Labour policy and the nuclear inheritance
In October 1964, the month when British voters would go to the polls to elect a new Government, the UKâs strategic nuclear forces, though dwarfed by those of the United States and the Soviet Union, nevertheless possessed considerable destructive potential. The Royal Air Forceâs Bomber Command, operating at exceptionally high levels of professionalism and skill, could muster nine Vulcan (72 aircraft), and four Victor squadrons (32 aircraft), all equipped with nuclear weapons of British manufacture. Three of the Vulcan and two of the Victor squadrons were armed with the Blue Steel stand-off missile, capable of delivering a one megaton warhead to its target from a range of about 100 miles; the rest of the force was still equipped with Yellow Sun free fall bombs, using the same one megaton Red Snow warhead as Blue Steel. Thirteen of the Vulcans and Victors were constantly kept at 15 minutes readiness to fly, and in a period of tension there were plans to disperse the V-force to 36 airfields across the UK, with the force able to take-off two minutes after an order was issued.
Since May 1963, as was seen in volume one of this history, the entire Vulcan and Victor force had been assigned to NATOâs Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR) for targeting purposes, subject to the general proviso of the Anglo-American Nassau Agreement of December 1962 that it could be withdrawn when âsupreme national interestsâ were deemed at stake. Also assigned to SACEUR were four squadrons of Canberra light bombers (48 aircraft) based in Germany, and three squadrons of Valiants (24 aircraft) from the UK, all equipped with US nuclear weapons provided under dualkey arrangements (with eight Valiants and four Canberras also kept at a high state of readiness). The Valiants and Canberras remained under national command during peacetime. If war were to occur, SACEUR, as well as general authorisation from the Alliance, would require the specific agreement of the British Government before he could employ any of the UK nuclear forces that had been assigned to him. There was a general understanding between the US President and British Prime Minister that they would consult one another before any US or UK nuclear forces were ordered into use, and there was a specific agreement to making a âjoint decisionâ if a nuclear strike were to be made by US aircraft based in Britain or by the Valiants armed with US weapons.1
Under the sales agreement concluded by the Conservative Government in April 1963, preparations were already being made for the procurement from the United States of 97 of the advanced A3 version of the Polaris submarinelaunched ballistic missile, as well as provision made for their logistic support. Scientists and engineers at the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment (AWRE) at Aldermaston had been busy with the design of a new British primary for inclusion in an adaptation of the US Mark 58 thermonuclear warhead which would be employed in the A3âs re-entry system. They were assisted in this work by the knowledge gained, and specialist materials supplied, under the terms of the Anglo-American âAgreement on the Uses of Atomic Energy for Mutual Defence Purposesâ (hereafter Mutual Defence Agreement, or MDA) first concluded in July 1958, then amended in May 1959. The shipbuilding firms Vickers-Armstrong and Cammell Laird were fully engaged with designing and constructing a new force of four nuclear-powered submarines, each able to carry 16 Polaris missiles. The demanding goal of introducing the first submarine into service by June 1968 having been set, keels for the first two boats had been laid in 1964, with a further two planned for 1965. In early 1964, with the keen support of the Prime Minister, Sir Alec Douglas-Home, the Government had modified earlier plans and had placed an order for a fifth Polaris submarine. With a force of five boats it was expected that two could be kept on continuous station, and a third at a maximum period of notice of four days. In the confident tones of one Ministry of Defence official, âas far as can be foreseen at present, Polaris submarines at sea will be as nearly invulnerable to pre-emptive attack as anything can be.â A national command and communications system, as then existed for the V-bomber force, was being devised to pass orders to the Polaris submarines, and so âin practice ⊠a British Government could, if it so wished, order the use of its major nuclear weapons or prevent them being fired on the orders of any other authority.â Estimates of the destructive capability of the 104 V-bombers available for use in 1964 were put at 20 major Soviet cities, and a comparable capability was expected of the Polaris force when it was eventually deployed.2
The allocation of extra resources for construction of a fifth Polaris submarine came during a period when Opposition attacks on the Governmentâs approach to spending on the nuclear deterrent were intensifying. Now firmly ensconced as leader of the Labour Party, Harold Wilson was keen to make the point that the preoccupation with nuclear independence, represented by the Polaris programme, was making it more difficult for the armed forces to meet Britainâs world-wide military commitments, whether in defence of Malaysia (which since September 1963 had been embroiled in full-blown confrontation with Indonesia, with British forces engaged in repelling crossborder raids by Indonesian forces in Borneo), or in the South Arabian Federation (the home of Britainâs key Middle East base of Aden, and where insurgents were threatening the control of pro-Western rulers). During a Commons debate staged by the Labour Party in mid-January 1964, where an attempt was made to attack the Government for its neglect of conventional defence capabilities, Wilson had again affirmed that, âBritain should cease the attempt to remain an independent nuclear power, since this neither strengthens the [NATO] alliance nor is it now a sensible use of our resources âŠâ Proclaiming that âour expenditure on the nuclear effort has had, and will have if it is continued, serious and limiting effects on our ability to build up adequate conventional forces,â he continued that the deterrent was âwholly irrelevant to the problems the country is facing. One cannot use it in Cyprus or in Borneo. The Government are not going to drop it on the trade union leaders in South Arabia.â As well as its dubious utility in such low intensity military operations or against non-nuclear adversaries, Wilson voiced doubt that the Government would ever âcontemplate taking on Russia alone in a thermonuclear exchange. I should like to know their estimate of our second-strike capacity. There are not many first-rank military experts who think that we have very much. In their calculations, however, do the Government contemplate the possibility of a first-strike alone, without our allies?â
Wilson then quoted from a recent article by Sir John Slessor, where the former Chief of the Air Staff (and principal author of the Chiefs of Staff 1952 Global Strategy Paper) now expressed the view that all Polaris would offer would be âthe doubtful consolation of a posthumous revenge â devastating no doubt, but not lethal â after our country and the bulk of our population had been obliterated.â Referring to government statements extolling the importance of NATO for deterrence, Wilson pointed to the inconsistency of considering the UK deterrent as available for use in a situation where the United States had, in fact, refused involvement and âwe might have to use our nuclear weapons as a means of forcing Americaâs hand â the so-called catalytic strike?â Wilson said that, knowing the Prime Minister, he would acquit him of âanything so fundamentally evil as that proposal, or in that matter so self-defeating, because if the Americans have decided not to honour the alliance, I am not certain that they will be shamed into it by the fact that we have committed suicide first.â Nevertheless, the Government still talked in such terms, and so Wilson asked if it really believed that the United States would
supply Polaris for us to engage in a war to which the United States are opposed ⊠the Governmentâs nuclear argument is based upon not trusting our allies, because they envisage a situation in which the United States desert us and default on the alliance. They think that they can bring the United States in by going it alone. I challenge the Prime Minister, when he meets the President of the United States, to ask him whether the idea of a catalytic strike to bring in an unwilling America is the Presidentâs interpretation of the Nassau Agreement. If it is not, the Governmentâs whole case falls to the ground.
Instead, Wilson argued that the real reason for maintaining the deterrent was âpoliticalâ, and rooted in the previous Prime Ministerâs need to return from Nassau with something to show for his efforts if he was not to be assailed by critical backbench opinion in the Conservative Party. What Wilson regarded as so âpatheticâ about Douglas-Homeâs position was that although he was âfar too intelligentâ to believe in the arguments over independent use, âhe holds his place only by maintaining the fiction. Now he hopes to use this in addition, not merely as a weapon of intra-party warfare, but as a weapon of interparty warfare in the General Election. In doing this, he is sadly underrating the intelligence of the electorate.â It was at Nassau, Wilson alleged, that the Government had also taken the unwise step of signing up to the controversial idea being pushed by the US administration in Washington, with varying degrees of enthusiasm, for establishing a Multilateral Force (MLF). A new force of 25 surface ships armed with 200 Polaris missiles under joint NATO control, with crews of mixed nationality, as envisaged by the MLF proposals, Wilson argued, would have âserious, perhaps fatal, implicationsâ for agreements with the Soviet Union over disarmament or non-proliferation. The Conservative Governmentâs nuclear policy, in other words, was undermining its avowed foreign policy goals of reducing East-West tensions and creating the conditions for a safer international environment.3
Having urged the Government to take nuclear non-proliferation more seriously, Wilson also proceeded to explain Labourâs policy. The V-bombers would be kept for the ârest of their limited life â and that is not long now â and we shall keep them unequivocally assigned to NATO.â Over Polaris, and as had been made âclear a hundred timesâ, if Labour was returned to power it would aim to ârenegotiate the Nassau Agreement on the basis of our declared policy that our proper contribution to our Alliance and that our most effective military strength in this country is secured without the illusion which is created by nuclear missile carrying submarines.â Referring back to the January 1963 parliamentary debate after the Nassau Conference, Wilson re-stated his intention to âdenegotiateâ the Agreement so as âto end the proposal to buy Polaris submarines from the United States.â4
According to Alistair Hetherington, the editor of the Guardian, who held frequent private conversations with Wilson at this time, the Labour leader regarded the British bomb as essentially âa bluff.â Wilsonâs views, moreover, had been confirmed when he had accompanied Philip de Zulueta, who had acted as Harold Macmillanâs Principal Private Secretary for Foreign Affairs during the final years of Macmillanâs premiership, on a flight to Washington for President Kennedyâs funeral in November 1963. On this occasion de Zulueta âhad taken the line that it was damaging for Labour to show up the emptiness of Britainâs nuclear boast. Wilson had said he didnât believe that Britain had either a first or a second strike capability,â and that the âlittle valueâ there was in the deterrent should be used as a âbargaining weapon âŠâ5 When it came to the prospect of Polaris, it should be called the âMoss Bros deterrentâ as âwe had to borrow it from America.â6 Wilson also told Hetherington that he âshouldnât make the mistake of thinking that they hadnât had their contacts already with the chiefs of staff and the scientific advisers. The chiefs of staff were quite keen to talk to them, where it could be done discreetly.â7
Labour leaders were, it is clear, already reaching for some new conceptions of how the existing nuclear forces of the NATO Alliance could be reorganised, with the goal of circumventing the need for a new mixed-manned MLF, and move British nuclear policy away from its rhetorical commitment to independence and toward closer coordination with the US strategic deterrent. In early February 1964, Denis Healey, the Opposition defence spokesman, had discussed with Peter Thorneycroft, the Defence Secretary, the notion that pooling of the deterrent into some common Anglo-American force might afford the UK a greater voice in how the United States intended to use its own general strategic nuclear forces. This, however, was a proposition which the then Prime Minister, when he learnt of it, dismissed out of hand by recalling that Dean Rusk, the US Secretary of State, had told him âthat if they [i.e. the Labour Opposition] thought they could get a say in the use of the US deterrent it was pure bunk.â8
These were nevertheless indications that Healey was thinking in far larger terms than the MLF, and was looking toward solutions to the perennial conundrum of how NATOâs nervous members could be reassured that Washington would be ready to commit its strategic nuclear forces in the event of a European conflict, when the Soviet Union was in a position (as it plainly was by the mid-1960s) to inflict its own devastating nuclear attacks against the US homeland in response. The bargain envisaged by Healey in 1964 was foregoing the âindependentâ character of European strategic nuclear capabilities through their commitment to a n...