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British Scientists and the Bomb: The Decisions of 1980
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 March 2014
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THE BRITISH CONSERVATIVE GOVERNMENT ELECTED IN MAY 1979 had, by August 1980, taken three decisions in respect of nuclear weapons and civil defence which in portent had had few peacetime parallels. These decisions naturally had a technical as well as a political dimension yet, until at least the spring of 1981, the involvement of the British scientific community in public discussion of the underlying issues remained negligible. No similar decisions could be taken, or even contemplated, in the United States without provoking a response both substantial and professional from American scientists. How does one explain the attitude, or lack of it, in this context of their British counterparts? Why, when these decisions were announced, did British scientists behave, or appear to behave, as political eunuchs? Are there no matters which rouse them to political involvement? Or are they perhaps more politically effective precisely because they pursue a low-profile course? These questions are important and it is worth trying to answer them. Before attempting to do so, however, it will be helpful both to identify the British decisions of 1979–80 referred to above, and also to outline such reaction to them on the part of the British technical community as had, in fact, occurred by the spring of 1981.
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References
1 I have throughout used the term ‘scientists’ to include, as well as technologists and engineers, the whole scientific or technical community, but social scientists are not included.
2 House of Commons Debates, Vol. 975, cols. 1540–56.
3 The essential difference between cruise and intercontinental ballistic missiles is that the former are powered and controlled throughout their flight, the latter only during the first few minutes, after which they move under gravity. Cruise missiles are also relatively slow and terrain‐hugging, while ballistic missiles are very fast and follow a trajectory which takes them into space. Both can now be extremely accurate. Cruise missiles are developments from the V1 of the Second World War, made possible by much advanced control and propulsion systems, while ballistic missiles were developed from the V2.
4 House of Commons Debates, Vol. 986, cols. 1342–58.
4a 4a Addressing the Royal United Services Institute on 16 December 1980, Mr Pym said that, the US having already withdrawn 1000 warheads without seeking Soviet reciprocation, as the new systems were deployed, further warheads would be removed on a one for one basis.
5 House of Commons Debates, Vol. 976, Cols. 672–784. The subject was also debated on 3 March 1981, House of Commons Debates, Vol. 1000, cols. 137–224, this being the occasion eventually chosen by the Social Democrats to separate themselves formally from the Labour Party. The position of David Owen, spokesman for the Social Democrats, was set out in Negotiate and Survive, CLV Publications, 1980.
6 House of Commons Debates, Vol. 988, cols. 1235–51.
7 The text of the Anglo‐American letters was published as The British Strategic Nuclear Force, Cmnd. 7979, July 1980. See also House of Commons Debates, Vol. 991, cols. 183–8, 28 October 1980.
8 The Times reported, 28 January 1981, that the possibility of a fifth boat was ‘dead in all but name’, a ‘hidden casualty of pressure on the defence budget’.
9 Reported in The Times, 1 May 1980. See also his letter in The Times, 16 May 1980, and speech in the Lords, 18 December 1979 (Vol. 403, cols. 1601–48, Nuclear Deterrent: Replacement Policy). There were other military critics, e. g., Air Vice‐Marshal S. W. B. Menaul, Times (letters), 2 June 1980. Menaul believed that a nuclear war would not necessarily mean a holocaust (Times, letter, 10 January 1981). The World Disarmament Campaign, launched in Britain in April 1980, has a brigadier as general secretary. See also Jane's All the World Aircraft 1980–81, Jane's Publishing Company, and The Future of Britain's Deterrent Force, London, International Institute for Strategic Studies, 1980.
10 The successful resolution of the Cuban missile crisis in 1962 and the Partial Test Ban Treaty of 1963 also helped. See Pritchard, Colin and Taylor, Richard, The Protest Makers, Oxford, Pergamon Press, 1980.Google Scholar
11 The Liberals convincingly rejected unilateral nuclear disarmament but the voting margin was much narrower on a pro‐NATO as against a non‐nuclear European force: the party leadership is pro‐cruise missiles but anti‐Trident.
12 The Times had a particularly important series of articles in January 1980. See also House of Lords Debates, Vol. 406, cols. 260–388.
13 House of Commons Debates, Vol. 990, cols. 790–804, 7 August 1980.
14 Reported in The Times, 6 September 1980.
15 ‘The Deterrent Illusion’, 21 January 1980. The lecture was also published by the Menard Press, London, 1980, with the title Science Advisers, Scientific Advisers and Nuclear Weapons.
16 Tizard himself, as Chairman of the Defence Research Policy Committee in the late forties, felt that Britain should leave nuclear weapons to the USA. Tizard's paper is summarized in Margaret Gowing, Independence and Deterrence, Britain and Atomic Energy 1945–52, Vol. 1, London, Macmillan, 1974, p. 230, but the paper itself was not released in the materials declassified under the 30 year rule in 1980. The two volumes of Professor Gowing's study and her Britain and Atomic Energy, London, Macmillan, 1964, constitute the official history of Britain's nuclear project to 1952.
17 See the Lancet, 9 August 1980. Also Anthony Tucker, The Guardian, 24 April 1980, and The Guardian, 9 October 1980.
18 8 November 1980.
19 29 November 1980.
20 Also 29 November 1980.
21 9 October 1980.
22 4 August 1980.
23 16 January 1981.
24 15 January 1981.
25 22 May 1980.
26 28 July 1980.
27 The lectures by Mountbatten and Zuckerman were published in Apocalypse Now?, Nottingham, Spokesman, for the Atlantic Peace Foundation and World Disarmament Campaign, 1980.
28 Published by the Menard Press, London.
29 6 March 1981.
30 12 June 1980.
31 12 February 1981. Mrs. Thatcher, who it should be recalled herself has a science degree, was to say on Washington television (Sunday Times, 1 March 1981) that she wanted an effective anti‐tank weapon and that the neutron bomb should ‘never, never, never have been given that name’, her preference being apparently ‘neutron weapon’.
32 Beaton, Leonard and Maddox, John, The Spread of Nuclear Weapons, London, Institute for Strategic Studies, 1962.Google Scholar
33 Michael Pentz, Towards the Final Abyss? The State of the Nuclear Arms Race, J. D. Bernal Peace Library Pamphlet, 1980. See also his response to Zuckerman, The Guardian (letters), 6 November 1980.
34 THES, 5 December 1980. The BBC also refused again in 1980 to show The War Game, a film about a fictional nuclear attack which they had commissioned in 1965: it was upsetting and also out of date. The Times, 13 June 1980.
35 Quoted from the letter inviting scientists to attend. Places were limited to 200.
36 See, for example, Thompson, E. P. and Smith, Dan (eds), Protest and Survive, Harmondsworth, Penguin Special, 1980 Google Scholar, reviewed by Howard in the Sunday Times, 9 November 1980. In February 1981 the two debated at Oxford, THES, 20 February.
37 HC 674 i‐iv (1979–80), HC 36 i‐iv (1980–81) to time of writing: the Assistant Chief Scientific Adviser's evidence is HC 36‐ii. The Director of the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment at Aldermaston told the Defence Committee on the same occasion that there had been recruitment problems in connection with the Chevaline and Trident missile programmes, especially in regard to engineers and health physicists. The trouble, it seems, was that they could earn more elsewhere.
38 See Williams, Roger, ‘Some Political Aspects of the Rothschild Affair’, Science Studies, 3, 1973, pp. 31–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
39 See Williams, Roger, The Nuclear Power Decisions: British Policies 1953–78, London, Croom Helm, 1980.Google Scholar
40 J. Vig, Norman, Science and Technology in British Politics, Oxford, Pergamon Press, 1968, pp. 128, 130, 138.Google Scholar
41 Moodie, Graeme C. and Studdert‐Kennedy, Gerald, Opinions, Publics and Pressure Groups, London: Allen & Unwin, 1970, p. 86.Google Scholar
42 Gummett, Philip, Scientists in Whitehall, Manchester, Manchester UP, 1980, p. 229.Google Scholar
43 Blume, Stuart S., Toward a Political Sociology of Science, London, Collier Macmillan, 1974, p. 171.Google Scholar
44 I do not include the new Technical Change Centre being set up in 1981 by the SRC, SSRC and Leverhulme Trust. This will have social scientists as well as scientists and others and is to ‘develop a major programme of research on the choice, management and acceptability of technical change relevant to the advancement of the national economy’.
45 As reported in The Times, 1 November 1980.
46 At its 16 November 1980 conference.
47 In this connection, Lord Orr‐Ewing (House of Lords Debates, Vol. 403, cols. 1636–41) complained of a BBC Panorama programme on 3 December 1979, which he found ‘biased, despicable and very heavily loaded’, and stated that ‘none of the Marxist interviewees was interrogated’. He specifically mentioned Dr Rotblat, ‘a distinguished physicist… has always been of the extreme left or Marxist viewpoint’, and Mr Frank Barnaby, ‘described as an ex‐Aldermaston scientist… for some years he has been working at Stockholm at the International Peace Research Institute… [which]…believes in unilateral disarmament’.
48 Freedman, Lawrence, Britain and Nuclear Weapons, London, Macmillan for the RIIA, 1980 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Smart, Ian, The Future of the British Nuclear Deterrent: Technical, Economic and Strategic Issues, London, RIIA, 1977.Google Scholar