a bloody great union jack all over it

So we’ve made the final payout on our war debt to the US. This raises the question of what we spent the money on – not just the loans, but the Marshall Plan aid. From Corelli Barnett’s Lost Victory:

In another victory by Bevin over fierce opposition by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, a Cabinet inner circle secretly decided in October 1946 on a technically novel but enormously expensive (in R and D and engineering resources as well as money) expedient for perpetuating Britain's status as a first-class power: the development of a British nuclear deterrent.

Bevin is supposed to have said of nukes that they were terrible things, but while they existed we needed one with a bloody great Union Jack all over it. The nukes, by the way, were only part of a generally bloated military establishment:

And yet when it is borne in mind that this was the aftermath of war with no immediate enemy in sight and that Britain was desperately hard-up, even his chosen total of 1,100,000 men in the armed forces by the end of 1946 seems inflated enough in comparison with the total of 681,000 on the outbreak of war with Germany in 1939. The projected 1946 bill for defence still amounted to .£1100 million even after a 10 per cent cut proposed by the Chancellor. And in the event the strength of the armed forces at the end of 1946 proved to be 327,000 above Attlee’s target figure.

And while other countries were using US aid and loans to reconstruct their economies, we were keeping hundreds of thousands of people off the labour market and unable to contribute to the economy through conscription; a classic example of borrowing to make yourself poorer.

The working party ended its report by trying from another angle to guesstimate the economic cost of half a million conscripts Given that the average net output of a young man in industry was about £400 a year, then the loss of production would equal about £200 million a year, or 22 per cent of the expected level of fixed investment in 1946-7, and likewise 22 per cent of expected exports.. In the light of these gruesome prognostications about the impact of conscription on Britain's frail economy, it does seem astonishing that the working party should nevertheless still choose to give priority “to maintenance of British prestige abroad” and to living up to "our reputation as one of the three leading powers of the world'.

It’s kind of ironic that we’ve finally discharged the debt just at the time when the government seems determined to spunk away billions on replacing trident, for more or less the same reasons and motivated by the same impulses – not only the general desire of politicians that the public pay for their places at the top table but the specific neurosis of rightwing Labour types that they have to be seen as strong.

What a waste. And what a waster.

Comments

[Matthew]

I'm strangely optimistic about Trident's replacement, or moreover, it not happening. A lot has been made about the lack of controversy over replacing it compared with that of the early 1980s. But there seems also a lack of controversy about scrapping it too. This might reflect general political apathy, or just that the support/opposition for it is spread more evenly across the polical classes.

In the end I think it'll be like ID cards - popular (ish) until the cost is known, and then given a choice of the carriers or the subs they'll go for the carriers.

[Chris Williams]

And just three weeks too late to incorporate into my programme. Ah well.

http://www.open2.net/thingsweforgot/prog_sum_labour_government.html