Introduction: social and cultural histories of British nuclear mobilisation since 1945

Abstract

ABSTRACTIn the years after 1945, the British government mobilised money, scientific knowledge, people and military–industrial capacity to create both an independent nuclear deterrent and the generation of electricity through nuclear reactors. This expensive and vast ‘technopolitical’ project, mostly top-secret and run by small sub-committees within government, was central to broader Cold War strategy and policy. Recent attempts to map the resulting social and cultural history of these military–industrial policy decisions suggest that nuclear mobilisation had far-reaching consequences for British life. The guest editors of this special issue of Contemporary British History invited contributions that would explore aspects of the social or cultural history of nuclear Britain in the Cold War era, 1945–1991. We hope that this collection contributes to a more multivalent exploration of the consequences of nuclear choices which, we contend, are too often left unacknowledged by historians of post-war Britain.