The British Government, Nuclear Testing, and the Arms Race, 1961–1962

Abstract

In 1961–2, when a three-year international moratorium on nuclear testing was broken by the Soviet Union, Britain and the United States agreed to resume testing in partnership: Britain would test underground at the American site in Nevada and the US would use the British site at Christmas Island for a new series of atmospheric tests. This article uses archival evidence to examine the British government’s position, showing that there was a great reluctance to resume testing and that, contrary to stereotypes, there was no strong lobbying for tests from the military or atomic scientists. While it was convenient to express the need for nuclear testing as a technical necessity, the requirement was fundamentally political: to support the United States. Meanwhile, Britain’s atomic scientists were working hard not only to test nuclear weapons but to ban testing, and the article also introduces the extensive scientific work done in support of nuclear test detection and arms-control verification. Although histories today emphasize the health and environmental impacts of nuclear testing, at the height of the Berlin crisis it was the nuclear arms race that worried politicians and scientists above all.