Britain's nuclear bomb
By Clare Bailey
“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.” Ernest Bevin 1946 (British Foreign Secretary 1945-51)
GETTING THE BOMB
Churchill, with his eye on the future forms British imperial power might take, was the architect of British nuclear weapons policy. He had written with enthusiasm in the early 1930s about research into ‘a gigantic source of energy…waiting for a detonator’, authorised the development of an atomic bomb in 1941 and, against earlier instincts, arranged the incorporation of British research into the Manhattan Project in 1943.
When as Prime Minister he introduced the 1955 Defence Command White Paper, which committed the UK to a thermo-nuclear or hydrogen bomb defence policy, Churchill was intending to settle the shape of British military policy for years to come. His otherwise rhetorical speech was candid in one respect - it conceded that the truth about the hydrogen bomb and its destructive power could well lead to public panic and insisted on the need to withhold information from the British people, “I have been most anxious that responsible discussions on this matter should not take place on the BBC or upon the television…’
In the debate that followed Churchill’s speech, John Strachey, MP (previously Attlee’s Secretary of State for War and party to the decision to pursue the production of a British atom bomb), pointed out that significant ‘commitments’ were being made though not referred to by Churchill, notably a commitment to a first strike policy. The White Paper he said: “…lays down the doctrine that if there is any aggression in Europe, and however we are attacked, whether by nuclear weapons or not, we should certainly reply with nuclear weapons. We are committed, it seems, to doing so. That is a very grave decision indeed.” Later in his speech, Strachey adds, “Surely, the time to begin negotiations is now.... Whatever their motive may be, the Russians make offer after offer to negotiate, and, so far, what has the West done with those offers? It has written them off and has ridden them off on the grounds that they are all propaganda.”
With the passing of this Bill in 1955, the essential components of current UK policy with regards to the retention, deployment and use of nuclear weapons were put in place. The UK would refuse to participate in good faith negotiations for disarmament proposed by the USSR; it would continue to develop thermo-nuclear nuclear warheads; these warheads were committed to NATO, and there was an explicit commitment to their potential offensive use in a conventional war.
UK/US RIVALRY
Clement Davies, leader of the Liberal Party, joined that debate in 1955 to ask about British relations with the US, “We now know that the United States has a large quantity of hydrogen bombs. We are now, apparently, to start upon their manufacture. Do we transmit to one another the knowledge which we have? Do we tell one another our secrets?... or does each nation follow its own policy without reference to anybody else? This seems to me an extraordinary situation.”
The ‘extraordinary situation’ he refers to had begun over a decade earlier and could also be described as business as usual – the pursuit of competing imperial interests under the guise of a wartime alliance. Churchill had set up a British nuclear programme known as Tube Alloys in 1941, outsourcing most of the work to ICI, a decision that alienated the US who saw no reason to collaborate on a project that was going to benefit a foreign corporation. When the US some months later proposed a joint effort, the British government failed to respond and it was only when the US pressed on with the Manhattan Project at speed after Pearl Harbour in December 1941 that the UK discovered its interests would be best served by joining in and that it was now frozen out. When UK scientists were permitted to join the Manhattan Project in 1943, it was as junior partners.
Two years later, after the US dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, leaks from the Project to the Soviet Union were traced to British participants and were a convenient pretext for passing the post-war 1946 US McMahon Act, which prevented any further cooperation with its ally on nuclear matters – on pain of death.
Efforts by the US in the late 1940s to restrict the development of the UK programme by offering the use of US made bombs were rejected, and the Attlee cabinet took the secret decision to produce a UK atom bomb independently in 1947. This was in the face of US opposition. It was the year India shook off colonial rule and became an independent state. Loss of empire in one form was made up for in another; post-war Britain may have been broke but not so broke it could contemplate passing up this opportunity to retain its place as a world power.
THE MUTUAL DEFENCE AGREEMENT
Britain went ahead with its own nuclear weapons programme. Thus far, thus ‘sovereign’, to use Grant Shapps’ recent description of the UK ‘deterrent’. But discussions between Eisenhower and Churchill in the early 1950s soon led to the signing of the precursor to the Mutual Defence Agreement (MDA), compromising the autonomy of the British programme.
When the Suez debacle in 1956 definitively exposed the limits of British power post-World War 2, and when in 1957 Britain became the third power, after the US and the Soviet Union, to produce and test a hydrogen bomb, the Macmillan government proposed to the US the pooling of nuclear resources. This cooperation took the form of the Mutual Defence Agreement which, after much hard-fought technical horse-trading, was signed in July 1958. And so the ‘special relationship’ began – approved by Congress but not by Parliament, which has to date never fully discussed let alone challenged the terms of the Agreement. Although it was originally to be renewed every 10 years by parliament, it has been reported that Starmer has removed this requirement.
While the US benefited initially from aspects of British nuclear research, the MDA effectively rendered the British nuclear programme dependent on US technology and US arms manufacturers. It allowed the UK to conduct tests in the Nevada desert. It also committed it to continued expenditure on nuclear R&D.
The MDA continues to operate very actively via constant exchanges. In 2002, for example, the Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE) at Aldermaston received visits from many state and private partners in the US military-industrial complex, including Lockheed Martin Missiles & Space, Los Alamos National Laboratory, ITT Industries, Honeywell and Bechtel. AWE visited US establishments 2,000 times between 2007 and 2009. Cooperation is also organised in Joint Working Groups, whose number and focus vary – there are currently 15 of them. This information about the workings of the MDA is never published and is only extracted with difficulty from ministers by parliamentary select committees.
This sharing of knowledge and materials has facilitated the development of the UK weapons programme for over 60 years and, despite denials, it has consistently breached the terms of the 1968 Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) whose purpose was to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons technology and to promote the goal of nuclear disarmament. In 2004 the British American Security Information Council (BASIC), one of the less aggressive establishment think-tanks working on what used to be called ‘peaceful co-existence’, obtained a legal opinion that the renewal of the MDA treaty would violate Article VI of the NPT. This view was rejected by the US and the UK on the weasel grounds that the MDA does not involve the transfer of deployment-ready bombs or warheads. The 2004 BASIC report (1) on the workings and implications of the MDA is worth reading as is the more recent Nuclear Information Service report. (2)
A 2020 report by the national security think tank, Center for Strategic & International Studies (3) fears the US warhead modernisation programme could indeed be seen as escalatory and refers repeatedly to the implications for the UK. In their view the ‘tight coupling’ of the US/UK nuclear relationship requires very careful PR.
UK NUCLEAR FORCE TODAY
The active nuclear force is composed of 4 SSBN (Ship Submersible Ballistic Nuclear) submarines. One of these is always at sea, its whereabouts unknown; two in port, deployable at short notice, and the fourth in overhaul/repairs. This is termed Continuous at Sea Deterrence – CASD. Each submarine carries 16 Trident IID-5 missiles, each of which has a range of 12000km and can be armed with up to 12 warheads. The current Vanguard submarines are due to be replaced by new Dreadnought submarines over the coming decade currently costed at £31 billion. A programme to replace the Mk4 nuclear warhead they carry is also underway at AWE Aldermaston, in close consultation with the US. The Trident delivery system currently in use was designed to operate into the 2040s and the decision to replace/renew was taken in 2016. In effect there was little choice if the UK was to continue to operate a nuclear force given the US was modernising its own warheads and Trident system.
In the 2021 Integrated Review of Defence and Foreign Policy the government, citing new ‘technological and doctrinal threats’, announced the reversal of what had been several decades of decreasing the number of UK warheads – that is, gradual disarmament. The previous cap on the nuclear stockpile of 225 was increased up to a possible 260, permitting a 40% increase over the earlier goal of a reduction to 180. This huge escalation has gone largely unremarked.
An overview of the nuclear force can be found in a Commons briefing paper of May 2023, Nuclear weapons at a glance: United Kingdom, although the UK has never declassified the precise size of its nuclear stockpile and the 2021 Integrated Review makes it clear that a policy of ‘deliberate ambiguity’ about the operational stockpile, deployed warheads and missiles, was being extended.
The UK’s nuclear submarines are built by BAE Systems in Barrow and maintained by Babcock International in Devonport and Faslane. The propulsion systems, and their in-service support, are provided by Rolls-Royce Submarines Ltd in Derby. The warheads are designed and made in Aldermaston. A nationalised Sheffield Forgemasters is now also part of the UK nuclear supply chain. The Trident missile delivery system is built in America, primarily by Lockheed Martin with Northrup Grumman, Boeing and others contributing elements to its production. This means regular visits to the US by the UK submarines for maintenance.
The components of the UK’s nuclear weapons establishment are carefully distributed across the country as can be seen on the 2024 Defence Nuclear Command Paper map – figure 1. They employ around 42,000 people, a workforce that will double under new plans. Interestingly the map does not mark Sellafield or other sites involved in the production and storage of fissile materials for use in the warheads. Some of these materials come from the US, but by no means all.
ALDERMASTON
The Atomic Weapons Establishment at Aldermaston, target of the peace marches of the 1950s and 60s, merits attention.
The precursor to AWE was the High Explosive Research project at RAF Aldermaston, a World War 2 airfield used by the US Air Force. The AWE was established there in 1952 and was managed by a number of different government departments until 1993 when the Blair government gave Hunting-BRAE, a private consortium, the contract to manage the whole Establishment. Within 5 years the company had been prosecuted twice for serious breaches of safety and in 1999 it lost the contract to another consortium whose key elements were in place until recently – US arms manufacturer Lockheed Martin and Serco. Jacobs Engineering, another US company bought a stake in 2008, meaning that US companies controlled of 75% of the management of, and profits deriving from, the ‘sovereign’ British bomb plant. Between 2000 and 2015 dividend payments to shareholders amounted to over £800m, £82m in 2019 alone.
The privately-run AWE’s safety record was dangerously poor. In the years 2000-2011 there were 158 fires recorded, with a local newspaper reporting that during the same period the fire brigade was called out to AWE four times a week on average. In 2013 AWE was placed under ‘special regulatory attention’ by the Office for Nuclear Regulation, not only in response to safety concerns but also because there were huge delays and overspends in the delivery of a new warhead – 6 years overdue with a budget running at double the original. In 2018 AWE was ordered to pay £1m to an employee who had suffered electrical burns. Eventually AWE was nationalised by the Tory government in July 2021 – without fanfare, and without disclosure of the compensation that was undoubtedly paid to Lockheed and its partners.
AWE is now managed for the UK government as an arms-length company with a workforce of 7,000 – the arms-length status guaranteeing continued access by private companies. A case in point: AWE’s CEO is Nick Elliott, Director of Helsing Ltd., a company that bills itself as ‘Europe’s leading software and AI defence company’. Helsing announced a £100m investment in the UK at an event in February 2024 featuring Ukraine’s Deputy Defence Minister, alongside Minister for the Cabinet Office, Jeremy Quin. Both Quin and Elliott referred to the war in Ukraine as an opportunity to be seized to test new software developments in the battlefield.
SELLING THE BOMB
The purposes, dangers and costs of the UK’s bi-partisan nuclear force have never been accepted in the UK. Protests began in 1952 and never stopped. Successful peace campaigning – the great CND marches of the 1980s, the Greenham Common peace camp that saw off US Cruise missiles – meant governments have had to work hard to conceal the actual workings of the force. The British bomb has always been cloaked in myth.
In March 2024 the Sunak government published a Defence Nuclear Enterprise Command Paper laying out the UK’s planned escalation in its offensive capabilities. It was dressed up as a ‘national endeavour’ by Grant Shapps, who described it as an inspiration to the workforce and a commitment to ‘the communities that support the nuclear deterrent’. This ‘national endeavour’ entails huge investments in nuclear-related skills – 5,000 new apprenticeships over the next 4 years, a quadrupling of PhDs in the nuclear sector; a £763 million investment partnership with industry focused on BAE Systems, Rolls-Royce, EDF and Babcock, as well as a £3bn investment into the infrastructure in Barrow and Derby. This is in addition to the allocation of £31bn for the building of the Dreadnought subs. The plan is ‘to expand the nuclear workforce’ by something like 40,000 (currently estimated to be 42,000). The plan for Barrow is to be a ‘new partnership between national and local government, BAE Systems and the local community…to make the area an even more attractive place to live, work and build a nuclear career’.
When training and skilled jobs have disappeared almost everywhere else, they can be conjured up for the nuclear industry.
The 2024 Paper also outlines the degree to which UK universities have been penetrated by the arms industry. AWE has ‘a programme of engagement’ with 37 universities, and a ‘strategic partnership’ with five of them.
When it became clear that Shapps was not going to be Defence Minister for very much longer, the PM in waiting, Kier Starmer, was brought forward to express his readiness to ‘press the button’. This ritual conducted by the press on behalf of the British state seals his or her endorsement as a candidate for Prime Minister and at the same time enacts for the public the claim to ‘operational independence’ made by British governments since the MDA was signed.
The claim has often been disputed, for example in a Politico article How Washington owns the UK’s nukes (30/04/15), quoting Peter Burt, research manager at the Nuclear Information Service, “The fact that, in theory, the British Prime Minister could give the order to fire Trident missiles without getting prior approval from the White House has allowed the UK to maintain the façade of being a global military power…. In practice, though, it is difficult to conceive of any situation in which a prime minister would fire Trident without prior US approval… the only way that Britain is ever likely to use Trident is to give legitimacy to a US nuclear attack by participating in it…”
Much about the precise workings of the UK nuclear programme remains either classified or obscure, so it is perhaps significant we’re allowed to know that one of the first duties of a new PM is to write by hand the Letters of Last Resort – instructions for the commanders of the four UK nuclear submarines, to be opened and read at sea in the event of the annihilation of the British government in a nuclear war. The Letters also have a function in the present, reinforcing the notion of an independent deterrent.
In April 2024, Starmer visited the BAE Systems shipyard in Barrow and wrote in the Daily Mail that his commitment to the UK deterrent was ‘unshakeable’ and ‘absolute’. For good measure he added that he sees the independent nuclear programme as one of the towering achievements of the 1945 Labour government and as the bedrock of Labour’s plan to ‘keep Britain safe’ – the greatest myth of all.
GETTING READY FOR NUCLEAR WAR
Army top brass, angling for a bigger cut of the defence budget, have at times expressed the view that Trident is an expensive nonsense, but Britain’s nuclear ‘deterrent’ is far from being a white elephant. Its Trident missiles are part of an aggressive NATO first-strike strategy and Britain’s rearmament drive is contributing to the NATO-wide arms race.
As the US is modernising its own nuclear forces, its nuclear missiles are set to return to the UK. The US Department of Defense recently added the UK to a list of NATO nuclear weapons storage locations in Europe, while work has begun on a ‘surety dormitory’ at RAF Lakenheath, suggesting an imminent increase in US personnel. ‘Surety’ is a term used to indicate conditions for the maintenance of US nuclear weapons overseas. Similar bases are being established all over Europe and South East Asia as the US prepares for nuclear war with Russia, China and North Korea.
In the six months following the beginning of Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine in February 2022 a rash of articles appeared across all media calculating the odds on the use of battlefield nuclear weapons, and it is now commonplace to read military analysts, commentators and politicians airing the potential, even likely, use of tactical nuclear bombs in current conflicts. NATO’s drive to war outlined in an Atlantic Council paper, To deter Russia, NATO must adapt its nuclear sharing program (30/7/24), makes their case for moving tactical weapons further east in Europe. Speculation about nuclear weapons being used in the Middle East has reached fever pitch.
In effect, the use of battlefield nukes has not only been made thinkable, the expectation that it will happen sooner rather than later has been created. This in turn makes the use of strategic weapons like the UK’s Trident missile system much more likely.
(2) https://www.nuclearinfo.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/MDA-Briefing-digital.pdf
(3) https://www.csis.org/analysis/us-nuclear-warhead-modernization-and-new-nuclear-weapons
Vanguard submarine armed with Trident nuclear weapons returns to base at Faslane on the Clyde. photo Tam McDonald
