Eric spoke at a meeting of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament in 1964.

1. - . 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, although
the 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.. The
argument is that if someone looks like provoking a major convention
al 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 is
that an aggressor might think the Americans would-not come to our
aid 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 exactly
the same reasoning as General de Ga> lie uses, and on the other side
of 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 the
policy we first adopted in 1958, that Britain should not make
nuclear we^ons herself. Well it has. If by some ghastly,
mischance Goldwater were successful, the problem would be how-to
stop 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 would
become even more irrelevant with Goldwater as President.

2. - 2 -
Ultimately, the only hope for avoiding war lies in general and
complete disarmament. Liberals believe-that .unification of
nuclear 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 weapons
in 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 Britain consents to participate or not. Personally
I fear that"a British contribution would imply further increases
in 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 to
a 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 on
the 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 on
limited measures of arms control such as the freezing of military
budgets. I believe also that an undertaking not to develop or
manufacture any new means of strategic del ivery of nuclear weapons
would be valuable. Both sides now have the capability of inflicting
unacceptable damag e on the other, so weapons like the TSR 2 serve
no conceivable military purpose. If it ev er comes into service
the 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 at
the conference table. But as Mr. Grimond has observed, the only

3. ' .-
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
proposition that it is easier for three negotiators to reach'
agreement than two.
It is noticeable that there has been no British initiative
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 a
White 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 fears
of disarmament among workers in defence-based industries, for
political reasons. In constituencies where a high proportion
of 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 up
the deterrent. This is utterly dishonest considering that in our
official reply to the U.N. survey on the economic effects of total
disarmament, it was stated that no insurmountable problems would
arise in the U.K.
Finally although this meeting is concerned primarily with
nuclear weapons, I would like to point out that Britain's defence
policy as a whole is affected by the Tory insistence on nuclear

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grandeur. There is a limit to what the long suffering taxpayer
is 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, Aden
and 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.