Churchill's Bomb

by Graham Farmelo

  In spite of Attlee’s strictures about the need for security, news of the planned British test soon leaked, in the New York Herald Tribune.22 While Penney’s team worked frantically to finalise the Bomb’s design and assemble it, he and the Chiefs of Staff and other officials deliberated over the options for the location of the first test, preferring to keep it on a site in the Commonwealth. The Monte Bello Islands, off the north-west coast of mainland Australia, were the most popular option, followed by sites in the Canadian wilderness. The American government at first appeared to be disinclined to host the test, but in September changed its mind, offering to discuss with Penney and his colleagues the possibility of a site in the Nevada desert.23

  In September 1951, with the back-room debate about the nuclear test site in full swing, Attlee announced that there would be a General Election on 25 October. As well as putting the quarrelsome Parliament out of its misery, he hoped that voters would increase his majority and strengthen his mandate. Labour MPs swiftly went on the offensive, repeatedly calling Churchill a ‘warmonger’, a charge he angrily rebutted as ‘cruel and ungrateful’ while maintaining his composure and running a surprisingly moderate campaign that concentrated on domestic policy.24 In his final election speech, given at a football ground in Plymouth two days before the vote, Churchill unfurled his true colours, focusing not on dreary domestic details, but on saving the world. He wanted to be Prime Minister so that he could persuade the Commissars in the Kremlin to have a ‘friendly talk’ and ‘make an important contribution to the prevention of a Third World War’.25

  The speech made a splash in the next morning’s newspapers. Penney and Tizard probably read Churchill’s words en route to another Chiefs of Staff committee meeting to discuss nuclear weapons. Tizard had recently set aside his usual caution, and warned in a confidential policy review that Britain’s military strategy was deluded:26

  We persist in regarding ourselves as a Great Power, capable of everything, and only temporarily handicapped by economic difficulties. We are not a Great Power and never will be again . . . A wholly exceptional set of circumstances enabled us to become a Great Power for a century; a small period of time compared with the Romans, the Spaniards and the French. That set of circumstances will never recur.

  This clear-headed cri de cœur left no trace in Whitehall, and it was certain that a Churchill administration would regard such views as defeatist nonsense.27 Sir Henry plodded on, implementing defence policies he regarded as wrong-headed and delusional, including the high-priority funding of nuclear weapons at the expense of more rational investments.

  Penney’s team was now finalising the design of its Bomb, which was similar to the implosive device that the Americans had detonated over Nagasaki.28 All the details of the design of the first British nuclear weapon were, however, finalised on home soil, and the plutonium for the core was to be supplied by Christopher Hinton’s reactors, eked out if necessary with additional fissile material from Chalk River in Canada. If the Bomb worked, it would demonstrate to the Americans that the British were quite capable of building a nuclear weapon on their own.

  Penney had recently been in Washington, where he had been impressed by the Americans’ willingness to help test the British Bomb.29 Nevertheless, it seemed to both him and Tizard that Monte Bello was the best place to detonate the weapon. Most important, the site allowed them to plan and deliver Operation Hurricane without having to consult the American military and risk a sudden change in their attitude.30

  With the politicians back in their constituencies, the civil servants and other officials in Whitehall were kicking their heels, waiting to hear the names of their new bosses. At the Ministry of Supply, officials in ‘the Cage’ had good reason to be jittery – the scientists were now poised to deliver the Bomb, but a change in government could put an end to all their plans.31 If Churchill, famously most interested in matters of defence and international relations, were returned to Downing Street, he would probably have Lindemann at his side. The Prof had been making trouble for the Ministry and, though friendly with Penney and the other leaders of Britain’s nuclear project, was sometimes woefully ignorant of its progress. Only a few weeks before, he had told the House of Lords that the civilian use of nuclear energy was ‘several decades’ away.32

  Officials were more concerned about how Churchill would react when he learned that Attlee had hidden from him – and almost everyone in Parliament – the budget for building nuclear weapons. Penney would soon find out the fate of his plans to detonate the first British Bomb: two days later, Churchill was Prime Minister again, elected to the office for the first time.

  4

  CHURCHILL’S SECOND PREMIERSHIP

  OCTOBER 1951 TO DECEMBER 1952

  Churchill – Britain’s first nuclear Premier

  ‘[Churchill] is imaginative, unpredictable, firm in [his] belief in his own genius, and apparently determined to attempt one last crowning act on [the] world stage.’

  WINTHROP ALDRICH, US Ambassador to the UK, in a secret briefing to the American Secretary of State, 27 October 19531

  In his first speech to the new Parliament on 6 November 1951, Churchill struck a moderate tone: ‘What the nation needs is several years of quiet, steady administration.’2 In private, he was more graphic about the Tory Party’s top priorities – they should be ‘houses and red meat and not being scuppered’.3 According to Jock Colville, Churchill at first believed that his second term in Downing Street would be only brief. He remarked soon after the election that he intended to be Prime Minister for only a year, after which he would hand over to Anthony Eden.4 Yet it was unlikely that Churchill, having been out of power for over six years, would leave it after twelve months, having focused on the comforts of home and hearth. Consciously or not, he wanted to make another appearance in the pageant of world history.

  Churchill was soon to build on the work of Attlee’s government, becoming the first British leader to be armed with nuclear weapons and to put in place plans to set up a nuclear-power industry. But the new Prime Minister was ill-prepared to take over the stewardship of a country with its own nuclear capability – as his colleagues would soon see, his views on nuclear matters had scarcely changed since he left Downing Street in July 1945. As far as he was concerned, what mattered most was the restoration of Anglo-American relations, which he believed Attlee had grievously neglected. With that achieved, he believed, Britain’s nuclear projects could flourish under the wing of American power.

  Within hours of his election, Churchill walked into 10 Downing Street. The event was like the return of an exiled monarch, with choruses of ‘Auld Lang Syne’ ringing out around Whitehall. After six grey years under Attlee, government officials were glad see ‘The Old Man’ back.5 Probably expecting a return to the hyperactivity of the war years, the Office Keeper in Downing Street laid before the Prime Minister’s seat at the Cabinet table a sheaf of labels screaming ACTION THIS DAY.6 In some ways, it was like May 1940 all over again: Churchill appointed himself Minister of Defence, attempted to set up a coalition (with the Liberals, this time without success) and reappointed many of his cronies and wartime colleagues. Among them was, predictably, Frederick Lindemann. ‘I must have Prof,’ Churchill told his Cabinet colleagues. ‘He is my adder. No. I can add – he is my taker away.’7

  Lindemann was reluctant to return to government. Ailing with heart disease and diabetes, he was out of breath after climbing a single flight of stairs and, according to his fellow don A. J. P. Taylor, ‘looked as though he banged his head against a stone wall for half an hour each day to keep it in trim’.8 For three days the Prof resisted Churchill’s pressure, but then accepted the Cabinet post of Paymaster General, which came with the perk of a two-room apartment at the top of 11 Downing Street.9 He asked for no salary. Lindemann joined the government wanting only to serve Churchill and to extricate the UK’s nuclear programme from the Ministry of Supply, ambitions that would soon come into conflict and cause the Prof a good deal of grief. Y
et he was to achieve several notable successes, standing up to Churchill and establishing himself as Whitehall’s most valued supporter of the government’s leading nuclear scientists.

  Lindemann quickly learned how much opposition there was to his plans for the government’s nuclear programme. The Treasury, the Ministry of Supply and sundry Whitehall mandarins heard him out and offered warm words of support, while doing everything they could to thwart his intentions. But he appeared to hold the trump card – Churchill had pledged to support his plans as a condition of returning to government. Or so the Prof believed.10 Whether out of insensitivity or mischief, Churchill had installed as his Minister of Supply his son-in-law Duncan Sandys, long one of Lindemann’s arch-enemies in Whitehall. A bloody battle was in prospect.

  The first clash between Churchill and his favourite scientist took place within two weeks of the government’s taking office. In an uncharacteristically wordy message, the Prof asked the Prime Minister to approve the choice of the Monte Bello Islands as the site of the first British nuclear test.11 The reply left Lindemann stunned.

  Churchill wrote that he had ‘never wished . . . that England should start the manufacture of bombs’, contradicting almost everything he had ever said on the subject.12 He now believed that Britain needed only to be an expert in the science of the Bomb, not the weapons themselves – ‘the art rather than the article’, as he put it. He was sure, he said, that when he met Truman in a few weeks’ time, the President would gladly hand over ‘a reasonable share’ of the Americans’ own nuclear weapons. For the Prof, worse was to come. Churchill told Lindemann that decisions about the first British nuclear test were not urgent and could surely wait until he had met the President. ‘When we produce the [Quebec Agreement] and demand that it shall be published’, Churchill wrote, ‘we shall get very decent treatment’ from the Americans.

  It took the Prof six days to recover his composure. In a robust reply, he reminded the Prime Minister of the story of Anglo-American nuclear relations since the war, and ended by rebutting all Churchill’s points. Lindemann strongly supported Attlee’s nuclear policy, noting that it had so far cost 100 million pounds, and emphasising that it was vital to take a decision on the Monte Bello test immediately. If they delayed, the Prof pointed out, Penney and his colleagues would be too late to take advantage of optimal weather conditions, and would have to postpone by a year. If that happened, Lindemann knew they risked ‘being jockeyed [by the Americans] into a test in Nevada where we should reveal our secrets without getting any return’. Lindemann ended his memo on his knees: ‘I beg you to accept the advice of the Chiefs of Staff, the Foreign Office and all the other Departments concerned and definitely to decide in favour of the test being made in Australia.’

  Churchill’s comments on Lindemann’s memo are revealing. Obviously unconvinced by Lindemann’s case, he ringed the project’s cost of 100 million pounds, a figure that amazed him.13 When Lindemann noted that it was ‘inconceivable’ that the Americans might hand over bombs or details of their construction, Churchill circled the word and wrote in the margin ‘No’.

  Two weeks later, while Lindemann was still pondering his next move, Churchill fired off a short minute to a Treasury official about one of the details he had read in Lindemann’s brief: ‘How was it that the £100 million for atomic research and manufacture was provided without Parliament being informed?’14 A few days later, with all the figures in front of him, his predecessor’s accountancy on the Bomb project became clear for the first time. By manipulating the numbers, Attlee and his colleagues had kept the cost of producing the Bomb from his country’s legislature, exactly as Roosevelt had done.15 After the Prime Minister’s enquiry had been answered, Lindemann pressed again for a decision on the test. Churchill replied, ‘Proceed as you propose.’16 Thanks to Lindemann, Britain’s nuclear policy was back on track, for the time being.

  No one else in government appears to have been aware of this spat. To most of his colleagues, Churchill was making a confident start to his second premiership, pulling his Cabinet together, declaring that Whitehall was now ‘drenched in Socialism’ and ordering a cull of Attlee’s sprawling committees.17 He wanted to put an end to ‘party brawling’ and concentrate on pushing through his domestic policies, overseen by the forward-looking ministers he had appointed, including Rab Butler at the Treasury and Harold Macmillan in the Housing Ministry. Consensus and continuity were to be the watchwords of this administration. Churchill’s main priority, however, was to restore the warm Anglo-American relationship he believed he had bequeathed to Attlee, and in particular to persuade the Americans to repeal the McMahon Act.

  As Christmas 1951 approached, Churchill was looking forward to his first Prime Ministerial visit to the United States for more than seven years. At home, he savoured the trappings of power he had long missed, a cadre of loyal assistants always at his beck and call. After spending a morning working on his papers in bed, he still liked to take an afternoon nap and round off the day with a good dinner, sometimes with his old friends in The Other Club.18 At weekends, he and Clemmie decamped to Chequers or Chartwell – Lindemann was still his most frequent visitor.

  Long breaks in the parliamentary calendar afforded Churchill plenty of opportunities for restorative vacations. Now seventy-seven, the infirmities of ageing were among his most serious problems. His eyes were giving him trouble, he worried that he would have another stroke or heart attack, and, most inconveniently, he had gone seriously deaf. ‘A bloody nuisance,’ he sulked.19

  The purpose of the Washington visit, Churchill insisted, was not to ‘transact business’ but to ‘establish intimate relations’ with President Truman.20 No matter how hard his officials tried to push him to prepare for the trip, he was determined to wing it. After officials in both the White House and Downing Street pestered him for a clear statement of what he wanted to discuss at the meeting, he grudgingly offered only the bones of an agenda. At the top was ‘The “Cold War” – policy of the West towards Russia’, with Anglo-American cooperation on ‘Atomic Energy’ second to bottom.21 None of these was among Truman’s top priorities, and he took care to leak his opposition to the idea of another ‘Big Three Summit’ to the New York Times well before Churchill’s arrival.22

  Truman was at that time mired in problems – perpetually under siege for being soft on Communism, plagued with scandals and under pressure to put an end to the unpopular Korean War. Although he regarded Churchill as the greatest public figure of the age, he had been looking forward to the Prime Minister’s visit with mixed feelings, worried that he was a potential trouble-maker. The ‘old lion would have to be watched by the White House’s gamekeepers’.23

  When the two leaders met at the National Airport in Washington on 4 January, Truman saw that Churchill was a shadow of the figure he had first met – white-haired, slower in step and with a pronounced stoop, though still with charisma to spare. That evening, cruising down the Potomac on the Presidential yacht, they chatted with each other and their colleagues at the reception party, Churchill beaming with pleasure at his return to the Presidential court. Drinking tomato juice to demonstrate that he could do without alcohol, Churchill treated his hosts to a well-practised entertainment, in which he and Lindemann performed like an aristocratic Laurel and Hardy.24 After Churchill had loudly demanded an estimate of the total volume of alcohol he had drunk in his life, the Prof theatrically pulled out his slide rule. He calculated that if all the alcohol the Prime Minister had consumed were poured into the room, it would come up to their knees. Feigning great disappointment, the Prime Minister delivered his punch line, saying that he had hoped everyone would drown in champagne and brandy. The double act was a highlight of the party.

  In the coming days, the two leaders discussed everything from the military challenges in East and South-East Asia to the possible threat from Mao’s government in China, as well as meat-and-potatoes matters of strategy and shared intelligence. Before they had exchanged a word on policy, Churchill
opened his heart, recalling with surprising candour his impression of Truman at their meeting in Potsdam:25

  I must confess, sir, I held you in very low regard then. I loathed your taking the place of Franklin Roosevelt. [Pause] I misjudged you badly. Since that time, you more than any other man, have saved Western civilisation.

  Impatient as ever with the Prime Minister’s fawning, Truman often cut him off as he began another of his paeans to Anglo-American goodwill.

  For all his presence and dominance over his ministers, especially Eden, Churchill struggled at the conference table. Bereft of much of his former energy and clarity of mind, he struggled to grasp detail and repeatedly cupped his hands over his ears to hear the President’s words. He failed entirely to make any headway with his passionate belief in the need for another ‘Big Three’ summit. Truman explained that, while relations with the Soviets were so poor and with so little common ground, this was not the right time to begin talks, especially as their failure might well increase tensions still further. Besides, he had already invited Stalin to Washington, but did not expect him to accept. Truman deflated Churchill’s concern about an imminent nuclear showdown by stating categorically that he had no interest in precipitating one.

  Churchill did, however, have some diplomatic successes, persuading the Americans to agree that the use of their military bases during an emergency ‘would be a matter for joint decision’.26 Away from the conference table, he was determined to get to the bottom of how the Quebec Agreement had been abandoned. Four days after he arrived in Washington, his only American guest for lunch at the British Embassy was Senator Brien McMahon, who had done more than anyone else to terminate Anglo-American nuclear cooperation. Churchill had corresponded with the Senator a few years before but, out of ignorance or discretion, had not raised the subject of his Act.27 With the culprit now in front of him, the Prime Minister examined him like a prosecutor: he sent for a copy of the Quebec Agreement and handed it to McMahon, who read it.28 According to fellow guest Lord Moran, Churchill declared that Britain ‘has been grossly deceived’ and that there had been ‘a breach of faith’. McMahon replied with the words the Prime Minister wanted to hear: ‘If we had known this, the Act would not have been passed. Attlee never said a word.’ Churchill’s suspicions had been vindicated – he could now blame the rupture in Anglo-American nuclear relations entirely on Attlee.