7 - A Blessing in Disguise: Britain and the International Control of Atomic Energy

Summary

Chapter Seven focuses on postwar Britain and highlights the liberal nature of postwar atomic internationalism by examining responses to the bomb from across the political spectrum. The chapter explores media coverage as well as positions taken by prominent intellectuals; particularly liberals Arthur Salter and Bertrand Russell, realists such as Lord Hankey, and the leftist perspective developed by physicist Patrick Blackett. The chapter also argues that long-established liberal internationalist organizations such as the New Commonwealth Society and the United Nations Association were more crucial to the propagation of proposals for international control than the scientists’ associations emphasized in existing histories of the period.