- . i .» . T o r y 0 „ e r „ » t . 5 p o U c y o „ „ « ! « „ „ , „ „ , u ^

not involve our American ainoe. -j, • a l l i e s ; d a n g e r o u s b e c a u s e i t , c o n s t i t u t e s

a standing invitation to other powers to copy our example; and

expensive because it is now costing Britain £200 million a year'

. No leading Conservative has .ever described the situation . ' 'w h e r e w e w o u l d d e r i d p t - n » o « , . . .decide to use our nuclear weapons alone, althoughthe Nassau agreement explicitly mentions the possibility. ,*en .

back-benchers like Sir Harry Legge-Bourke have tried to spell it

out, they sound like the worst ravings of Senator Goldwater.. Theargument is that if someone looks like provoking a major conventional war, he should be threatened with our nuclear arsenal.

The Government have never gone as far as this. -Their latest

justification for maintaining the means of independent action isthat an aggressor might think the Americans would-not come to ouraid if the conflict was confined to Europe, however many times they

say they would. This line .of reasoning means that each member of the"estern alliance must have its own striking force. It is exactlythe same reasoning as General de Ga> lie uses, and on the other sideof the Iron Curtain, no doubt Chinese politicians are using it .as well.

Some commentators have said that Goldwater's bid for the ,;.

presidency of the United States should make Liberals rethink thepolicy we first adopted in 1958, that Britain should not makenuclear we^ons herself. Well it has. If by some ghastly,

mischance Goldwater were successful, the problem would be how-tostop him from embarking on nuclear escapades, and not how to drag.America into a conflict vh.ich did-not affect her interests directly.we say that Britains pretensions to nuclear independence wouldbecome even more irrelevant with Goldwater as President.

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Ultimately, the only hope for avoiding war lies in general and

complete disarmament. Liberals bel ieve-that .unificat ion ofnuclear power within each of the major alliances will make it

•easier to reach agreement, and this is why we atta ch great

i

importance to non-dissemination. Some of us think that in the

long run it will be necessary to share control of nuclear weaponsin the Western Alliance if the Germans in particular are to renounce

their ambition to develop weapons of their own. It must be

admitted that America seemsddetermined to press ahead with the

M.L.F., whether Br i ta in consents to part ic ipate or not. Personal lyI fear that"a Brit ish contribution would imply further increasesin our swollen defence budget, since I believe that the present

Government would insist on retaining the V bomber force, Polaris

submarines and TSR 2. If, however, the proposal is shown to lead toa reduction of the separate means of delivery that already exist,

and if the principle of the veto is maintained and any question of

majority voting excluded, then I am prepared to keep an open mind onthe question.

It is, I think, most unfortunate that while the Soviet Union

and the U.S.A. are decreasing their defence budgets, ours continue

to increase and now stands at £2,000 million. For as long as

agreement cannot be reached on a treaty on general and complete

disarmament, at least it is worth trying to reach agreement onlimited measures of arms control such as the freezing of military

budgets. I believe also that an undertaking not to develop ormanufacture any new means of strategic del ivery of nuclear weapons

would be valuable. Both sides now have the capabil i ty of inflicting

unacceptable damag e on the other, so weapons like the TSR 2 serveno conceivable mil i tary purpose. If i t ev er comes into servicethe bill the taxpayer will have to foot may amount to as much as

£1,000 million according to some defence experts.The expenditure of vast sums like this continues to be defended

by Tory spokesmen on the grounds that it ensures us a seat atthe conference table. But as Mr. Grimond has observed, the only

' .-

e in

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conference ifever got us into was the Test Ban conferenc

Moscow. It U indeed an ,dd argument infaVour Qf the

possession of nuclear weapons, that it enables you to talk

about getting rid of them. And although the Prime Minister

claimed to have played an important part in achieving this

limited success of a test ban treaty, I just cannot swalUw the

proposit ion that i t is easier for three negotiators to reach'

agreement than two.It is not iceable that there has been no Bri t ish ini t iat ive

in following up the test ban treaty. At the time, many people

had strong hopes that the treaty would swiftly be extended to

cover underground tests as well. But time and time again, the

Government have refused to state the exact requirements for an

extension of the treaty. They have attempted to throw all the

blame onto the Russians for refusing to agree to onsite

inspections, and the Prime Minister has refused my demand that aWhite Paper should be published on the reliability tf monitoring

tests at a distance. Nor has the Government thought it

worthwhile to set up a separate department concerned with the

problems of disarmament as they have in the United States.

Indeed, they have deliberately attempted to fan the fearsof disarmament among workers in defence-based industries, for

po l i t i ca l reasons. In const i tuenc ies where a h igh propor t ionof the labour force is engaged on defence work such as Barrow,

where Polaris submarines are being built, the Tories are

saying that thousands would be thrown out of work if we gave upthe deterrent. This is ut ter ly dishonest consider ing that in our

official reply to the U.N. survey on the economic effects of total

disarmament, it was stated that no insurmountable problems wouldarise in the U.K.

Finally although this meeting is concerned primarily withnuclear weapons, I would like to point out that Britain's defence

policy as a whole is affected by the Tory insistence on nuclear

-4-

grandeur. There is a l imit to what the long suffering taxpayeris prepared to.pay for defence, a nd the more .money that is devoted

to nuclear weapons and their means of delivery, the less is

available to meet the demands on our conventional forcesi Crises

occurring simultaneously in Cyprus, Malaysia, East Africa, Adenand British Guiana duringthe past year have illustrated that .the

kind of forces we need are highly mobile and. flexible units vhich

can be airlifted to any part of the world at short notice.