13 JUNE 1987, Page 5

ENOCH'S NIGHTMARE

IN HIS unilateralist speech on Sunday, Mr Enoch Powell said that the theory of nuclear deterrence could be discarded:

The salutary event of Chernobyl streng- thened and crystallised an already growing impulse to escape from the nightmare of peace being dependent upon the contempla- tion of horrific and mutual carnage.

Earlier in his speech, Mr Powell said that there had been peace since 1945 not because of the 'spectre of Hiroshima but the spectre of involvement in a third world war'. Even if Mr Powell is right, is not the desire to avoid a conventional third world war prompted by the 'contemplation of horrific and mutual carnage'? If so, how is a non-nuclear world escaping from a `nightmare'?