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On 15 February 1968, the Royal Navy submarine HMS Resolution launched a Polaris A3 missile with a dummy nuclear warhead from the sea off the eastern coast of the United States. The culmination of a successful partnership between the United States and Britain, begun in 1962, the launch showed that the UK remained a nuclear weapons power. Outwardly, Polaris seemed to epitomize the government's commitment to British nuclear weapons, yet, only months before, in October 1967, Treasury officials engaged in a confidential review of the future of the nuclear weapons programme had argued that, 'since our nuclear capability was never a credible weapon, its abolition could not leave a gap in our defence'.1While this comment might be seen as part of the normal rough and tumble of government business, this article suggests that it expressed a genuine lack of belief in the arguments made in favour of the British deterrent. As such, it is an example of a range of responses to nuclear weapons within government in the 1950s and 1960s that can be examined productively using the idea of 'nuclear cultures'.
The cultural aspect in the British quest for an atomic bomb was acknowledged by the programme's official historian, Margaret Gowing, who argued that, alongside a recognition that these weapons were militarily devastating, there was an 'almost instinctive ... feeling that Britain as a great power must acquire all major new weapons, a feeling that atomic weapons were a manifestation of ... scientific and technological superiority ... a symbol of independence'.2Other historians have touched upon this subject. John Baylis has talked about the 'mind set' that underpinned the adherence to the 'Moscow criterion' from the 1960s onwards.3Peter Hennessy's description of the various sections of 'the secret state' as a 'cluster of priesthoods' forming 'worlds apart unto themselves' appears to suggest that intra-governmental identities may have played a significant role in responses to nuclear weaponry.4These ideas have not, however, removed an inclination among many historians to see a British 'nuclear weapons state', with a purportedly uniform approach to nuclear weaponry, whose officials held similar attitudes and ideas; a perception that, as Michael Howard puts it, the Cold War ran 'according to...