Introduction

Abstract

The evolution of British nuclear weapons policy between June 1970, when the Conservative Party came back into power under Edward Heath, and March 1976, when Harold Wilson resigned as Labour Prime Minister, saw the further implementation of many of the policy decisions highlighted in the preceding 1964–1970 volume of this series, Losing an Empire and Finding a Role. The post-1970 period was interspersed with two general elections in 1974: the first left Wilson presiding over a minority government while the second, in October, gave Labour a working majority of four seats. Under Edward Heath, Britain looked seriously at options for changing the direction of its nuclear weapons policies through nuclear collaboration with France to create a parallel entente nucléaire to the existing US—UK ‘special nuclear relationship’ based on the 1958 Mutual Defence Agreement (MDA) and 1963 Polaris Sales Agreement (PSA). The hope was that this would facilitate a deeper political and economic reorientation towards Europe in UK foreign policy.KeywordsNuclear WeaponEuropean Economic CommunityMinority GovernmentHigh PolicyNuclear DeterrenceThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.