‘So sophisticated and so barbarous’: Britain’s resumption of nuclear testing, 1961-62

In 1958 worldwide diplomatic and scientific pressure led to a three-year international moratorium on nuclear testing. After the Soviet Union broke this moratorium in September 1961, Britain and the United States agreed to resume testing together: Britain would use the American site in Nevada for underground testing, and the U.S. would use the British site at Christmas Island in the Pacific for a new series of atmospheric tests. This paper examines British motivations. How did scientists and politicians come together on this issue? What was more important to whom: running the arms race, or constraining it? Historians have suggested a harsh cold-war logic: that once Britain had successfully tested thermonuclear warheads (“H-bombs”) and secured a renewed atomic relationship with the U.S. in 1957-58, then it could afford the luxury of arms control. However, analysis of archival materials, including records from the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment (AWRE) at Aldermaston, shows that Britain was always reluctant to test. Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, who called testing “so sophisticated and so barbarous,” literally prayed for a test ban. Much of the military and scientific advice available to him belied stereotypes. Even AWRE worked to support a test ban. This paper will also assess Britain’s significant scientific work on test-ban verification.