Nuclear Disarmament

Lord Thomas of Swynnerton Excerpts

Thursday 24th January 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Thomas of Swynnerton]

My Lords, like other noble Lords I regard it as a privilege to be present at the last speech of the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Bramall. His presence here, like that of the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, and the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Craig, reminds us of the contribution that Chiefs of Staff and other soldiers, or people of military training, make to this House. For that reason a chamber like this is not easily found in any other legislature.

In this debate I speak as a dinosaur. I became interested in the question of disarmament and nuclear weapons in 1954, when I was briefly the secretary of the British delegation to the sub-committee of the Disarmament Commission. How optimistic we were in those days. We were led brilliantly by a lost leader, Sir Anthony Nutting. We had with us M Jules Moch, one of the most brilliant and eloquent French socialists. We also had Governor Harold Stassen, who had been a presidential candidate in the previous United States election. We also had the spiky and bureaucratic presence of Mr Gromyko and Mr Malik for the Soviet Union, but they were not as bad as they are sometimes cracked up to be—or, rather, cracked down to be. On one occasion, in May 1955, when I was there, the Soviet Union accepted the British and western disarmament proposals. This was an alarming moment for us. We had to reconsider everything about which we had been talking for a long time.

The Soviet Union also made the interesting observation that there were circumstances beyond international control that could not be guaranteed by any imaginable inspection agency. We had suspected this since an article on the subject had been written in the Spectator the previous autumn by the distinguished physicist Sir George Thomson. No one took much notice of it and we continued our deliberations.

I remember those occasions in the mid-1950s for several other reasons. There was a preoccupation with interweaving the question of nuclear disarmament with that of conventional disarmament. We put forward the idea that before we took any nuclear disarmament steps of our own, we would insist on a one-third cut in Soviet conventional forces. That was one important element. Another was that we talked a great deal about a control and inspection agency, which, even if it was not perfect, would be a great deal better than anything that we had at the time. If there were ever to be the kind of nuclear catastrophe that the noble Lord, Lord Browne, mentioned, our minds would come round immediately to the idea of something similar.

The United States began the Cold War with a proposal for the complete international ownership and management of nuclear activities. There was to be no distinction between peaceful and military uses. Both would be organised and owned by an international control agency that would have the unique capacity to deal with nuclear possibilities. That seems a very idealistic and improbable concept now, but I think that if there were to be a catastrophe, we would probably find ourselves going back to all sorts of interesting ideas that were rejected because they were considered impractical in the past.

What happened—I make no bones about citing something that happened over 60 years ago—was that at the end of the world war, there was a great deal of pressure among United States scientists to devise some method of putting the genie that they had unleashed back in the bottle. First, Dr Oppenheimer devised a scheme that was made political by two distinguished United States politicians, Mr Dean Acheson and the head of the Tennessee Valley Authority, Mr David Lilienthal. The scheme was for complete international ownership of nuclear weapons. It was thought that the controllers would remain happy because they would have something to do. They would not just be checking that people were not making mistakes but helping to develop the nuclear industry of the world. That was put forward as a United States proposal by Mr Truman in May 1946, and the spokesman was the improbable figure of a businessman called Bernard Baruch, who was a great friend of Winston Churchill, as was Mr Truman. This scheme was considered to be the best way of scientists making up for what they had done by creating such a dangerous world with nuclear weapons.

It is not certain, fortunately, that there will be any kind of breakdown that would justify such extreme reconsideration. After all, gas was not used in the Second World War, although when people talked about war in the 1930s, it was thought likely that it would be used. Indeed, the self-control of states in not using nuclear weapons has been one of the striking elements of international politics since 1945. Nevertheless, it may happen. There may be a catastrophe and, if so, we should be prepared to take extreme measures afterwards to organise a method of survival.