8 years ago
32
It’s well known the United Kingdom used many of it’s former overseas colonies as bases for it’s military forces. In some nations, Britain still maintains a presence in at least 15 other nations.
Until independence in 1963, there were over 10,000 British military personnel stationed in Kenya.This question posed in the House of Commons back in November 1960 highlights the possibility of Nuclear warheads being kept in the East African nation.
Labour MP John Stonehouse asked the Minister for Defence “whether nuclear weapons and warheads are now stocked at the military bases in Kenya?.” A swift, but reheard line of rebuttal was made; “it is the practice not to confirm or deny the presence of nuclear weapons at particular sites.” a long-standing practice which sounds logical in terms of military strategy.
The thug with a knife in his pocket isn’t going to have it on show for the whole world to see. Unless of course that’s the point. Perhaps that explains why leaders of authoritarian regimes such as China, North Korea (and the former Soviet Union) parade their own stockpiles so prominently through their capital cities, the British are more discreet. Even to this day our Nuclear deterrents could literally be anywhere in the world that an ocean-rated submarine could get to. You’ll never catch a formidable Trident Class sub strapped to the back of a lorry, draped in velvet curtains. Allegedly, they don’t even return to the shipyards in which they were constructed. Once they leave the nest, they patrol continuously ever ready to strike if the need arises.
Although the reply was rebutted and the answer not given – it is a curious why that specific question was raised in the first place. Did Mr Stonehouse have information that could only be confirmed from the top-down? Where any British nuclear weapons being stockpiled in it’s former colonies.
Furthermore, who knows how many other nations were used as a dumping ground for never-used but deadly Nuclear Weapons? and where they are today.
The most intriguing contribution during this debate however, came from the member for Northampton. Mr Reginald Paget a Labour MP who told the house “for the last ten years I have urged that this island is an unsuitable base for the deterrent and that it should be dispersed throughout the Commonwealth?” To suggest such an idea today would be completely absurd, not only to those living in the British Isles, but the now sovereign states that make up the modern day Commonwealth of Nations. Even the 14 remaining “Commonwealth Realms” where King Charles is Head of State would be unlikely to want anyone else’s baggage dumped on their back-yard, even if they do have his face on their coins. The nearest being Canada!
Paget continued to argue for the nation’s nukes to be kept elsewhere and opposed the construction of a nuclear-capable jet fighter, the TSR2 that would have been stationed a bit closer to home. That project was subsequently cancelled due to costs spiralling out of control in an era that Concorde first took to the skies, hardly an inexpensive endeavour either. Padget died some thirty years later, but something tells me he got his wish in the end. Such mighty weapons of mass destruction remain kept in check at a distance, not on the doorstep of an empire that has come and gone.
Bomb casings at South Africa’s abandoned Circle nuclear bomb production facility near Pretoria. These most likely would have accommodated a gun-type nuclear package for air delivery. The URANIUM inside the warheads was enriched at the University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom during the 1970’s.
Author: David Joseph Henry
