Clouds of Deceit

by Joan Smith

  ‘Because of the ban on interchange of atomic weapon secrets imposed by the US Government, Sir William Penney has been unable to reveal to the Americans the novel devices which detonate the weapon. While visiting Washington two years ago, Sir William was aghast at the line the Americans were taking, because he had already abandoned it in favour of another method which has been used in the more effective and much cheaper British bombs.

  ‘The British success has been achieved at “shoestring” costs compared with the US methods. The only big special installation involved is at Capenhurst, Cheshire. The US has several enormous plants.

  ‘The success of Operation Grapple - code name for the tests – means that Britain is now independent of America for military might.’ One wonders why the phrase ‘yah boo, sucks to you’ does not actually appear in this panegyric to the British H-bomb tests. Pincher also takes the opportunity to explain that the test series is now over not ‘for political reasons or because of any effect of world opinion against H-bomb tests.’

  God forbid that any old nonsense like world opinion should interfere with Britain’s right to nuclear tests. In fact, Pincher reveals alarmingly, ‘the Prime Minister, Mr Harold Macmillan, gave Sir William Penney carte blanche to explode as many H-bombs as were needed to ensure that Britain could stockpile effective deterrent weapons.’ The series of tests had ended only because the most recent explosion was a complete success – ‘probably the most powerful weapon which has ever been dropped from an airplane’ and ‘a great advance over any hydrogen weapon possessed by the Americans’.

  The British government was lucky to have such devoted servants in the press: privately, both the British and US governments were worried to death in case their electorates found out what the effects of these bombs would be if used in war. It was these fears which were behind the most sinister feature of British propaganda in favour of the nuclear weapons tests - the witch-hunting of anyone who dared to oppose them.

  As early as 1954, long before Britain had its own hydrogen bomb, the British government knew that the effect of fallout on the civilian population would be ‘bleak’. Cabinet papers from the period show that the Conservative government was terrified that this fact would provoke a public outcry against having the H-bomb if it got out. The result was direct interference with the BBC, which was planning to make a programme on the effects of thermo-nuclear weapons.

  In December 1954, the Cabinet had before it a top-secret memorandum written by the then Minister of Defence, Harold Macmillan. In it, Macmillan warned that ‘much of the present indifference of the public would vanish’ if they discovered that the government was having to alter radically its civil defence plans to cope with the terrible devastation which would be caused by an attack with a single H-bomb.

  Macmillan wrote the memorandum after studying the very first assessment by British scientists of the effect of fallout from a ten-megaton bomb - the equivalent of ten million tons of TNT. British scientists had put together the assessment from ‘all that we have been able to find out about the effects of the experiments by the United States in the Pacific and elsewhere.’ The memo, and the accompanying assessment, make clear that the government was well aware even before Britain had the H-bomb that the effects of nuclear war would be much worse than those subsequently described in its own civil defence propaganda.

  ‘There will be an inner zone of approximately 270 square miles in area (larger than Middlesex), in which radiation will be so powerful that all life will be extinguished, whether in the open or in houses,’ the scientists’ report predicts. ‘Because of the persistence of the radioactive contamination of this inner zone, general relief measures would be virtually impossible for some weeks, and possibly months.’

  People in ‘specially deep shelters’ in this area, with supplies of uncontaminated food and water, would have some chance of survival, ‘provided they were not entombed by other effects of the explosion’. Outside this central zone, there would be an area of about 3,000 square miles (several counties wide) in which ‘exposure on the first day might easily be fatal’. The report notes that ‘no medical means of curing or even curbing the effects of radiation on human beings are yet known’. In the Marshall Islands, it goes on, ‘natives on an atoll 110 miles from the explosion received about one-third of the lethal dose.’

  The scientists’ report raises the possibility of evacuating people in the direct path of fallout in the immediate aftermath of the explosion, since ‘fallout will not occur until 8-24 hours after the burst’ - a proposal directly ruled out in later government advice on how to survive the bomb. A film made by the Central Office of Information, for example, tells people to do quite the opposite: ‘No place in the UK is safer than anywhere else,’ it insists. ‘No one can tell you where the safest place will be.’

  Macmillan’s covering memorandum to the Cabinet points out that the new facts about fallout ‘must have a revolutionary effect’ on the government’s preparations for civil defence. ‘Thought is already being given to its implications by the limited circle of Ministers and officials to whom this scientific appreciation is known,’ he wrote. But he asked the Cabinet to consider a difficult problem. If those responsible for civil defence were allowed to have the information they needed to revise their plans to take account of fallout, ‘we must accept some risk that people may come to know quite soon that the Government are planning on this new hypothesis.’

  Since this revelation of the horrors the government was anticipating might destroy the public’s present ‘indifference’ to Britain’s possession of nuclear weapons, he called for guidance from the Cabinet on how much to tell government departments concerned with defence, and ‘the manner in which the implications of fallout for our defence policy should be presented to the public.’

  The memo was written at a crucial time for Britain’s own nuclear weapons programme. Britain had by now tested three atom bombs in Australia, was hoping to set up a permanent site for testing atom bombs at Maralinga, and had already taken the decision to make its own hydrogen bomb. The last thing the government wanted was a public outcry against British nuclear weapons, sparked off by fear of what would happen to the civilian population in a nuclear war.

  The Cabinet had already been made aware of this problem earlier in 1954. A note prepared for a Cabinet committee in May on the effects of nuclear weapons said that, ‘if information about these effects is to be published, the manner of its presentation will need to be carefully considered, because not only is the man in the street apt to be more fearful about comparatively mysterious forces like radioactivity than he is about the immediate effects of bomb damage, but also he will be confused by conflicting scientific opinions.’

  Now that the first major assessment of these effects had been placed before them, the Cabinet was faced with deciding what to do. One of Macmillan’s suggestions, in his covering memo, was an approach to the Americans, who naturally had exactly the same problem - ‘there are indications that the United States Government are now considering the political implications of the hydrogen bomb for their home front.’ (Indeed they were. Eisenhower had already thrown out an assessment of the dangers of the arms race written by his chief speechwriter, saying: ‘We don’t want to scare the country to death.’)

  At the time of writing, the exact decisions taken by the Cabinet after reading Macmillan’s memo have not yet been released for public consumption under the thirty-year rule which keeps Cabinet papers secret for that length of time. Their tenor can be gauged, however, not only by the anodyne nature of later civil defence advice issued by successive governments - such as the ‘Protect and Survive’ booklet - but by a short discussion at a Cabinet meeting late in December 1954.

  At that meeting, the Cabinet noted Macmillan’s memo and went on to discuss the BBC’s plans to produce a programme on the hydrogen bomb early in 1955. The chairman of the Atomic Energy Authority, then Sir Edwin Plowden, had spoken about this project to the Director-General of the BBC, Sir Ian Jaco
b, the Cabinet minutes record. Sir Ian ‘had undertaken to make himself personally responsible for ensuring that those planning the programme consulted reputable scientists’ (my italics). He had also given an assurance that the programme would be ‘free of any political bias’.

  The Cabinet was asked to consider whether this matter could now be left to the ‘discretion’ of the Director-General. They decided not to take any chances. It was important that ‘the Government should themselves retain control over the form and timing of publicity on the effects of thermo-nuclear weapons,’ the minutes record. They decided that no less a personage than the Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, would arrange for ‘further guidance’ to be given to the BBC on how to deal with the subject in radio and television programmes.

  It is against this background that later developments, such as the banning of Peter Watkins’s film, The War Game, must be set. At the time that that decision was announced, in November 1965, the BBC’s then Director-General, Sir Hugh Greene, said it had been taken simply because the film was too horrifying. It had not been taken ‘as a result of outside pressure of any kind’.

  The decision is all the more shocking because it was taken under Greene, the most liberal Director-General of the BBC to date. But the BBC had come under pressure. It was exercised in that traditionally English way which capitalizes on the fact that there are always people in the right places with the right connections: Lord Normanbrook, chairman of the BBC’s governors and a former Cabinet secretary, passed on the message that the government would like the film kept off television screens. It was.

  This, then, was the climate in which opposition to the bomb, and to the testing of it, had to operate. With the British government secretly discussing how best to control and restrict the flow of information on the effects of nuclear weapons, it is not surprising that critics of government policy should have found themselves the target of virulent personal abuse.

  Opposition to the British bomb tests grew steadily during the 1950s. In 1956, there were protest marches in the Australian city of Perth, where people carried placards complaining they were being used as ‘guinea pigs’ for the atom bomb tests. In February 1957, an Australian public-opinion poll showed that 66 per cent of the population wanted atom bomb tests banned by international agreement. In April, as Britain got ready to test its first hydrogen bomb at Christmas Island, a poll showed that more Australians were against the test than for it - 45 per cent opposed it, with 43 per cent in favour (interestingly, women were three to two against).

  The situation was judged sufficiently serious for the Australian government to ask Penney to speak on Australian radio with assurances that the tests had not harmed anyone. Penney was asked about this broadcast when he gave evidence to the Australian Royal Commission in London in 1985. The questioning was done by Peter McClellan, the Sydney barrister assisting the commission. The exchanges between the two men are revealing.

  First, Penney was asked whether he took any steps to check the reliability of the methods used to collect data about fallout on the Australian mainland - data on which he based his assurances to the Australian public.

  PENNEY No. I was shown values… Here was some fallout. I think it was given to me by the Australians… They were made by competent physicists.

  In fact, there were deficiencies in the methods used to monitor fallout, which Penney himself admitted under questioning. But on the basis of the figures given to him, he made a radio broadcast assuring the Australians there would be no harmful consequences from the tests. He was then asked about hostile public opinion, which was the reason why he had been invited to speak on Australian radio.

  MCCLELLAN Did you ever feel concern … at that stage … that there was any real prospect … by reason of the reaction of the Australian public … it might come to an end?

  PENNEY No I didn’t. In fact, I’m slightly surprised [to hear] there was a hostile reaction.

  The commission was later told that Penney had complained in a letter about ‘cranks in Australia equipped with Geiger counters waiting for radioactive rain’. For the moment, McClellan simply put the opinion-poll results cited above to him.

  PENNEY What I … on a similar theme … I do remember going to Canberra, I can’t tell you whether it was after Buffalo or Totem [series of tests which took place in 1956 and 1953, respectively]. I talked to Dr Evatt [the Leader of the Opposition] who said, ‘I don’t agree with what you’re doing, I think it’s terrible.’ I said, ‘I don’t like it much, but I think we’re going to stop war that way.’ We had a long discussion. That was the kind of position … I was very well aware he and many in the Labour party who supported him didn’t like it but that was not quite the same. (My italics.)

  Poor old Dr Evatt. He was only the elected leader of the opposition, so why should anyone take any notice of him? This was certainly a view shared by Chapman Pincher, who wrote in 1957: ‘Dr Herbert Evatt, the consistently pro-Russian leader of the Australian Left-wing opposition, surprised nobody when he jumped on the ban-the-British-bomb bandwagon.’

  Britain often congratulates itself for not having instituted McCarthyite witch-hunts in the 1950s. But the terms of abuse applied to opponents of the bomb tests by British journalists, scientists and politicians bear all the hallmarks of just such a campaign. It was a crude attempt to silence opposition by the use of smear tactics.

  The method was straightforward. It worked on the unspoken suggestion that because, according to its protagonists, there were no real arguments against possessing and testing the bomb, opposition to it must be political. Who would benefit if Britain did not have the bomb? The answer was Russia. Therefore anyone who criticized the bomb tests must, at least secretly, be a pro-Russian communist. This is a clever, if crude, tactic, because it diverts attention away from the many real political and, even more importantly, scientific arguments against the tests. Chapman Pincher’s writing on this subject provides an interesting example of the media’s response.

  Pincher is a journalist who writes for the Daily Express. In his writings about the bomb in the 1940s and 1950s, he got key things wrong. On one occasion, as he later admitted, his story was based on guess work rather than fact. Linus Pauling is an American chemist. He is the only scientist, apart from Marie Curie, to win the Nobel Prize twice. By 1957, when Britain was about to test its first H-bomb, he was a dedicated campaigner against weapons tests because of their effect on the atmosphere. He predicted that 1,000 people would die if Britain went ahead with its first H-bomb test in the Pacific Ocean.

  On 1 May, 1957, Chapman Pincher went on the attack in the Daily Express. ‘Here it comes again,’ he began wearily. ‘Read it above - this monstrous charge by a top-ranking scientist that the British are about to murder 1,000 people by testing an H-bomb.

  ‘Fortunately, this charge can be ignored, for though brilliant in the laboratory, Dr Linus Pauling is fatuous in politics. (The US Government had to refuse him permission to leave the country for many months.)’

  Note the masterly use of the damning parenthesis. Why would the US government have to forbid Pauling to leave the country? Because he is a suspected traitor? Pincher doesn’t even need to say it. But Pincher does produce a reason for the opposition of Pauling and a growing number of other scientists and politicians to the British tests to divert attention away from the dangerous territory of scientific argument.

  ‘Why has Britain’s proposal to explode an H-bomb in an entirely uninhabited part of the Pacific provoked such hysterical and sustained opposition throughout the world?’ he goes on. ‘I will tell you. Because through a peculiar set of circumstances, the test provides those who hate or envy the British with an extraordinary opportunity to injure them.’

  Who are these horrid people? Pincher has the answer to hand in the form of a crudely racist and anti-communist litany. There are ‘Jap business tycoons’ who are ‘already using underhand methods to beat Britain in the export markets’. There is the Indian Prime Minister, Mr Nehru - ‘pretendin
g that Asia is seriously threatened by radioactive fallout from a British bomb is an effective way of fomenting nationalism among ignorant people.’

  Nor is there any need to wonder why ‘the Socialist supporters of Mr Aneurin Bevan are manipulating the H-test issue to weaken Mr Hugh Gaitskell’s hold on the party leadership.

  ‘Of course, not all the opposition is deliberately political. There are always a few highly vocal individuals who seize on such an opportunity to give publicity to their own fanciful fears and fads.

  ‘Thus making common cause with the Communists on this issue, there is Bertrand Russell, who opposes the test on moral grounds. There is Dr Albert Schweitzer, who, having deliberately sealed himself off from the realities of politics, sends up a cry from the African swamps that the H-test must be banned on medical grounds.’

  So far, the opposition is made up of out-and-out communists and those naïve enough to play into their hands. What about the scientists? They are just as bad. ‘Some, like Dr Pauling and Polish-born Professor Joseph Rotblat’ - he must be suspect if he’s Polish, even though he left before the outbreak of the Second World War - ‘of St Bartholomew’s Hospital, warn of radioactive dangers to a degree not supported by eminent experts advising the Government.

  ‘Others, like Professor Christopher Powell, of Bristol, and Professor Joliot Curie, of Paris, speak on behalf of the World Federation of Scientific Workers, an organization so riddled with Communists that it has been forbidden to meet in Britain.

  ‘Finally, there are the pacifists, opposed to weapons of every kind and dedicated to the principle that it is always better to live on your knees than die on your feet.’ What these people are doing, says Pincher, is chanting, ‘Woe, woe, with a harmony which is marvellously melodious to the Kremlin’s ears.’