BOMB TEST ANXIETY

Press, Volume XCV, Issue 28268, 4 May 1957, Page 11

BOMB TEST ANXIETY

‘Non-Scientific Sources’

LONDON, May 2. The Prime Minister (Mr Macmillan) today supported the recent remarks by the Foreign Secretary (Mr Selwyn Lloyd) that a good deal of the expressions of anxiety about the hydrogen bomb tests came from “non-scientific sources, and a great deal from people with strong fellow-travel-ling tendencies.”

He was replying in the House of Commons to a question whether Mr Lloyd’s statement in a British Broadcasting Corporation programme called “Women’s Hour” on April 29 represented Government policy. There was a noisy scene when the Prime Minister replied: “Yes.”

Labour members have complained that the Foreign Secretary should not make political statements in a non-political programme.

The Prime Minister said later that as far as the British Government could see at present, the latest Soviet proposals on nuclear weapons “call for a permanent or temporary ban on tests without any of the safeguards we think necessary.” This was the first British official reaction to the proposals. A Labour member, Mr Arthur Henderson, had asked in the House how far it was the Government’s policy to support the banning, as distinct from the limitation, of nuclear tests by inter-

national agreement without waitng for a general disarmament agreement.

Mr Macmillan replied: “It is the view of the Government that the cessation of all nuclear test explosions should follow the prohibition of the production of fissile material for weapon purposes as part of a general disarmament agreement containing an effective system of control.”

Mayflower II F calmed.— The Mayflower II was becalmed yesterday off the Canary Islands, according to a radio message picked up in London.—London, May 3.