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"This book provides an overview of how the UK tried to maintain and modernize its strategic and tactical nuclear weapons during 1974-82, whilst also pursuing a comprehensive nuclear test ban treaty. The core question addressed in the book is how a test ban treaty would impact on the reliability and safety of the UK's nuclear weapons and how this would constrain and limit efforts to secure a comprehensive treaty that would prohibit nuclear testing indefinitely. An added complication lay in the fact that a ban treaty could also prevent or limit the UK's ability to test new warhead designs to replace its existing tactical nuclear weapons and a new strategic successor system to Polaris. How all of this played out between 1974 and 1982, when the UK announced its decision to acquire Trident and the US decided that a test ban treaty was no longer in its security interests, is discussed. A detailed review, based on the available materials in the UK National Archives, also looks at the aims and objectives of UK nuclear tests in Nevada and on the decisions taken on the Chevaline warhead and its Trident replacement. The book also considers whether there was a far greater threat to the UK nuclear programme from shortages of skilled craftsmen and industrial action at the Atomic Weapons Establishment at Aldermaston than from a test ban treaty. It also looks at whether nuclear defence trumped arms control objectives during this period. This book will be of much interest to students of British politics, nuclear proliferation and Cold War History"--

The 1977-1982 Tripartite Test Ban Treaty Negotiations and Aftermath -- British Nuclear Tests 1974-1982 and Test Ban Pressures -- Stockpile Reliability and Safety and the Test Ban: UK concerns -- Chevaline and Successor Systems -- Strategic and Tactical -- Conclusion: British Nuclear Weapons and the Test Ban 1974-1982.

"This book provides an overview of how the UK tried to maintain and modernize its strategic and tactical nuclear weapons during 1974-82, whilst also pursuing a comprehensive nuclear test ban treaty. The core question addressed in the book is how a test ban treaty would impact on the reliability and safety of the UK's nuclear weapons and how this would constrain and limit efforts to secure a comprehensive treaty that would prohibit nuclear testing indefinitely. An added complication lay in the fact that a ban treaty could also prevent or limit the UK's ability to test new warhead designs to replace its existing tactical nuclear weapons and a new strategic successor system to Polaris. How all of this played out between 1974 and 1982, when the UK announced its decision to acquire Trident and the US decided that a test ban treaty was no longer in its security interests, is discussed. A detailed review, based on the available materials in the UK National Archives, also looks at the aims and objectives of UK nuclear tests in Nevada and on the decisions taken on the Chevaline warhead and its Trident replacement. The book also considers whether there was a far greater threat to the UK nuclear programme from shortages of skilled craftsmen and industrial action at the Atomic Weapons Establishment at Aldermaston than from a test ban treaty. It also looks at whether nuclear defence trumped arms control objectives during this period. This book will be of much interest to students of British politics, nuclear proliferation and Cold War History"--

"This book provides an overview of how the UK tried to maintain and modernize its strategic and tactical nuclear weapons during 1974-82, whilst also pursuing a comprehensive nuclear test ban treaty. The core question addressed in the book is how a test ban treaty would impact on the reliability and safety of the UK's nuclear weapons and how this would constrain and limit efforts to secure a comprehensive treaty that would prohibit nuclear testing indefinitely. An added complication lay in the fact that a ban treaty could also prevent or limit the UK's ability to test new warhead designs to replace its existing tactical nuclear weapons and a new strategic successor system to Polaris. How all of this played out between 1974 and 1982, when the UK announced its decision to acquire Trident and the US decided that a test ban treaty was no longer in its security interests, is discussed. A detailed review, based on the available materials in the UK National Archives, also looks at the aims and objectives of UK nuclear tests in Nevada and on the decisions taken on the Chevaline warhead and its Trident replacement. The book also considers whether there was a far greater threat to the UK nuclear programme from shortages of skilled craftsmen and industrial action at the Atomic Weapons Establishment at Aldermaston than from a test ban treaty. It also looks at whether nuclear defence trumped arms control objectives during this period. This book will be of much interest to students of British politics, nuclear proliferation and Cold War History"--

Cover -- Half Title -- Title -- Copyright -- Contents -- Acknowledgements -- INTRODUCTION -- 1. CORE TERMS/CONCEPTS -- The Fine Arts -- The Mass Media and Mass Culture -- 2. ART USES MASS CULTURE -- Courbet, Van Gogh and Popular Imagery -- Pop Art Translates Mass Culture -- American Pop -- Formalism in Pop Art -- The Politics of Pop -- Transubstantiation -- Indirect Influences of the Mass Media -- 3. THE MASS MEDIA USE ART -- Art as Subject-matter -- Image of the Artist in Advertisements -- Art as a Source of Styles and Formal Innovations -- Art as Subject-matter in the Cinema -- Artists as a Pool of Skilled Labour -- 4. MECHANICAL REPRODUCTION AND THE FINE ARTS -- 5. HIGH CULTURE: AFFIRMATIVE OR NEGATIVE? -- 6. CULTURAL PLURALISM AND POST-MODERNISM -- Reporting the Zeitgeist -- The Politics of Pluralism -- 7. ALTERNATIVES -- John Heartfield and Photo-montage -- Community Art/Murals -- Political Art in the Galleries -- 8. ART AND MASS MEDIA IN THE 1980s -- Cross-overs and Mass Avant-gardism -- Simulacra -- Art, Advertising and Billboards -- Appropriationists -- Plagiarists -- Koons, the Master of Kitsch and Business Art -- 9. ARTISTS AND NEW MEDIA TECHNOLOGIES -- Photography -- Photocopiers -- Video -- Computers -- 10. WAR, THE MEDIA AND ART IN THE 1990s -- 11. CONCLUSION -- Notes and References -- Bibliography -- Index.

Since the use of poison gas during the First World War and the dropping of atomic bombs on Japan at the end of the Second World War, nuclear, biological or chemical (NBC) weapons have registered high on the fears of governments and individuals alike. Recognising both the particular horror of these weapons, and their potential for inflicting mass death and destruction, much effort has been expended in finding ways to eliminate such weapons on a multi-lateral level. Based on extensive official archives, this book looks at how successive British governments approached the subject of control and disarmament between 1956 and 1975. This period reflects the UK's landmark decision in 1956 to abandon its offensive chemical weapons programme (a decision that was reversed in 1963, but never fully implemented), and ends with the internal travails over the possible use of CR (tear gas) in Northern Ireland. Whilst the issue of nuclear arms control has been much debated, the integration of biological and chemical weapons into the wider disarmament picture is much less well understood, there being no clear statement by the UK authorities for much of the period under review in this book as to whether the country even possessed such weapons or had an active research and development programme. Through a thorough exploration of government records the book addresses fundamental questions relating to the history of NBC weapons programmes, including the military, economic and political pressures that influenced policy; the degree to which the UK was a reluctant or enthusiastic player on the international arms control stage; and the effect of international agreements on Britain's weapons programmes. In exploring these issues, the study provides the first attempt to assess UK NBC arms control policy and practice during the Cold War.

1. Introduction -- 2. Early pressures : 1954-1958 -- 3. 1958 : a decisive year -- 4. The testing moratorium and its constraints on UK weapons : 1958-1963 -- 5. Diplomatic pressures and the testing moratorium : 1958-1961 -- 6. Test-ban treaty verification and the role of seismology : UK efforts 1958-1965 -- 7. The end of the testing moratorium 1961 : UK responses -- 8. The UK and the Partial Test-Ban Treaty (PTBT) : 1963 -- 9. UK testing and future plans 1963-1973 -- 10. Uk CTBT policy 1965-1973 -- 11. A static UK nuclear weapon development programme 1966-1973 -- 12. Conclusions.

1. Introduction : Britain and disarmament: weapons programmes and arms control: balancing conflicting requirements -- 2. The UK's offensive CW programmes : abandonment and aspirations 1956-1969 -- 3. 'Inappropriately hilarious' : the UK and incapacitating chemical agents -- 4. A tale of two riot control agents : UK attitudes to CS and the 1925 Geneva protocol and CR in warfare and law enforcement 1969-1975 -- 5. The biological and toxin weapons convention : origins of the UK proposal to separate BW from CW 1968 -- 6. The biological and toxin weapons convention negotiating history : March-September 1971: the key months -- 7. The UK and why 'research' was dropped from the draft biological and toxin weapons convention -- 8. The UK nuclear weapons programme, fissile material cut-off and safeguards 1956-1973 -- 9. UK nuclear weapons, the Atlantic Nuclear Force (ANF) and the NPT 1962-1968 -- 10. UK nuclear weapons and the Strategic Arms Limitations Talks 1969-1973 -- 11. Conclusions : Britain and nuclear, chemical and biological arms control and disarmament.

Through a thorough exploration of British government records, this book explores the UK's nuclear, biological and chemical weapons programmes and attempts to control them between 1956 and 1975. It addresses issues concerning the military, economic and political pressures that influenced policy; the degree to which the UK was a reluctant or enthusiastic player on the international arms control stage; and the effect of international agreements on Britain's weapons programmes. In so doing, it provides the first attempt to assess Britain's NBC arms control policy and practice during the Cold War