Abstract
This reasoning turned out to be extremely prescient. At the end of February 1974 the Labour Party won a surprise general election. The new Government was faced with a decision on whether to go ahead with the Chevaline programme. There had yet to be a major commitment of expenditure but a decision was needed, certainly before the major review of all defence expenditure promised by the new Government could be completed. Furthermore, the first underground nuclear test for 9 years was planned for May, without which it could not have been ascertained whether Chevaline was a feasible project. The test could have been delayed, but at some cost as dates had been booked at the US testing site and new appointments would have taken time to arrange.
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Notes
See stories by Richard Norton-Taylor in The Guardian (11 February and 17 May 1977)
Twelfth Report from the Expenditure Committee, Session 1978–9, Evidence, pp. 9, 1. The figures on orders of Polaris missiles from the United States come from Department of Defense Security Assistance Agency, Foreign Military Sales and Military Assistance Facts (Washington DC: December 1978).
Harold Brown, Department of Defense Annual Report Fiscal Year 1981 (Washington DC: 29 January 1980), p. 84.
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© 1980 Royal Institute of International Affairs
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Freedman, L. (1980). The Problem of Replacement. In: Britain and Nuclear Weapons. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-16388-5_6
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