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How they decided to
have (and keep)
the Bomb
We look at what a
collection of declassified official documents reveal about the nuclear
weapons policy of successive British governments, Labour and Tory
 Peter Hennessy’s
Cabinets and the Bomb (published for the British
Academy by Oxford University Press) is a documentary study concerning
the decisions made by various Labour and Conservative governments
regarding the development of atomic and thermonuclear power - er
-making bombs. It comprises a series of declassified Cabinet and
Cabinet Committee papers, minutes and letters covering the period from
1940 to 2007.
Even for close students of such matters, there are many fascinating
extra nuggets of information to be discovered within these pages and
numerous valuable insights into the devious nature of power politics.
Also, perhaps surprisingly for some, a document (circulated by Sir
Burke Trend, Harold Wilson’s Cabinet Secretary) which summarises, with
great lucidity, the case respectively for retention; possible
replacement or improvement; or complete abandonment of a nuclear
weapons policy.
Less surprisingly, the arguments in favour of abandonment (or
non-development initially) – at least at Cabinet level – were based
solely on doubts about economic viability, by Sir Stafford Cripps and
Hugh Dalton (both Chancellors of the Exchequer under Clement Attlee)
and later, during Harold Wilson's premiership, by the Treasury and DEA.
Ethical considerations played very little part – realistically, none at
all – in these deliberations. By the time a decision was required to be
made over the hydrogen bomb it was conveniently, and alas correctly,
concluded that in terms of ethics there was little or no difference
between the A or H bombs and that, after all, the A bomb already
existed. Indeed, the point was advanced that the hydrogen bomb could be
made "cleaner".
As the author himself puts it: "This is a book of explanation rather
than advocacy, it is for the reader to judge, rather than for the
author to declare, which factors trumped what at various times in
private debates in the Cabinet Room or Chiefs of Staff suite”. Peter
Hennessy, however, does intersperse the rather carefully formulated
documents with brief but salient observations. These skilfully succeed
in expertly highlighting some of the more important points that might
otherwise pass unnoticed in the rather dry language favoured by civil
servants. His restrained but informative and engaging commentary
provides exactly what is required by the reader and, very sensibly, no
more.
One of the benefits of such a commentary is that it is able to draw
upon relevant information from other sources. Sometimes this produces a
more colourful account than that confined by the austere language of
official reports. For instance, when the Cabinet Committee on Atomic
Energy (GEN 75) met on 25 October 1946, they were conscious of the fact
that, contrary to previously agreed procedure, the McMahon Act
prohibited the US from sharing its atomic knowledge with any other
country, including the UK. The Foreign Secretary, Ernest Bevin, had
broached the matter with the American Secretary of State, James Byrne,
and received short shrift. He was not accustomed to being treated in
such a disdainful manner and arrived at the meeting still smarting from
the humiliating encounter.
The minutes of the Cabinet Committee meeting are relayed thus: "THE
FOREIGN SECRETARY said . . . Even with the American information,
however, there would still be strong grounds for proceeding with the
construction of the plant.". Drawing on a BBC Timewatch documentary,
Hennessy tells how Bevin "waddled in late, having fallen asleep after a
heavy lunch" and turned the meeting around. Confronting the arguments
of Cripps and Dalton he said: "This won't do at all ... we've got to
have this thing over here whatever it costs ... We've got to have the
bloody Union Jack on top of it".
Lord Portal (Controller of Production of Atomic Energy) apparently
considered this piece of simplistic jingoistic logic decisive. He is
quoted as remarking to Sir Michael Perrin, a Ministry of Supply
official : "You know, if Bevin hadn't come in then, we wouldn't have
had that bomb, Michael." To borrow a familiar line from pantomime: "Oh,
yes "we" would".
A further example of this contrast in style arises from the debate
regarding the ludicrous and ill-fated Skybolt project. In June 1960,
the Tory Minister of Defence, Harold Watkinson, reported in a note to
Cabinet on the promised delivery of the missile: "There could as yet be
no certainty that Skybolt, which was not due to be tested as a complete
weapon for about a year, would be successful . . . However, the United
States authorities were confident that it would be effective."
The weapon was cancelled in December 1962 and the author recalls how,
many years later, it was described to him by Robert McNamara (President
Kennedy's Secretary of Defence) as: "Skybolt. It
was an absolute pile of junk".....continued next
page 18
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