J D Bernal

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J D Bernal Page 66

by Andrew Brown


  To him, a scientist, it was ‘a particular tragedy that in 20 years since the end of the last world war, when immense progress has been made in the means of production and the powers given by science are greater than they have ever been, the peoples of the world should still be living for the most part in a state of poverty and anxiety’.91 For this state of affairs he blamed ‘the pre-occupation of the old industrialized powers with war preparations, and the unchecked operation of economic exploitation, which by controlling raw material prices, hinders the development of the newly liberated countries, and reduces to an absurdity the “aid” which has been grudgingly given to them’.

  During his speech, Bernal said he would be stepping down as president of the WPC, when the congress was over. At the final session, an emotional Pablo Neruda recited a poem he had written to mark the occasion. In the last stanza, Neruda called out ‘Bernal! Bernal! And doves will fly’92 but, in his own closing speech, Bernal was anything but dovish. Whereas he had always argued for negotiations rather than continued fighting as a way to settle international disputes, he could not bring himself to support Johnson’s call for unconditional discussions over Vietnam. Dismissing the President’s suggestion as ‘meaningless and hypocritical’, Bernal stated that he was content to wait for ‘actual military developments in Vietnam and… world public opinion, to which this Congress has made a notable contribution’ to force the US evacuation from South Vietnam before any negotiations.93 During his opening speech just five days earlier, he had been applauded for saying, ‘The first principle of the World Council of Peace is to stop wars in being.’ Once again, as in the Hall of Mirrors in 1949, he could not resist milking the cheers from a communist audience with blazing anti-American rhetoric.

  After he stepped down from the presidency, Bernal prepared a sober assessment of the future role of the WPC. He deplored the loyalist tendency to believe that ‘all is for the best in the best of all possible peace movements (ours), and that anyone who dares to lay a finger on its structures and methods is a liquidationist and a pessimist’.94 Instead he pointed to the need to break down the ‘monolithic principle of obtaining unanimous decisions, policies and universal actions’. Its demise would be a hopeful sign because it would reflect the passing of the harsh rigidities of the worst Cold War period and ‘a return to the healthy diversity of ideas and policies which is normal in a world made up of so many different countries, civilizations and cultures… It is essential to realise that this is an inevitable, irreversible development and that no useful purpose will be served by trying to turn back the tide at a command, in the manner of the early Danish King of England, Canute.’ The WPC would have to learn to live with the increasingly diverse peace movements emerging outside of the communist bloc.

  Critics of the WPC, both at the time and subsequently, have dismissed it as an arm of the Soviet regime, a sham organization. There is no doubt that it served an important foreign policy role for the USSR, especially in the early years when the US held an overwhelming advantage in nuclear weaponry. But for all its ridiculous posturing, fraudulent petitions and bombastic meetings, through the leadership of Joliot-Curie and Bernal, the WPC may have had an important restraining influence on Khrushchev in particular. In his farewell speech at Helsinki, Sage reflected that ‘following the example of my predecessor Frédéric Joliot-Curie and many of the other great scientific workers for peace such as Bertrand Russell and Linus Pauling, we have not altogether failed… to get across to the people of the world the knowledge which alone can ensure that the dangers of war will be averted’.95 However difficult it may be to make any elected statesman accept unwelcome or disconcerting information (as for example Patrick Blackett found with Prime Minister Attlee), it is incontrovertibly harder to persuade a totalitarian leader to the same truths. Only the bravest and most charismatic citizens within the system, for example Andrei Sakharov and Peter Kapitza in the USSR, would dare to broach the subject, and most outside experts would be dismissed as enemies. Joliot-Curie and Bernal genuinely believed in communism and were accepted, on a personal level, by Khrushchev as friends of the Soviet Union. If its first two presidents were even partly responsible for Khrushchev’s realization that ‘it’s one thing to threaten with nuclear weapons, it’s another to use them’,96 the WPC did not exist completely in vain. According to Khrushchev, neither Castro nor Mao Zedong seemed to comprehend the insanity of nuclear war.

  President Kennedy’s summer reading for 1962 included Barbara Tuchman’s bestseller The Guns of August, which brilliantly reconstructed the start of World War One.97 Kennedy could not put out of his mind a conversation between two German leaders on the outbreak of that war. ‘How did it all happen?’ asked one. The other replied, ‘Ah, if only one knew.’ Kennedy told his White House staff that he was determined to prevent two survivors of a nuclear war having the same conversation. During the half-century between 1914 and the Cuban Missile Crisis, the speed of communication between international statesmen had increased dramatically, but the content still depended on the bluff and quirks of human psychology. If Kennedy and Khrushchev had not managed to stop pulling on the ends of the rope in which the knot of war was tied, as Khrushchev said, ‘reciprocal extermination’ would begin.98 Whereas the world survived the horrors of the First World War, which is still spawning new histories, nuclear war would not allow any literary legacy. As Bernal wrote in his 1958 book, World Without War,

  Those killed outright will be the luckiest; far more will die in lingering agony from burns and radiation sickness. There will be little hope of help and it will be of little help when it comes. Overall there will be the general horror of the bursting, searing bombs, crushed and burnt bodies, greater than anything imagined in the hells of the Middle Ages, and the longer horror of recovering for a few of the immediate survivors… Nuclear war would not mean a simple, clean end to civilization, such as indeed as could happen from an explosion of the sun, but rather a painful creeping back into some form of life of the maimed and crazed remnants of humanity in the least-affected areas such as Tristan da Cunha or Tierra del Fuego, which will also be the least likely to retain the creative possibilities of civilization. It means a setback of hundreds or perhaps thousands of years. Yet I do not believe it means a complete destruction of civilization, because this has been sufficiently diffused, and enough will be kept of the principles of science, even in remote places, to start again without having to retrace all the steps from the Stone Age.99

  21

  Order and Disorder

  Both at home and abroad, Sage had close contacts with a wide range of scientists, reflecting the diversity of his own interests and the interdisciplinary nature of X-ray crystallography. He was an inspirational figure to colleagues everywhere – Linderström Lang, who was the protein chemist in charge of the outstanding Carlsberg Laboratory in Copenhagen, told Perutz, ‘When Bernal comes to see me, I feel that my research is really worthwhile.’1 Given how much time and effort Bernal spent as an unpaid consultant in science and technology to countries like China, India, and Russia in the 1950s, it would have been understandable if he had no enthusiasm left for the same role at home. He had, after all, written The Social Function of Science to stimulate others to think about the way science contributed to the British economy and way of life; he had done his best to revitalize research in England after the war, both at Birkbeck and by his frequent visits and talks at other universities. At the start of 1956, when he was still unable to persuade the university authorities that a separate department of crystallography needed to be established at Birkbeck, he decided it was time to review the whole issue of how scientific research was funded and organized in Britain. He sent out a memorandum to two hundred of the country’s leading scientists, politicians and university administrators. In his preamble, he made it clear that he was concentrating on the future of pure scientific research rather than on the subsequent economic and social application of scientific discoveries.

  The vitality of the economy of Brita
in depends ultimately on that of fundamental scientific research. No amount of attention to applied research and technology can take the place of fundamental research. That is not only in the long run in the provision of radically new ideas, but also in the short run in providing the answers to key questions as they arise.2

  While he did not think there had been any falling off in the quality of scientific research in Britain, he was concerned that the piecemeal system of funding within the university system meant that in future Britain was likely to fall behind both the USA and the USSR. He listed four major practical obstacles to current research:

  lack of technical assistance;

  inadequate research staffing;

  lack of up-to-date equipment;

  shortage of modern laboratories.

  The bulk of university research funding came from the University Grants Committee (UGC) and Bernal thought that this funding should be increased to allow individual universities to develop more ambitious research programmes. He also suggested that a parallel National Research Committee should be established, where a panel of leading scientists would direct extra money to promising research projects. There should, in addition, be more direct sponsorship from industry and individual government departments to the universities.

  About seventy individuals replied to Bernal, and their attitudes diverged widely. One university administrator thought that scientists were very poor at exploiting the existing facilities at their disposal due to a mixture of ‘uninterest and incompetence’. He had obviously never set foot in the Torrington Square laboratories. There were many who were broadly in sympathy with Bernal’s proposals. This was not surprising – since the publication of The Social Function of Science in 1939, the notion that science should be centrally planned to meet the needs of society had attracted supporters under the banner of ‘Bernalism’. There were still some who adhered to the opposing viewpoint, articulated most clearly by Michael Polanyi, that a scientist should be allowed to investigate whatever subject interested him or her, untrammelled by any outside control. Sage recounted the reply he received from one of ‘our most productive scientists’:

  I have never been able to plan a research, and set out the plan, and justify it, or apparently justify it, as is required by a scientific committee, such as a Research Council. If ever I had a plan, it was somewhere deep down in the sub-conscious, and I could not have told even myself, let alone anybody else, what I hoped might come out, still less what did in fact come out.3

  This unnamed professor told Sage that he simply approached his university for money and made do with what they gave him, valuing most of all the complete freedom to follow where his instincts led him. Another professor who wrote a friendly reply was Sir Solly Zuckerman, who by now was combining a career at Birmingham University with the chairmanship of various government committees concerned with science and technology. He suggested that he and Sage should meet to discuss the issues raised: Zuckerman’s prime concern was that the universities were going to find it increasingly difficult to compete with industry for talented research workers.

  Bernal’s memorandum was well received by several influential Labour MPs, who saw it as a foundation on which to build a modern science policy. Harold Wilson discussed its content with the nuclear physicists in his Liverpool constituency and ‘they very much confirmed my prima facie view on reading your report that it is on the lines we should press for’.4 Wilson had also passed the document onto Jim Callaghan, who had responsibility for science in the shadow cabinet. Callaghan incorporated several of Bernal’s ideas in a House of Commons speech in June.5 The new leader of the Labour Party was Hugh Gaitskell, a frequent participant at the Tots and Quots dinners before and during the war, who was well acquainted with scientists like Bernal, Blackett and Zuckerman. These Labour MPs saw science policy as a mechanism for modernizing Britain, when they came to power, and as a way to gain power, by outshining the Conservative government studded with classicists and knights from the shires.

  The development of Labour Party science policy was led by the unlikely figure of Marcus Brumwell, a flamboyant comrade in the finest champagne-and-caviar mould. He owned Stuarts Advertising Agency in Mayfair, where he would sometimes oblige Sage by finding jobs for young women in need.6 In May 1956, Sage sent Brumwell memoranda on fundamental and applied science policy.7 Apart from the well-worn complaints about inadequate financing of fundamental research, especially when compared with the lavish amounts spent on military research, Bernal identified the nation’s oldfashioned education system as the root cause of the shortage of qualified researchers and technicians. He recommended three broad policy improvements for a future Labour government to make:

  mobilize existing resources by reducing restrictions and shifting funding from the military;

  plan greater use of science in industry and agriculture, and stimulate research in medicine and the social sciences;

  remould the education system.8

  Brumwell organized a series of dinners at the Reform Club and Brown’s Hotel, where scientists in sympathy with the Labour Party would have a chance to brief interested politicians and to thrash out policy ideas. Blackett and Zuckerman were two key members of the group; Sage would sometimes attend, but more often wrote the policy menu for the evening. Over a period of two years, the opinions expressed at these dinners were refined into a draft Labour Party policy document. Bernal sent six pages of comments on the draft to Brumwell, saying he found it to be ‘remarkably lacking in a quantitative approach. We want far more facts and figures.’9 He objected to the myth promoted by the Labour Party research department that ‘most of our distinguished scientists made their way from humble beginnings’ which was ‘hardly true, though some did’. A more substantive criticism was the document’s omission of ‘the chemical industry, which underpins modern agriculture as well as plastics and pharmaceuticals’. Bernal noted that the nationalized coal industry invested £64 million on research during a period when the private chemical industry invested 700 million: he thought nationalized industries ought to be setting an example. The document was rewritten by C.P. Snow and was ready for the summer of 1959, when Gaitskell and Wilson both came to a dinner at Brown’s and announced that they were very satisfied with it.

  Unfortunately for the Labour Party, the British electorate chose to believe Prime Minster Macmillan that autumn, when he told them that ‘You have never had it so good.’ Brumwell wrote to Bernal thanking him for all his hard work, which had impressed Gaitskell and Wilson and opened their eyes to the possibilities of modern science.10 Brumwell did his best to keep the lines of communication open over the next few years, but Wilson was the only politician to attend the dinners, and often his interest seemed rather superficial. In November 1962, Brumwell sent a letter to Gaitskell on behalf of the group, voicing their frustration that although lip service was being paid to science, it still had a very low priority in practice. To remedy this, Brumwell wanted Gaitskell to appoint a shadow minister exclusively for science and to ensure at least two other MPs attended their meetings. It would fall to Wilson to make these changes as the new Labour leader after Gaitskell’s untimely death at the start of 1963.

  Wilson immediately promoted Richard Crossman from the backbenches to become shadow Minister for Higher Education and Science. Wilson had particular respect for Blackett, and he would become the primary figure, with Crossman, in revitalizing Labour’s approach to science and technology. The spirit was caught by Wilson in his landmark ‘white-hot technology revolution’ speech to the Party conference in Scarborough in 1963. Bernal wrote to Crossman saying that he ‘thoroughly and enthusiastically’ agreed with most of what Wilson said, but was worried about certain plans, ‘such as putting large research institutes under separate ministries, where research will have a low priority because they are overwhelmed with quotidian problems’.11

  Sage was too red for the white-hot technology revolution. While Zuckerman, who had been Chief Scientist at the Ministry of Defence s
ince 1960, would in addition become scientific adviser to the Cabinet Office in the new Labour government, and Blackett was offered the new Ministry of Technology to run, Sage was not even admitted to a Labour Party conference on science in London. He was invited originally by Crossman himself, who then withdrew the invitation, saying he had exceeded his powers by inviting him without the proper authorization. Sage took the snub in good heart.

  Dear Crossman,

  Naturally, I was somewhat upset at receiving your second letter, but I cannot say I was as surprised by it than I was at receiving the original invitation… Some method, surely, could be devised whereby those who do not agree with certain aspects of the Labour Party policy such as Polaris submarines or mixed manned forces could be consulted on relatively non-controversial subjects such as science.12

  Crossman did include Bernal as one of five FRSs on a government working party, headed by Robert Maxwell MP, on government, science and industry. Within months, Bernal’s health would deteriorate to the extent that he was no longer able to fulfill any official duties. There was therefore no prospect of him being appointed to Crossman’s Council on Science Policy. This body did include several of his friends, in particular Blackett, John Kendrew and Lord Rothschild. When their report appeared in 1966, it seemed to sound the death knell of Bernalism. Sage wrote to Blackett objecting to the statement in the report that there was a ‘misconception that the advance of scientific knowledge itself can be directed from the centre’. Sage thought this statement ‘very largely destroys the object of the report’ because no alternative was offered. He still believed it was ‘possible to identify certain growth points such as electronics, computers and biochemistry, materials science that ought to be given special support’. The report, mindful of Britain’s sluggish economy, also stated that the 15% rate of increase in scientific growth was unsustainable and should be cut – an opinion Sage derided as ‘entirely deplorable as well as unnecessary’.13

 

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