TheGen 75 Committee was acommittee of the Britishcabinet, convened by thePrime Minister,Clement Attlee, on 10 August 1945. It was one of manyad hoc cabinet committees, each of which was convened to handle a single issue, and given a prefix of Gen (for general) and a number. The purpose of the Gen 75 committee was to discuss and establish the British government'snuclear policy. Attlee dubbed it the "Atom Bomb Committee". It was replaced by an official ministerial committee, the Atomic Energy Committee, in February 1947.
Matters considered by the Gen 75 Committee included decisions on what production facilities should be built to produce nuclear weapons, authorising the construction ofnuclear reactors to produceplutonium atWindscale, and agaseous diffusion plant to produceuranium-235 atCapenhurst. It took decisions on the administrative structures that would oversee production, and appointedMarshal of the Royal Air ForceLord Portal, the wartimeChief of the Air Staff, to run the project, which becameHigh Explosive Research. The final decision to proceed with building nuclear weapons, however, was made by another Gen committee, theGen 163 Committee.
During the early part of theSecond World War, Britain had a nuclear weapons project, codenamedTube Alloys.[1] A directorate of that name coordinated this effort. SirJohn Anderson, theLord President of the Council, was the minister responsible, andWallace Akers fromImperial Chemical Industries (ICI) was appointed the director.[1] At theQuadrant Conference in August 1943, thePrime Minister,Winston Churchill and thePresident of the United States,Franklin Roosevelt, signed theQuebec Agreement, which merged Tube Alloys with the AmericanManhattan Project to create a combined British, American and Canadian project.[2] The British considered the Quebec Agreement to be the best deal they could have struck under the circumstances, and the restrictions were the price they had to pay to obtain the technical information needed for a successful post-war nuclear weapons project.[3]Margaret Gowing noted that the "idea of the independent deterrent was already well entrenched."[4]
Many of Britain's top scientists participated in theBritish contribution to the Manhattan Project.[5] A British mission led by Akers assisted in the development ofgaseous diffusion technology at theSAM Laboratories in New York.[6] Another, led byMark Oliphant, who acted as deputy director at theBerkeley Radiation Laboratory, assisted with theelectromagnetic separation process.[7]John Cockcroft became the director of the Anglo-CanadianMontreal Laboratory.[8] The British mission to theLos Alamos Laboratory led byJames Chadwick, and laterRudolf Peierls, included distinguished scientists such asGeoffrey Taylor,James Tuck,Niels Bohr,William Penney,Otto Frisch,Ernest Titterton andKlaus Fuchs, who was later revealed to be aspy for theSoviet Union.[9] As overall head of the British Mission, Chadwick forged a close and successful partnership withBrigadier GeneralLeslie R. Groves, the director of the Manhattan Project,[10] and ensured that British participation was complete and wholehearted.[11]
TheGovernment of the United Kingdom is directed by thecabinet, a group of seniorgovernment ministers led by the Prime Minister. Most of the day-to-day work of the cabinet is carried out bycabinet committees, rather than by the full cabinet. Each committee has its own area of responsibility, and their decisions are binding on the entire cabinet. Their membership and scope is determined by the Prime Minister.[12]
During the post-Second World War period, in addition to standing committees, there weread hoc committees that were convened to handle a single issue. These were normally short-lived. Each was given a prefix of Gen and a number. Gen 183, for example, was the Committee on Subversive Activities.[13] Between 1945 and 1964, Gen (for general) committees were sequentially numbered from 1 to 881 in order of formation.[14]
Prime MinisterClement Attlee, who succeeded Churchill in June 1945, created the Gen 75 Committee on 10 August 1945 to examine the feasibility of anuclear weapons programme.[15] It was known informally by Attlee as the "Atomic Bomb Committee", although no explicit decision to build one was made until January 1947.[16] The Gen 75 Committee differed from other Gen committees in that its deliberations were not reported to the full cabinet, and were shrouded in secrecy even at that level. The entire subject of nuclear weapons was kept off the full cabinet agenda, and cabinet ministers not attending the meetings may not have even known of its existence.[17]
Membership of Gen 75 initially consisted of five ministers: the Prime Minister, Clement Attlee; the Lord President of the Council,Herbert Morrison; theForeign Secretary,Ernest Bevin; and thePresident of the Board of Trade,Stafford Cripps. It was soon expanded with the addition of theLord Privy Seal,Arthur Greenwood, and theChancellor of the Exchequer,Hugh Dalton. After the Gen 75 Committee decided that the nuclear weapons project should be the responsibility of theMinistry of Supply, theMinister of Supply,John Wilmot, was added.[16]
As reports came in of the devastation caused by theatomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Attlee considered how nuclear weapons had changed the nature of warfare and international relations. He raised the matter with the Gen 75 Committee, and Bevin suggested that a first step should be a letter to Truman suggesting a review of policy. The letter was sent to Truman on 20 September 1945. A response was slow in coming; Truman was concerned about the effect that Anglo-American and Canadian talks might have on the Soviet Union. At Attlee's insistence, talks were scheduled for 9 November 1945.[18]
The Gen 75 Committee meeting discussed what should be said at the meeting, in particular what British policy towards the Soviet Union should be. Bevin took a conciliatory line at the Gen 75 Committee meeting on 11 October 1945, only to take a harder one at the meeting a week later. Unusually, the matter was placed before the full cabinet. Hopes were expressed that Britain might be able to broker a deal that would head off a schism between the United States and the Soviet Union. Ultimately, though, it endorsed Attlee's preference that practical knowledge of nuclear weapons design not be shared with the Soviet Union.[18]
During the war, Chadwick, Cockcroft, Oliphant, Peierls,Harrie Massey andHerbert Skinner had met in Washington, DC, in November 1944, and drawn up a proposal for a British atomic energy research establishment, which they had calculated would cost around £1.5 million.[19] The Tube Alloys Committee endorsed their recommendation in April 1945,[20] and Anderson, in his capacity as chairman of the Advisory Committee on Atomic Energy, submitted the memorandum advocating it to the Gen 75 Committee. It endorsed the creation of theAtomic Energy Research Establishment in September,[21] Attlee announced the decision in theHouse of Commons on 29 October 1945.[20]
In October 1945, the Gen 75 Committee considered the issue of ministerial responsibility for atomic energy. TheCabinet Secretary, SirEdward Bridges, and the Advisory Committee on Atomic Energy both recommended that it be placed within the Ministry of Supply. Developing atomic energy would require an enormous construction effort, which the Ministry of Supply was best equipped to undertake.[22] The Tube Alloys Directorate was transferred from theDepartment of Scientific and Industrial Research to the Ministry of Supply effective 1 November 1945.[20]
To coordinate the atomic energy effort, the Gen 75 Committee decided to appoint a Controller of Production, Atomic Energy (CPAE). Wilmot suggestedMarshal of the Royal Air ForceLord Portal, the wartimeChief of the Air Staff. Portal was reluctant to accept the post, as he felt that he lacked administrative experience outside theRoyal Air Force, but eventually accepted it for a two-year term, commencing in March 1946. In this role he had direct access to the Prime Minister.[23] Portal ran the project until 1951, when he was succeeded by SirFrederick Morgan.[24] It was hidden under the cover nameHigh Explosive Research.[25]
An early debate among the scientists was whether thefissile material for an atomic bomb should beuranium-235 orplutonium. Tube Alloys had performed much of the pioneering research on gaseous diffusion foruranium enrichment, and Oliphant's team in Berkeley were well-acquainted with the electromagnetic process. The staff that had remained in Britain strongly favoured uranium-235; but the scientists that had worked in the United States argued for plutonium on the basis of its greater efficiency as an explosive, despite the fact that they had neither the expertise in the design ofnuclear reactors to produce it, nor the requisite knowledge of plutoniumchemistry ormetallurgy to extract it. However, the Montreal Laboratory had designed and was building pilot reactors, and had carried out some work on separating plutonium from uranium.[26]
The Manhattan Project had pursued both avenues, and the scientists who had worked at Los Alamos were aware of work there with compositecores that used both; but there were concerns that Britain might not have the money, resources or skilled manpower for this. In the end, it came down to economics; a reactor could be built more cheaply than a separation plant that produced an equivalent quantity of enriched uranium, and made more efficient use of uranium fuel. A reactor and separation plant capable of producing enough plutonium for fifteen bombs per year was costed at around £20 million.[26]
It fell to the Gen 75 Committee to decide how many reactors should be built at its meeting on 18 December 1945. Considering the demands that reactors would make on scarce skilled labour and materials, the Gen 75 Committee decided to defer a decision on building a second reactor,[27] but to proceed with the first one "with the highest urgency and importance".[28] Reactors were built at the formerROF Sellafield. To avoid any confusion withSpringfields, where uranium metal was produced, the name was changed to Windscale.[29]
A few months later, Portal, who had not been appointed when this decision was taken, began to have doubts. Word reached him of problems with theHanford Site reactors, which had been all but completely shut down due toWigner's disease. On a visit to the United States in May 1946, Groves advised Portal not to build a reactor. By this time, there was interest from the scientists in making better use of uranium fuel by re-enrichment of spent fuel rods. A gaseous diffusion plant was costed at somewhere between £30 and £40 million. The Gen 75 Committee considered the proposal in October 1946.[30]Michael Perrin, who was present, later recalled that:
The meeting was about to decide against it on grounds of cost, when Bevin arrived late and said "We've got to have this thing. I don't mind it for myself, but I don't want any other Foreign Secretary of this country to be talked at or to by theSecretary of State of the United States as I have just been in my discussion withMr Byrnes. We've got to have this thing over here, whatever it costs... We've got to have the bloodyUnion Jack flying on top of it."[15][31][32]
The Gen 75 Committee thereupon approved the construction of the proposed gaseous diffusion plant, which was built on the site of an oldRoyal Ordnance Factory atCapenhurst, nearChester.[31][33]
In July 1946, theChiefs of Staff Committee considered the issue of nuclear weapons, and recommended that Britain acquire them. This recommendation was accepted by the Cabinet Defence Committee on 22 July 1946.[34] The Chief of the Air Staff,Lord Tedder, officially requested an atomic bomb on 9 August 1946.[35][36] The Chiefs of Staff estimated that 200 bombs would be required by 1957.[37] Despite this, and the research and construction of facilities that had already been approved, there was still no official decision to proceed with making atomic bombs.[38]
Dissent came fromPatrick Blackett, who submitted a paper to the Gen 75 Committee that forcefully argued against Britain acquiring atomic bombs.[39] The Foreign Office, however, labelled his ideas "dangerous and misleading rubbish",[40] and rejected a characterisation of the Soviet Union as a peace-loving state with no expansionist ambitions whereas the United States was an aggressor predisposed towardspreemptive war.[40]
Portal submitted his proposal to proceed with the manufacture of nuclear weapons at the 8 January 1947 meeting of the Gen 163 Committee.[41] This was a smaller committee, consisting of Attlee, Morrison, Bevin, Wilmot, theSecretary of State for Dominion Affairs,Lord Addison, and theMinister of Defence,A. V. Alexander.[42] It was this committee, which met only once, that agreed to proceed with the development of atomic bombs.[41] Once again, Bevin was a strong supporter, arguing that "We could not afford to acquiesce in an American monopoly of this new development."[32] It also endorsed Portal's proposal to place Penney in charge of the bomb development effort, although Penney was not informed of this decision until May.[41]
With the decision taken to proceed with nuclear weapons development, the Gen 75 Committee was replaced in February 1947 by a standing committee, the Atomic Energy Committee "to deal with questions of policy in the field of atomic energy which require the consideration of Ministers".[43] Its membership was that of the Gen 75 Committee, plus Alexander and Addison. However, the Atomic Energy Committee only met five times in 1947, twice in 1948, four times in 1949, twice in 1950 and just once in 1951. Important decisions therefore continued to be made by Gen committees.[43]
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