5 The Sandys White Paper of 1957

That the 1957 Defence White Paper represented not some new strategic departure but rather a reaffirmation of existing trends well established in British defence policy has been the underlying theme of most analyses of this document.¹ Yet, at the same time, it is clear that between January and April 1957, the new Minister of Defence, Duncan Sandys, brought about a revolution in British force posture. Despite the fact that there was nothing essentially new in his proposals, the inability of earlier occupants of Sandys’s post to override service preferences highlights the scale of his achievement. For, in the final analysis, not only did Sandys impose upon British defence policy a sharper declaratory focus, but more significantly, he presented the services with little option other than for a substantial withdrawal from a posture of multiple capabilities. His achievement was to be a British ‘New Look’—a policy reflecting greatly reduced reliance on manpower and a strong declaratory emphasis on Britain’s burgeoning nuclear deterrent.

The Suez crisis provided the immediate backdrop and impetus for the shift of strategic emphasis announced by the Macmillan administration. Certainly, the failure of the British and French operation against Nasser was accompanied by a major domestic and international crisis for the embattled Conservative government. Public divisions at home over Britain’s policy in the Middle East paralleled pressures on the United Kingdom within the Commonwealth and the United Nations and a deterioration in the all-important relationship with the United States. The inability of Britain’s military to secure its objectives against what was considered a second rate foe underlined the frailties of the United Kingdom’s conventional military power, while Bulganin’s threats and the American unwillingness to provide generalized support seemed to many to highlight the importance of independent nuclear deterrence. Perhaps most significantly, the economic strains that attended the Suez crisis—specifically the run on the pound and the fall in reserves —made policy-makers aware that the budget in general and the size and shape of the defence budget in particular would have to be radically amended.

Combined, the various strains helped facilitate a flux in perceptions and attitudes—a flux that manifested itself both on the level of public opinion and government. Traditional images of Britain’s role as a world power in the international arena had been rudely shaken as had the electorate’s confidence in the competence of the governing party. It was the immediate objective of the new Prime Minister Harold Macmillan—who replace the battered Eden in January 1957—to secure both his international and domestic fronts by restoring public confidence in the Conservative government and overseas faith in Britain’s willingness and ability to function as an important actor on the world stage. To do this he made economic reform his first target with strategic policy the umbrella for his plan of expenditure restraints. Such an approach was regarded as imperative if the United Kingdom was to retain some semblance of her traditional stature within the international community and the Conservative Party its now tenuous position in government.

It was indeed fortuitous for the Conservatives that their loss of face at Suez could at least be partially offset by the perceived prestigiousness of the upcoming British thermonuclear test planned for mid-May 1957 on Christmas Island. There had been exceedingly good progress between the decision to develop the H-bomb and the test series—a timescale made short by the political imperative of demonstrating a thermonuclear capability and completing a test series before an international test ban took hold.

The United Kingdom’s growing atomic weapons design know-how helped form a foundation for the new project with the Blue Danube and Red Beard nuclear bomb programmes serving as the basis for the new design concepts.² Following the May test a number of further explosions took place in 1957. During this test series a prototype H-bomb and other big yield designs were analysed as well as detonation systems and explosive techniques. According to Simpson the first fully successful megaton test took place on Christmas Island on 8 November³

It is clear that Macmillan’s emphasis on thermonuclear weapons helped assuage the right-wing of the Conservative party—especially that segment of the party which according to Epstein remained ‘essentially unreconciled to a second place in an American alliance or to internationalism in general’.⁴ Disquiet at Britain’s poor military showing in Egypt and anger at the American refusal to be more supportive created a natural constituency within conservative ranks for a policy that emphasized Britain’s nuclear independence. However, at the same time, there were many in the Conservative Party—especially the large grouping of retired military officers—who viewed the weapon as a dangerous means whereby the government could legitimize the reduction of conventional forces. These forces, which were to be informally led by the former Minister of Defence Anthony Head, were to make their presence felt after the publication of the annual Defence White Paper.

In the post-Suez aftermath, Macmillan was also quick to recognize the political advantages that could be gained from splitting the Labour Party over the H-bomb issue.⁵ The front bench of the Labour Party had supported the development of the H-bomb and in the immediate aftermath of Suez, while roundly condemning the government, spokesman on defence George Brown remained committed to the view that

if we still have visions of retaining influence in the world, if we still have visions of ourselves as the centre, if no longer the mother of a great Commonwealth of nations, and if we see ourselves influencing the circumstances in which the deterrent may be used, I do not see how we can do without it.⁶

Concomitantly, in a House of Commons debate on 1 April 1957 Labour Party leader Gaitskill was of the opinion that the United States may not in all circumstances be prepared to support Britain against Soviet nuclear blackmail. Consequently it was necessary for Britain to possess a nuclear deterrent capability.⁷ Gaitskill was soon to shift his position to support the left wing of his party and push for a ban on nuclear testing, though Labour unease and confusion was only to become more visible following the publication of the Sandys White Paper in April and the British thermonuclear explosion in May.

Disquiet amongst the press and military professionals with regard to the adoption of a British ‘New Look’ force posture was also adumbrated in the immediate post-Suez period. For example, an editorial in The Times criticized the ‘hollowness’ of the claims put forward by those who expressed attachment to Britain’s nuclear deterrent. It was also stated that

As the nuclear stalemate between east and west approaches, the balance of power is likely to shift back towards conventional forces. In general, therefore, there is not time to make large reductions in our conventional strength…⁸

To the extent that these ideas were at the very least demanding a continuation of a posture of multiple capabilities with both a nuclear focus and large conventional forces, they could not be squared with Macmillan’s and Sandys’s emphasis on the need to achieve major economic savings.

Certainly, the exigencies of economic savings provided the most immediate and vital motivation. In his autobiography, Macmillan states that at the time of the formation of his administration he had come to the conclusion that a complete review of British defence policy was essential and that this review would have as its object the achievement of major economic savings. Already during the previous year he had warned that Britain was carrying ‘two rifles’ because compared to the continental European countries she was assigning about twice as large a share of her resources to defence.⁹ During the Suez crisis Chancellor of the Exchequer Macmillan reportedly presented the Cabinet with the alternatives of devaluation or cease-fire and in November the reserves fell by £100 million to stand at the end of the month at their lowest level since 1952.¹⁰ On 4 November in order to restore home demand, the duty on petrol and diesel oil had been increased, a large drawing made on the UK quota with the International Monetary Fund, and further ‘second line’ reserves mobilized. While the drain on the reserves was halted, the economic survey for 1957 warned that the year would be dominated by balance of payments problems, that the current surplus was quite inadequate to enable the country to meet all its overseas commitments, that even if the terms of trade should improve, exports would still have to be increased, and that a considerable proportion of Britain’s domestic product would have to be exported if the balance of payments situation was not to be worsened.

A major potential for exports was the metal producing industries which, as throughout the 1950s, were deprived of manpower and were having to devote a large part of their product to domestic military uses.¹¹ It was clear that this sector would have to be supplied with labour if Britain’s balance of payments situation was to improve and her economy made more sound. That same month Macmillan had warned Minister of Defence Anthony Head in a November 1956 memorandum that Britain was facing the most difficult economic situation in her history and that substantial savings would have to be made in the defence budget. He reaffirmed the war planning priority list which placed emphasis on nuclear deterrence and the need to cut out ‘all preparations for global war that we can without losing our power to influence world affairs or alienating our essential allies’.¹² Soon after coming to office the Prime Minister wrote to Lord Salisbury that discussions with the Governor of the Bank of England had made clear the necessity of reducing the defence budget in order to hold the value of the pound in the autumn. The point was that ‘If we lose the pound, we lose everything’.¹³ The very day in January that Macmillan moved in to 10 Downing Street he demanded that Head agree to major economic and manpower cuts by that afternoon. Head’s failure to do so allowed Macmillan to replace him with Churchill’s son-in-law, the more aggressive Duncan Sandys.

In his earlier role as Minister of Defence and later as Chancellor of the Exchequer, Macmillan had witnessed the difficulties that the Ministry of Defence had encountered in imposing direction and discipline on service preferences. As noted, the 1955 and 1956 policy reviews had been long-running difficult affairs whose results were often ambiguous and whose implications were often less than decisive. A recognition of these problems had led the Minister of Defence, Anthony Head, to state just three weeks before his resignation in January 1957 that

he was convinced that it was impracticable to achieve inter-Service agreement on a long-term programme. Attempts to do so in the past had merely resulted in short-term compromises which in the end had led to wasteful expenditure…In his view the outlines of a long-term defence programme and the allocation of resources between the Services should first be agreed by Minister of Defence with his senior colleagues…¹⁴

While the new Prime Minister did not have the time completely to overhaul the Ministry of Defence’s position relative to the services, he was ‘determined, by all the influence that I could bring to bear, to make the Minister of Defence’s position as strong as it must be’.¹⁵ The services were thus informed that Macmillan ‘proposed to bring some reality to the task given the Minister of Defence under Section 1 of the Minister of Defence Act, 1946’.¹⁶ On 18January 1957, Macmillan issued a directive to the Chiefs and service heads outlining the responsibilities of the new Minister of Defence. It is clear from a reading of the document that the weight of influence in decision-making was being pushed decisively in the direction of the Ministry of Defence. It was stressed that the first goal of the Minister would be to draw up a new defence policy aimed at securing substantial reductions in both expenditure and manpower. He would then have to prepare a plan which would reshape the armed forces in line with the new policy. The directive was furthermore explicit that the Minister of Defence would have authority to make decisions on all matters of policy influencing the shape, organization, size, and deployment of the armed forces. This would also apply to the issues of their supply, equipment, and pay as well as to research and development. Equally as significant was the point that if a service minister wished to make a proposal to the Prime Minister, the Defence Committee, or the Cabinet on any of the matters mentioned above, he would have to make it through the Minister of Defence himself.¹⁷

Sandys came to the post with a record indicating a predilection towards cost-cutting, reliance on nuclear deterrence and missiles, and a willingness to override service sensitivities. During the Second World War he had played a vital role in helping identify and destroy German missile sites. This experience had left a lasting impression on him to the extent that he considered himself well cognizant of the major changes taking place in the realm of military technology and aware of the natural conservativeness of the defence departments especially when it came to resisting change to their traditional and preferred roles and capabilities. During the Radical Review exercise of 1953 it was Sandys who had spearheaded the government’s assault on the Navy’s carrier fleet—an assault that may have succeeded had it not been for his ill health, but one which nevertheless left much ill feeling and resentment. Vice Chief of the Naval Staff, Sir William Davis, was adamant that Sandys had little appreciation of strategic problems and was out to secure rapid economic savings. He states that the new Minister of Defence had ‘little underlying realisation of the strategical needs of the Country’¹⁸ and that he did not ‘have any strategical concept beyond the factor that in his opinion the atomic weapon was all important!’¹⁹

Davis’s contention about Sandys’s appreciation of strategic realities appeared to be only partly based on the fact that Sandys’s strategic vision differed considerably from his. For Sandys’s proclivity for quick results with the minimum of fuss and opposition tended to indicate that he was often less concerned with the strategic coherence of his plans than that they should be quickly implemented. Indeed, it can be argued that throughout the period under study, it appears that Sandys’s primary concern was not strategy as much as economy. For as A.J. R. Groom correctly notes, the decisions of this period were ‘above all…motivated by notions of economy and prestige’.²⁰

At a meeting of the Cabinet on 21 January, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Peter Thorneycroft, forecast a budget deficit of over £500 million. He warned that Britain had mobilized nearly all the support for sterling which she could command and had very little left to meet future crises. Savings would immediately have to be sought in the fields of defence, civil, and public spending. The defence budget for 1957–8 was now projected at £1,550 million and it would have to be cut by a substantial amount at once. Sandys readily agreed with the view that the nation could not afford such a level of defence production and that it was crucial to reduce the burden it imposed on materials and skilled manpower. It was at this meeting that the new Minister of Defence promised substantial cuts in defence expenditure,²¹ laying the basis for the British ‘New Look’.

While much of the focus of the secondary literature has tended to be on the aspects of nuclear policy in the 1957 White Paper, a reading of the relevant documents makes clear that manpower issues dominated discussions and it is there that the more revolutionary aspects of the Paper are to be found. Indeed, an analysis of the documentation concerning the nuclear deterrent in the context of the White Paper negotiations reinforces this assertion. While the Minister of Defence stated in a directive to the services in late February that Britain would play a part in preventing war ‘by creating a British element of nuclear deterrent power’,²² there was no mention of the word independent or any suggestion that the force be used in an independent manner. This whole area was left unexplored. Indeed, not only were discussions on nuclear weapons pushed to the side in the face of the far more pressing discussions on conventional force issues, but Sandys’s approach to the subject demonstrated the Macmillan government’s qualified attitude towards a British independent deterrent.

At the Defence Committee meeting of 27 February, Macmillan underlined the relative importance of conventional force issues as opposed to nuclear ones. Only following a lengthy discussion of manpower did the Prime Minister turn to the issue of nuclear weapons and then only to state that Britain would not use them other than in the context of a global war and in conjunction with the United States. In addition, Britain would not use tactical nuclear weapons except in wars in which the United States was engaged or was giving full support.²³ The Prime Minister thus clearly rejected the independent British use of nuclear weapons.

At the same time, he demonstrated the complexity of the issue at hand when he stated that ‘We should, however, have within our control sufficient weapons to provide a deterrent influence independent of the United States’. The Prime Minister did not specify over whom this influence would be achieved or how the influence would be exercised though he did say that ‘Our objective should be to remain a nuclear power and for this purpose we would need the capacity to make both atomic and hydrogen weapons and the means of delivering them’. Yet, when it came to actual force requirements he maintained that the number of kiloton and megaton bombs which we should produce ‘would depend on further assessment of the costs involved’—an indication that economic as much as strategic considerations would determine the size of the force.

It is reasonable to assume that had Macmillan’s and Sandys’s focus been on further strengthening the nuclear deterrent at the expense of conventional force capabilities and conventional force levels (as opposed to allowing the importance of the deterrent to rise relative to conventional force levels merely as a result of cutbacks in the latter), then the Air Ministry would have greeted these ideas with satisfaction. Yet, the Air Ministry’s attitude throughout the 1957 White Paper discussions was one of apprehension mixed with uncertainty. The problem was that for the Air Ministry, Sandys was not only intent upon seriously cutting back manned aircraft, but he also appeared in some instances to be weakening and not strengthening Britain’s nuclear deterrent. If Sandys was keen on basing a new defence policy on the British deterrent he did not seem to be in a rush to bring these ideas to the notice of the services. Thus, at the beginning of March, Assistant Under Secretary of State for Air, R. H. Melville, complained to Powell that the Air Ministry was being asked to prepare a memorandum on the air estimates, but it had no idea what the Minister intended to say about the RAF’s role in the White Paper.²⁴ In fact, when the first major draft of the White Paper was presented to the Chiefs and services on 12 March, while the manpower sections were there in detail, the paragraphs on the nuclear deterrent were as yet not ready.²⁵

It appeared to the Air Ministry that Sandys was not intent upon shifting the focus from conventional forces to nuclear weapons, but mainly concerned with securing economic savings through a reduction of the former. Assistant Private Secretary K. C. Macdonald—who while not high on the bureaucratic chain was in this case setting out a position that was undoubtedly not confined to himself—wrote to Ward on 12 March expressing extreme displeasure with regard to Sandys’s plans. Thus, according to Macdonald, the effect of the White Paper on the UK would be ‘panic’, on the services ‘bad’ and on the world ‘shattering’. The only certain result of Sandys’s ideas was that Britain would ultimately become a second class military, economic and political power. This perceived lack of interest on the part of the Minister of Defence in the nuclear deterrent was resulting in the defence of the UK being placed ‘wholly in American hands’. It seemed to be Macdonald’s view that Sandys was only implicitly relating nuclear weapons to conventional force levels. Consequently, there had to be a greater stress on nuclear weapons and this had to be tied to a time-scale of manpower rundown. The Assistant Secretary’s warning was unequivocal:

A plan, better phased in manpower rundown and related in time-scale to new weapons would create [a] feeling of confidence. But even such a plan would require [a] most explicit demonstration that H.M.G. meant business both in going ahead with new weapons and improving conditions of Service people.²⁶

These fears were reaffirmed by Air Ministry Permanent Under Secretary Maurice Dean, who told Ward on 14 March that nowhere in the present draft of the White Paper was there any mention of overall policy, priorities, or strategy.²⁷ As a result of this confusion the RAF was bound to suffer. Although the nuclear deterrent sections of the White Paper were still not ready, Assistant Chief of the Air Staff Earle was adamant that

It is difficult to know what general recommendation to make until we see the rest of the paper, but enough is already available to show that much of it is pretty puerile stuff which I thought would serve the Government badly with public opinion…²⁸

In the second half of March, the Air Ministry found itself encouraging the Minister of Defence to strengthen further the nuclear focus of the White Paper. On 16 March, following a meeting between Ward and the Air Council, Ward’s Private Secretary, Ewen Broadbent, wrote to the Ministry of Defence that paragraph B.17(a) of the 12 March Draft which stated that ‘the reshaping and re-distribution of the armed forces, on the lines indicated above, will greatly reduce the military manpower required’ was misleading because ‘it is not reshaping or redistribution but new policies and new scientific developments which will permit the major reductions in manpower to be made’.²⁹ Concomitantly, the Ministry of Defence was also informed that Sandys must strengthen his paragraph on the deterrent because the one the Air Ministry had seen gave the impression that Britain was almost wholly dependent upon the United States and ‘it plays down the British element of the deterrent’.³⁰ This point was reaffirmed in discussions in March between Ward and Sandys, where once again, it was often the Secretary of State for Air, and not the Minister of Defence which appeared to underline the stress on Britain’s deterrent and the independence of that deterrent. On 18 March, Ward wrote to Sandys that

You agreed at our meeting last Friday that we should strengthen [the nuclear deterrent paragraphs]. This has already been done to some extent but I still feel that in view of the importance of the deterrent as brought out in [the relevant paragraphs] and as also emphasised in all the recent talks with NATO, it is important not to play it down too much, I suggest therefore that we should delete the words ‘an element of and make the sentence read ‘possess a nuclear deterrent of her own.’³¹

Arguably, the demand that Sandys should not ‘play down too much’ the focus on the deterrent does not seem to square with a view that his primary concern during the White Paper negotiations was to focus on nuclear deterrence and to emphasize Britain’s independent deterrent capabilities. Of course, the Air Ministry could just have been overreacting to an aspect of policy that touched directly on its ‘organizational essence’. Yet, at the same time, it should be recognized that Sandys was most concerned with getting his ideas on manpower accepted, and it was there that the main battles took place. For him, it was enough that the importance of the deterrent would rise relatively as the manpower basis of multiple capabilities was taken away. He had, however, no major disagreements with what the Air Ministry was saying and was therefore willing to accede to variations in declaratory intent. Thus, at least to an extent, the Air Ministry, by encouraging Sandys, helped strengthen the declaratory emphasis on independent nuclear deterrence.

The results of these discussions and the Minister of Defence’s shifting position on the declaratory aspects associated with the deterrent can be noted in a comparison of a number of key paragraphs circulated before and after discussions and correspondence between Ward and Sandys in mid-March:

1. In a draft circulated for Cabinet discussion on 15 March, Sandys and Powell had written:

(7)c Now and in the foreseeable future, the free world is almost wholly dependent for its protection upon the nuclear power of the United States.³²

By 26 March, this had been replaced with the words

The free world is to-day mainly dependent for its protection upon the nuclear capacity of the United States.³³

The replacement of ‘foreseeable future’ with ‘to-day’ can be seen as a shift away from the impression that the United States would always provide such a capability and that Britain would always reside under the US deterrent umbrella.

2. A draft circulated on 15 March stated that Britain should ‘possess an element of nuclear deterrent power of her own’. By 26 March this had been replaced with the stronger sentence, ‘it is generally agreed that she should possess an appreciable element of nuclear deterrent power of her own’.³⁴ Here Sandys had gone some way towards meeting Ward’s criticisms, but not all the way. While no documents are available indicating that Ward’s demands that the White Paper include the sentence that Britain must ‘possess a nuclear deterrent of her own’³⁵ was rejected this did not appear in Cmnd. 124. Arguably, such a sentence would have greatly underlined the independence of Britain’s deterrent for the word ‘element’ tended to indicate that Britain’s deterrent was but part of a greater whole—in this case the allied deterrent. Why Sandys did not include this sentence is unclear but perhaps he rejected such an explicit statement of independence because it was not in line with his or Macmillan’s thinking as expressed at the 27 February Defence Committee meeting. This would support the contention that during the White Paper negotiations, the Air Ministry was sometimes more concerned about laying declaratory stress on nuclear deterrence and unilateral independence than Sandys.

3. Air Ministry pressure was also responsible for expanding the 15 March draft sentence that ‘the means of delivery for these weapons is provided by the V-class’ to that of

The means of delivering these weapons is provided by medium bombers of the V-class whose performance in speed and altitude is equal to that of any bomber aircraft now in service in any other country.³⁶

Here the credibility of Britain’s nuclear contribution was definitely reinforced.

4. Although it is difficult to assess from where the impetus derived, the following sentence appeared in the 26 March draft and not that of 15 March:

…in assessing the value of military effort, it must be remembered that, apart from the United States, Britain alone makes a contribution to the nuclear deterrent power upon which the peace of the world so largely rests.³⁷

Again the aspect of independence received a boost with the result that at an Air Council meeting on 27 March, Ward could state that the latest proof was a ‘considerable improvement’.³⁸

5. The Air Ministry, however, did not give up in its attempt to lay added emphasis on the independence of Britain’s nuclear force. There was still concern about the manner in which Sandys was presenting the Thor and Blue Streak missile issuesin the White Paper.³⁹ In a meeting with Powell only two days before the White Paper was published, Ward told him that language must not be used in the White Paper which implied that Britain would look solely to the United States for ballistic rockets.⁴⁰ Powell appears to have agreed to this Air Ministry suggestion and he convinced Sandys to broaden the sentence dealing with missiles to read that ‘agreement in principle forthe supply of some missiles of the ballistic type had been reached with the United States’.⁴¹ The key word here was ‘some’ which implied that not all weapons of this type would beacquired from the United States. The Air Ministry could thus be assured that the Blue Streak project was still secure.

Two basic issues can be gleaned from the debate on the nuclear deterrent in the context of the White Paper discussions: (1) there seems to have been a difference of emphasis between what the Prime Minister and Minister of Defence were saying in the privacy of the Defence Committee and what was being said on the declaratory level of policy concerning the future independent role of Britain’s nuclear deterrent; (2) there was an attempt by the Air Ministry to shift the focus of the declaratory expressions towards a greater emphasis on independent nuclear deterrence (unrelated to how that independence was actually defined).

It was because of Sandys’s tendency to focus on the reduction of manpower spending without clearly elucidating how and when nuclear weapons would fill this gap that the Air Ministry, theoretically the greatest beneficiary of Sandys’s nuclear focus, expressed deep concern over the wording of the White Paper. The wording of paragraphs and their inclusion was viewed as a matter of great significance as it was believed that declaratory expressions could ultimately help influence action policies. Certainly the shifts described above were not great and it can be reasonably argued that the differences were ultimately not large. However, on the level of declaratory policy—as the services and Sandys clearly recognized—each nuance carried with it the possibility for far broader implications on the level of procurement policy. Here, the Air Ministry thought it was strengthening the nuclear deterrent and the independent deterrent focus of the White Paper, while in fact it was merely broadening the gap between declaratory and action policy. That Sandys was prepared to accede, at least partly, to Air Ministry pressures, is testament to his desire to avoid extra battles with the service departments which were peripheral to the more pressing issues of economic savings and manpower reductions.

It must be recognized that Sandys approached the White Paper with the prime intention of setting out the basis for securing savings through manpower reductions. Of course he accepted that there must be a shift in stress from conventional to nuclear forces but he did not consciously attempt to unite the two major aspects of his policy into a consistent whole. From the papers available at the Public Records Office it appears that the focus on nuclear deterrence was sometimes more implicit than explicit in the 1957 White Paper negotiations and that Sandys seemed relatively uninterested at this time in outlining a coherent and systematic policy of British nuclear deterrence linked to other levels of British defence policy.

Arguably, given his style and approach to defence planning he would have reduced manpower anyway—nuclear weapons notwithstanding. This approach differed somewhat from the declaratory level where the link between manpower reductions and the focus on the nuclear deterrent was made more explicit. In a speech in the House of Commons on 17 April 1957 Minister of Labour and National Service Ian Macleod stated that, ‘If we refuse to rely on the deterrent we cannot at the same time urge the abolition of National Service’.⁴² This was reaffirmed by Macmillan who on the same day stressed that ‘the end of conscription must depend upon the acceptance of nuclear weapons’.⁴³

Yet there is little evidence that at the beginning of the White Paper negotiations there were major dicussions of the relation between the timing of British nuclear weapons deployment and cutbacks of conventional forces. Nor does there appear to have been a strong interest in the Ministry of Defence during 1957 for further increasing the absolute power of Britain’s deterrent force beyond that already planned. On 28 February, for example, Powell spoke of the need for a ‘moderate size [V-bomber] force (number undecided]’⁴⁴ but made no mention of the requirements of independent deterrence. Again, while he stated that the V-bombers would ultimately be replaced by ballistic missiles, he stressed that Britain would continue only a modest research programme into her own Blue Streak missile, while Thor missiles would be supplied and controlled by the United States. Moreover, despite attempts by the Air Ministry in 1955 and 1956 to stress the link between defence of the V-bomber bases and the credibility to the British deterrent, the Permanent Secretary warned that air defence forces would be reduced from 480 to 280 aircraft.⁴⁵

On 20 February, Powell underlined the main focus of the White Paper when he told the Permanent Under Secretaries of the defence departments that Sandys would attempt to terminate national service and set the total manpower ceiling at 380,000.⁴⁶ Again, following a special Cabinet meeting at Chequers on 23–4 February at which Sandys sought Cabinet approval for his defence plans, the services were issued with a directive in which it was apparent that the first goal would be the termination of national service—an objective to which all else would be subordinate. This would have direct economic implications in itself, as well as serving to undercut the basis on which conventional capabilities were constructed. Sandys was, as usual, direct:

In reviewing our defence plans, my starting point has been the Government’s declared intention to end National Service as soon as practicable. For the purposes of this review, I have assumed that there would be no call-up later than 1960 and that consequently the last national serviceman would leave the forces in 1962.⁴⁷

The target was to reduce spending from the total of £1,600 million in the defence estimates of 1956/7 to an annual figure of around £1,300 million. Although Sandys admitted that the costs of his reduced programme had not yet been established, he warned that if drastic economies were not instituted, defence spending would shortly rise to £2,000 million. 380,000 troops would have to suffice, this despite the fact that—as the Minister admitted—’[it] would appreciably affect our ability to exert military power in distant parts of the world and would inevitably reduce our influence in NATO, SEATO and the Baghdad alliance’.⁴⁸ The Minister was not explicitly arguing that nuclear weapons would fill this gap.

There was a similar thrust in the presentation given by Powell to the Permanent Under Secretaries of the service departments on 28 February.⁴⁹ A reading of this presentation indicates that the proposed order of battle did not in itself mean that Britain was to rely more heavily on the nuclear deterrent other than in a relative sense—that is, there was still no clear linkage between specific force reductions and numbers of nuclear weapons and the timing of their deployment. While a balancing of the one with the other would be too simplistic a formula to measure the strategic coherence of Sandys’s plans, the point is that the two issues did seem very loosely connected. The services were thus made well aware that the focus of the forthcoming White Paper would be a reduction in manpower and that their task would be to make use of the reduced force to attain the old objectives. Before the Defence Committee on 27 February, Macmillan reaffirmed that the main objective of the new defence policy was the reduction of the regular forces to 380,000 by the earliest practical date and that the economic objective was an annual defence budget of £1,450 million, not taking into account any contribution from the United States or Germany.⁵⁰

Nuclear issues continued to remain peripheral to the manpower debate and to the degree that it was included, the services seemed to have reservations about the idea that nuclear could replace conventional fire-power. Thus towards the end of January, the Chiefs wished Sandys to be informed that even the figure of 450,000 men for the armed forces (that is Minister of Defence Anthony Head’s plan presented towards the end of 1956) was not based on any study of strategic requirements.⁵¹ He was told that the Chiefs believed that while there might be economic reasons for reducing the order of battle, ‘in our opinion there are no military or strategic grounds which justify considerable reductions from the resources at present devoted to United Kingdom defence’.⁵² They went on to warn that the reduction of Britain’s forces to approximately half what they were in 1954 would involve the country in serious risk.

In fact, despite the care and time the Chiefs allocated to the Head plan during the first weeks of 1957, Sandys seems to have ignored these studies and presented his February directive calling for a 380,000 force level on the basis of minimal consultation, let alone negotiation, with the Chiefs and service heads.⁵³

The Chiefs appeared, in turn, to reaffirm their lack of confidence in the efficacy of nuclear weapons as replacements for conventional forces and their ‘serious concern on the effect which [conventional force reductions] would have on the NATO, Baghdad Pact and the SEATO’. Concern was also expressed about the implications of a termination of national service on Britain’s European allies.⁵⁴ The War Office also rejected out of hand the claim that with a figure of 165,000 men the United Kingdom could contribute 50,000 troops to BAOR in 1961 —43,000 being the more likely number.⁵⁵ The VCIGS, Sir William Oliver, also maintained that he was opposed to an early draft to the White Paper which he had seen because it made no mention of the Army’s role in limited war, ‘nor does it refer to their ultimate task of playing a part in global war should the deterrent fail’.⁵⁶ Indeed, even in the midst of the Sandys onslaught, the Army and the Navy remained attached to a concept of a long global war—the emphasis on nuclear weapons notwithstanding.

By the middle of March, Sandys and Powell were busy presenting the Chiefs and service heads with draft after draft (ultimately 13 major drafts) of the White Paper. At this stage, service and Chiefs of Staff opposition to the Minister’s plans focused almost exclusively on the manpower issue with little attention being focused on Britain’s nuclear weapons. The Chiefs preferred to attack the basis of Sandys’s ‘New Look’ with the claim that the draft White Paper gave the impression that there were strategic reasons to support the government’s proposed reductions when in fact this was not so and the motivations were primarily economic.

On 21 March, Dickson met with Sandys and expressed the Chiefs’ dissatisfaction both with the substance of Sandys’s proposals and the manner in which the Minister was going about his task. Dickson explained to the Minister that the Chiefs regarded themselves constitutionally as the expert military advisers to the government—the clear implication being that they were not being treated as such. The Chairman of the COSC then painted a grim picture of the world situation and demonstrated that Sandys’s proposed manpower cuts were extremely dangerous. He pointed to the growing Soviet and Chinese military potential and the increasing threat to all of Britain’s alliances. Dickson also warned that the UK would have to take cognizance of growing threats to purely British interests. Finally, he once more reaffirmed the Chiefs’ attachment to a 450,000 force armed with ‘modern weapons’⁵⁷ thereby indicating that he would prefer both large nuclear and conventional forces.

True to form, Sandys quickly dismissed Dickson’s complaints. He told him that British defence requirements could be divided into two parts: the first was the defence of purely British interests; the second was the contribution that the UK had to make to her defensive alliances. Sandys believed that the 380,000 force would be adequate for the first category; with regard to the second requirement, the Minister maintained that Britain’s final force contribution would have to be determined in negotiation with her allies and that while ‘military considerations come into this…the decision must be made on political and economic grounds’.⁵⁸ Sandys went on to state that he regarded a 375,000 force as being ‘fair’ and effective when compared with the military and economic potential of Britain’s allies. Dickson was left with the clear impression that despite his objections, Sandys intended to proceed on the basis of a 380,000 force. Here, the Minister was clearly subordinating even his own strategic premisses to economic considerations.

On 27 March, Sandys made an effort to convince the Chiefs of the merits of his proposed order of battle—though it was evident from the outset that this was not a search for compromise on his part but a reaction to the criticisms that he had been ignoring the Chiefs. The basis for discussion was provided by the fifth proof of the White Paper which stated that the government believed that Britain could discharge her responsibilities with an all-regular force but no mention was made of the Chiefs’ lack of agreement.⁵⁹ Sandys informed the COSC of his confidence in an all-regular force of 375,000 being able to defend British colonies and protected areas, take part in limited overseas operations (i.e. in support of the Baghdad Pact or SEATO allies) and to ‘make a fair contribution to the joint effort of NATO’. As far as Sandys was concerned, if NATO was to be strengthened conventionally, then the other partners must begin to carry a greater burden. He maintained that he did not think the conventional effort that Britain was now making would in any way determine whether a third world war would start or not. Then the Minister went on to state that although the resulting NATO force

would not be regarded as enough for safety, in his view they were sufficient to deter Soviet Russia from starting a nuclear war since she could attain her ends in other ways at much less risk to herself, e.g. by subversion in the Middle East and South East Asia. However, a greater probable danger was the potential commercial threat from Russia since, with her form of Government she could easily undertake a trade war.⁶⁰

The Minister’s ideas were here certainly somewhat confused. On one level he seemed unclear as to what he considered was actually deterring the Soviets from starting a global war: was it allied conventional or nuclear forces? Nor did he attempt to separate out the British and American nuclear contributions. On another level, he appeared to equate Soviet goals in the Middle East and the Far East with those in Europe, and he seemed to blur the Chiefs’ careful distinctions between cold, limited, and global war. Here it must be recognized that what undoubtedly drove Sandys was not so much an explicit strategic formula as much as the issue of financial savings—thus his concern about a trade war. Consequently, while he patiently listened to the Chiefs’ views, he was not prepared to change his approach. For him, the problem was now one of wording and presentation, not strategic rationales. He could only assure the Chiefs that it was not his intention to implicate them in the decision to terminate national service and reduce the armed forces to 375,000. The wording of the White Paper could therefore be adjusted, but the Chiefs’ appeals had otherwise fallen on deaf ears. Furthermore, the battle over the wording was not yet over and the Chiefs continued to believe that Sandys was still attempting to create the impression in the White Paper that there was general acceptance that Britain’s commitments could be sustained with a 375,000 force.

Sandys, however, sought to move away from giving the impression that economic considerations came at the expense of military ones. Thus, the Chiefs’ statement on the predominance of economic factors was ultimately replaced with the sentence,

Britain’s influence in the world depends first and foremost on the health of her internal economy and the success of her export trade. Without these, military power cannot in the long run be supported. It is therefore in the true interests of defence that the claims of military expenditure should be considered in conjunction with the need to maintain the country’s financial and economic strength.⁶¹

The Chiefs were furious that even their compromise position on the presentation had been ignored. At 3.30 p.m., 45 minutes before the Cabinet meeting on 28 March began, they met to discuss the matter. Mountbatten stressed how seriously he viewed the efforts ‘to avoid the point the COS were making’.⁶² At that meeting, Dickson did not relate the cuts to any increased emphasis on the strategic deterrent or tactical nuclear weapons but stated that

a reduction in the total strength of the forces to 375,000 could not be justified on strictly military grounds. The threat of communism had in no way diminished, and since the planned reduction in British forces would not, in the event, be counter-balanced by any comparable increases in the forces of the other countries in the Western Alliances, the total forces available for the defence of the free world would be reduced. Though no precise estimate could be given of the forces required for sound military planning, the further reduction now proposed…would result in a disproportionate loss of fighting units. The Chiefs of Staff therefore considered that it should be made clear in the White Paper that the decision to reduce the forces eventually to 375,000 was dictated primarily by economic needs.⁶³

Though the available documents do not describe any tensions at the Cabinet meeting, these must have been strong, because the Prime Minister, once having admitted that the question of manpower was the most important feature of the White Paper, stated that he, himself, would draft the relevant paragraphs, taking account of the concerns of the Chiefs of Staff.⁶⁴ To the satisfaction of the Chiefs, the problem seemed to be taken out of Sandys’s hands. Consequently, a proof of the White Paper issued on 30 March stated in paragraph 46 that ‘in the light of the need to maintain a balanced distribution of the national manpower, regular forces [of 375,000] constitute the objective which [the government] should seek ultimately to attain’.⁶⁵ At a meeting of the Chiefs of Staff Committee on 1 April, it was concluded that while this paragraph was far from satisfactory, it was open to different interpretations, and if the Chiefs were asked ‘if they agreed with the paragraph they should be at liberty to say they did not’.⁶⁶

Yet, by the 11 a.m. Cabinet meeting on the following day, it appears that Sandys had once again altered the relevant paragraph which now stated that the regular strength of the armed forces would by 1962 be between 350,000 and 400,000 men. Moreover, no mention was made of the relationship of economic to military criteria in determining this force level. The Chiefs reacted angrily, but once more to no avail.⁶⁷ At 5 p.m. on 3 April it was discovered that in the latest version of paragraph 46—a version which Sandys had no intention of circulating for agreement and of which there was only one copy in his private office—the sentence ‘In the light of the need to maintain a balanced distribution of national resources…’ had been omitted. It seemed that the Minister of Defence was continuing to circumvent the Chiefs’ demand that they be distanced from the manpower proposals. At 5.30 p.m. Mountbatten made an urgent phone call to Dickson and demanded that the matter be investigated. Sandys, whose plans were now uncovered, agreed to alter the wording so as to imply that economic as much as strategic motivations lay behind the decision to cut manpower and terminate the national service programme. This was reflected in the final draft of paragraph 46 which appeared in Cmnd. 124.⁶⁸

During the White Paper negotiations of 1957, the services continued to attempt to contain Sandys through influencing the wording and inclusion of paragraphs in the White Paper. Thus, there was a long but losing battle supported by the Navy and fought by Chairman of the COSC Sir William Dickson to prevent the inclusion of paragraph 13 which stated that ‘the overriding consideration in all military planning must be to prevent war rather than to prepare for it’⁶⁹—thereby indicating the Navy’s continued commitment to global war capabilities and its less than unqualified commitment to a policy primarily based on the threat of massive retaliation.

This rejection did not imply that the Navy—especially Mountbatten—was during 1957 uninterested in also moving towards a nuclear role in terms of propulsion or strike capabilities. Indeed, the Navy evinced a preference for pursuing such an option independently of the Americans. The staff requirements for a British nuclear submarine had been concluded in February 1957 with agreement reached with Vickers and investigations into enriched uranium cores begun at Harwell. By September, much to the RAF’s consternation, the Navy was requesting reactor fuel for its programme from the same stock that was supplying the Air Force with its fissile material. Progress, however, remained slow but the Admiralty remained hesitant about seeking help from the Americans as this they believed would jeopardize the independence of Britain’s submarine programme.

However, in the context of Sandys’s economic strategy of cost-cutting and his political strategy of closer alliance with the United States the Navy’s independent pretensions, too, gave way to greater co-operation with the Americans. In June, twenty-five British engineers and nuclear scientists associated with the submarine project visited the United States. During First Lord Selkirk’s visit to Washington in October, Admiral Rickover—in charge of America’s nuclear submarine programme—gave the impression that the sale of US nuclear propulsion technology to the United Kingdom might be possible. The following month Rickover stated that the Royal Navy had to decide whether it was more interested in satisfying its pride with an independent project or moving as quickly as possible towards deploying a nuclear submarine.⁷⁰ Mountbatten was by now apparently convinced that co-operation with the Americans held the key to the future of Britain’s naval nuclear programme and he readily agreed with Rickover that co-operation would be best for both countries.

Despite this interest in nuclear propulsion, in the context of the 1957 White Paper negotiations and throughout 1957, the Navy seemed more concerned about defending its conventional forces than about agreeing that a nuclear emphasis enabled conventional force reductions or even about pushing for itself a nuclear strike role. On assuming office in January, the new First Lord, Lord Selkirk, wrote to Sandys what in retrospect can only be regarded as a very optimistic brief.⁷¹ The thrust of Selkirk’s arguments was that Head’s call for a 90,000 strong Navy (the so-called 90 Plan)—which the Navy had accepted—was itself problematic. Ships of all classes would be reduced, and significantly—from the point of global war capabilities—the supplementary and extended reserve fleets would be abolished by 1960/1. The First Lord went on to warn that such an inbalance was legitimate only because the Ministry of Defence’s directive made the assumption that conventional preparations for global war were of a low priority. Selkirk stressed that this was not a view held by the Navy and he was adamant that ‘the only circumstances in which there will be no survival are if we plan on the basis that there can be none’.⁷² Clearly, the Navy’s commitment to the nuclear focus of the 1957 White Paper was less than unreserved—at least in terms of bargaining tactics.

The Navy also faced problems in relation to how the nuclear deterrent was being presented in the White Paper and the way that this related to their concept of broken-backed warfare. Prior to Macmillan’s meeting with Eisenhower in March⁷³ Dickson circulated a draft paper to be used at the conference which stressed the centrality of the British contribution to the deterrent in the context of the Anglo-American relationship. Consequently, the Navy Director of Plans, E. D. G. Lewin informed Mountbatten,

If you agree with the proposition which [Dickson] makes you will be underwriting the importance of the…deterrent in a much more forthright manner than you have ever done before. If you consider that there is a chance of the President suggesting to the Prime Minister that we should drop out of the deterrent market, it would, from the long term Naval point of view, be very damaging if you were on the record as supporting our share of the deterrent as ‘the most appropriate and effective’ contribution which we could make with our limited resources.⁷⁴

Lewin pressed this point home on 1 April when he wrote to the Navy’s Parliamentary Secretary, Christopher Soames, that as a result of the large number of drafts of the White Paper, the connotations of the word ‘deterrent’ had become confused. He pointed out that in paragraph 1 it was stated that Britain must make a fair contribution to the allied deterrent to global war and to discharge her responsibilities in many parts of the world. Lewin maintained that here it was not clear whether what was meant was nuclear deterrence or nuclear forces plus conventional forces.⁷⁵ If it was only nuclear deterrence then the statement, according to Lewin, was indefensible, since conventional forces which contributed to the prevention of global war could also be used in conventional operations during global war. Lewin was here supporting a broken-backed capability.

Equally as significant, it can be argued that if Sandys’s focus in the White Paper negotiations had been primarily on the nuclear deterrent, then surely this should have been clear to all by the beginning of April. Indeed, it is possible to claim that Sandys must have made the nuclear deterrent focus plain by now, but the Navy refused to accept it and pleaded ignorance as to the meaning of the White Paper—ignorance that would have allowed it later to make claims for conventional global war preparations. Lewin admitted that in paragraph 20 it was stated that the possession of nuclear power was not itself a capable deterrent. However, he maintained that this paragraph came so far after paragraph 1 that the common usage of ‘deterrent’—namely ‘nuclear deterrent’—was likely to be assumed to be that put forward at the beginning of the paper.

Lewin also objected to paragraph 24 in which it was said that naval forces did not contribute directly to the deterrent. He maintained that if the deterrent was defined broadly (that is to include non-nuclear forces) then the paragraph was unacceptable because the Navy did contribute—the implication here being that if it was defined narrowly (including only nuclear power) then it was acceptable. This reinforces the argument that during the White Paper negotiations the Navy was concerned about contributing not so much to the nuclear deterrent to global war but to conventional preparations should that war be fought. At the same time, the Navy certainly did not wish to foreclose its options. Consequently, the sentence stating ‘naval forces do not for the most part contribute directly to the deterrent’ was dropped by the time the White Paper was published, though it was continued to be stressed that ‘the role of naval forces in total war is somewhat uncertain’.⁷⁶

While the Navy, no doubt, felt that it had secured a victory because a threat to its global war preparations had been removed, it is not clear whether Sandys attached similar meaning to the removal of this paragraph. It is unlikely that he did, given his antipathy towards conventional global war preparations. Possibly, he took the narrow interpretation of the deterrent as his starting point and saw the deletion of the sentence merely as a recognition that the Navy had little to contribute to the nuclear deterrent.

This measure of ambiguity made it easier for the Admiralty to go along with the White Paper—and allowed Sandys to press on with his manpower objectives. Amongst the Board of Admiralty there was still uncertainty and much displeasure about the wording of the paragraphs defining the intentions of the government as to the final size of the forces,⁷⁷ but there was cause for optimism as well. Thus, on 3 April, naval commanders were informed that with regard to the Navy’s role in nuclear war,

The relevant paragraph in the White Paper tries to face this problem frankly for the first time and comes to the conclusion, precisely because the course of nuclear war can never be predicted, that the country must maintain such Naval Forces as, in co-operation with the NATO Navies, will constitute a vital piece both of the overall deterrent and of our preparations for total war.⁷⁸

The Admiralty was firm in its belief that a ‘costly programme of re-equipping the Navy with up-to-date weapons lies ahead’. The key words in the 3 April letter were ‘overall deterrent’ (which demonstrated that the Navy was giving deterrence the ‘broad interpretation’) and the explicit statement of ‘prepara-tions for total war’. The Navy was in no way giving up its commitment to broken-backed warfare—a fact that the Air Ministry had long recognized: only two weeks previously, Assistant Chief of the Air Staff, A. Earle, had written to Boyle that the Navy was perpetuating what Earle regarded as the old fallacy that following the thermonuclear exchange phase, a battle would have to be conducted against the Soviet submarine fleet.⁷⁹

Clearly, there was still much confusion and incoherence and it seemed inevitable that another crisis would arise later when the implications of Sandys’s manpower proposals began to inform themselves more directly on ambiguous declaratory policy. Yet, this was still in the (albeit near) future. While Ziegler is correct in his interpretation that the statement of the Navy’s role in global war being somewhat uncertain ‘was a phrase that struck a chill into every sailor’;⁸⁰ the Navy also often seemed intent upon seeing its glass as half full.

Even in the wake of the 1957 White Paper, the Navy remained attached to the concept of conventional preparations for global war. In July, the First Lord had hinted at the need for global war forces when he stated that Sandys’s planned cuts would lead to Britain losing all standing in NATO (an essentially political justification for these forces) and that NATO would become a ‘hollow deterrent’ (the military justification for global war forces).⁸¹ The statement in the White Paper that Britain must make her contribution to NATO on a reduced scale⁸²was thereby in practice strongly opposed. First, the Minister’s attempt to cut forces based on a war preparation priority list (which placed global war preparations at the bottom) was strongly resisted on the basis that the Navy order of battle could not be broken up into these specialized functions. Secondly, Sandys’s claims that global war was unlikely was rejected with the statement that ‘NATO policy to which Her Majesty’s Government is committed, is that global war is possible, and that the alliance must be prepared to fight it’.⁸³

Concomitantly, it was Selkirk’s view that (1) vast quantities of hydrogen bombs in the UK could not make her influence felt overseas; (2) the Commonwealth was built on sea-power and the 80 Plan (that is, an 80,000 Navy), by undermining naval manpower, would undermine the Commonwealth; and (3) the strength of NATO would be seriously impaired and ‘without Nato our hydrogen deterrent becomes a hollow straw, a mere bluff which the most gullible communist could not fail to see through’. Selkirk went on:

In my view, therefore, we should be seen, in the eyes of the Commonwealth, of NATO, and especially America, and of the world at large, to be abdicating our position as a naval world power. This is not a question of pride or sentiment. Our friends will be discouraged; our enemies will take heart. Thus the balance of cold war may be expected to swing against us, and the outcome may be very serious.⁸⁴

In this regard Selkirk received strong support from Mount-batten. Indeed, throughout 1957, the First Sea Lord remained adamant that the White Paper would be incompatible with the promises of the Navy to NATO. It was, according to Mount-batten, impossible to estimate for how long after the nuclear exchange Soviet submarines would endanger shipping and, consequently, there would be a need to provide for global war anti-submarine forces.⁸⁵ Here Selkirk was more specific and maintained that the growing strength of the Russian fleet meant that it could function for six months to a year after a nuclear exchange whatever the outcome. The First Lord stated that

In global war itself, it has been possible to claim with some plausibility that a Navy provided for peace and the cold war would put up an adequate showing in the unpredictable circumstances of global war. I have in fact made such a claim in my own Explanatory Memorandum this year [but in view of the increase in Soviet naval strength] I would no longer be able to do so.⁸⁶

On top of these anti-submarine requirements, Mountbatten and Selkirk continued to press for a major convoy role for the Royal Navy. Mountbatten stressed that in the event of global war occurring, SACLANT would need to get supplies into Western Europe, and the only way this could be done would be to fight a ‘monster convoy’ through the Atlantic.⁸⁷ In turn, Selkirk reaffirmed the Navy’s focus on anti-submarine missions, but also stated that with the forces projected in the White Paper, the Atlantic could not be kept open—a situation he termed militarily disastrous.

In discussions between the Minister of Defence and the Chiefs of Staff on 19 February, the Chiefs had withstood an onslaught by the Minister as he attempted to rid the Navy of all its aircraft carriers. Mountbatten united the Chiefs of Staff Committee behind the JPS report that

We conclude there is a need to retain the Fleet Air Arm because it provides a means of applying air power in areas where other means cannot be efficiently or economically used. We consider that, in the strategic circumstances with which we are faced, the carrier is the most flexible and valuable unit of the Fleet and that, if economies in Naval forces have to be made, these ships should be the last to be reduced.⁸⁸

The Chiefs were here legitimizing the need for carriers in terms of cold and limited war roles and not as a global war capability. This possibility stemmed not only from a belief in the necessity of such forces but also from the recognition that Sandys, unlike his predecessors, would not diverge from the set of war preparation priorities which placed global war at the tail-end, nor would he succumb to the attractions of a Strike Fleet role—a role, after all, to which he had never been particularly partial.⁸⁹ The Chiefs were more concerned to secure the ships rather than to convince the Minister about a controversial rationale for their use. In addition, support for the Navy’s position could be more easily mustered in the Cabinet if it was framed in limited and cold war terms.

Thus, Mountbatten’s lobbying soon brought strong support for his and Selkirk’s attempts to alter Sandys’s position. For example, on 22 August, the Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations, the Earl of Home, presented a report to the Defence Committee on the ‘Implications for the Commonwealth of Proposed Naval Reductions’ in which Sandys was taken to task for endangering Britain’s position in the Far East and South Atlantic. It was the Secretary of State’s view that everything must be done to avoid the impression being created that Britain was starting a process of general withdrawal from South East Asia. The independence of Malaya would be endangered and Australia and New Zealand isolated, with the latter two countries being pushed towards greater co-operation with the United States. The most significant factor in Britain’s power in these areas was the British naval contribution and the Secretary doubted whether the Australian and New Zealand governments would regard the presence of a carrier group east of Suez as adequate compensation for reductions in the ships based in Singapore to as few as two frigates. It was crucial that the base at Singapore be retained with a substantial naval presence because for Auckland and Canberra, the base still represented a ‘visible, vital and essential link with the UK’. Concomitantly, Sandys’s reductions would adversely influence Britain’s security in the South Atlantic by prejudicing her ability to defend the sea routes around southern Africa. In short, while Sandys’s ‘New Look’ may have realized substantial economies, the implications for foreign policy and military objectives were entirely detrimental.⁹⁰

To reaffirm this position, in September the Admiralty, with the Chief’s backing, presented a paper (the so-called ‘Autumn Naval Rethink’) on the Navy’s role in global war, cold war, and especially limited war and its need for carriers—a case, according to Mountbatten, that was so convincing that he was certain Sandys would give the Navy extra men and money.⁹¹ These ideas were reflected in a report presented to the Defence Committee by Selkirk on 15 November. It is significant that the Navy’s position had altered little from June. When it came to cold and limited war capabilities, the report repeated the Navy’s earlier assertion that the 1957 White Paper had recognized the need for forces to meet both these requirements; however, now manpower and financial cuts made it impossible to do so. It was stressed that under Sandys’s reductions, the Navy was being pressed to a point where vital interests were being liquidated. The Admiralty proposed that Sandys agree that the absolute minimum forces necessary for cold war duties include—in addition to the carrier task group east of Suez—sixteen frigates of which six would be in the Far East, six in the Persian Gulf, four in the South Atlantic, and two in the American and West Indies Stations.⁹²

In the face of this constant and unrelenting pressure, the Minister of Defence moved some way to the Navy’s position. In mid-November, Sandys presented his own paper to the Defence Committee on the role of the Navy.⁹³ In it he agreed that because the Navy could recruit more than 80,000 men, the Navy manpower limit could be allowed to rise to 88,000.⁹⁴Sandys also agreed to a fourth carrier (to be held in reserve), but on the proviso that it make no extra demands on money or manpower. At the same time, he told the Admiralty to cut back on aircraft production, a reduction which would involve canceling as many Scimitars as possible, a slowdown of the planned production of Sea Vixen and that if the NA 39 was to be produced, the RAF would first have to accept it as a successor to the Canberra. In other words, what the Minister was giving with the one hand he was taking with the other. His compromises were certainly not unconditional ones and a return to the pre-1957 force posture of multiple capabilities seemed out of the question.⁹⁵

Similarly to the pre-1957 V-bomber force debate, economic concerns played a major role in determining the size of the planned V-bomber force—a tendency that was made possible by a greater willingness of those outside the RAF to, at least implicitly, and often explicitly, rely on the deterrent power of SAC. Although in the available documents of the 1957 period the sub-theme of ‘unilateral independence’ informed strongly on arguments for the preferred V-bomber order of battle, unilateral action continued to be regarded by Sandys and Macmillan as a remote possibility and reductions in the planned force were also demanded on financial grounds and legitimized by the fact that Britain would most likely only act in conjunction with the United States. The theme of nuclear strategic concert continued to remain a firm foundation on which policy was based.

The Army and Navy thereby sought to prevent the expansion of the planned V-bombers beyond the 184 announced by Head in December 1956, while at the same time holding out the possibility that the force would be reduced still further. Thus, in discussions in January over joint nuclear strategic planning with the Americans, Templer and Mountbatten only agreed to accept the American proposals provided that such co-ordination did not serve to push up UK bomber force numbers. Mount-batten argued strongly that it be made very clear to Washington that agreement to their proposals did not commit Britain to a specific size of the bomber force.⁹⁶ Similarly to the pre-1957 period, these services continued to accept the declaratory focus on nuclear deterrence but not the implications of that focus for their conventional forces. This rejection did not subside as 1957 progressed. In July the First Lord, Lord Selkirk, wrote Sandys a letter concerning the Admiralty’s view on the size of the V-bomber force in which he stated that while the Admiralty supported the broad principle of contributing to the deterrent, neither the Admiralty nor the Chiefs of Staff had ever agreed that a sensible defence policy could be maintained with forces of 375,000 men. Moreover, the possibility of basing a sound policy on this manpower was not influenced by the size of the bomber force except to the degree that the bombers and the conventional forces became competitors for financial resources. For Selkirk, the nuclear deterrent did not legitimize smaller forces and, indeed, the smaller the order of battle, the more necessary became their equipment. If the V-bombers and their nuclear ordnance absorbed an excessive proportion of defence resources it would be more difficult to develop a policy designed to protect Britain’s alliances and world-wide interests.⁹⁷ The Navy thus rejected any link between a reliance on nuclear weapons—whether used independently or in concert with the United States—and conventional force levels. This was a position once more supported by the Army when in October 1957 Sir Gerald Templer was adamant that with costs of forces steadily mounting it might be necessary to give up the deterrent.⁹⁸

As for Sandys and Macmillan, from the beginning of 1957, they seemed ambivalent about the future size of the V-bomber force. On 27 February, Macmillan told the Defence Committee that on present plans, by 1960 there would be 184 V-bombers of which 120 would be Mark 2S. If existing orders were completed and no more were placed, there would ultimately be a front-line strength of 176 of which only 40 would be Mark 2S. He preferred to maintain that the final number was still under consideration.⁹⁹ From this discussion it was apparent that primarily economic and not strategic requirements would determine the final force size. This was reaffirmed in a letter from Powell to Dean in which the latter was told that for costing purposes ‘assume whatever pattern not exceeding a front-line of 184 medium bombers you would regard as sensible’¹⁰⁰—not exactly a very strategically rigorous method of addressing the issue of bomber strength.

Yet, while often unclear as to the purposes of their nuclear deterrent force, the Air Ministry, in the face of Army, Navy, and Ministry of Defence objections, clung tenaciously to the 184 figure (of which 120 would be Mark 2S which could deliver Blue Steel). In the face of a possible further assault on the size of the force, it was the Air Ministry’s plan to attempt the fastest build-up manageable. This would mean accepting a larger proportion of the less capable Mark 1S but ‘on present plans [this] would appear the better alternative—a very slow buildup may well invite a reduction in the size of the force’.¹⁰¹ This was a surprising strategy since the Air Ministry itself admitted that without Blue Steel (which would be carried by the Mark 2S) the V-bombers would become extremely vulnerable to Soviet air defences. Consequently, it was stated at the same time that if the Minister of Defence succeeded in cutting the V-bomber force below 184 ‘it would be better to procure more Mark 2S in order to get better quality in the reduced force’.¹⁰²

In a paper presented to Sandys by the Air Ministry on the size and composition of the medium bomber force on 15 May, the efficacy of the Mark 2S was stressed and the impotence of Britain’s V-bomber force underlined if this type were abandoned. It was demonstrated that: (1) from 1957 to 1961 when the V-bombers would carry free-falling bombs only, the superior performance of the Mark 2S would make the force less vulnerable to enemy defences and enable it to penetrate and attack a larger selection of key targets; (2) between 1960/1 and 1963/4, Russian targets would be defended by SAGW and successful delivery would require Blue Steel; (3) after 1963/4 the Soviet SAGW would improve in quality and the maintenance of the deterrent would depend on the improved air-to-surface missile, the OR 1149. Both Blue Steel and the OR 1149 could be carried on Mark is but only with the penalty of reduced operational effectiveness. Consequently the Air Ministry believed

the force should contain at least 120 B.2 aircraft in order to make it an effective deterrent in the eyes of the enemy, since this would depend upon his assessment of our ability to penetrate deeply into his territory and render vulnerable a large proportion of his key areas.¹⁰³

Here Sandys concurred that

in order to exercise any serious deterrent influence upon the Kremlin we should need to have not less than 15 squadrons (i.e. a front-line of 120), equipped with aircraft capable of launching propelled bombs (i.e. Vulcans and Victors of the Mark 2 type).¹⁰⁴

Yet, his acceptance of the Air Ministry figures was couched in terms that expressed the limitations he imposed on the concept of ‘unilateral independence’ and adumbrated his later willingness to tolerate further reductions to the force. Thus while agreeing with a total of 120 Mark 2S, his support of it was guarded. Indeed, he added the rider that ‘it is generally accepted that financial reductions make some appreciable reductions [in the planned V-bomber force] inevitable’¹⁰⁵ and that

Since the possession of a British element of nuclear deterrent is a central feature of our defence policy, and since it is one of the main justifications we have advanced for the reduction in our contribution of conventional forces to N.A.T.O., I am sure we should not hesitate to order the extra 95 Mark 2 aircraft which, at relatively small cost, would so appreciably increase our military power and influence.¹⁰⁶

Strategic reasoning was matched here by political justifications and economic considerations. For the Air Ministry, the strategic rationale of independent deterrence was the sufficient condition for determining the force size; for Sandys it was just one factor (irrespective of whether it was to be taken at face value or not). His position was thus inherently more flexible—a flexibility demonstrated by his readiness to bow to Thorneycroft’s demands for securing more savings through reductions in the V-bomber force—even if this clashed with what the RAF felt was the minimum necessary for a unilateral deterrent stance.

In reply to Sandys’s request for 95 extra Mark 2s, the Chancellor of the Exchequer presented a paper on 29 May entitled ‘The Deterrent and the Defence Budget’ in which he refused to commit himself to such a procurement for fear that it might overstrain the economy.¹⁰⁷ Thorneycroft did not reject the request outright but wanted to see how Sandys’s other plans for savings unfolded. In a meeting with Sandys on 30 May, Thorneycroft said that before he committed himself to any final bomber force size he wished to see what the total RAF expenditure would be. All he was now prepared to say was that the total medium bomber force should be between 120 and 184 of which 80 would be Mark 2S.¹⁰⁸

Thorneycroft made no attempt to relate these figures to strategic requirements or, more specifically, to Sandys’s statements concerning the necessary numbers needed to ‘exercise any serious deterrent influence upon the Kremlin’. Even more significantly, the minutes of the meeting do not reveal that Sandys was interested in referring to his earlier arguments. In his discussions with Thorneycroft he preferred to express most concern with regard to the fact that continual procrastination over the final size of the V-bomber force would harm the ongoing talks with the Americans over co-ordinated strategic strike plans. Thus, for the Minister of Defence, what was significant here was the implications of uncertainty for Anglo-American strategic co-ordination and not the issue of requirements for independently deterring the Soviet Union. Once Thorneycroft managed to convince him that relations with the Americans and NATO would not be adversely influenced by the postponement of the procurement decision for a few months, Sandys was willing to accept—at least until July when force costings were to be ready—planning on the basis of a front-line force of only 80 Mark 2S.¹⁰⁹ Sandys’s later willingness to countenance a total of 144 medium bombers was most probably a result of Thorneycroft’s arguments (arguments with which he did not strongly disagree), his conception of strategic concert with the United States which meant that sufficient Soviet targets were in any event covered by the combined force, and the fact that even with these reduced numbers Britain could, if the worst came to the worst, independently attack enough countervalue targets necessary to deter the Soviet Union by itself.

While at the end of July, Sandys told the Defence Committee that he still regarded 184 medium bombers as the minimum procurement target,¹¹⁰ on 2 August he told the committee that there ‘could be no arithmetical proof that this was the right figure’.¹¹¹ It was then agreed that further orders for V-bombers would be limited to the number of aircraft required to bring the front-line strength to 144. When reservations were expressed about the reductions, these were framed not in strategic terms but in political ones. It was stated that

the recent White Paper has emphasised that our future defence policy would be based on the deterrent and there might be unfortunate repercussions if we now announced that reductions were to be made in our provision for the deterrent.¹¹²

Furthermore, the Defence Committee went on to reaffirm these considerations and attachment to a measure of ‘independence in concert’. They therefore pointed out that the difference between a force consisting of 96 and 120 V-bombers would be £54 million over a five-year period and that in view of the fact that

our investment programmes as a whole were already imposing a severe strain on the economy and since we should never, in practice expect to challenge the Soviet Union alone, some reduction in the total cost of the V-bomber force should be accepted. An appropriate compromise would be to provide for a total front-line strength of 144 V-bombers.¹¹³

Here the V-bomber force was once more reduced in size on the basis of economic considerations, and this time accompanied with an explicit rejection of a preference for unilateral nuclear strategic actions. A comparison of the 1955–6 period with that of 1957 reveals no inconsistency on this score.¹¹⁴

Throughout 1957, the Air Ministry—similarly to the 1955–6 period—continued to reaffirm the point that the defence of the V-bomber bases was an integral part of the deterrent. The link between survivability and credibility was recognized in the White Paper. In paragraph 17 it was stated that

Since peace so largely depends upon the deterrent fear of nuclear retaliation, it is essential that a would-be aggressor should not be allowed to think he could readily knock out the bomber bases in Britain before their aircraft could take off from them. The defence of the bomber airfields is therefore an essential part of the deterrent and is a feasible task.¹¹⁵

The object of this section is to answer the question of whether the 1957 debate differed in any significant manner from that conducted in 1956? Specifically, in view of the greater declaratory focus on nuclear deterrence and independent British nuclear deterrence, was there now a greater sensitivity on the part of those outside the RAF to the necessity of air defences for the V-bomber bases? In other words, was Sandys interested in taking his own declaratory statements about defending the V-bomber bases seriously, or did his reservations about the efficacy of such defences and the need to secure financial savings in the RAF budget militate against such a step? Finally, is it possible to deduce anything about Sandys’s attitudes towards independent deterrence in general from his approach to air defences?

The 1957 White Paper admitted that the size of Fighter Command would be reduced,¹¹⁶ but it stressed that the remaining force would be adequate for the defence of the V-bomber bases. This was a claim bitterly contested by the Air Ministry. On 1 March, the Air Defence Commander, Sir Thomas Pike, wrote a letter to Dermot Boyle in which he pointed out that acceptance of Plan L would involve a reduction in front-line Fighter Command from 780 aircraft (including the auxiliaries) to 280 aircraft by June 1959. He agreed that, partly for reasons of economy and partly for reasons concerning the future deployment of SAGW, this was acceptable, but he expressed concern that the rundown in fighters and the build-up of the SAGW system would not be co-ordinated. A special committee set up by Boyle on SAGW deployment had concluded that an adequate defence consisting of 300 SAGWs armed with atomic warheads would only be ready by 1961/2. However, Pike considered the deployment date optimistic and he warned, ‘I do not think that anyone could pretend that we should have a worthwhile defence/ deterrent in 1959 with only 280 fighters and one very doubtful SAGW station’.¹¹⁷ The crux of the matter was that from the end of 1958 until the nuclear SAGW was in place, a defence gap would open up. Unfortunately for the Air Ministry, Sandys did not appear to have related much to this criticism. Arguably, for him, the defence gap was irrelevant as the combined Anglo-American nuclear force was credible enough to deter war and was insensitive to fluctuations in the level of defences surrounding the British V-bomber bases. Also, arguably, had Sandys been primarily interested in the British nuclear force as a ‘unilateral independent’ deterrent capability, he would have been more sensitive to the Air Ministry’s complaints: if Britain was unilaterally to deter the Soviet Union then a defence-gap would have far-reaching consequences for deterrence credibility, not to mention the implications if Britain actually found herself forced to attack in a second strike mode. Thus, Sandys told Ward that there would be no war within the next five years because the Soviet Union would not have ballistic missiles to attack the United States. According to the Minister of Defence, the Air Ministry’s case was further weakened by the fact that fighter aircraft could not obtain ioo per cent immunity against a thermonuclear attack delivered by bombers and were useless against a missile attack.¹¹⁸ Ward strongly disagreed with Sandys’s arguments but the Minister of Defence was dismissive of Ward’s ‘Verbal démarche’.¹¹⁹

Sandys therefore pressed forward with his search for economies and was not overly attentive to the problems of vulnerability. Pike was informed by the Vice Chief of the Air Staff (VCAS), Sir Ivelaw Chapman, that while Pike’s concerns were not without foundation and the level of fighter defences included in Plan L were not without risk, he would just have to accept it as the Air Ministry was having difficulty in convincing Sandys to accept even this attenuated force. Ivelaw Chapman complained that the Minister of Defence was avoiding the fact that war was unlikely because of the deterrent but that this situation could only continue so long as the deterrent was relatively invulnerable.¹²⁰ Yet, Ivelaw Chapman’s argument would only have carried weight with Sandys if the Minister had been intent upon viewing deterrence in purely British terms. For, to repeat, in the context of Anglo-American deterrence, the combined nuclear force was not vulnerable enough to undermine allied threats of nuclear reponse. Consequently, from the Air Ministry’s point of view, the second half of 1957 posed more problems than the first.

In his search for savings, Sandys cut the V-bomber force to 144, thereby making the task of air defence even more difficult as the target presented to the attacking forces was now considerably smaller. The Air Ministry was then forced to defend the number of planned V-bomber bases against attempts by Sandys to secure savings in this area. On 16 August, the Minister of Defence was informed that for a front line of 144 medium bombers, the minimum dispersal scale that was acceptable to the Air Council consisted of six main bases from each of which eight aircraft would operate in war; twenty-four dispersal bases at which four aircraft would be based and a main base for the two photo-reconnaissance squadrons, 50 per cent of which would be dispersed to two bomber dispersal airfields. It was stressed that ‘smaller forces means more compact targets and suggestions that we can do with less are without foundation’.¹²¹

As the year progressed, Sandys became more open to suggestions that dispersal was a significant issue¹²²—but this apparently only because he and Macmillan were interested in totally abolishing Fighter Command—an issue that caused major tensions between Sandys and CAS Sir Dermot Boyle.¹²³ On 31 December, Macmillan told the Defence Committee that it was his and Sandys’s view that the expenditure involved in providing for fighter aircraft was no longer justified, that the only defence was nuclear counter-attack, and that it would be wiser to use the £100 million a year which was then devoted to fighters to provide more bombers or to build up other deterrent forces.¹²⁴ Macmillan, however, argued that fighters could still make it more difficult for a bomber force to carry out their attack, and until this role had been taken over by the SAGW, fighters should be retained. This, of course did not indicate that Macmillan or Sandys had been won over by the Air Ministry’s reasoning. Indeed, Macmillan preferred to express most concern about the ‘psychological’ impact on Britain’s allies and her own domestic opinion of abandoning fighter defences.¹²⁵ To this Sandys added his view that in the light of the expected diplomatic problems arising out of the abolition of Fighter Command, he would accept that its total abolition was out of the question. Yet, he added, this decision would have to be reviewed at a later date¹²⁶ and thus the option of terminating Fighter Command was left open and the issue of the potential defence gap left unresolved.¹²⁷

Consequently, the 1957 White Paper’s focus on Britain’s nuclear deterrent did not reflect itself in concern for the defence of that deterrent. While arguably the contribution of fighters to the defence of the air bases was marginal (an argument that the Air Ministry did not totally accept), if the deterrent was so central to Britain’s defence policy then surely, in terms of Britain’s total defence posture, this was more than a marginal issue.

The opening up of the strategic debate in Britain both in Parliament and outside also manifested itself in the, albeit muted, response to the Sandys White Paper. Similarly to the bureaucratic debate described above, attention was focused on the sagacity of emphasizing massive retaliation, of defining independent deterrence, and of cutting back on conventional forces.

Sandys’s explanation in the House of Commons of the meaning and implications of the British ‘New Look’ helped reflect a measure of ambiguity especially with regard to the degree to which the logic of the ‘New Look’ strategic formulation was to be pursued. This was most evident when it came to the issue of limited war in Europe. Speaking on 16 April the Minister of Defence had stated that

Limited and localised acts of aggression…by a satellite Communist State could, no doubt, be resisted with conventional arms, or, at worst with tactical atomic weapons…If, on the other hand, the Russians were to launch a full-scale offensive against Western Europe, it would…be quite unrealistic to imagine that the issue could be fought out on limited conventional lines and according to rules.¹²⁸

The view that an outbreak of hostilities on the central front need not escalate from the theatre nuclear to the central nuclear level, or even from the conventional to the theatre nuclear level itself, appeared to undercut the declaratory reliance on massive nuclear response.

The Conservatives’ ambivalence about terminating national service, reducing manpower, and cutting back on conventional capabilities—especially among the retired servicemen who were strongly represented on the back benches—therefore found an opening within the Minister’s own arguments as Sandys seemed to be admitting that conventional capabilities and manpower could not be entirely disregarded. At the Conservative Party conference in October, while the government’s emphasis on nuclear weapons was supported, it was also warned not to cut back so greatly on conventional forces.¹²⁹ This was a refrain soon taken up with added vigour by former Minister of Defence Anthony Head—a man who had resigned in January 1957 after being presented with the new plans—when he claimed that with growing super-power strategic parity, the readiness to use tactical atomic weapons would decline. This would result in the only remaining responses being on the one side the use of conventional forces for what he termed ‘minor matters’ and for holding territories, and on the other, the ultimate sanction of nuclear weapons.¹³⁰

While Head appears to have been Sandys’s most vocal critic in the Party, major criticism also emanated from those ministers with responsibilities which called for British political and military presence overseas such as Colonial Secretary Lennox Boyd, Foreign Secretary Selwyn Lloyd, and the Commonwealth Secretary, Lord Home. Indeed, they continually expressed unease with Sandys’s conventional reduction plans. On the other hand, those ministers with their sights on economic savings such as Chancellor of the Exchequer Peter Thorneycroft demonstrated most support for Sandys’s plans. Thus, on this level of decision-making, political and economic rather than strategic issues determined the position of both supporters and opponents of Sandys’s plans.

Similarly to the Conservatives, the Labour Party was also caught between on the one hand a desire amongst a number of their senior defence specialists to place less reliance on what was perceived to be in many instances an incredible threat and on the other the need to avoid reverting to electorally unpopular conscription and economically expensive conventional forces.

In April 1957 Labour Party leader Hugh Gaitskill supported Sandys’s emphasis on independent nuclear deterrent as he believed that in certain circumstances the United States would not be prepared to extend her deterrent so as to protect the British Isles.¹³¹ In turn, John Strachey—one of Labour’s traditionally strongest supporters of an independent British deterrent—told the Labour Party conference of 1957 that without a nuclear capability Britain would not be able to follow policies regarded as unfavourable by the Americans.¹³²

Concomitantly, the growing strength of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament—a movement which had gained impetus following Britain’s nuclear test in May—reinforced splits within the Labour Party over nuclear issues. Already prior to the publication of the 1957 White Paper approximately 100 Labour MPs had indicated their desire to stop all nuclear tests, and by the middle of the year an H-bomb Campaign Committee had been formed.¹³³ By April, Gaitskill himself, taking note of these pressures, was supporting a moratorium on nuclear testing,¹³⁴ although the implications of CND for Labour Party politics had in 1957 yet to be fully realized. Indeed, by the Labour Party conference in October, even Aneurin Bevan had come around to support the British nuclear deterrent and at the 1957 TUC conference there was little union support for unilateral nuclear disarmament.

However, attacks on Sandys’s stance also came from the more conservative wing of the Labour Party. For example, MP Richard Crossman felt that the paper represented a ‘reckless gamble’ and presaged the undermining of the UK’s ability to defend itself ‘in the only kind of war this country could wage’.¹³⁵ He believed that Britain should renounce a nuclear capability—leaving it solely to the Americans—and focus on conventional forces alone. He was later to go on to throw light on the questionable strategic logic of Sandys’s plan by pointing out that there was, in any event, a major time lag between planned theatre nuclear weapon deployment in Europe and planned reductions in BAOR.

Crossman’s arguments were taken further by Dennis Healey who criticized Sandys ‘for basing the whole of alliance strategy on the limited use of atomic weapons [in which] they really do not believe…at all’,¹³⁶ and by using it mainly as a means for legitimizing reductions in conventional forces. Rather, Healey preferred the creation of a conventional buffer which could allow for conventional responses to military challenges. While, similarly to Sandys, the Americans saw limited war in nuclear terms, Healey placed emphasis on constraining responses, if possible, to the non-nuclear level. Unfortunately this still begged the question of how troops would be found and where the money would come from—a criticism that those opposed to Sandys would still have to address.

Outside these political circles, responses remained generally tempered. Some observers reacted to the emphasis Sandys was placing on massive retaliation as opposed to limited war, others responded to the cutbacks he was making to Britain’s conventional forces. Liddell Hart, for example, maintained that while the paper did not go as far as he would have liked ‘It was quite as good as I expected, and nearly as good as I hoped.’¹³⁷ On 14 February he had told Sandys that his speech in the Commons on the new defence plans was ‘the most realistic appreciation of the problem that has come from any official quarter’.¹³⁸

Nevertheless Liddell Hart was later to warn that ‘the White Paper also shows a continuing trust in the saving grace of tactical atomic weapons, and that tends to confuse its own conclusions’. He later questioned whether the pursuit of an independent British deterrent would not subtract from her resources needed for ‘brush-fire’ wars and add to the risks of world war by encouraging other NATO countries (especially Germany) to acquire their own nuclear weapons.¹³⁹ Thus in spite of his initial favourable response, by the end of 1957 Liddell Hart was questioning the two major pillars of the paper—conventional cutbacks and the independent nuclear emphasis.

Buzzard, on the other hand, from the start deplored the thrust of Sandys’s reasoning, perceiving him as attempting to negate all that he felt made necessary the adoption of a policy of graduated deterrence. At the beginning of March 1957, following a speech by Sandys in the House, the Admiral had written to Liddell Hart stating that Sandys

has missed the point completely, that if only he would concentrate thoughts and resources on deterring and suppressing limited war he would not only be dealing with the real threat, but also be doing the best possible to prevent global war, since that can now only happen if we fail to deter or suppress limited war.¹⁴⁰

Conversely, the strong proponent of Britain’s nuclear deterrent, Sir John Slessor, who generally was to welcome the paper, felt that the long war-short war dichotomy had been fudged, and preferred to denounce the ‘nonsense’ of graduated nuclear deterrence he felt implicit in parts of the paper.¹⁴¹ He also was prepared to admit that cuts in the conventional forces had gone very far.

Nevertheless, Sandys proceeded with his cuts ignoring internal criticisms both from government and opposition as well as experts and press.¹⁴² He was not to shift tack when it came to dealing with the very negative foreign responses to the British ‘New Look’.

The far-reaching nature of the changes in force structure sought by Sandys and Macmillan is underlined not only by the reactions of the Chiefs, service heads, the broader British political leadership and domestic expert opinion but also by those of Britain’s allies in NATO and the WEU. Throughout the period of the White Paper negotiations and in the months thereafter, Britain’s representatives in these two organizations reported on the unease that the news of Sandys’s plans was causing. In March 1957 Sir Frank Roberts at the UK Permanent Delegation in Paris wrote to the Foreign Office that the statement in the White Paper which maintained that 375,000 regulars would be sufficient to effectively replace the present strength of 700,000 troops, would have a ‘shattering’ effect on NATO. He went on that ‘the mention of the figure of 375,000 will also at once revive questions about our capacity and intention to maintain even 50,000 men plus the reduced 2nd TAF on the Continent’.¹⁴³

Service objections were mirrored by allied responses, but Sandys remained relatively undeterred by either. For the Minister of Defence what was of greater concern was the issue of BAOR’s cost.¹⁴⁴ Indeed, the Minister of Defence made little attempt to dispel fears that

the impression is bound to be created that, whatever the opinion of our allies, consultation is a formality and we have again taken an unilateral decision part of which will involve unlimited further cuts in BAOR.¹⁴⁵

Yet, for Macmillan and Sandys, the issue could now be only one of packaging and not one of concessions or alterations in policy. While Foreign Secretary Selwyn Lloyd reported that Britain’s proposals to reduce her troops on the Continent had been received without enthusiasm¹⁴⁶ and that both the French and German governments had been disturbed by the reductions planned in BAOR, it was Macmillan’s view that the British case would ‘need to be developed with skill and firmness; and in the meantime we should do nothing to imply that we had doubts that it would be accepted’.¹⁴⁷ Consequently, when French Foreign Minister Mollet informed the British that France attached great importance to ‘la presence humaine’, that modern weapons were no substitute for men, and that in certain circumstance a strategy of massive retaliation lacked credibility,¹⁴⁸ he was told that Britain recognized that there was a balance of risks involved but the pressures on her economy were very great.¹⁴⁹ In turn, when Chancellor Adenauer complained that reductions in BAOR would lead to a chain reaction of reductions in other NATO countries, he was told by Ambassador Sir Christopher Steele that in the event of a major Soviet aggression, nuclear retaliation would follow within hours and that the combat efficiency of Britain’s remaining conventional forces would, in any event, be greater in the future than at present.¹⁵⁰

The Americans, too, were left in no doubt that Britain would not alter its course because of allied pressures. In January 1957, when Ambassador Caccia told US officials that tactical nuclear weapons would increase the firepower of Britain’s remaining forces, he did not suggest there would be a linkage in timing between reductions and tactical nuclear weapons deployment.¹⁵¹ According to American Ambassador Whitney, the fact that Sandys was cutting British troops in Europe before tactical nuclear weapons were in place meant that the Minister of Defence’s policy rested on an implicit assumption that the Soviets would not attempt for the next few years to extend power by direct military means and that a ‘major factor is reliance on [the] US nuclear deterrent’. Thus American concern was not that Britain would go off on its own in terms of nuclear power and deterrence but that it was too willing to rely on the nuclear arsenal of the United States.¹⁵²

In correspondence between Sandys and Dulles, the Minister of Defence maintained that while he hoped that Britain’s troop cuts would not adversely influence NATO, they would, he stressed, be carried out irrespective of NATO demands.¹⁵³ Even when President Eisenhower told Macmillan at the Bermuda conference in March that Britain’s new policy reminded him of the US ‘New Look’, ‘an idea which, however, had been considerably affected since its formulation a few years ago by political considerations around the world’,¹⁵⁴ Macmillan remained unimpressed and unwilling to alter the direction of policy laid out by Sandys in the White Paper. Public Pentagon statements about UK claims that the British Isles was indefensible in the thermonuclear age represented a ‘defeatist military attitude’¹⁵⁵ were also ignored.

By the time of the NATO heads of government meeting in Paris in December 1957, the British had managed to gain NATO acceptance of a reduction in BAOR of 31,500 men to approximately 63,000–64,000 to be reached by 1 April 1958. In the autumn of 1957, they had emphasized their inability to meet the costs of British troops in Germany after March 1958 and their continued interest in reducing BAOR by another 13,500.¹⁵⁶ While in October the British were prepared to concede that 5,000 men of the strategic reserve be left on the Continent, this was only dependent on future German aid, and the other 8,000 men of the second 13,500 ‘slice’ remained non-negotiable.¹⁵⁷

In Paris, Macmillan stressed the UK responsibilities outside NATO and made a plea for the concept of balanced collective forces within the organization. He called for the pooling of resources and the designation of specific tasks to various members.¹⁵⁸ With the emphasis on Britain’s nuclear contribution, there was no attempt to moderate her position on force reductions. Indeed, in a meeting with Dulles and the Secretary General of NATO, Sandys emphasized ‘the importance as he saw it of planning massive retaliatory action if there were any armed attack in Europe’, and he criticized Eisenhower’s speech at the conference for undercutting this impression through the statement that Soviet aggression would be met with ‘all appropriate force’.¹⁵⁹

Although the Americans had been informed by a senior British official ‘close to Sandys’ that the Minister’s ‘thinking had changed in recent months so that Sandys no longer relied so heavily or almost exclusively upon [the] concept of massive retaliation to deter war’,¹⁶⁰ the statements of the Minister at the conference did not indicate a major shift in British force planning. Rather, Sandys and Macmillan remained intent upon pushing a strategic concept that allowed for large reductions in British troop deployments. Although not everyone at the conference was impressed with the strategic logic of the British arguments, few could have left believing the British would alter their position.

While according to Andrew Pierre the significance of the White Paper ‘lies in the practical conclusions for the military services and the economy which were drawn from its strategic assumptions’,¹⁶¹ it would possibly be more accurate to explain that it was the practical consequences for strategy and force posture that were drawn from the White Paper’s economic foundations that are of note. Indeed, even Sir John Slessor, in commenting on the White Paper, admitted that the main rationales behind the document were not strategic considerations but the objectives of securing financial savings and reaping the political rewards of terminating national service.

A number of important factors can be gleaned from the debate on the White Paper that reflected on thinking concerning British nuclear strategy in the mid-1950s. The manpower issue was recognized by both Sandys and the Chiefs as being more fundamental than anything else in that it impinged both directly and indirectly on roles and capabilities. However, similarly to the 1955–6 discussions on national service, only limited reference was made either by the Ministry of Defence or the Chiefs of Staff to massive retaliation strategy and/or tactical nuclear deployments as means for cutting back on manpower requirements. That nuclear weapons would replace conventional forces was always an accepted concept but it was rarely fleshed out in the sense that timing of deployment and numbers of men to be removed and weapons to be deployed were not often clearly linked—though, admittedly, a definite link in terms of numbers would have been difficult to secure. However, it should be recognized that the shift away from conventional forces was primarily a result of a conscious effort by Sandys to reduce manpower and secure savings. Indeed, he often appears to have approached the problem independently of an overall strategic conception, with the conventional and the nuclear components of his strategy not related other than in an implicit manner. Thus, the achievement of a strategically consistent balance between a declaratory stress on nuclear deterrence and a cutback in conventional global war preparations was as much a result of economic as strategic reasoning.

Concomitantly, the emphasis on independent deterrence in the context of the negotiations over the White Paper seems less forthright than appears reasonable to assume in the light of the admittedly very general declaratory statements concerning the independent role of Britain’s nuclear force. Indeed, there seemed to be a continuity in strategic rationales underpinning the acquisition of a British nuclear deterrent that focused primarily on interdependence with the United States in terms of strategic planning. Certainly in this sense, the British ‘New Look’ was anything but new. This is a subject that will be investigated in greater depth in the next chapter.

The ‘newness’ of the British ‘New Look’ must rather rest on the uniqueness of Sandys’s contribution in 1957 and the changes he brought about in conventional forces. Clearly, Sandys’s approach was crucial to the outcome of the debate as he ignored and overrode service objections and predilections that led them to prefer a posture of multiple capabilities. He refused to get embroiled in interminable negotiations and instead sought to impose his own solutions. Thus the first stage of the White Paper debate dealt with the actual reductions of manpower. The word debate is, in turn, most probably inappropriate as Sandys pushed ahead relatively independent of any outside suggestions. During the second stage—which involved the wording of the White Paper and the implications of responsibility —Sandys appeared more amenable to pressure, but his style could only have caused tensions which further poisoned relationships. By the first week of April Sandys had achieved his goals as far as manpower was concerned and was in a good position to undercut service roles and capabilities.

With 1957 representing a turning point in policies concerning the size of Britain’s conventional order of battle and the balance between her nuclear and conventional forces, it is clear that this year straddles a major discontinuity in British strategic planning —even though the pressures for such changes had long been existent. It is certainly significant that by terminating national service¹⁶² Sandys had altered the balance between nuclear and conventional fire-power and not only on the declaratory level. The proposed force structure embodied in the paragraphs of the 1957 White Paper reflected a strategic coherence that was lacking in defence policies prior to 1957. The paper represented a shift away from an attachment to multiple capabilities to a greater emphasis on nuclear weapons at the expense of conventional forces. In this sense it was internally consistent. Consequently, it can be argued that the 1957 White Paper was truly the British ‘New Look’. As Liddell Hart told the Minister of Defence, his task was to tackle ‘“vested interests in vanished dreams”’,¹⁶³ and this Sandys succeeded in doing where others before him had faltered.