14 December 1950 On 14 December 1950, Prime Minister Clement Attlee had just returned from a meeting in Washington, DC, with President Truman. Attlee claimed in the House of Commons that he had ‘received assurances’ which he considered to be ‘perfectly satisfactory’ over the use of American military bases in the United Kingdom.1 He had been under…
20 November 1974 On 20 November 1974, during a Cabinet discussion on nuclear weapons, Prime Minister Harold Wilson presented his reasons why he thought Britain should retain them, with the inevitable consequence that the country would be a prime target in the event of any future nuclear war. Wilson might have argued that, despite the…
27 October 1962 At 1.00 pm on 27 October 1962, Air Marshal Sir Kenneth Cross placed RAF bases, housing sixty H-bomb tipped missiles and over 100 RAF nuclear V bombers, on to alert level three. It was the highest state of alert Britain ever went to during the entire Cold War. Its nuclear strike force…
25 October 1946 A little over a year had passed since the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing over one hundred thousand people, when, on 25 October 1946, Ernest Bevin, the Foreign Secretary of Britain’s first post-war Labour government, showed up late to a meeting of the Atomic Energy Committee at…
24 June 1974 On 24 June 1974, Prime Minister Harold Wilson made a statement in the House on Britain’s nuclear deterrent. The previous year, the Labour Party Conference had voted by a clear majority to close down all nuclear bases in the United Kingdom and many Labour MPs had taken their seats ready to denounce any…
4 February 2009 In the early hours of 4th February 2009, two nuclear powered submarines, HMS Vanguard and Le Triomphant, collided in the mid-Atlantic. The damage was estimated at some £50 million. Kate Hudson, chairman of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, commented that the accident was ‘a nuclear nightmare of the highest order.’ She added that…
CROMWELL MASSACRES THOUSANDS OF SOLDIERS AND CIVILIANS AT DROGHEDA [ 11 September 1649 ] Historian Micheál Ó Siochrú, in his book God’s Executioner: Oliver Cromwell and the Conquest of Ireland, writes that ‘the storming of Drogheda (by British parliamentary forces) on 11 September shocked contemporary opinion and established Cromwell’s reputation for cruelty and savagery, which has…
CHURCHILL ADVOCATES A NUCLEAR STRIKE AGAINST MOSCOW [ 8 August 1947 ] Today in 1946, over lunch at Chartwell, Winston Churchill enthusiastically answered a question from his physician Lord Moran regarding how a nuclear war might be waged against the Soviet Union. ‘We ought not to wait until Russia is ready,’ Churchill explained, adding ‘America…
CHURCHILL SUGGESTS THREATENING NUCLEAR ATTACKS ON RUSSIAN CITIES [ 23 July 1945 ] Prime Minister Winston Churchill had just been informed of the first successful American testing of an atomic bomb in New Mexico when on 23 July 1945, while having lunch with his foreign secretary, Anthony Eden and three leading Chiefs of Staff, he…
CHURCHILL – TOO RISKY TO ALERT THE PUBLIC TO THE REALITIES OF NUCLEAR WAR [ 22 March 1954 ] On 22 March 1954, the Cabinet met to discuss the growing threat of nuclear war as the possibility of world conflict over Indo-China grew. According to the minutes, Prime Minister Winston Churchill and the attending ministers…
