Labour Member Reveals Secrets, Calls For Open Policy On Atom

Northern Advocate, 1 November 1945, Page 5

La bour Member Reveals Secrets, Calls For Open Policy On Atom

(Received 11 a.m.) LONDON, October 31.

A DEFINITE IMPRESSION WAS MADE BY THE REMARKS OF CAPTAIN RAYMOND BLACKBURN (LABOUR, KINGS NORTON) WHEN HE DEFIED THE PARTY WHIPS TO ALLOW A SPEECH ON ATOMIC ENERGY IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS, TO WHICH THE LORD PRESIDENT OF THE COUNCIL (MR HERBERT MORRISON) REPLIED. Captain Blackburn made three important statements: (1) “An atomic diviner” has been developed, which, when fitted to an aeroplane, can detect factories in which radio-active substances are being used.

(2) The United States has a virtual peacetime monopoly of atomic development for industrial purposes apart from atomic bombs. This monopoly is alleged to have been agreed to between Mr Churchill and President Roosevelt at Quebec in 1943.

(3) British scientists know all the atomic bomb secrets, including the technical “know how” of manufacture.

Time for Straight Sneaking

The story of the atomic bomb, said Captain Blackburn, became even more anxious when you inquired what firms were managing plants which were now on behalf of the American War Department, producing bigger and better bombs. Their names were the names of fear, unpleasing to the Russian ear. Enormous factories in Washington w'ere managed by the firm of Dupont, which, as was well known, had agreements with Imperial Chemical Industries in Britain and I. G. Farben in Germany, agreements which provided for their revival after the war, and were properly regarded in Russian quarters as part of an encirclement policy directed against them. “We must indicate quite clearly, contrary to the impression now prevailing, that, if we are prepared, as candid friends, to tell the truth to the Soviet Union, we also are prepared, as candid friends, to tell the truth to the United States. |

the need for the kind of secret diplomacy we have had in the past, to abandon utterly and reject utterly the doctrine of balance of power.” It was apparent? he said, that the terms of the Quebec agreement left development of the peacetime use of atomic energy by Britain very much to the discretion of the President of the United States. Wants Path Cleared

While fully agreeing with the necessity for secrecy during the war, and while in no way desiring to criticise the circumstances in which this agreement was concluded, Captain Blackburn asked the Prime Minister to “bring this secret agreement to the light of day at the earliest possible moment, so that we may decide whether it should be ratified for the future or not."

It was of vital importance that, at the earliest possible moment, Britain should know that she can go ahead, in conjunction with other nations, to develop atomic energy for the proper purposes for which Lord Rutherford and British and American scientists desired it to be developed—namely, for the benefit of mankind and to lighten the load of drudgery that is upon working, men and women in the world

Cannot Be Stifled

“Those interests which now are predominant against the wishes of scientists, reek with the stale odour of reaction. We should dissociate ourselves from those Interests and associate ourselves with the progressive opinion of scientists who are unanimous that we should, at the earliest possible moment, get back to a peacetime exchange of information, instead of behaving like insane men, wasting our substance on trying to kill each other.” It was impossible to exploit the peacetime use of nuclear energy without being, at the same time, in a position to manufacture atomic bombs. “Nothing in the world, nothing politicians can do, will stop man everywhere from continuing' to find out truths which are released by splitting the atom and the further scientific inventions now discovered. The process is bound to continue, and we must ourselves decide, in consultation with our great allies, how these great scientific discoveries can be utilised for the benefit of mankind and how they can be prevented from destroying the world.”

Benefits for Mankind

.President Truman had said he regarded the secret of atomic energy as a sacred trust, Captain Blackburn continued. Why, then, did he not concentrate upon the cheap production of power, in which case, in a comparatively few years • by irrigation, the desert could be made to blossom like the rose. On the medical side, also, it would be of inestimable value.

Captain Blackburn also said: “We ask the Prime Minister, quite openly, to abandon the doctrine of continuity of foreign policy, to abandon altogether