Policy-making 1961–64

Abstract

If the period between 1958 and 1961 was one of political success for the British government’s nuclear defence policy, with growing American links and the domestic political opposition in disarray, the succeeding three years were not so happy. The Macmillan government was weakened by economic difficulties and political scandal, and in October 1963 the Prime Minister was forced to resign for health reasons. The impressive series of Anglo-American defence agreements reached under Eisenhower, including the atomic bilateral, remained in force. The new Kennedy administration, however, resolved officially and specifically to discourage Britain’s nuclear ambitions. Although Macmillan came to enjoy a cordial and even friendly relationship with Kennedy, his major diplomatic achievements vis-à-vis the US — the Polaris deal of December 1962 and the successful pursuit of a partial nuclear test-ban in 1963 — came at a political price, and necessarily involved the defeat of powerful bureaucratic interests in Washington. Polaris, as we shall see, was seen in some quarters as a very visible blow to Britain’s independence, and the deal infuriated the State Department. Acute pressure to agree to join the NATO MLF was to follow. On the way to the partial test-ban, Britain was made to look. On the way to the partial test-ban, Britain was made to look slightly ridiculous at ministerial meetings in Moscow, and the deal was bad news to the Pentagon and the nuclear-weapons laboratories in the US.