by James Jinks
The changes which had taken place over the last 30 years in international affairs, such as the Sino/Soviet quarrel, Yugoslavia’s withdrawal from the Cominform [the Soviet bloc co-ordinating body], the development of fusion weapons [hydrogen bombs] and the rapid progress in decolonization, had not been predicted in advance. Developments in the next 30 years were likely to be equally uncertain. The Atlantic Alliance [NATO] had lasted longer than might have been predicted 30 years ago, but no one could say what would be its future or the future of the United States/Soviet relations in the period to which we had to look forward.56
The Group ranged over the destructive force needed to deter the Russians, the cruise missile option and the Trident C4, as well as the possibility of collaborating with the French not being foreclosed at this stage. They agreed to meet again on 2 January 1979 to decide whether or not Callaghan should approach Carter at Guadeloupe. At that meeting ‘there was general agreement that the Guadeloupe meeting presented an ideal opportunity to broach the matter with President Carter privately …’57
The 2 January session was significant for another reason. In his summing up, Jim Callaghan came out to his colleagues as a Trident man. John Hunt’s minute records that the Prime Minister:
said that the Group were not yet ready to take a decision even in principle, though he himself favoured the Trident C4 option. They agreed however that he should raise the issue privately and without commitment with President Carter in Guadeloupe. To some extent he would have to feel his way, but if President Carter showed readiness to be helpful he would work out with him the best way of exploring the matter more thoroughly.58
There was no more sinuous a politician than Callaghan at feeling his way and he already possessed a good working relationship with Jimmy Carter. According to the note Callaghan circulated to the ‘Restricted Group’ on his return, it was at 3.30 on the afternoon of Friday, 5 January 1979, that he roused the President from his afternoon nap.
It’s all too easily forgotten that the one person in the world who, alone, could bring to an end Britain’s status as a nuclear-weapons nation is the US President. If the beach hut conversation had ended with a presidential ‘no’, the Polaris boats and the RAF’s WE 177 gravity bombs could have run on for a decade and a half (and no doubt something could have been done within the UK to replace the WE 177). But the country could well have ceased to be a top-of-the-range nuclear power in terms of equipment. We now know that in just over a year Mrs Thatcher would be in No. 10 and Ronald Reagan in the White House and both were nuclear-minded, to put it no higher. But the calculus inside the Nuclear Defence Policy Group would have been entirely different if Callaghan had returned from Guadeloupe with a piece of paper recording an ‘I’m sorry; no more’ reply from Carter.
Instead Callaghan’s note for his nuclear group read:
I woke the President up and said I wanted to talk to him about something important. I then explained to him the ground we had been over in considering the next generation of nuclear weapons. I explained to him that we might have to replace some of the Motors of the Polaris missiles in the middle of the 1980s and that we had made a detailed in-house study ourselves about what would be involved if we decided on a new generation and we now wished to carry our studies further on a confidential basis. I wanted to know what his reaction would be. Our approach was that any successor system should be cost effective and that it should add to total security. For us as a nation the balance of advantage was only marginal and it could well be that we could use the resources to better effect in more conventional directions. This was why I had put the question to [Helmut] Schmidt [West German Federal Chancellor] this morning and had received the same answer that he had given me on an earlier occasion, namely that he wishes us to remain in the nuclear field.59
Carter, as Callaghan knew, had considerable nuclear and submarine experience in his pre-political life. In the 1950s he served under Rickover and personally witnessed the Royal Navy’s early attempts to foster collaboration with the US Navy’s nuclear-propulsion programme. Carter’s reaction was favourable:
The President said that he too was glad that we were in the nuclear field and that he hoped strongly that both we and the French would remain. He did not wish the United States to be the only country that confronted the Soviet Union. What kind of system were we thinking of? I said we ruled out the GLCM [Ground-Launched Cruise Missile] for the time being. At this stage we were basically attracted to a submarine launched missile and for my part if the cost could be properly apportioned what I thought would be best would be the Trident C4. Did he see any objection? He said that there was no objection at all.60
The pair of them danced a strange little quadrille of names and systems:
I pointed out to him that it [the C4] was MIRVed [carrying Multiple Independently Targeted Re-entry Vehicles] and that we did not have a MIRVed missile at the moment. He said, ‘Well, so is the [Soviet] SS20 MIRVed.’ Incidentally what I called the Trident C4 he called the Trident I. I asked if they were the same and he said they were. He said it was the C5 (which I was calling the D5) which was still on the drawing board. At any rate, it was quite clear that both of us were speaking of a MIRVed warhead. He said that the United States had always got the greatest benefits out of co-operation with Britain …61
Callaghan’s report to his nuclear group on Guadeloupe noted ‘President Carter’s offer in relation to the Trident missile was welcomed.’ The two men agreed that Callaghan could send a couple of officials to Washington to talk further about systems and cost. At John Hunt’s suggestion, Sir Ron Mason and Sir Clive Rose, head of the Cabinet Office’s Oversea and Defence Secretariat and other minute taker at the ‘Restricted Group’, were chosen for this mission.62
The group agreed to extend the proposed bilateral talks to cover the other options being considered, i.e. cruise missiles and a modernized Polaris A3 as well as the C4. It was noted that President Carter had told the Prime Minister that the SLCM [Submarine-Launched Cruise Missile] could not be regarded as a serious option because of major technical difficulties which it had not yet been possible to overcome. It was, however, pointed out that President Carter’s own experience was ‘likely to give him a natural bias in favour of ballistic-missile options and that he had a need to get the Trident programme through Congress’.63
It should be remembered that all this nuclear diplomacy and the work of the Nuclear Defence Policy Group was being conducted against a very substantial political, economic and industrial crisis – the ‘winter of discontent’ – as the majority-less Callaghan Government struggled with a spiralling series of strikes that hit the essentials of life, absorbing copious quantities of ministerial time and energy and siphoning away support for the Government in the country. Indeed, it was on his return from the Caribbean at Heathrow Airport on 10 January that the well-tanned Callaghan made the still-remembered political gaffe which is misremembered as him saying ‘Crisis? What crisis?’ (which was a newspaper headline in the Sun rather than something he actually said).64
The Labour Party’s nuclear neuralgia was still running through the nervous system of Callaghan’s nuclear group and a cover story was concocted lest it be needed: ‘Provided participation in the bilateral talks was strictly limited on the American side, as we assumed it would be, even if this meant some loss in terms of detailed information, the risk of leaks should be reduced to a minimum. But it would be advisable to have ready a defensive line and it was suggested that we could say in the event of a leak that the talks concerned our Polaris missile motors and our position in relation to the SALT negotiations in preparation for SALT III.’ Callaghan undertook to write to Carter about the Mason–Rose mission and the ground he wished the talks to cover.65
The ‘Restricted Group’ did not meet again, but they corresponded on a form of words for the next Labour general election manifesto that would give them a degree of flexibility.66 Callaghan’s letter to Carter was still being tweaked when his Government entered what proved t
o be its terminal phase as a result of a no-confidence motion in the House of Commons at the end of March 1979. On the day before the crucial vote Callaghan finally wrote to Carter a hand-delivered letter ‘For the President’s Eyes Only’:
As you know, the Government here faces a crucial Vote of Confidence on Wednesday, and no one can predict which way things will go. But either way an election cannot be far off, and I want therefore to put on record what I told you privately in Guadeloupe about the future of our nuclear deterrent.
He indicated that he would wish to dispatch the Mason–Rose team to Washington but that decision might be with his successor.67
Hunt minuted Callaghan the same day asking his authority to show Mrs Thatcher the letter should she become PM. As a result, on 4 May Callaghan gave the written instructions that ‘The incoming Prime Minister should be briefed on the need for replacing Polaris (or otherwise – as she thinks!) and should decide whether to make her own approaches to President Carter.’68 In the meantime, Carter sent a personal manuscript letter to Callaghan (which is not in the file but is quoted in part in a Private Office exchange with John Hunt on 6 April 1979) extending good wishes for the coming election (the Government had lost the confidence vote by one) and stating that the US administration ‘will be glad to talk to your people as suggested, recognizing that there are no presumptions about the result of the talks’.69
One of the many differences between Jim Callaghan and Margaret Thatcher as Prime Ministers was that she was not afflicted by a Conservative equivalent of Labour’s nuclear neuralgia. This (unlike so much of the Polaris to Trident story) is quite visible from a simple reading of the respective parties’ manifestos for the May 1979 general election. Compared to that of the Conservatives, the Labour manifesto’s entry about the Bomb is prolix and laden with caveats:
Labour
In 1974, we renounced any intention of moving towards the production of a new generation of nuclear weapons or a successor to the Polaris nuclear force, we reiterate our belief that this is the best course for Britain. But many great issues affecting our allies and the world are involved, and a new round of strategic arms limitations negotiations will soon begin. We think it is essential that there must be a full and informed debate about these issues in the country before the necessary decision is taken.70
Conservative
The SALT discussions increase the importance of ensuring the continuing effectiveness of Britain’s nuclear deterrent.71
Mrs Thatcher’s ad hoc ministerial group on ‘Nuclear Defence Policy’ (MISC 7 in the Cabinet Secretariat’s lexicon) was one of the first Cabinet Committees she created. Its first meeting took place in No. 10 in the late afternoon of Thursday, 24 May 1979, exactly three weeks after the general election polling day which brought the Conservatives back into power with an overall majority in the House of Commons of 43.72
PURCHASING TRIDENT
Following her victory in the general election, the new Prime Minister pressed on as swiftly as she could on the matter of replacing Polaris. Her Government revealed the existence of Chevaline. On 24 January 1980, Francis Pym said to the House of Commons:
Without breaching the provisions of the 1972 treaty on anti-ballistic missile defence, the Soviet Union has continued to upgrade its ABM capabilities, and we have needed to respond to that upgrading so that we can maintain the deterrence assurance of our force. The previous Conservative government, therefore, pressed ahead with a programme of improvements to our Polaris missiles, which our immediate predecessors continued and sustained. The House will, I am sure, understand that I cannot go into detail, even to correct the widely mistaken assertions that have sometimes appeared in public, but I think the programme has now reached a stage where I can properly make public more information about it.
The programme, which has the codename Chevaline, is a very major and complex development of the missile front end, involving also changes to the fire control systems. The result will not be a MIRVed system, but it includes advanced penetration aids and the ability to manoeuvre the payload in space. The programme has been funded and managed entirely by the United Kingdom with the full co-operation of the United States … It has been a vital improvement. I do not think the House will be surprised that it has been costly. The programme’s overall estimated cost totals about £1000 million.73
This was done in part to minimize opposition to proceeding with Trident from the Labour Party. The former Foreign Secretary, David Owen, criticized Pym for making a ‘cheap party point’ and the announcement on the grounds that it had been made ‘for purely party political reasons to justify the decision to buy Trident missiles and to embarrass the Labour Party for the fact that it had put the interests of the country first and had been ready at all times to modernize the deterrent – and it was right to do so’.74
Margaret Thatcher took nuclear-weapons matters very seriously. She carried out her own Nuclear Release Procedures exercise in the Cabinet Office’s Nuclear Release Room (then next to COBRA) in October 1979. In what circumstances would she have been prepared to use either Polaris or Trident? This was a question the veteran BBC broadcaster Sir Robin Day asked the Prime Minister in the run-up to the 1987 general election. Mrs Thatcher replied:
‘The nuclear weapon is a deterrent. NATO has said that we are only a defensive organisation; that we only use any of our weapons in response to an attack. If there is no attack, there will be no war. If there is a nuclear deterrent, I believe that there will be no attack. I would not have that confidence if there were no nuclear deterrent. After all, Europe was full of weapons when Hitler went to war, and if you look on the side of the allies, there were probably more than Hitler had. Russia was full of weapons when Adolf Hitler attacked her. It did not stop a war. The nuclear deterrent has been so powerful that it has stopped it. And that is the argument.’75
In an earlier exchange in the House of Commons the Prime Minister left little doubt. ‘Yes, of course if you have got a nuclear deterrent you have to be prepared to press the button because that deters anyone from using nuclear and also from crossing the NATO line on conventional.’76 Enoch Powell, never a believer in the nuclear deterrent, seized on this statement and expressed his belief that the Prime Minister would not ‘take a decision that would consign a whole generation to destruction in any conceivable circumstances whatsoever’.77 Indeed, early on in her Premiership she told one of her Foreign Office experts on the Soviet Union, Sir Rodric Braithwaite, ‘that she was not at all sure that, in the event, she could press the button: “I want grandchildren too …” ’ she explained.78
Those responsible for operating the deterrent during Mrs Thatcher’s long Premiership were equally committed to carrying out the Prime Minister’s instructions should they be called on to do so. Paul Branscombe and Toby Elliott both commanded HMS Resolution during the first Thatcher Premiership. Did Elliott think he would ever have to launch? ‘No,’ he says. ‘In those days I was so convinced that the deterrent was working so well, and because we were operating these things with precision, and the Russians knew that we were operating them with precision, they knew that if we were told to fire, we would fire. I didn’t really need to think about it too deeply. It most certainly didn’t cause me any sleepless nights and it most certainly didn’t stir my conscience, at all.’79
Did Elliott ever wonder what Mrs Thatcher had written in her letter of last resort? ‘I think I knew,’ he says. ‘She would have wanted me to execute the target plan that I had been allocated.’80
How would he and Resolution’s crew have handled the task?
‘I would imagine that it would have been quite a challenge to psych everyone up and say: “Come on guys, we’ve got to do this, this is what we’ve been instructed to do.” There would have been some who would have been overcome with the implications not only for themselves, but their families, particularly those that lived around the base. They would have been very emotionally disturbed by it. Then there would have been those who you would have had to
control their anger and throttle them back. It would have been quite difficult, particularly after they stopped issuing rum. I suppose you could have had a medicinal tot but it’s not quite the same as a steadying tot of rum. I can’t imagine that there wouldn’t have been a period of intense, or building international tension, certainly during my period. I can’t believe it would have been the bolt from the blue. We would have followed the increase in tension intensely and I would have told the ship’s company about this and I would have started to gear them up to think about the need for us to step up our game if we needed to. We would have done more drills, not necessarily rehearsing the weapon system readiness because that was exercised sufficiently anyway … You would start exercising the attack team. You would spend time with your officers doing table top stuff, discussions about what was going on, we’d be listening to the news and so on. We would have got used to the very much heightened tension that would exist on board as well as what was going on outside. So our own little world would become very tense from that point of view. In that situation, assuming the punch-up would have started, one would like to think conventional war would have started, then tactical nuclear weapons might have been used in the ground war, so you would have gone through that stage. One would be thinking it’s not too long before it’s going to happen, before you had to press the button. So if you woke up the following morning, if you could get any sleep, and instead of being told to press the button overnight, you woke up and Britain wasn’t there, then it wouldn’t be too much more of a shock, but the longer you had to wait before you were actually instructed to retaliate, I think it would be more difficult to keep your guys pulling together.’81
Branscombe’s crew used to debate in a jocular fashion where they would go after unleashing their deadly arsenal. Some favoured Florida, others the southern hemisphere, somewhere like Perth. They also used to debate how many Polaris missiles they would keep back, as a bargaining chip. ‘It’s all pretty grim stuff,’ he says. ‘Living in a submarine is pretty grim in all circumstances. If you didn’t have an advanced or what one might say warped sense of humour you probably would not survive. So being able to think of silly things and make sure everybody was engaged in that, not only does it relieve tension, but it meant that we survived doing what we did.’82