Peden G.S. Arms, Economics and British Strategy From Dreadnoughts to Hydrogen Bombs

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ones is far from overwhelming. It is true that ministers could be more

enthusiastic than their service advisers about new technology, as with

Churchill’s advocacy of tanks in the First World War, or Sandys’ policy

of replacing manned ﬁghters with guided missiles , but reluctance on the

part of soldiers or airmen to get ahead of what technology could delive r

can be interpreted as common sense as much as conservatism. There

were, of course, conservative minds to be found in the services, but that

is true in all professions, and there is plenty of evidence that the British

armed forces were at least as willing to innovate as their counterparts in

other countries.

In the case of air warfare, Britain had more than matched Germany in

strategic bombing by 1918. However, Air Staff enthusiasm ran ahead of

technology and Bomber Command had a long learning curve in the

Second World War. A little more scepticism might have avoid ed mis-

allocation of resources, bearing in mind that the opportunity cost of

labour and materials embodied in bombers included aircraft for other

purposes, such as anti-submarine warfare or tactical air power, or in

making equipment for the navy or army. On the other hand, the Air

Staff’s preference for an offensive strategy did not prevent Britain

leading the world in air defence, including command and control sys-

tems as well as radar and ﬁghters. The Ge rmans were about two years

ahead of the British in the development of jet engines, but the RAF

introduced jet ﬁghters in the same year as the Luftwaffe (1944) and a

year ahead of the Americans. In the post-war period the Air Staff

embraced nuclear weapons but the effort to provide delivery systems –

the V-bombers and the Blue Streak IRBM – placed a strain on Britain’s

resources for research and development. The outcome was greater

reliance upon American technology, which was seen as a better alter-

native to obsolescence.

Likewise there is more evidence of technological innovation than of

conservatism in the Admiralty. Down to 1914 the Royal Navy led the

way in building larger battleships and battle-cruisers, and ordered

submarines earlier and in greater numbers than the German navy.

Backwardness in mine warfare was the exception, not the rule. Brit ain

pioneered aircraft carriers and was still capable of innovation in the

1950s, as shown by the introduction of the angled deck. Battleships did

not remain in service in the Royal Navy any longer than in other navies.

In the 1960s the navy was keen to adopt nuclear propulsion for sub-

marines, importing American technology for the purpose, and compe-

tently took on the role of the nuclear deterrent.

The Br itish army may not have made as much use of tanks in the First

World War as critics like Fuller, Liddell Hart or Travers have claimed

Conclusion 345

that it should have done, but it was ahead of the French and German

armies in introducing tanks to the battleﬁeld. The Royal Artillery

adopted scientiﬁc techniques that enabled it to outgun the Germans by

1918. The army found it harder than the air force or navy to keep up

with its E uropean counterparts because it had to ﬁnd a balance between

technology and tactics appropriate for m ajor wars, on the one hand, and

for limited wars, on the other. Consequently there was a good deal of

catching up to be done during the Second World War. Nevertheless, the

army dealt with its different roles with professionalism. Success in low-

level conﬂicts, particularly the Malayan emergency of 1948–57 and the

confrontation with Indonesia in the 1960s, both very different from the

European role for which the army also had to train, does not suggest an

undue attachment to a ‘baroque arsenal’.

Economics

British grand strategy incorporated economic as well as military strength

as a factor in warfare and deterrence. The question of how much of the

national income should be spent on defence depended upon interna-

tional relations as well as economics, and clearly the answer was dif-

ferent in war than in peace. Before 1914 Britain had a stronger balance

of payments on current account and larger holdings of overseas assets

than any other country. A substantial part of this advantage was used up

in the First World War, and Churchill’s policy of victory at any cost in

the Secon d World War turned Britain into the greatest debtor in the

world. From an economic point of view, Britain’s decline as a great

power can be seen to h ave been accelerated by Pyrrhic victories. It was

only from the late 1930s that the balance of payments and conﬁdence in

sterling were signiﬁcantly affected by the level of defence expenditure in

peace-time. Frequent sterling crises, and devaluations in 1949 and

1967, showed that the proportion of national income being spent on

defence in the post-war period was clearly at the upper limit of what the

balance of payments would bear. Of course, the external balance could

have been strengthened if higher taxes had been used to reduce civil

consumption and therefore imports, but tax rates at the levels reached in

the 1940s and 1950s could hardly have been increased signiﬁ cantly

without adverse effects on enterprise and productivity. Alternatively,

government might have spent less of its revenue on welfare and more on

defence, but it is worth noting that whereas over the 1950s and 1960s

Britain spent a higher proportion of national income on defence than

any other European NATO power, her expenditure on social security

Arms, economics and British strategy346

was a lower prop ortion of nation al inco me than the averag e for Wes tern

Europe an countri es.

Anothe r way to look at wh ether the level of expendit ure on defence

was too high is to cons ider the effec ts on industry . While m ass pro -

ducti on of munition s in war-t ime could be expec ted to encourage

indust ry to modern ise, the effects of peace-t ime ord ers for small batches

of wea pons des igned to highe r speciﬁc ations than require d for civilian

use were pro bably quit e othe rwise, especial ly wh en the re was limi ted

compe tition betw een ﬁrms and contra cts were on a cost- plus basis . Air

Minis try res earch contract s kept aircr aft and aero- engine ﬁrms at the

forefront of te chnolo gy in the inter-war perio d, but the atte mpt in the

1950s to m atch the Unite d St ates and the Sovie t Unio n in researc h and

developm ent overst rained the Brit ish aircraft indust ry. Further researc h

is r equired int o the m icro-ec onomic effects of defence expend iture.

There is no do ubt, h owever, that the inten tion of the Conser vative and

Labou r governme nts in red ucing the size of the armed force s an d the

aircr aft industry after 1957 was to streng then the na tional eco nomy and

theref ore Brit ain’s posit ion as a great power.

British outpu t of muni tions in both world wars was prodigio us and

some retrenchm ent after eac h was inevitabl e. Nev ertheless British arms

indust ries beneﬁ ted from ord ers that were as large as coul d be expected.

The outpu t of warships from Britain’ s ship yards was great er than that

from those of the United States unt il the Secon d Wo rld War or the

Soviet Unio n unt il the late 1940s, and was still the thir d large st in

the world thereaft er. The Brit ish aircraft indust ry was always one of the

large st in the world, being only tempo rarily overtake n by Germa ny in

the 1930s, and was sti ll the largest in Western Europe in the 1960s.

Army cont racts were not large by intern ational standa rds, except in war-

time, and it is no t surprising that the supp ly of muni tions for sudde n

expan sions of the army in 1914 and 1939 was proble matic. E ven so, the

army was no t neglect ed in the scie ntiﬁc- industrial-mi lita ry com plex, as

witness Britain’s capacity to compete internationally in the manufacture

of tanks in the 1950s and 1960s.

Given the tendency of the cost of weapons systems to rise faster than

national income, defence policy could not be left to the defence

departments alone. The Treasury’s attempts to curb the demands of the

armed forces, notably during the conscription deb ate in 1915–16 and in

the setting of ﬁnancial limits that led to the Inskip Report in 1937, the

See tables 5.6 and 6.5 above and Roger Middleton, Government versus the Market: The

Growth of the Public Sector, Economic Management and British Economic Performance,

c.1890–1979 (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 1996), p. 98.

Conclusion 347

Global Strategy paper in 1952 and the Defence White Paper in 1957,

were motivated by an understanding that too much defence expenditure

would undermine Britain’s economic strength. There was a need to

match strategic ends and economic means.

Grand strategy

In the long run British strategy had to be adapted to enable smaller, if

more powerful, armed forces to protect the Unite d Kingdom, its mar-

itime communications, and overseas territories and interests, and to

support allies. However, two world wars, each preceded by an arms

race, and rearmament at the time of the Korean War disturbed the long-

term trend. Strategists had to deal with short-term dangers that changed

over time according to developments in international relations and

military technology. Any attempt to impose a rigid mod el of a British

way in warfare on the past is liable to distort understanding. The stra-

tegic choices facing an island nation were different from those of con-

tinental European powers, but British strategy was inﬂuenced more

strongly by technical change and economics than by traditional modes

of thought. At the same time Edgerton’s division of the British way of

warfare into naval, air and nuclear phases oversimpliﬁes the interaction

between technology and strategy, as he himself points out.

Sea power was fundamental to British strategy for defensive and

offensive reasons. Protection of trade routes enabled Britain to import

essential food and raw materials and also to supplement her own outpu t

of munitions. In more general economic terms, she could exploit an

international division of labour by concentrating her productive

resources on making goods in which she had a comparative advantage.

Command of the sea also enabled Britain to deny an enemy access to

extra-European sources of supply, and to despatch land forces overseas,

including Western Europe. Air power added to the hazards facing

warships, as was demonstrated repeatedly in the Second World War, but

aircraft could be used to add to the striking power of the ﬂeet and to help

to protect the merchant navy from submarines. The navy continued to

be essential to British strategy in Edgerton’s air phase and became the

means of delivering the deterrent in the nuclear age.

Although amphibious operations had long been a feature of British

warfare, lack of co-operation between the army and navy in the

Edwardian period meant that Britain was no t well prepared to exploit

sea power in this way in the First World War, as was dem onstrated at

Edgerton, ‘Liberal militarism’, p. 141.

Arms, economics and British strategy348

Gallipoli. Matters were no more advanced by the Norwegian campaign

in 1940. However, amphibious operations became a major feature of the

Second World War and investment in commando carriers and specialist

landing craft after 1957 for the East of Suez role raised British capability

for combined operations to new levels of efﬁciency. Once more there is

no clear trend here from a naval to an air or nuclear phase in the British

way of warfare.

Britain was a pioneer of air power but the absence of any plausible

enemy within range of the United Kingdom from 1919 to 1933 meant the

RAF’s expenditure did not exceed the army’s until 1937/8 or the navy’s

until 1938/9. Had the allocation of ﬁnance recommended by the DRC in

1934 not been changed radically by Neville Chamberlain, Edgerton’s air

phase would have begun later than it did. Even in the Second World War,

strategic bombing was part of a wider strategy of economic warfare,

encompassing naval blockade. The impact of bombing on Germany’s oil

output in 1944 was all the more damaging because the increased scale of

land operations after D-Day forced the Wehrmacht to use up fuel reserves,

while air operations were greatly aided by the overrunning of German

radar early warning systems. The RAF was at its most effective when it

acted in combination with the other services.

The biggest break in the British way of warfare in the ﬁrst half of the

twentieth century rel ated to the bala nce between loans or subsidies, and

supplies, for allies on the one hand, and the size of the army on the

other. In the First World War Britain not only adopted her traditional

role of paymaster of the Allied coalition but she also put an army of

unprecedented size into the ﬁeld. The attempt to do both was beyond

her economic power, and the role of paymaster had to be ceded to the

United States in 1917. The loss of wealth left Britain in no position to be

a major source of subsidies if she was also to maintain substantial armed

forces of her own again.

Howard, Barnett and Bond have focused criticism on the decision

taken at the end of 1937 to give imperial defence priority over the

continental commitment. However, despite this priority, no additional

RAF squad rons were allocated to imperial defence, and the army’s

rearmament programme was already subject to delay for industrial

reasons. There was a danger that the Chiefs of Staff’s long-war strategy

would be undermined by rearmament before an outbreak of hostilities,

and overriding priority was given to the defence of the United Kingdom

and its maritime communications, in line with the strategic principle of

securing one’s main base. Evidence of neglect of imperial defence,

particularly in the Far East, helps to place decision-making in the 1930s

in perspective: Britain had too many commitments and policymakers

Conclusion 349

had to juggle them as best they could. In the eve nt, the fall of France in

1940 forced the British into a maritime strategy for most of the Second

World War and even without a continental commitment the British

armed forces could be sustained after 1941 only through Lend-Lease.

The nature of all-out war changed with the use of the atomic bomb in

1945 and more particularly with the testing of hydrogen bombs in 1954.

Nevertheless there was a case for maintaining balanced conventional

forces to prevent limited wars developing into major wars, especially as

long as Britain had a greater responsibility than other Euro pean coun-

tries for commitments outside the NATO area. By the mid-1950s

ministers accepted that defence forces had to be reduced to a sustainable

level for the long term and believed that the economy should be

strengthened to meet the new challenge from the Soviet Union in the

form of competitive co-existence. Eden and Macmillan deserve credit

for undertaking policy reviews of how Britain should strike a balance

between armed preparedness and economic streng th. The 1957

Defence White Paper was not a retreat from power but a redeployment

of resources for a long-term strategy appropriate to the Cold War. Along

with the reduction in overseas commitments represented by the Wilson

government’s decision to withdraw from East of Suez, the White Paper

can also be seen as a response to the problem that the cost of weapons

systems tended to grow more rapidly than national income, leading to a

reduction in the size of the armed forces, without necessarily increasing

their ﬁrepower relative to that of potential enemi es. Cuts had to be made

in commitments by the late 1960s, and the deterrent and the con-

tribution of the BAOR to the political cohesion of NATO were deemed

to have higher priority than Britain’s world role. Contrary to what

Barnett believed, policymakers could tackle inherited overseas com-

mitments with clear-sighted, strategic calculation once the Treasury had

pointed out that costs were exceeding beneﬁts.

British strategy between 1904 and 1969 was certainly not beyond

criticism. It was overly inﬂuenced by bure aucratic politics, with each

service pressing its own case for the importance of the contribution that

it could make to national security. In particular, the RAF was too

concerned to retain its separate identity after 1918 and was unable to

support the army or the navy effectively until 1942. Even the Global

Strategy paper of 1952, which has its admirers among authorities in

strategic studies, can be seen to be an exerc ise in papering over cracks

created by the vested interests of individual services. Attlee was surely

right when he said that there was a need for a single defence doctrine to

ensure proper combined use of arms. The transfer of responsibility for

the nuclear deterrent from the V-bombers to Polaris submarines in 1969

Arms, economics and British strategy350

may have helped in this regard, since the RAF henceforth no longer had

a separate raison d’e

tre from the other services.

Postscript

The pattern in defence policy established at the end of the 1960s remained

in place for the remainder of the Cold War. The cost-effectiveness of a

submarine-launched, second-strike nuclear deterrent led to the Polaris

system being updated in the Chevaline programme in the 1970s and

replaced by Trident in the 1980s. British land, air and sea power was

concentrated in Europe and the North Atlantic, but greater out-of-

NATO area capability was retained than the decision to withdraw from

East of Suez might seem to have implied. British warships continued to

take part in exe rcises with allies in the Indian Ocean and the Paciﬁc and,

despite the decision in 1966 not to build new aircraft carriers, the

‘Invincible’-class ‘through-deck cruisers’ laid down in the 1970s gave

the navy continuing ﬁxed-wing air support with VTOL Harriers. No

country other than the two superpowers could have done what the

British armed forces accomplished in the Falklands War in 1982, and no

other European ally of the United States made so large a contribution to

the coalition that drove the Iraqi army from Kuwait in 1991.

The

British way of warfare continued to be different from that of a con-

tinental European power, and was best performed by adaptable, highly

professional, volunteer forces rather than more numerous but less well

trained conscripts.

Geoffrey Till, ‘The return to globalism: the Royal Navy east of Suez, 1975–2003’, in

Kennedy (ed.), British Naval Strategy, pp. 244–68; Lawrence Freedman, The Ofﬁcial

History of the Falklands Campaign, 2 vols. (Abingdon: Routledge, 2005), vol. II: War and

Diplomacy; Alberto Bin, Richard Hill and Archer Jones, Desert Storm: A Forgotten War

(Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1998), pp. 67–8, 79.

Conclusion 351

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