Britain's Need for a Nuclear Deterrent

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Notes

1 CAB 80/94: COS(45)402(0), Future Development in Weapons and Methods of War, 16 June 1945.

2 Letters, Independent, 10 July 2006. In 1983, the author published the then Group Captain Cheshire's lecture, ‘The Error of Pacifism’, for the Coalition for Peace Through Security as one of seven St Lawrence Jewry Talks collectively entitled Peace and the Bomb. It is therefore quite false of an educational website to claim that: ‘After the war, Cheshire … was a member of CND’ (www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/2WWcheshire.htm). In the BBC's ‘Nagasaki–Return Journey’ (1985), Lord Cheshire defended the atomic bombings because ‘they saved more lives than they took’ (www.startrader.co.uk/wed_play/wed_ep_09.htm), and he remained one of the most articulate opponents of unilateral British nuclear disarmament until his death in 1992.

3 PREM 11/4283: Macmillan to Ramsey, 15 July 1963.

4 PREM 11/4283: Ramsey to Macmillan, 25 July 1963.

5 CAB21/2093: 19/10/201, The Basis of Service Estimates, 9 Jan. 1931.

6 DEFE 11/604: COS(JGW) (60)6, 11 July 1960.

7 DEFE 11/604: COS(JGW) (60)9, 8 Nov. 1960.

8 DEFE 32/9: COS 58th Mtg/64 (2) (Confidential Annex) (SSF), 29 Sept. 1964.

9 DEFE 4/175: COS 59th Mtg/64 (3) (Confidential Annex), 6 Oct. 1964.

10 DEFE 4/175: COS Sec Min 2971/2/10/64(Annex A), 2 Oct. 1964, attached to COS 59th Mtg/64 (3) (Confidential Annex), 6 Oct. 1964.

11 DEFE 4/175: COS Sec Min 3033/9/10/64 (Annex), 9 Oct. 1964, attached to COS 60th Mtg/64 (3) (Confidential Annex), 13 Oct. 1964.

12 DEFE 5/4: COS 278/64 (Annex), 14 Oct. 1964.

13 DEFE 5/155: COS 295/64 (Annex A), 29 Oct. 1964.

14 DEFE 32/9: COS(I) 5/11/64 (SSF), 5 Nov. 1964.

15 DEFE 32/9: COS 68th Mtg/64(3) (Confidential Annex) (SSF), 17 Nov. 1964.

16 DEFE 32/21: COS 10th Mtg/71(5) (Confidential Annex) (SSF), 9 March 1971.

17 DEFE 5/192/45: COS 45/72 (Annex A), 25 April 1972.

18 On 14 March 2007, some six months after the completion of this paper, the House of Commons voted by 409 to 161 ‘to take the steps necessary to maintain the UK's minimum strategic nuclear deterrent beyond the life of the existing system’. The size of the Government's majority concealed the fact that the motion was carried only due to the support of the Conservatives, as 87 Labour MPs joined with the Liberal Democrats in opposing it.