The Third World War: August 1985

What happened over the trade unions was evidence of the refreshing and welcome spirit of realism and common sense which gradually began to emerge on every side in British public opinion in the late seventies. A new political approach — which also demonstrated how politicians will inevitably in the end be guided by changes in public opinion — was before very long to become evident in the matter of defence.

These years saw slow but significant changes in Britain. A total addiction to redistributive economic and fiscal policies, which showed itself in hostility to profit-making and in penal taxation on industrial enterprise, was gradually being replaced by more sensible attitudes, which at last permitted an increase in national wealth. These changes, together with the movement of world trade out of recession and the revenue from North Sea oil, contributed to some recovery in the standard of living in Britain and, in no small measure, to a revival of national confidence.

As the United Kingdom at last began to find a new awareness of national identity in a post-imperial mode, less began to be heard of separatism in the parts. Devolution became less fashionable. Less was also heard of any suggestion that the world owed Britain special consideration, which may have at one time been justified, let alone a living, which never was. There was less and less support of what had previously been known as progressive education. There was acceptance of the necessity for children in school to learn, even when they did not greatly like it. Variety in educational provision almost ceased to be regarded as sinful, independent schools were once more allowed to flourish, as so many parents wished, and even the public schools, their old-fashioned discipline long derided by radicals who so often sent their sons to profit from it, came under less violent attack.

The instinct to voluntary service, an instinct rather disliked by the more extreme addicts of the welfare state, was also seen to have survived, and even once again began to flourish. Scouts, Guides, St John Ambulance and countless other voluntary organizations reported sharp rises in recruiting. So did the volunteer reserves of the armed forces. In universities it began to be quite fashionable once more to join the Officer Training Corps. There was even a movement towards a voluntary revival of civil defence, long neglected by government.

In this changing climate of public opinion some scrutiny of Britain’s security in the world was before long inevitable. More notice began to be taken of what threatened it. There was more questioning of the extent to which Britain was taking a proper share in her own defence. It was even suggested, possibly unfairly, that it might no longer be enough to rest on what some called abject reliance on the United States.

The British record in the sphere of common defence did not stand up under scrutiny any too well. At the close of the Korean war in 1952 the proportion of the gross national product devoted to defence was 11.2 per cent. This was possibly too much. In the financial year 1976-7 it was 4.9 per cent. This was certainly too little. Even further reductions were being sought by some. The National Executive Committee of the British Labour Party (from whose control the Labour government of the day was content to remain free) was in 1977 demanding a further reduction in defence spending by one-third.

It is still, as this is being written, too early for a balanced assessment of where responsibility lies for the dangerously low state to which the defences of Great Britain had by the year 1977 been allowed to fall. Though historians will probably agree that no political party is free from serious blame, they are already beginning to accept that, however regrettable the economies made in the mid-seventies under the transparent guise of improved efficiency, it was in the defence policies formulated in the UK Defence White Paper of 1957 that the rot really began. It is here that the first real signs appear in the sphere of defence of a latter-day British tendency to duck responsibility and shy off into make-believe, a tendency which did much to bedevil relations with Britain’s allies in the years that followed.

The basic idea behind the 1957 White Paper was that American strategic nuclear power was to be the primary guardian of peace in Europe. Britain contributed her own nuclear bomber force, but beyond that all she was called upon to do was help provide a conventional trip-wire to identify a major incursion, which would then be answered by massive nuclear retaliation from the United States. A very great saving in cost would result as well as a great saving in manpower. This is, in fact, what happened. The political party in power at the time was able to go to the country at the next general election as the party which had freed the nation from military conscription in peacetime.