¹ H. C. Debs., Feb. 29, 1960, col. 861.

The sources are never adequate in dealing with a period so recent and a system so addicted to secrecy. While most of the facts that follow can be found in the public record, I have had to rely on many conversations with well informed participants for guidance as to which parts of the record are reliable. I cannot cite most of the individuals because they still hold official posts. They included a diverse collection of experts, such as ministers, leaders of Opposition, back-benchers, official scientists, staff officers, senior civil servants, defense correspondents and others. I can express my thanks to the Hon. Alastair Buchan and the staff of the Institute of Strategic Studies, Rear Admiral Sir Anthony Buzzard, Bt., Mr. Richard Crossman, M.P., Admiral Sir Richard Denny, Mr. John Grant, Mr. Michael Howard, Captain B. H. Liddell Hart, and Marshal of the Royal Air Force Sir John Slessor. The original work on this subject was made possible by a grant from the Social Science Research Council. None who helped me is at all responsible for any particular statement of mine.

² Throughout this paper the term “official” is used to refer to those connected with Government, not in the special British sense of a civil servant as distinguished from a politician.

³ Many members of the Ministry of Defence are seconded temporarily from the Service Ministries; the Cabinet Office in turn draws on the Service Ministries and on the Ministry of Defence.

⁴ The most recent and by far the most comprehensive history of the formal system is Johnson, Franklyn A., Defence by Committee, The British Committeeof Imperial Defence, 1885–1959, London, 1960Google Scholar. This excellent informative history does not deal in any detail with developments after 1956.

⁵ Some critics also believe the system of handling research and development through a separate Ministry of Supply (MOS) also hindered provision of equipment, by encouraging overspecification by the services and inflation of research and development costs by the MOS, which had no interest in output.

⁶ On this see the account of Soames, Christopher, H. C. Debs., 03 1, 1960, cols. 1050 ff.Google Scholar

⁷ The Memoirs of F.M. The Viscount Montgomery (London, 1958), p. 495Google Scholar.

⁸ Churchill, Alexander, Macmillan, Selwyn Lloyd, Monckton, Head, Sandys, Watkinson.

⁹ See Emanuol Shinwell's account of the 1951 budgetary process in H. C. Debs., July 28, 1958, col. 1002. The Permanent Secretary and his staff, and particularly the Chief Scientist, were frequently the actual decision makers at the margin. Even those who claim a united recommendation by the CSC to be virtually irresistible—and such recommendations wore not too common—make an exception for cases where the military view calls for overall increases in defense expenditure and where Treasury restraint is powerfully backed in the Cabinet by a natural reluctance of all other departments to see a larger slice of revenue for the military accommodated by a cut in their own budgets. Aneurin Bevan's resignation during the Korean War is an exception to prove this rule.

¹⁰ H. C. Debs., Feb. 28, 1961, col. 1458.

¹¹ This is the paper which, as advocated by Slessor in the U.S. is said to have been rejected by the Truman Chiefs, but resuscitated under Eisenhower as the germ of the “New Look.” See inter alia, Hart, B. H. Liddell, Defence or Deterrence (London, 1960), pp. 18–20Google Scholar, and Buchan, Alastair, “Their Bomb and Ours,” Encounter, 10, 1958Google Scholar.

¹² Cmd. 8768, 9075.

¹³ Beloff, Max, New Dimensions in Foreign Policy (New York, 1961), p. 54Google Scholar. This book is an excellent source of information on many aspects of British administration.

¹⁴ See his memoirs, The Central Blue (New York, 1957), pp. 450–63Google Scholar.

¹⁵ Eden, Anthony, Full Circle (Boston, 1960), pp. 415 ff.Google Scholar

¹⁶ It should not go unremarked that the CSC was scarcely consulted about this innovation, which a number of officers suspected to be based more on a political desire to appear active with regard to defense than any well thought out theory of organization. The announcement was made to the Conservative Party conference. SirSlessor's, John critical view can be seen in The Central Blue, pp. 450 ff.Google Scholar Slessor believes a solemn commission should have been set up to review the whole system—such as preceded inauguration of the CSC in 1923—before tampering with existing methods.

¹⁷ See in particular Eden's letter to Eisenhower, , 07 18, 1956, Full Circle, p. 417Google Scholar. Eden had been particularly impressed by the nuclearmindedness of Khrushchev and Bulganin during their visit to London in 1955.

¹⁸ An ad hoc Air Defence Committee under Sir Frederick Brundrett, then Deputy Chief Scientist, settled the ground-to-air missile controversy mentioned above.

¹⁹ The phrase is John Strachey's from the 1955 defense debate. A senior British official described the operation in a paraphrase of the R.A.F. motto, as “per ardua ad hoc.”

²⁰ Cmnd. 124, accompanied by Defence Statistics, Cmnd. 130.

²¹ For the reality of this alternative, see Day, A. C. L., “The Economics of Defence,” Political Quarterly, 01-March, 1960, pp. 57 ff.Google Scholar With a rising national product, of course, the decision to hold defense expenditure steady was to reduce the proportion spent on military affairs.

²² This was the period in which Admiral Radford pressed the nuclear view in the U.S. and Franz Joseph Strauss cut back the proposed Bundeswehr.

²³ The Polaris was not seriously taken up at this time. For this two American influences were partly responsible: that of the USAF in providing both the R.A.F. and the Ministry of Defence with skeptical assessments, and that of Admiral Rickover and associates in advising the British missile chiefs to avoid the Polaris until more development problems—then expected to be greater than was the case—had been solved.

²⁴ The exact figures for individual services were not in Cmnd. 127. See George Wigg's analysis of the arithmetic. H. C. Debs., Feb. 29. 1960, col. 909.

²⁵ This must rest in part on private information, but Head's later speech of July 28, 1958, H. C. Debs., col. 988 ff. goes a long way. Suspicion that 165,000 was actuarial rather than military is born out by the Government's raising the figure to 180,000 when recruiting went well, on the ground of providing a cushion for fluctuation in recruitment (presumably as desirable in 1957 as later) and by the Minister of Defence's frank admission in 1960 that a cut to 165,000 again, made necessary on financial grounds, was felt undesirable by the Army, Times, Nov. 7, 1960. The leadership of the Labour Party was equally committed to ending conscription for electoral reasons and tried to discourage those Labour Members who advocated a bigger Army.

²⁶ The difficulties raised by economies already envisaged in the White Paper were sharpened for some months by the anxiety of the Chancellor of the Exchequer to secure still further reduction of expenditure. This ultimately terminated in the resignation of the Chancellor, Peter Thorneycroft, in January, 1958.

²⁷ Dec. 7, 1957.

²⁸ July 28, 1958, H. C. Debs., col. 994.

²⁹ Cmnd. 476.

³⁰ Cf. Daily Telegraph, Feb. 28, April 25, July 10, 1958; Times, June 26, 1958; Observer, June 29, July 6, 1958.

³¹ In April, 1957, Sandys had announced a Defence Administration Committee to consider service unification but little more was heard of it.

³² For explanation of all this see Sandys' contribution to the debate on the White Paper, July 28, 1958, H. C. Debs., col. 954 ff.

³³ The Chiefs of Staff would apparently attend as of right. See Para. 4 of Cmnd. 476.

³⁴ In this respect it partly replaced an informal Service Ministers Committee in which the Minister of Defence had periodically met the service heads.

³⁵ I.e., Prime Minister, Home Secretary, Foreign Secretary, Chancellor, Commonwealth Secretary, Minister of Defence, Minister of Labour, the Service Ministers, and the Minister of Supply. The Minister of Supply survived this reorganization but disappeared the following year, to be replaced by a Ministry of Aviation, for development of aircraft and missiles, and by distribution of other supply functions to the Services.

³⁶ The “Fisher era” before World War I, and that war itself, are renowned cases. Liddell Hart's writings abound in examples from the interwar years. In his valuable article on “Civil-Military Relations in Great Britain and the United States, 1945–1958,” Political Science Quarterly, March, 1960, p. 40Google Scholar, Michael Howard undoubtedly expresses the tendency of the British system as compared to the American when he writes that “defeated or disgruntled parties are prevented from reopening a chose jugée and throwing everything once more into confusion.” But it is not absolutely so and the later 1950s would seem to have been a period of strenuous efforts to reopen issues publicly. It is perhaps worth recalling that as a Territorial Army officer before the war, Duncan Sandys caused a furore by denouncing deficiencies in anti-aircraft preparations.

³⁷ For one public reference to this see George Brown's—Labour's chief spokesman on defense—observation, “We … have had almost every member of the Services' team … making quite sure that their particular angle on what was happening was well known and well publicized.” H. C. Debs., July 28, 1958, col. 971.

³⁸ A onetime minister has suggested to me that leaks are particularly prevalent in areas where private contractors have an interest in boosting or detracting from a particular weapon, e.g., in the missile and aircraft field, as compared to programs handled by national arsenals, etc. SHAPE, ever since the incumbency of F. M. Montgomery, has afforded a somewhat privileged sanctuary for a greater outspokenness than is common at home: cf. The Economist, November 14, 1959, discussion of the case of Sir John Eccles.

³⁹ Again note George Brown's allegation: “The Service Chiefs spoke in public, against all traditions, taking that risk in order to get round the Ministers whom they could not persuade in private. There was virtually nobody in the Service Departments at that time who was not taking the trouble to tell anybody about it who would listen. I have minuted notes of receptions and of conversations in which leading Service men made only the reservation, ‘Do not quote me’ … other Service advisers had articles written in leading journals with only the thinnest of pseudonyms hiding the authority behind them …” H. C. Debs., April 27, 1960, col. 221.

⁴⁰ See Air Power, Summer 1958, pp. 283 ff.Google Scholar

⁴¹ As far as I can discover, this was not, as is now sometimes said, an anticipation of the Skybolt airborne ballistic missile later made the mainstay of British policy, but a cruise missile for lowlevel radar penetration.

⁴² For the history of this aircraft, see the Observer, Jan. 4, 1959.

⁴³ The Economist once more provided the most incisive comment, “Whose Hand on the Tiller?”, May 10, 1958.

⁴⁴ See Admiral Sir John Eccles' outburst, “repudiating” the White Paper and reverting to the concept of “broken-backed” war. Economist, Oct. 5, 1957.

⁴⁵ A telling broadside under the nom de plume of Nucleus, in the Observer, was said, by those in a position to know, to be the direct contribution of a just retired, very senior naval staff officer; see Observer, Dec. 7, 28, 1958.

⁴⁶ A text of the Cowley lecture is in the RUSI Journal, February, 1060. An exchange in the House of Commons, in which the new rules on clearance were stated, is in H.C. Debs., Nov. 11, 1959, cols, 378 ffGoogle Scholar. While the Cowley lecture was the most sensational single Army effort, the most solid presentation of the Army case was the Army League report, The British Army in the Nuclear Age (London, 1959)Google Scholar, edited by Richard Goold Adams. Another Army officer's complaint was that of Brigadier Fernyhough, Director of Ammunition Stores, who made a report referring to the absence of a practical war plan and to the alleged fact that “in relation to its small size and large commitments, the British Army must be one of the worst equipped in the world. Yet the Treasury continues to urge us, with loud cries, to avoid overinsurance.” See H. C. Debs., Feb. 29, 1960, cols. 915–17.

⁴⁷ It should be observed that the unusual intensity of feeling may have distorted as well as intensified the normal pattern.

⁴⁸ March 7, 1959. On the subject of bases there is an exhaustive Princeton doctoral dissertation by Lt, Col. C. Dewitt Armstrong, U.S.A., “British Policy Toward Strategic Bases,” 1959.

⁴⁹ Times, November 12, 1959. On the effect of secrecy on trust in the Government, see the exchange between Sandys, and Brown, , H.C. Debs., 02 11, 1957, cols. 1155 ff.Google Scholar

⁵⁰ Which might be said to comprise the Times, Daily Telegraph, Guardian, Financial Times, Observer and Sunday Times, together with the weekly Economist, New Statesman, Spectator, Time and Tide, Tribune, and the New Scientist.

⁵¹ Since 1958 Director of the Institute for Strategic Studies.

⁵² Captain Liddell Hart, for example, firmly maintains that a well written critical letter to the Times does more to influence leading civil servants than a wealth of books or articles.

⁵³ The general mode of operation of such interest groups in Britain has been much clarified in recent years by the works of Ivor Jennings, S. E. Finer, Sam Beer, and J. D. Stewart. The effect of the arms industry is still an obscure issue much beclouded by old emotions. Equally hard to evaluate is the coincidence between strategic views advocated by certain leading, articulate, retired officers, and the kinds of equipment manufactured by firms of which they are directors. The fact that many of the retired officers most respected as commentators are connected with armaments firms is sometimes said to be due to their advantage in keeping up with technical developments, but it seems at least equally probable that it is their articulateness or reputation as publicists which secures them the favor of manufacturers. Most of these pundits, one notices, are drawn from the R.A.F. or the Navy, the “weapons services.” For a reference to this at the highest level see Sir Frederick Brundrett's speech to the R.U.S.I., March 16, 1961. Sir Frederick was Chief Scientist to the Ministry of Defence until December, 1959 and closely associated with the Blue Streak. Quite apart from vested interests there are of course powerful arguments for the preservation of an aircraft industry on grounds of employment and the export trade.

⁵⁴ See for instance Hilsman, Roger, “Congressional-Executive Relations and the Foreign Policy Consensus,” this Review, 09, 1958Google Scholar, and, since completion of this paper, Huntington, S. P., The Common Defense (New York, 1961)Google Scholar.

⁵⁵ H.C. Debs., Dec. 13, 1960, col. 226.

⁵⁶ See F. J. Bellenger's suggestion H.C. Debs., Feb. 26, 1958, col. 427, that of W. Wyatt on April 27, 1960, H.C. Debs., col. 288, and Gaitskell's complaint, H.C. Debs., March 1, 1960, col. 1140. Wyatt was concerned that “We are handicapped at present in this country because we have no adequate machinery for going into these highly important but complex and technical matters in any satisfactory way.”

⁵⁷ When, in their intermittent checks, the committees on Estimates and Public Accounts have examined military affairs, they have several times recently revealed inefficiencies in the handling of research and development and in the organization of administration.

⁵⁸ In contrast to which the CID had a certain amount of bipartisan representation in early days.

⁵⁹ E.g., “all the relevant details in ten pages or less.” Laurence Levine, Appendix, p. 144, in Stanley, T., American Defense and National Security (Washington, 1956)Google Scholar.

It is interesting to notice that during the period of fullest commitment to the Sandys policy, the White Papers of 1957, and particularly 1958, contained long theoretical expositions of the relation between force and foreign policy. As promotion of the pure form of the doctrine has weakened, so the Papers have reverted to factual descriptions of the defense measures taken. On the other hand, as a dubious tribute to increased public attention to defense, the 1961 White Paper contains a large number of pictorial graphs to emphasize the logic of the Government's policy.

⁶⁰ The Paper of 1959 was dubbed by The Economist “Blank White Paper”; cf. Daily Telegraph, Feb. 7, 1958, and H. C. Debs., Feb. 26, 1958, cols. 561–4; Feb. 29, 1960, col. 903.

⁶¹ The debate in the Lords on March 5, 1958, is full of examples of this, H. L. Debs., cols. 1095 ff.

⁶² The Bow Group, a collection of young Conservative thinkers, is said to have found it difficult to recruit a working party to prepare a study on defense to match their publications on other topics.

⁶³ H. L. Debs., March 5, 1958, col. 1248.

⁶⁴ Full Circle, p. 354. The intensification of interest in defense matters in the last few years, however, might lead him to modify that assessment.

⁶⁵ See especially their joint articles in the New Statesman, May 14, June 11, 1960.

⁶⁶ Unfortunately for the Labour Party, of course, its constitution and its ideological bent tend to compel it to try to draw up a coherent policy despite frequent pleas that an opposition is only obliged to criticize.

⁶⁷ Retired officers, particularly from the Army, are numerous in the Commons and were especially alarmed by reductions in manpower. On the subject of retired officers, mention should be made of such service-related interest groups as the Navy and Army Leagues. With the exception of such special efforts as the Army League's occasional study reports—and the unique but elusive influence of the service clubs—these organizations would not seem to be sufficiently up to date in their thinking to contribute much to the supply of ideas, though they may have some restraining influence on the desire to eliminate established formations. See Armstrong, op. cit., pp. 101–2.

⁶⁸ Sunday Times, February 26, 1961; and see Viscount Lambton's privately printed pamphlet, Inadequacy, 1961.

⁶⁹ H. C. Debs., April 27, 1960, col. 237.

⁷⁰ Cmnd. 952.

⁷¹ See the defense debate, Feb. 29, March 1, 1960, H. C. Debs., cols., 846–1168.

⁷² Fitzroy Maclean, H. C. Debs., Nov. 1, 1961, col. 218.

⁷³ H. C. Debs., Nov. 1, 1961, col. 203 ff.Google Scholar

⁷⁴ The 1961 White Paper, Cmnd. 1288, had made a gesture toward integration by abandoning the classifications of land, sea and air, and adopting those of “the nuclear force” and “the conventional force.”

⁷⁵ The first officer appointed, Air Commodore F. E. Rosier, had been Director of Plans in the Air Ministry.

⁷⁶ The JPC still reports to the CSC. But the CDS can initiate studies, informing the CSC, and the cover note to plans originated by the CDS makes reference to this initiative.

⁷⁷ This is a very small staff indeed. Service representatives double as the CDS's personal briefer on a geographical area.

⁷⁸ The service members of the JPC may also be invited to attend certain meetings of the CSC.

⁷⁹ Liaison with the Foreign Office on the mutual implications of military and diplomatic policy is said to have improved since the Permanent Under-Secretary's Department, which handles liaison with the CSC and Ministry of Defence, has established, in 1959, a stronger section for long-term planning.

⁸⁰ It should not go unsaid that, as a secondary Power, Britain was handicapped by the need to conform in part to American policy at a time when it was not very clear what this was.

⁸¹ This is not to say that the scepticism of many British military officers and commentators as to the pretentious apparatus with which some American military experts surround themselves may not be justified. But none of the unofficial British commentators I have talked to doubt the need for this kind of activity in principle.