Ian Lowe Explores Australia’s ongoing entrapment in the nuclear web (original) (raw)

Historical fallout: British nuclear testing in Australia and the nature of science

2006

This paper was submitted as a requirement for the History Extension course in the 2006 Higher School Certificate, part of the secondary school curriculum in the state of New South Wales, Australia. My research of these events is the result of a passion for Australian history and the belief that not enough is known, or acknowledged, by the public about events within our nation’s past: including many during the nuclear testing conducted at the Monte Bello Islands, Emu Field, and Maralinga between 1952 and 1967 by Great Britain. These produced such a number of issues relevant to the study of the philosophy behind historiography, that it would be a difficult to cover all in such a limited period. This led to a focus upon what the 1985 Royal Commission dubbed the “Marston Controversy.” Throughout my research on this event, I explored the influence of the respective agendas and paradigms of ‘historians’ upon their research as well as the parallels between the natural and social sciences. Rather than merely studying the remaining written material, I consulted sources from a variety of other mediums, such as oral history and audiovisual material. In order to maintain a balanced perspective, sources from both the British and Australian perspectives were obtained, and individual participants, as well as relevant government departments, such as Australian Radiation Protection And Nuclear Safety Agency (ARPANSA), Department of Education, Science and Training (DEST), and British Defence Research and Support Staff (BDRSS), were consulted. The central concerns of this essay concentrate on the reliability of ‘scientific’ data as a historical source, and the extents to which personal influences or agendas of individuals (be they historians or researchers) affect the resultant historiographies. In addressing these issues, this essay presents the prominent events during Australia’s nuclear testing era and the ‘Marston controversy’, analyses the background of the ‘historians’ to present possible reasons for their opinion, and makes comparisons between the perspectives. Scientific data is also treated in a similar manner to the historical sources, thus making a connection between the methodologies and the subjectivity of the natural and social sciences. This paper was added to the source selection list of the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency (ARPANSA) on Maralinga for some ten years, and although based on pre-University work serves at the very least as a sound resource list for the topic in question.

Nuclear Imperialism in Imperialism and Anti-Imperialism, UK: Palgrave 2015/2020

The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Imperialism and Anti-Imperialism, 2020

This entry follows the emergence and development of nuclear energy and nuclear weapons as part of a renewed form of imperialism during and after the Cold War. Through the cases of the United States, United Kingdom, Japan and Australia, in particular, the entry examines the links between nuclear energy, nuclear testing and security alliances. It then turns to testing by core nations in peripheral regions and the negative impacts on populations in the peripheries and on test workers and indigenous communities. It shows how radiological health regimes support the transnational nuclear industry to continue its activities. It suggests how anti-nuclear movements are necessarily a part of an anti-imperialist movement resisting a renewed form of imperialism.

The Prime Minister and the Bomb: John Gorton, W.C. Wentworth and the Quest for an Atomic Australia

2015

The efforts of the Liberal government led by John Gorton to acquire a locally built nuclear deterrent stretch back into the 1950s when Robert Menzies preferred to rely on the American or British nuclear umbrella for protection. Gorton took a different view and the advocates of an independent Australian nuclear capability rejoiced upon his elevation to the Liberal leadership. We argue that Gorton's ambitions advanced as far as they did in the latter 1960s due to the support, or urgings, from an informal coalition of scientists (particularly Philip Baxter) and discontented fringes of the parliamentary Liberal Party. In particular, the maverick backbencher, W.C. Wentworth, played a key role in mobilising support for Gorton's controversial quest to acquire an independent nuclear capacity.

Editorial Introduction: The Politics of Nuclear Techonology in the Twenty-first Century

St Antony's International Review, 2009

The Frisch-Peierls memorandum of March 1940 must rank as one of the most significant historical documents of the twentieth century for students of international relations. Otto Frisch and Rudolph Peierls, two refugee scientists fleeing the German Nazi regime, arrived in Britain in 1940 and set about alerting the British government to the imminent danger of nuclear technology. Using their knowledge of the activities of German scientists, the memorandum warned the British government that Germany sought to construct a nuclear device -the only logical deterrence to which, they argued, would be a British nuclear weapon. The enormity of what the two scientists were proposing was not lost on them, for the brief memorandum discussed not only the scientific feasibility of the device, but also the strategic and ethical dimensions to the existence of such a weapon in the hands of governments. 1 Their prescient warning serves as a foreword to debates that continued during the cold war period and have remained relevant in our post-cold war era. The Frisch-Peierls memorandum set in motion events that would come to define the strategic balance of the contemporary era.