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Britain and the H-bomb, 1955–1958
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 August 2009
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Britain's decision in 1955, reaffirmed by policy and action through 1958, to manufacture its own hydrogen bomb has raised important questions about the effectiveness of joint Anglo-American defense arrangements. That the British development of massive retaliatory weapons involved a costly and unnecessary duplication of the American program has been persuasively argued by Henry Kissinger. Like many others, Kissinger would have preferred Britain to have concentrated on the conventional and tactical nuclear means of waging limited war. Indeed, from a joint Anglo-American point of view, Kissinger's argument is so persuasive that an altogether different point of view, much more exclusively national, is required to explain Britain's H-bomb development. This may be discerned in the way in which the policy was presented to the British public. Granting that such presentation does not necessarily reveal the actual motivations of policy-makers, nevertheless the public justifications for Britain's H-bomb illuminate the image which Englishmen have of their nation's status in world affairs, particularly in relation to the United States.
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- Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1959
References
1 Kissinger, Henry A., Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy (New York, 1957), chap. 9Google Scholar. Kissinger, believing that Western Europe must be prepared for tactical nuclear warfare, argued that British statesmen were right to insist on the need for British possession of nuclear weapons, but wrong to identify their policy with the all-out massive retaliation implied in an emphasis on the H-bomb's delivery by strategic air power. It is only with Britain's adoption of the latter position that this article is concerned.
2 Deutsch, Karl W. and others, Political Community and the North Atlantic Area (Princeton, 1957), pp. 5–6, 29–30Google Scholar.
3 Ibid., p. 129.
4 The British Gallup polls have shown substantial, if unsteady, opposition to the manufacture and the testing of the H-bomb. In March 1955, when the government's decision to manufacture the bomb was announced, 32 per cent responded negatively to the plain question whether Britain should make the bomb (compared to 54 per cent pro and 14 per cent “don't know”). Two months later 53 per cent said that Britain should devote atomic energy solely to peaceful purposes rather than making the H-bomb, (while only 33 per cent chose the bomb, and 14 per cent didn't know). In April 1957, 44 per cent disapproved of Britain's decision to carry out H-bomb tests, 41 per cent approved; the remaining were “don't knows”. And in September 1958, 30 per cent said they would approve if Britain gave up her hydrogen bombs, even if other countries did not do so, 57 per cent disapproved and 13 per cent were “don't knows.” All of these results, as well as some to be cited subsequently, are from Social Surveys (Gallup Poll) Ltd., whose files were most helpfully made available to me in London.
5 The troubles of the Labour leadership on this issue were already plain in the parliamentary party at the time of the Conservative government's decision to manufacture the bomb in 1955. Sixty-two Labour M.P.s abstained from voting in support of the official party position, expressed in a Labour amendment objecting only to the government's administration of the defense organization. This experience is discussed in my “Cohesion of British Parliamentary Parties,” American Political Science Review, L (06, 1956), 360–77, at pp. 372–73Google Scholar. Later the issue was fought out and won by the leadership, at the 1957 and 1958 annual conferences of the mass party organization; these sessions provided the occasion for arguments to be discussed in this essay. Finally the Labour party settled, as indicated in its pre-election campaign pamphlet of November, 1958, on the advocacy of unilateral British suspension of nuclear tests but not on unilateral nuclear disarmament (The Future Labour Offers You).
6 Report of Liberal party annual assembly, Times (of London), 09 19, 1958, p. 3Google Scholar.
7 Cmnd. 9391, Feb. 1955, p. 6.
8 Report of Labour party conference, Times (of London), 10 3, 1958, p. 12Google Scholar. Gaitskell and other Labour leaders had reason to present the case for the H-bomb to their party's voters, as well as their rank-and-file members at annual conferences, since the Gallup polls, referred to in note 4, regularly showed more Labour voters than Conservative in opposition to Britain's nuclear arms policy.
9 The existence of such a fraction of the public is evidenced in the Gallup poll of April 1958. Of the 25 per cent who approved of Britain giving up her H-bomb without waiting for America or for Russia to move, almost onefifth indicated that they would not approve if this meant opposing the wishes of America and the other NATO countries.
10 Public Law 85–479, 85th Congress, H.R. 12716, July 2, 1958.
11 Times (of London), 10 15, 1958, p. 13Google Scholar. Now that this much status has been achieved it is conceivable that Britain could quietly put to one side its H-bomb development, depending on America in that respect, and concentrate on other defense weapons more securely than before the change in the McMahon Act.
12 537 H. C. Deb. 1905 (March 1, 1955).
13 537 H. C. Deb. 2182–83 (March 2, 1955).
14 Strachey, John, 508 H. C. Deb. 2036 (04 17, 1957)Google Scholar.
15 Speech of April 29, 1958, British Information Services text, p. 2. The conception of contemporary Britain entering a second Elizabethan age has frequently been alluded to by Macmillan and other ministers, relying on the parallelism of limited resources as well as the name of the Queen in each instance. Thus the prime minister said, on Nov. 21, 1958, that Englishmen must see, in the adjustment of the first Elizabethans to their inability to establish their country as a great continental power, a lesson for themselves as the recent losers of Kipling's “Dominion over palm and pine.” Greatness now as then could be achieved in new directions. (Speech delivered at Southampton, text given in Conservative and Unionist Central Office press release No. 6582).
16 537 H. C. Deb. 1897 (March 1, 1955).
17 However, this point was made clearly at the time of the 1955 decision by Denis Healey, a highly informed and able Labour M.P.: “The really crucial argument for our having our own thermo-nuclear weapons and the means of delivering them is that it gives us this extra means of security against a thermonuclear attack which no Power not possessing these weapons can have.” 537 H. C. Deb. 1934–35 (March 1, 1955).
18 568 H. C. Deb. 1760–61 (April 16, 1957).
19 For this statement, I can cite only private conversations with various British political and academic persons during the fall of 1958.
20 Among other difficulties in the way of carrying out this threat, there may be added the apparent lack of support accorded the policy by the British public. When asked by the Gallup poll in February, 1958, 64 per cent replied “wrong” (22 per cent “right” and 14 per cent “don't know”) to this statement: “The Government have said that if Russia attacked the West we would use the H-bomb, even if Russia used only conventional weapons. Do you think that the West would be right or wrong in being the first to use the H-bomb in such circumstances?”
21 Definition of White Paper's language (Cmnd. 363, Feb. 1958, p. 2) is by Prime Minister Macmillan, , 583 H. C. Deb. 408–09 (02 26, 1958)Google Scholar. He added that he meant the bombing of London with conventional bombs.
22 568 H. C. Deb. 1977 (April 17, 1957).
23 56th Annual Report of the Labour Party (1957), p. 177.
24 Ibid., p. 181.
25 The ten per cent estimate is from Cmnd. 363, Feb. 1958, p. 6, where the exact language is “less than one-tenth of the Defence Estimates for 1958–59.” However, twelve per cent is spoken of more frequently in unofficial statements. The total British defense expenditure for 1958–59, as listed in budget estimates, was 1,435 million pounds, in a total national budget of 5,439 million pounds.
26 Cmnd. 9075, Feb. 1954, p. 6.
27 In February, 1958, 45 per cent of a British Gallup poll said that it was right for the government to reduce Britain's conventional forces — Army, Navy and Air Force. 39 per cent said it was wrong, and 16 per cent didn't know. When presented with an alternative between conventional weapons and atomic weapons and missiles, in December 1957, only eight per cent chose the conventional weapons (as against 52 per cent preferring the atomic alternative, 22 per cent wanting neither and 18 per cent “don't knows”).
28 Thus in 1956 the official Labour opposition presented a parliamentary motion regretting that the defense White Paper “makes no provision for an immediate cut in the period of National Service nor for any specific plan for its eventual abolition …” 549 H. C. Deb. 1036 (Feb. 28, 1956).
29 568 H. C. Deb. 2040 (April 17, 1957).
30 Deutsch, and others, op. cit., p. 129Google Scholar.
31 It should be noted that in 1958 a growing informed British criticism of the government's defense policy took shape. It was reflected in parliamentary defense debates in which backbench Conservatives as well as Labour M.P.s criticized the reliance on nuclear deterrence at the expense of conventional forces, 592 H. C. Deb. 954–1075 (July 28, 1958). Some of this criticism derived from strong military service opposition to the cabinet's defense policy as represented by Duncan Sandys. See also the slashing critique by Hudson, G. F., “Was Sandys Really Necessary?”, Twentieth Century, CLXIII (05, 1958), 406–15Google Scholar. The case against Sandys resembled the slightly earlier review of American military policy by Henry Kissinger, and some of the British critics explicitly acknowledged the impetus which Kissinger's work, cited in note 1, gave to their own strategic thinking. None of these critics are to be confused with the British Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, which of course stood for the West's abandonment of the H-bomb entirely and which was too pacifist by inclination to urge the substitution of an increased capacity to wage limited war even by conventional means.