Figure 1: Antonio Reynoso. Untitled, Texcoco, 1966.

 

This is the story of an astonishing proposal, a 1960s technological fix that, it was said, save Mexico City from collapse, provide fresh water to its inhabitants, and all through the implementation of nuclear power. It became the subject of intense and competitive diplomacy.

The scheme, known as the Texcoco project, was pitched to the UK Atomic Energy Authority in February 1965. Dr Arnulfo Morales-Amado, of the Mexican Comision Nacional Energia Nuclear (CNEN) introduced the issues:

Mexico City stood in a valley surrounded by mountains which was geologically an independent basin. Approximately 160 million gallons of water per day were being pumped out of the water lying beneath the city to supply its needs and as a consequence the city had been sinking about one foot a year for thirty years. In these circumstances the cost of maintaining the sewers and other plant and equipment was considerable.

There was, however, a second basin formation some 30 kilometres from Mexico City at Texcoco which, in view of the sinking of the Mexico City basin was now higher than the latter. There was therefore a danger that if an earthquake were to result in the two basins becoming joined, Mexico City would be flooded. For this reason the Texcoco basin had been dried out which, in view of the prevailing winds, had led to dust storms blowing over Mexico City. Moreover, the development of industry from the city towards Texcoco basin had had to be stopped.[1]

The inhabitants and industry of Mexico City used 320 million gallons per day, about half of which was purified and used again for agriculture, so usage was about 160 million gallons per day. This water was extracted from under the inhabitants’ feet. In Mexico City £10 million a year was spent on work necessitated by subsidence. The sinking of wells had been prohibited, and industrial development ‘was held up by reason of water shortage…. If the water problems could be solved, industrial development near Mexico City need no longer be held up’[2]

The CNEN’s proposal was

to meet these problems by the construction of a 500 MW(E) reactor which would provide power but would be primarily designed to enable water from the Texcoco basin to be desalted and piped to Mexico City. …. If successfully completed this operation would result in the sinking of the Texcoco basin as the water was drawn away and would enable water to be pumped back into the sub-strata of Mexico City. The later would therefore stop sinking, with a saving in maintenance costs, and the flood danger be obviated’[3] To put this in perspective, the total generating capacity of Mexico was 5,000MW(E), of which 2,000 MW(E) connected to the grid around the capital. [4]

This was the astonishing technocratic Mexican vision of hydrological, geological and environmental engineering through nuclear power and desalination.  While presented in London by Morales-Amado, it was largely the work of Dr Nabor Carrillo Flores. Carrillo is a fascinating figure. The brief biography, sent by telegram to the leading scientist of the UK nuclear weapons programme, and passed around Whitehall, captures his character succinctly:

Dr Nabor Carillo

Is the main driving force in the Commission. He is a man of great energy and enthusiasm. He won international fame as a soil scientist. Following his pioneering work in saving buildings, and designing foundations for new buildings in Mexico City, where the ground is sinking up to 1 ft/year, he is now consulted on similar problems around the world.

He comes from a remarkable family. He is of true Indian descent. His father is a well known composer who used a 16 tone scale many years before Schoenberg; his brother is the Mexican ambassador to Washington; his sister is a concern pianist, and he himself was rector of Mexico university for six years. He is a man of great charm, wide interests and very cultured. His outside interests are painting (he is a creditable painter himself, and was a personal friend of the late Diego Riviera), and music.

The revival (after a false start) of plans to establish atomic energy in Mexico is due to him.[5]

Carillo was a modernist and a technocrat.[6] The alternative to the Texcoco project, to pipe fresh water 150 kilometers from a river supply, would also, of course, have required energy, but it did not possess the sheen of atomic modernity; it lacked, in Gabrielle Hecht’s term, “nuclearity”.[7]

 

Figure 2: Dr Nabor Carrillo Flores by Juan O’Gorman, 1960s (Source: Instituto Nacional de Investigaciones Nucleares). Figure 3: detail of painting, Carrillo is described at the ‘Autor del Proyecto Texcoco’)

Context

The context was a Mexican political system that had been under the firm grip of the Institutional Revolutionary Party since its foundation, under a different name, in 1929. At its head was the dictatorial President of the Republic. Under Miguel Alemán (1946-1952), policies shifted rightwards, state-guided industrialization accelerated, financed largely through US capital.[8] Through into the 1960s, multiple initiatives for massive infrastructure span out from the political centre: new railways, new superhighways, enormous hydroelectric dams, a Metro for Mexico City, and tourist resorts (first Acapulco, later Cancun) with airports. The economy of the “Mexican miracle” grew at up to 6% per year. But prosperity was by no means evenly shared. Rural poverty was devastating, and Mexicans who chose to move to the sprawling capital city, driving its population from 3 million in 1950 to nearly 9 million in 1970, struggled to find work and adequate housing.

Nuclear power appealed to this large-scale, infrastructural, technocratic, state-led style of industrial modernization. In 1955-6, under President Adolfo Ruiz Cortines (1952-1958), as civil nuclear power stations opened in the United States, the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union, Mexico’s Comision Nacional Energia Nuclear (CNEN) was established.  The commission’s activities were at an appropriate scale: encouraging education and training in nuclear physics and engineering, uranium prospecting, researching applications for radioisotopes, and so on. An institute for nuclear research was announced in 1963, near Salazar, west of Mexico City, and it housed an accelerator and planned to run a small Geneal Atomics Triga Mark III research and training reactor, with uranium fuel sourced from the United States via the International Atomic Energy Agency.[9]  American nuclear feet were already on the ground.

Small-scale research reactors were one thing. Large scale nuclear power stations were another thing entirely. Both the United States and the United Kingdom had built power stations, on the back of military programmes, and foresaw an emerging and lucrative global market opening up as the world chose the modern and mighty atom for its electrical power.

Between 1957 and 1960 tantalising rumours of Mexico entering the marketplace as a purchaser of nuclear power stations circulated.[10]  Then, in 1960, ‘all these phantoms were swept away’:

The Commission [CNEN] in a discussion with members of the [British] Embassy staff … said that there was absolutely no chance then of the Mexicans purchasing a nuclear power station. Their sources of cheap power were still largely unexploited, generation of electricity by hydro-electric means could be multiplied seven times, and production of oil almost as much … Mexico’s real need was for scientists trained in nuclear techniques to enable the Government to undertake an unpretentious but solidly based nuclear programme some time in the next decade.[11]

The UK responds to the Texcoco project pitch

Despite this sweeping away of phantoms, atomic relations between the UK and Mexico grew. In 1959 a visit by Licenciado José Ortiz Tirado, who had moved from being once President of the Supreme Court of Mexico to be President of CNEN, to the Calder Hall power station in September 1959, had been covered approvingly by the Mexican press. Mexican scientists had attended UKAEA schools for nuclear education, and the Morales-Amado visit, at which the Texcoco project pitch had first been made, was in the context of CNEN wanting to send more staff on attachment for training on the commercially sensitive methods of isotope production at Amersham, Wantage and Harwell, just as they did to Canada, Karlsruhe and Oak Ridge. Mexican scientists at CNEN and those at universities received and read the UKAEA publication Atom. Carrillo had visited in autumn 1964, and established, it was noted in the Foreign Office, ‘good relationships’. UKAEA scientists travelled to Mexico on fact-finding missions.[12] When the nuclear centre at Salazar was being kitted out, British companies, such as Fairey Engineering and Nuclear Chemical Plant Limited, touted their wares.[13]  There seems ‘little doubt’, reported the British Embassy in Mexico City, ‘that the Mexican Government is determined to build up a nuclear industry as rapidly as they can [and[ there should be very good opportunities for British firms in this country’.[14]

But the scale and vision of the Texcoco project were something else altogether. There were also time constraints, caused by the political character of big infrastructural projects in Mexico. The project would have to be completed ‘in the present Mexican President [Gustavo Diaz Ordaz]’s six year term of office’, in other words by December 1970. This short timescale meant that off-the-peg reactor designs were the only ones the UK could offer. However, if the project was financed by international assistance, probably by borrowing from the World Bank, this in turn would create delays, since it was likely that a lengthy tendering process would be imposed. [15]  So there was room, opportunity even, for financial alternatives.

The UK suggest going in stages, starting with a Magnox, which could provide 300 MW(E) costing £30m and between £9-30million for the desalination plant. A larger 500MW(E) reactor  would cost about £45m, and could be either a larger Magnox or the new AGR design. Magnox was the first generation of UK reactors for power stations, based on the Calder Hall model opened in 1956. They were proven but already looking relatively primitive. Advanced Gas-cooled Reactors (AGRs) were the new, expensive design touted by the UK. The announcement of Dungeness B, the first AGR, was made and trumpeted in 1965, perhaps not least with a view for possible export sales. ‘Like you we were greatly impressed by the announcement about the Dungeness B Station and its implications for elsewhere’, wrote a Ministry of Overseas Development civil servant, adding ‘I have no doubt that the Mexicans will be made aware of the news and the reasons for the decision’.[16]

The desalination plant would be provided by Weir Westgarth, an innovative Glasgow firm that had built a business around Heriot-Watt university professor Robert Silver’s invention of the multi-stage flash desalination method.[17] Weir Westgarth had built the largest desalination in operation anywhere in the world in 1964 (in the Dutch East Indies, producing one and a half million gallons of fresh water per day).[18] Weir Westgarth also pitched for a desalination scheme in Tijuana, which used thermal energy power.[19] It’s main competitor was the American firm Westinghouse.[20]

The next steps suggested by the UK was a team visit by members of the UKAEA Reactor Group plus industry representatives, and to do a feasibility study. Weir Westgarth, would also need 6 months for a feasibility study for the desalination plant. There should also be a survey of Texcoco. When the question of whether an International Atomic Energy Authority (IAEA) survey would be acceptable was answered in the negative in London, since it would be done by Americans, and however ‘unbiased they pretend to be their report would be unlikely to favour the UK’.[21]

Nuclear diplomacy

On the face of it, Mexico would seem remote from UK diplomatic interests, or as a country that might look to Britain for technical assistance. But, in the long memory of the Foreign Office it was recalled that in the 1890s, when Mexico City was expanding, the lake receding, and the city was already liable to very severe flooding, the English engineer Weetman Dickinson Pearson had built the Grand Canal ‘which … afforded relief for decades’. Pearson, later ennobled as Lord Cowdray had been the Liberal MP for Colchester (known as the ‘Member for Mexico’) and had been invited by President Porfirio Diaz to build a Mexican railway, and, while doing so, had discovered Mexican oil (the Mexican Eagle Petroleum Company was later merged into Royal Dutch-Shell) [22] Perhaps Mexican memories were also long.

‘The Mexicans appear genuinely interested in close nuclear collaboration with us & I assume it wd be v. profitable to us to encourage this interest’, noted the Foreign Office, adding a warning: ‘I also assume that the Mexicans are under constant US pressure to adopt American reactor systems & desalination plant’.[23] ‘The Mexicans are, no doubt, turning to us’, he thought, because:

(i) they recognize that we have some expertise to offer and

(ii) they welcome the opportunity, when it presents itself, of dealing with someone other than the Americans.

Whether this will turn out to be very profitable for us it is difficult to say, but if the President puts his shoulder behind the project … we could conceivably find ourselves in on the ground floor’.[24]

Notes circulated between the UKAEA, the Foreign Office, the Overseas Development Ministry, and the British Embassy in Mexico City.

Aware that the Americans had ‘embarked on an intensive sales campaign to obtain responsibility for the survey and eventual contract’, Carrillo asked the British Embassy in confidence for ‘a UK team to go out before March 22^nd [1965] for some other ostensible reason but in fact to provide realistic and convincing background information on a possible UK imported reactor and desalination plant for [the Mexican] Minister of Finance’.[25] Two UKAEA scientists, Dr Hans Kronberger and F.M. Greenless were dispatched.

In April 1965 Dr Nabor Carrillo and his CNEN team visited London, meeting with the leading politician Barbara Castle. (the Parliamentary Secretary of the Overseas Development Ministry), as well as civil servants; Castle also had a private conversation with Edmund de Rothschild.[26]

De Rothschild’s presence marked the entry of French interests into the diplomatic competition over Texcoco. The suggestion of UK-France cooperation originated from Dr Bertrand Goldschmidt of the French atomic agency[27], and was brokered, via the Paris-based Baron Guy de Rothschild, by Goldschmidt’s brother-in-law Edmund de Rothschild, who worked at N M Rothschild & Sons in London.[28] Guy de Rothschild thought that the project ‘could only be financed by an international consortium’, and proposed a meeting of ‘British and French industrial and financial interests to explore the desirability of co-operation’.[29] Edmund relayed this message.

The Ministry of Technology, the UKAEA and the Board of Trade were unanimous that the UK ‘should firmly decline this offer’, for several reasons.[30] Unlike the supersonic Concord aircraft project, which was a development package in which both countries would learn from cooperation to mutual advantage, Texcoco presented the possibility of a ‘straight off-the-peg sale’. Second, these UK bodies thought ‘cooperation was technically nonsensical’ since the choice was either a British design (AGR being favoured) or French. It was thought the Mexicans, and Carrillo specifically, preferred the more advanced British design. Finally, a lot more than the initial sale income was at stake, indeed it might be strategically critical for an industrial commercial sector that was expected to grow in the atomic age:

the chance of securing the contract for this reactor (which would bring us in about £15 million) gave us the chance of beating the Americans to the first large reactor in a developing country. This would be a major breakthrough for our nuclear industry and could well lead to further orders in this vast potential market

Nevertheless, privately, the Foreign Office took a different view of cooperation with the French, one based on a perhaps more realistic, long-term assessment of the nation’s strengths in an emerging international market for nuclear power: ‘if you believe – as I do, but fear that [UK]AEA do not – that we shall only be able to hold our own in the long term against US competition in these fields if we broaden our base by cooperating with Europe in them, then it is at least arguable that the time to do so is now, when our acknowledged lead over other European countries should enable us to devise a system in which we retained the lion’s share’.[31]

President Gustavo Diaz Ordaz had confirmed that nuclear matters were the responsibility of the Mexican Ministry of Finance. The Mexican view was clearly that having an alternative to any American offer was useful for their negotiations with their northern neighbour. It mattered less whether it was British or French. Or indeed it could be both. The Foreign Office explained to Rothschild that the UK saw no advantage in cooperation, but might pursue it if the ‘Mexicans wish to “internationalise” their project’.[32] However, from the Mexican perspective there was no overriding reason to involve the French, since any non-US alternative sufficed.

Carrillo initially expressed clear preference for the UK option. But the Mexican decision was certainly not Carrillo’s alone. The Ministry of Finance had responsibility and, ultimately, nothing big happened in the Mexican political system without presidential approval. Some of these worries were aired within the Foreign Office:

if Presidential approval for it is forthcoming, then Carrillo would be happy enough to award the major contract to the United Kingdom. There are however many ifs. We are by no means convinced that an independent survey will support Carrillo’s solution, particularly since no one knows to what extent [the waters of] Texcoco Basin really are saline. We still do not know whether Carrillo will succeed in persuading other and more influential members of the Mexican Government of the necessity of a nuclear solution; and we fear that if a nuclear solution is adopted the US offer a reactor on gift terms will prove impossible to resist.[33]

Small nuclear research reactors had been part of US diplomacy since Eisenhower’s Atoms for Peace. Large reactors for nuclear power might too be “gifted” if long-term interests, not least commercial interests, were served.

The Mexican government engaged a team of Mexican and American experts for a hydrological survey of Texcoco, including within it the leading Harvard soil mechanician Arthur Casagrande, and his brother Leo. Carrillo was allocated US$1 million for the survey.[34] The inclusion of the US experts was concerning for London, not least because the hydrological survey might ‘prove to be the first link in the chain of any project finally agreed for a reactor and desalination plant’.[35] But it was also noted that Carrillo had completed his PhD at Harvard and knew the Casagrandes well.

In the UK, Mexican ministers, government civil engineers and officials were wined, dined and given presentations through 1965, including a lunch given by Lord Snow (C.P. Snow, a minister in Harold Wilson’s Ministry of Technology) to discuss desalination. Meanwhile, UK atomic scientists, representatives of UK nuclear power station consortia, visited Mexico.[36]

Nevertheless, by September it was becoming clear to London that there were reasons to be worried. The Mexico City newspaper Excelsior reported an interview with Stewart Udall, the US Secretary of the Interior, in Tokyo. Udall, said the IAEA, at the request of the Mexican government had completed studies of a joint US-Mexican nuclear and desalination project. While not identifying the location explicitly, Udall was reported ‘to have mentioned that the US Government were informed about the problem of soil subsidence in Mexico City… [and] that a project to increase Mexico City’s water supplies could be subject of co-operation between the US and Mexico’.[37] While it seems Udall was talking about the Tijuana desalination – which actually increased Europeans’ chances, since European involvement in Texcoco would offset the American deal[38] – the scheme officials were right to worried.

A week of discussions in the fringes of a Desalination Symposium allowed time for an extensive conversation with the Mexican team. Present alongside the Mexicans and the Whitehall civil servants were Edmund de Rothschild, UKAEA scientists, Professor Silver, representatives of Weir Westgarth, and UK diplomats. As was reported by a British Embassy in Washington diplomat to a counterpart in the British Embassy in Mexico City, this conversation caused alarm bells to ring. It is worth quoting at length for what it reveals about different cultural expectations, the scale of the project, and the high stakes involved:

Our main object has been to try and discover whether this enormous project is only a pipe-dream of Carrillo’s or if there really is a likelihood that it will come off; and if so whether there is a role for the United Kingdom. I am not entirely confident of the answer to either question. Nothing is more difficult to read than the Mexican mind when not only technical considerations but foreign and internal politics are also involved. …

From our discussions on all this it was clear that Carrillo has until now greatly underestimated the immense complexity of a scheme of this kind, which would, if undertaken in its entirety, be the biggest in the world, and would pose problems that would tax the ingenuity of the world’s most sophisticated experts with experience in this field; this without even touching on the extraneous factors such as the need to rehouse anything up to ½ million people and perhaps eventually to move Mexico City International Airport. If we were talking about virtually any other developing country we could only conclude that the scheme is so huge and so little thought out that we could forget about it for the foreseeable future.

However all Mexican schemes seem to start in this muddled, haphazard and indeed exasperating manner, yet time and time again we have seen the pieces fall suddenly into place, a firm decision taken by the President, top priority given and unless one is very careful a contract lost before one ever fully realized that a possibility of one existed.[39]

In contrast, British ears would have pricked up hearing Diaz Ordaz’s Message to the Nation of 1 September 1965, as the President of Mexico, significantly, chose to address nuclear matters, starting with the role of CNEN and moving to hints at grand projects:

The work of the National Commission of Nuclear Energy is based on the will to favour and promote the peaceful use of nuclear energy.

We desire that the development of our nuclear industry should rest on self-sufficiency in the supply of raw materials; that increasingly large groups of Mexicans should be trained for the direction and control of future installations; that the people should experience the benefits of this activity through agriculture, industry and medicine, and that we should be prepared from now on to use nuclear reactors to remedy the shortage of electric power and water.[40]

Ultimately though the project had little support in Mexico outside the CNEN, a fact that UKAEA gradually recognized. ‘the Texcoco pot will probably remain simmering for some time but without coming to the boil’.[41] For the choice of desalination plant, first in Tijuana but then for Texcoco, the second factor was immense American political lobbying, at the highest levels, and how it split the influencers at the top of the Mexican one-party political system. For example, it was the Foreign Office’s ‘information’ that

very great pressure us being put on the Mexicans – at President to President level – to ensure that all desalination business in Mexico – including the possible plant at Texcoco – should go to the US. This has reached the point at which politicians close to President Diaz Ordaz assume that the US will get its way. The technicians on the other hand look to the UK and would seek to frustrate this pressure if they can.[42]

Other alternatives to a nuclear reactor/desalination plant combination were available. Piping river water from a distance has already been mentioned; later oil-fired power station for desalination and biochemical treatment of sewage effluent were also possible.[43]

The third factor was the death of Dr Nabor Carrillo in February 1967.[44] This man, who had witnessed a nuclear detonation at Bikini atoll in 1946[45], and who had subsequently promoted the application of nuclear power to save Mexico City from collapse, was, at least as far as UK diplomats and scientists heard and saw, the firmest supporter in Mexico of choosing UK over North American suppliers of reactors and desalination plant.

Many years later, the remnants of Lake Texcoco were eventually memorialized as  Lake Nabor Carrillo, and Mexico’s nuclear institute is also named after him. In the 2010s Lake Nabor Carrillo was first drained to start building Mexico City’s new international airport, and then, as this project was cancelled, refilled to form an ecological park.[46]

Nuclear power never saved Mexico City, and the Carrillo’s Texcoco Project was never realised. In the late 1960s, the UK were still pitching an Advanced Gas-cooled Reactor as Mexico considered its nuclear options elsewhere. In 1972 the Mexican government decided to accept US designs, and in 1976 construction began at Laguna Verde, on the Gulf coast, on two 654 MW(E) General Electric boiling-water reactors.[47] They are the only large nuclear power reactors in Mexico.

This has been a story of a grand hydraulic engineering vision conceived during the pinnacle years of nuclear optimism.  I found it because I was wondering about what links there might be between Mexico and the UK in the areas of scientific and technological collaboration and diplomacy. To be honest I had not expected to find much. Mexico is Spanish-speaking, a central American Republic, with little reason to prioritise relations with the UK. Yet because of its post-war strengths in nuclear power and desalination, and precisely because the United Kingdom was NOT the Unted States then a window for commerce opened.

There is still much we do not know. How seriously was the UK offer considered? How important were the exchanges between Mexican and US presidents? What would the public response have been to a large nuclear reactor built on the edge of Mexico City? It would be fascinating to see the view from other archives.

References

[1] TNA FO 371/183321. ‘Note of a meeting held at the UKAEA’s London office, 11 Charles II Street, at 3.30 pm on Tuesday, 2^nd February 1965’

[2] TNA FO 371/183321. Carrillo, from ‘Note of a meeting held at the Board Room of the UKAEA London Office at 11am on Wednesday 21^st April 1965’.

[3] TNA FO 371/183321. ‘Note of a meeting held at the UKAEA’s London office, 11 Charles II Street, at 3.30 pm on Tuesday, 2^nd February 1965’

[4] TNA FO 371/183321. ‘Note of a meeting held at the Board Room of the UKAEA London Office at 11am on Wednesday 21^st April 1965’. The Texcoco Project was described in a 1966 essay by one of Carrillo’s fellow engineers: Carlos Graef Fernandez, ‘The Texcoco Project’, in Post and Steele (eds.), Water Production Using Nuclear Energy, Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1966. Graef Fernandez’s essay has been noticed by present day promoters of nuclear solutions:  https://www.ans.org/news/article-2170/more-nuclear-for-mexico/ . See also: Natalia Verónica Soto-Coloballes, ‘Proyectos y obras para el use deo los terrenos desecados del antiguo Lago de Texcoco, 1912-1998’ (‘Projects abd construction work for using the dried lands of the former Lake Texcoco’, Estudios de Historia Moderna y Contemporánea de México (2019) 58, pp. 259-288.

[5] TNA AB 65/160. Telegram Kronberger to Sir Willliam Penney, 13 July 1964.

[6] ‘Technocrat’ is a politically-charged term in Mexico, see: Roderi Ai Camp, ‘The time of the technocrats and deconstruction of the revolution’, in William Beezley and Michael C. Meyer (eds.), The Oxford History of Mexico, 2010: ‘Few political themes in Mexico since the early 1970s have attracted more attention and provoked more discussion than the increasing role of technocrats and their influence on government policy and leadership trends, The rise of the technocratic politician is not, however – media interpretations to the contrary – a recent phenomenon. Its antecedents can be traced as far back as the 1940s…’. Carrillo is one such figure, I would suggest.

[7] Gabrielle Hecht, ‘Nuclear ontologies’, Constellations (13), No 3, 2006, pp. 320-331.

[8] John W. Sherman, ‘The Mexican “miracle” and its collapse’, in William Beezley and Michael C. Meyer (eds.), The Oxford History of Mexico, 2010.

[9] TNA AB 65/160. UKAEA, Brief for the visit to Mexico of Mr C. Buck, 1964.

[10] TNA AB 65/160. UKAEA, Brief for the visit to Mexico of Mr C. Buck, 1964. In 1957, it was reported that the Mexican Federal Electricity Commission wanted a 30 MW(E) atomic plant for the city of Chihuahua. In 1959 CNEN floated the idea of a 100 MW(E) station for Baja California. Others were even more speculative. One approach to UKAEA un 1959 by a Senor Geza Szekely of the Mexican firm PMEI, was assessed as “one of the growing pack of coyotes who thought they would obtain a handsome profit by acting as intermediaries in the purchase of an atomic power station”.

[11] TNA AB 65/160. UKAEA, Brief for the visit to Mexico of Mr C. Buck, 1964.

[12] Sir John Cockcroft, director of Harwell, gave a series of three lectures in Mexico City too.

[13] TNA AB 65/160 contains correspondence discussing UK firms’ atomic supplies business in Mexico.

[14] TNA AB 65/160. Hildyard (British Embassy, Mexico City) to Thomas (UKAEA), 18 November 1963.

[15] TNA FO 371/183321. Carrillo, from ‘Note of a meeting held at the Board Room of the UKAEA London Office at 11am on Wednesday 21^st April 1965’.

[16] TNA FO 371/183321. Hayes to Edmund de Rothschild, 28 May 1965.

[17] Silver visited Texcoco by helicopter in 1966, and provided a vivid description of landing ‘in a deserted portion of the lake … We dug a hole of about 4 feet diameter, and encountered water at 2 feet depth… The helicopter flight also revealed clearly the whole basin area, and the hill range which lies between it and Mexico City. It is presumed that the underground base of this range forms the impermeable curtain sealing off the two lakes from each other… I also made a tour of Mexico City and studied at first hand the very marked evidence of sinking, Again this is consistent completely with all the hypotheses on which Dr Carrillo’s theory is based. …The problem of subsidence is near disaster proportions and could become so any time. Hence not necessarily cheapest but the earliest possible solution must be found. For this reason I believe the balance will be on favour of nuclear desalination, even if the source waters are fresh’ TNA FO 371/189484. R.S. Silver, ‘Texcoco Project’, August 1966.

[18] TNA AB 65/160. Notes of a meeting at Weir Westgarth Ltd, 27 January 1965.

[19] There was also a smaller scheme in the Yucatan: a desalination plant to produce 40 tons of water a day for a naval station on the Isla de las Mujeres, near Cozumel, Quintana Roo. This was a few years before the immense tourist development began of Cancun.

[20] TNA 371/189484. Powell to Sir Nicholas Cheetham (UK Ambassador, Mexico City), 6 June 1966, records Weir Westgarth losing out to Westinghouse for a major contract in Kuwait, and the pressure and actions needed to influence Mexican desalination plant decisions

[21] TNA FO 371/183321. McLean (FO, Overseas Relations Branch) to Frost (Ministry of Overseas Development), 12 March 1965

[22] TNA FO 371/183321. Milward to MacKenzie, 24 September 1965 for grand canal information. For rest of Pearson’s biography: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weetman_Pearson,_1st_Viscount_Cowdray . Also: ‘Pearson’s first major contract in Mexico involved the construction of a 30 mile Drainage Canal (Gran Canal del Desagüe) to the north of Mexico City to relieve the persistent (and perennial) problem of flooding in Mexico City. On the back of this notable success, in 1895, Pearson won the contract for the reconstruction and refurbishment of Veracruz, which since the beginning of the colonial era had been Mexico’s most important Atlantic port. Three years later, in 1898, Pearson won the most important, and certainly the most expensive contract ever awarded by a Mexican government since independence: the re-construction of the inter-oceanic railway across the Isthmus of Tehuantepec in southern Mexico.’ https://hispanic-anglosphere.com/individuals/pearson-weetman-dickson-first-viscount-cowdray-1856-1927/ referencing Paul Garner, British Lions and Mexican Eagles: Business, Politics and Empire in the Career of Weetman Pearson in Mexico 1889-1919 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2011)

[23] TNA FO 371/183321. Covering note on file, 16 February 1965.

[24] TNA FO 371/183321. Note by Rogers, 23 February 1965.

[25] TNA FO 371/183321. Telegram, McLean to Stephenson (scientific attaché,  British Embassy, Washington DC), undated (March 1965)

[26] TNA FO 371/183321. ‘Record of a meeting with Dr Nabor Carrillo, of the Mexican Nuclear Energy Commission (CNEN) April 21, 1965’. In Carrillo’s CNEN team were Tomas Gurza and Graes Fernandez.

[27] Commissariat à l’énergie atomique (CEA). According to notes by Avnar Cohen for his oral history interview kept at the Wilson Center, ‘Goldschmidt headed the agency’s chemistry division for a decade, and later became a scientist-diplomat as head of the CEA’s “External Affairs” division’. https://www.wilsoncenter.org/bertrand-goldschmidt. French Who’s Who, gives 1959 as the start of his responsibility at CEA for ‘relations extérieures et des programmes’, and also adds that he was Représentant permanent de la France (1957-80) and then Président (1980) du conseil des gouverneurs at the l’Agence internationale de l’énergie atomique (the IAEA).

[28] The Foreign Office knew Bertrand Goldschmidt to be Edmund de Rothschild’s brother-in-law. Goldschmidt, who had been the only Frenchman employed on the Manhattan Project, was born 2 November 1912 and died aged 89 on 11 June 2002. He married Naomi de Rothschild (Edmund’s sister) in 1947. The London-based Edmund de Rothschild should not be confused with the French-Swiss banker Baron Edmond Adolphe de Rothschild. See: https://www.rothschildarchive.org/genealogy/

[29] TNA FO 371/183321. Frost to Strachan, 6 May 1965. Guy de Rothschild, ‘Projet de construction a Mexico d’une installation de dessalement’, and ‘Note annexe’, undated, prepared by Guy for the banque Nationale pour la Commerce et l’Industrie

[30] TNA FO 371/183321. B.L. Strachan, ‘Nuclear reactor for Mexico’, 21 April 1965.

[31] TNA FO 371/183321. Note on file by Strachan, 7 May 1965.

[32] TNA FO 371/183321. Oram to E. de Rothschild, 22 April 1965. Later in the year it was hinted that an international option might be for the UK to supply the reactor and desalination plant and for the French to supply electrical generation equipment, as well as help, via the Rothschilds, arrange finance. TNA FO 371/183321. Robin Johnstone (First Secretary, British Embassy, Mexico) to Robert McAlpine (Counsellor, British Embassy, Mexico City), 11 October 1965.

[33] TNA FO 371/183321. J. McAdam Clark (Scientific Relations Department, Foreign Office) to  R.D.C. McAlpine (British Embassy, Mexico City), 14 June 1965. TNA AB 65/160. Telegram to Ministry of Overseas Development, 17 May 1965: : ‘CARILLO considers it quite likely Americans will offer to provide at least a nuclear reactor at their own expense for prestige purposes and Mexican Government would find such an offer difficult to refuse’

[34] The sum was allocated in a “non-accountable” way, ‘that is to say he has been told to get on with the job without having to seek the authorization of any governmental body for the expenditure involved’. TNA FO 371/183321. Johnstone to McAlpine, 11 October 1965. Carrillo’s survey is mentioned (on p. 14) in a good longue durée study of the political ecology of Lake Texcoco, but does not mention its nuclear dimensions: Carolina Montero-Rosado, Enrique Ojeda-Trejo, Vicente Espinosa-Hernández, Demetrio Fernández-Reynoso,Miguel Caballero Deloya and Gerardo Sergio Benedicto Valdés, Historical Political Ecology in the Former Lake Texcoco: Hydrological Regulation’, Land (2023), 12(5), 1113, https://doi.org/10.3390/land12051113

[35] TNA FO 371/183321. MacLean to Hobbs, 2 August 1965.

[36] The consortia firms with an interest were The Nuclear Power Group, APC, English Electric, and B & W.

[37] TNA FO 371/183321. McAlpine to McAdam Clark, 28 September 1965.

[38] ‘the signature last week of the agreement between the United States and Mexico to undertake a joint survey in the North-West will almost certainly make it easier for Europeans to participate in Texcoco. Carrillo told us in confidence thar Sr. Gorostiza [President, CNEN] was not at all enthusiastic about co-opertaing with the Americans in frontier areas and Carrillo maintains that there will be stormy protests in political circles against the US/Mexico deal. In such a situation it would be true to form for the Mexican Government to seek a counter-weight and Carrillo thinks they may well choose Texcoco for this purpose’. TNA FO 371/183321. Johnstone to McAlpine, 11 October 1965.

[39] TNA FO 371/183321. Johnstone to McAlpine, 11 October 1965.

[40] TNA FO 371/183321. ‘Translation of passage on nuclear energy in the Message to the Nation delivered by the President of Mexico on 1 September 1965’. Diaz Ordaz also mentioned discoveries of reserves of uranium, and the pursuit of the construction of a ‘Nuclear Centre of Mexico in the woods near the village of Salazar’.

[41] TNA FO 371/183321. MacLean (UKAEA) to McAdam Clark, 31 December 1965.

[42] TNA FO 371/183321. Note on file, 22 December 1985

[43] TNA AB 65/160. Cock, ‘Notes of a meeting at Weir Westgarth Ltd…’, 29 January 1965

[44] His role was taken up by Ing. Hiriart. TNA AB 65/555. Chicj to Kronberger, 28 July 1967.

[45] https://www.gob.mx/inin/es/articulos/dr-nabor-carrillo-flores-el-sabio-mexicano

[46] https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/02/13/1067854/lake-texcoco-ancient-lake-unfinished-airport-mexico-city/

[47] https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profiles/countries-g-n/mexico

(I am sharing my possible research ideas, see my tweet here. Most of them remain only 1/2 or 1/4 ideas, so if any of them seem particularly promising or interesting let me know @jon_agar or jonathan.agar@ucl.ac.uk!)

Like many, I am a great admirer of William Cronon’s Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West, published in 1991. It is a history of the growth of the city, and the transformation of the regions around, as natural resources were brought to the centre and processed. It’s a story of grain, lumber, pigs and cows. It is a story of the past, but also the future. Literally, indeed, ‘futures’: how organic life became systematically processed, standardised, commodified, and, eventually, dematerialised, sold as  promises of future delivery. It draws the line between the technology of grain elevators and modern finance. It is extraordinary.

In terms of historical method, Nature’s Metropolis shows what an integrated environmental, urban and technological history can do if the historian follows material flows. The grain from the hinterlands that arrives in standardised sacks to be sold in central markets, or the livestock herded from afar to the central slaughterhouses, to be sent out again as commodified products, are the materials of interest.

In 2006-2007 I was lucky enough to spend a year in Boston. This research idea comes from time spent in that city, which then was very much in its biotech boom phase. I compiled a detailed list of Boston biotech companies, and I still have the 49-page Word document. Here are just some of the biotech ‘B’s of Boston: Biogen, Biomeasure Inc., Biopure Corp., Biotricity, Biotrofic Inc, BioVentures, Biovest, BioVex and Biovolutions Inc. I wonder how many still exist.

Reading Cronon in Boston gave me an idea. What would we find out if we followed the material flows into and out of the biotechnology centres? Does biotech transform nature in any even vaguely comparable way to the ways that Chicago’s lumberyards, stockyards and grain elevators transformed wood, meat and grain? What are the regional effects? How might it reach into the past and future?

Biotech is usually analysed from the perspective of innovation studies (does it return on investment?), or as the vehicle that carried commercial, entrepreneurial culture into the life sciences (does it undermine traditional academic values?). or around questions of the public response to GM foods. Taking inspiration from Cronon, but also from (the good) Latour’s analysis of the levering power of laboratories, as well as from recent scholarship that has focussed on the history of the laboratory animal, following the material in and out of biotech centres might provide a different path to studying the modern life sciences.

(I am sharing my possible research ideas, see my tweet here. Most of them remain only 1/2 or 1/4 ideas, so if any of them seem particularly promising or interesting let me know @jon_agar or jonathan.agar@ucl.ac.uk!)

The historical analysis of UK science policy is very patchy. Some organisations active in funding or shaping science are well studied (for example, we have quite a few papers on aspects of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research), but others, for various reasons, are more obscure, at least from the perspective of independent, primary-source-evidence-led investigation.

There are several causes of obscurity.

One is commercial secrecy. For much of the twentieth-century, most UK science was publicly-funded, even if much of the research was conducted by industry. Since the end of the Cold War, the predominant proportion of UK science has both been funded and conducted within the private sector. Yet science policy analysis still focusses mostly on government (mine included). According to most recent ONS figures (2019), £38.5 billion is expended on R&D in the UK, of which 2/3rds (£25.9b) is in the business sector.

According to the EU 2020 R&D Scoreboard, the list of UK companies that spent more than £300 million on R&D were:

 

GLAXOSMITHKLINE	Pharmaceuticals & Biotechnology	5068.0
ASTRAZENECA	Pharmaceuticals & Biotechnology	4795.3
HSBC	Banks	1856.9
ROLLS-ROYCE	Aerospace & Defence	1305.8
LLOYDS BANKING	Banks	1206.6
APTIV	Automobiles & Parts	1037.0
BARCLAYS	Banks	1001.0
ROYAL DUTCH SHELL	Oil & Gas Producers	856.3
UNILEVER	Food Producers	840.0
BT	Fixed Line Telecommunications	629.6
ATLASSIAN CORPORATION	Software & Computer Services	515.5
MICRO FOCUS INTERNATIONAL	Software & Computer Services	452.4
NATWEST	Banks	443.8
RELX GROUP	Media	388.9
MELROSE INDUSTRIES	Industrial Engineering	386.6
DELPHI TECHNOLOGIES	Automobiles & Parts	363.2
BP	Oil & Gas Producers	324.0
BAT	Tobacco	320.0
DYSON JAMES	Household Goods & Home Construction	309.5
EXPERIAN	Support Services	304.4
RECKITT BENCKISER	Household Goods & Home Construction	300.2

We can see the predominance of pharmaceuticals, and we all now know something about what Astrazeneca does. But what I find striking about this list is how little we know, in reliable detail, about much of this private science. The Atlassian Corporation’s R&D spend (£515.5m) is comparable to Cambridge University’s research income for 2018 (£524.9m), yet I think it is fair to say the latter is better known than the former.

The list of top R&D-spending companies in the UK changes over time, partly due to the changing fortunes of business, partly due to how and what is counted as research and development. A similar table from the R&D Scoreboard of 2007 has some of the same names (Astrazeneca, BT, Unilever, Royal Dutch Shell, HSBC, BP, etc) but also different ones (Smiths General, Vodafone, Shire, Reuters). Historians of recent UK science have not addressed these patterns of continuity and change of private science.

But there are also reasons other than commercial discretion that have discouraged detailed analysis of bodies important for UK science.

Which brings me to the Wellcome.

The Wellcome Trust is a private foundation that funds (broadly speaking) biomedical and health research. The overall funding from private foundations is, objectively, relatively small (private non-profit bodies funded just 4% of UK R&D in 2019), but it has considerable strategic significance. Partly this significance is due to the speed and nimbleness that private foundations can act in response to changing challenges, albeit as constrained within charitable aims. Private foundations, by leading, can make publicly-funded science policy follow. This leadership effect is one reason why the accountability of publicly-funded science is not complete without an analysis of privately-funded science.

Within the UK landscape of science funding, the Wellcome is the most significant. It spends more, it has a higher profile, and it is an essential partner and patron for many research institutes and university centres in (as well as beyond) the UK. While it has its origins in the foundation set up after the death of Henry Wellcome in 1936, its contemporary influence rests on decisions taken in the 1980s and early 1990s. In 1986, the Wellcome company was floated on the stock market, the foundation sold its shared, and a large diversified charitable fund was created. When the Wellcome company subsequently merged with Glaxo in 1992, more shares were sold, raising a further £2.3 billion. The Wellcome Trust’s investment fund now stands at £29.1 billion, and the revenue funds considerable amounts of science.

But what science?

The key decision-makers in philanthropic foundations are trustees. Trustees, by charity law, are bounded by the charitable aims, but within these bounds there is considerable flexibility. Trustees – and their interests, commitments, values, experience, background, and worldviews – should therefore be the focus of analysis to understand the science and science policy consequences of philanthropic foundations. In history of science we have an excellent worked example of such an analysis: Lily Kay’s The Molecular Vision of Life (1992), a terrific study of the consequences of the interests of the trustees on the science funded by the Rockefeller Foundation in the mid-twentieth century.

The proposal, therefore, is for an analysis of the Wellcome Trust along the model of Kay’s analysis of the Rockefeller Foundation.

One might wonder why such studies do not already exist, given the importance of science to solving the world’s problems, and the strategic significance of the Wellcome? We can (largely) discount commercial secrecy, since the Wellcome is a non-profit body. Of course as a private body it is not obliged to be accountable in the same way as publicly-funded bodies are (to Parliament, to public audit, and, ultimately, to historians via scrutiny of public records). Nor is it accountable to share-holders, as some companies are. Private means private. But, as argued above, the leadership effect should prompt us to inquire about how decision are taken when they have broader, including public, influence. Even press scrutiny is rare, although Natasha Loder’s article in Nature from 2000 comes close.

I suspect the absence of analysis comes from two sources, one stemming from academic self-interest (why jeopardise future research applications?), and one that comes from a general feeling that the Wellcome is a force for good, which I have no reason to doubt is the case. Who, after all, would not cheer on the people who support ‘science to solve the urgent health challenges facing everyone‘? Who doesn’t want to see mental health, infectious disease and climate change tackled?

But, there is too much at stake to assume the best of the best. I think science is too important for us not ask for as full-as-possible, open, independent, evidence-driven accounts of how the decisions that have shaped it have been taken. This argument applies to understanding how decisions are taken not only in government, but also in private bodies, including companies and foundations.

(I am sharing my possible research ideas, see my tweet here. Most of them remain only 1/2 or 1/4 ideas, so if any of them seem particularly promising or interesting let me know @jon_agar or jonathan.agar@ucl.ac.uk!)

This is not a research idea, but it is an idea about how to try research out.

You might have noticed that several of my 1/2 research ideas are proposals to experiment in terms of method or form. (For example, here, here and here.)

What I would like to see happen is a forum to host trials of experimental historiography.

Who is up for an experimental history of science conference?

It would be a space to take a risk, try something out, and get a response. It would aim to find new historiographical paths and possibilities. Some might work in hoped for, or, even better, unexpected ways.  It might shake things up. It would most definitely applaud interesting flops. It would be fun.

I think I can organise the basics of time and space. In other words, I can find rooms and equipment for a day workshop.

Beyond that I think a few guidelines are necessary:

1. Proposals are sought for ‘papers’, ‘events’, ‘interventions’, that have an explicit aim to experiment in how history of science is conducted or presented, ie experiments in method or form.
2. Experiments in research question are moot, since they might be answered through conventional methods or presented in conventional forms, but more radical proposals might be considered.
3. The method, form or question should depart from usual practice in interesting and bold ways.
4. The choice of the method, form or question should be justifiable and reasoned. Mere anarchy is boring.
5. The experimental aim should be articulable and clear.
6. The apparatus should be realistically achievable, although a challenge is welcome.
7. There should be a criterion for ‘success’, even if it is not met in practice.

That’s a start. Might need tweaking.

If such a conference or workshop sounds exciting then contact me. Happy to collaborate in putting it together.

 

(I’ve suggested history of science because that, along with history of technology, is my main research area. But the idea would also be good to try in the genre of nature writing, not least because it has its own entrapping conventions and well-trodden paths.)

 

(I am sharing my possible research ideas, see my tweet here. Most of them remain only 1/2 or 1/4 ideas, so if any of them seem particularly promising or interesting let me know @jon_agar or jonathan.agar@ucl.ac.uk!)

This idea goes back to conversations about research collaboration Jeff Hughes and I had back in the 1990s. We were both interested in the mobilisation of scientists during the Second World War. Jeff’s research was on interwar nuclear science, and mine was on post-war radio astronomy. His scientists went into war labs and mine came out of them. We started drafting a paper on scientists at the Telecommunications Research Establishment (TRE), home of UK wartime radar. We argued that the scientists at TRE learned particular ways of working, and, not least, promoting, projects, as well as gaining entrance to influential networks of contacts across military, academia and government. These networks in turn shaped post-war science. We gave some talks on it at the time, but the paper was never published.

I drew on some of insights in the ‘radar sciences’ section of my Science in the Twentieth Century and Beyond book.

But this idea is narrower.

Working on radar exposed scientists from a wide variety of disciplinary backgrounds to the techniques of manipulating “pulses”, loosely defined, of electrical current. The significance of this expertise in the manipulation and storage of discrete electrical current can be seen in, for example, the success of the team under F.C. Williams and Tom Kilburn, both ex-TRE, in being able to build the electronic, stored-program computer at Manchester University, working as early as 1948, ahead of other groups. The pulse-storage CRT “Williams Tubes” were at its centre.

The research question would be: by following technique, what were the consequences of shared, wartime, practical experience in pulsed electronics in the post-war sciences?

Another case study, for example, might be George Porter, radar officer in the Navy during the war, who, post-war, used pulse techniques and flash photolysis in investigating fast reactions, work that subsequently won a Nobel prize. Was there a connection between the war and post-war work? The scales of space and time – picoseconds, nanoseconds – are also interesting to me (I explain my interest in scale elsewhere).

There are plenty of other candidate case studies for this proposal of a practice-centred history of important threads of twentieth-century science. The trick, I feel, would be to follow techniques across disciplinary boundaries as they are picked up and applied away from radar.

(I am sharing my possible research ideas, see my tweet here. Most of them remain only 1/2 or 1/4 ideas, so if any of them seem particularly promising or interesting let me know @jon_agar or jonathan.agar@ucl.ac.uk!)

The sociological investigation of technology through the examination of how different social groups interpret, build, or challenge devices, machines and systems is very familiar now. Pinch and Bijker’s ‘Social construction of technology’ is over thirty years old. But there is still work to be done.

The idea here is very simple. Does it make any sense to consider criminals as a ‘relevant social group’ in SCOT terms? If so are there distinctive ways that can be discerned of the criminal shaping of technology?

‘Criminal’ is, of course, an almost ridiculously heterogeneous grouping. It is quite possible that the sheer diversity within criminality means this project is foolish. But there are shared features, and these features might point to shared interests and therefore shared characteristics of shaping technology.

What are these features? First, criminals must, at some level, be deceitful. What is done must be hidden to some degree from legal authority. Second. criminal processes must be both dependent – even parasitic – on legal bodies, systems, organisations, but also, at crucial points, disconnected. This pattern of connection/disconnection makes manufacturing, consumption and maintenance of technology possibly distinctive. Third, criminals have to work at speed – the longer a criminal act is ongoing the more likely the chances of detection. Working outside the system and at speed encourages bricolage – perhaps a distinctive, emergent feature of criminal technology. Fourth, some, but of course not all, criminals are willing to resort to violence, which the technologies of violence enable. You can, I am sure, extend this list.

As a sideshoot of my Government Machine project, I traced the history of ID card systems, a deeply fascinating combination of infrastructures of identity, bureaucratic information technologies, and interface between citizen and state.  What was clear, too, was that, in the UK when these systems were introduced in 1916 and 1939, they enabled new crimes, often but not exclusively of fraud. The criminal shaping of the technology, such as the forgery of a card, was deceitful, dependent on the official system (in order to work), but disconnected too (the fake ID didn’t appear on the central system), and were used speedily and briefly (or the fraudster was caught). No direct violence in these cases.

So one case suggests some of the features of the criminal shaping of technology. But what features would become prominent of more case studies accumulated?

It struck me some time ago that museum collections might help as sources of such case studies. In particular, the Metropolitan Police (ie “Scotland Yard”) has maintained a so-called “Black Museum” of the artefactual residues of crime since the 1870s. For most of its history it has been strictly off-limits to the public, although in the early 21st century it was renamed the Crime Museum and opened a fraction of its collection to visits. Currently it is closed for Covid reasons, I think. If it ever becomes open again, then one possible project might therefore be a sociological study of criminal-made artefacts as shaped technologies.

 

(I am sharing my possible research ideas, see my tweet here. Most of them remain only 1/2 or 1/4 ideas, so if any of them seem particularly promising or interesting let me know @jon_agar or jonathan.agar@ucl.ac.uk!)

I really dislike the film adaptations of Stanislaw Lem’s Solaris.

It’s not just the interminable scenes of lapping water in Tarkovsky’s Solaris (1972), nor the missed opportunity of Steven Soderburgh’s version starring George Clooney of 2002. Neither really engages with Lem’s question: if we encounter something truly alien can we ever know it? All attempts by the visiting cosmonaut-scientists to make contact with the apparently intelligent ocean of Solaris are futile. Hollywood especially cannot resist turning this classic sci-fi conundrum into a metaphor for human-human communication – see the dreadful run of recent films each of which turns the cosmic into the personal and parochial: Nolan’s Interstellar (2014), Ad Astra (2019), and so on. (Although I have a soft spot for Arrival.)

There’s plenty of critical interpretation of Lem’s Solaris, some of which predictably read it as a Cold War commentary or dissent. Others are better, and Istvan Csicsery-Ronay, Jr.’s ‘The Book Is the Alien: On Certain and Uncertain Readings of Lem’s “Solaris”‘ is good example.

But there’s two parts of Solaris I would like to see done right.

The chapter I most enjoy in Lem’s Solaris, as a historian of science, is ‘The solarists’. In it Lem gives us the history of Solaris studies, as scientist after scientist propose new hypotheses for understanding the ocean. Each one falls. It is partly a parody of scientific debate, but it also contains a deeper point. Science, as Kuhn told us, makes sense of a subject once a paradigm is established. If a paradigm doesn’t form, then all there is is a churn of failed interpretations. Lem’s Solaris was published in 1961, Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolutions the following year.

The ‘Solarists’ chapter has never been filmed. I think that is a shame, and would make an entertaining short. Historians of science could act the roles of Solarist scientists.

Second, I would bookend it with colourised footage of Earth’s clouds as seen from an airliner. It is clear to me that Lem’s descriptions of the wondrous forms taken by the Solaris ocean take inspiration from such a view.

I have no film-making skills.

(I am sharing my possible research ideas, see my tweet here. Most of them remain only 1/2 or 1/4 ideas, so if any of them seem particularly promising or interesting let me know @jon_agar or jonathan.agar@ucl.ac.uk!)

Think of this one as Animal Studies meets History of Technology.

Specifically, think how our technological infrastructures are experienced differently by humans and other animals.

Take an airport. It is an extraordinarily carefully designed infrastructure that sorts, stops and moves humans. To a rat an airport is a place for food, shelter or accident. In the 1970s how a rat could move around an airport depended on what species it was. The National Archives file MH 148/888 contains instructions and debate about what to with rats found on aircraft and airports. Generally they were killed, if found, and incinerated. But if a rat was suspected to be a Ghana or Gambian Multimammate Rat (Mastomys natalensis) then it would be differentially sorted, packaged up and sent to Porton Down for analysis. The reason was concern about Lassa fever. 

The authorities even produced this pictorial guide to distinguishing species or rat and mouse, although I’m not convinced it would have helped.

Other big technological infrastructures have also been designed with animal movements in mind. The Channel Tunnel for example has fences not just for humans but also for stray dogs and foxes. The concern in this case was rabies, which had, and has, a distinctive cultural history of fear in Britain.

So the thought is: what would history of technological infrastructures look like from an animal studies perspective?

(I am sharing my possible research ideas, see my tweet here. Most of them remain only 1/2 or 1/4 ideas, so if any of them seem particularly promising or interesting let me know @jon_agar or jonathan.agar@ucl.ac.uk!)

One of the very first acts of privatisation under scientist-turned-politician Margaret Thatcher was The Radiochemical Centre, floated as Amersham International Ltd in 1982. Much smaller than the the privatisation of public sector telecommunications, gas, electricity, docks and air travel that followed, it nonetheless a first, experimental test of the flagship Thatcherite policy. It was an intriguing mix to me, even more so when I found out that one of the Radiochemical Centre’s key products depended on the supply of blood – and traditionally in the UK blood donation was seen as a ‘gift’ relationship not a market one.

I followed this one up.

Amersham is the main case study in ‘Chapter five:  radioactive privatisations’, in my Science Policy under Thatcher (UCL Press, 2019), available open access for download.

(I am sharing my possible research ideas, see my tweet here. Most of them remain only 1/2 or 1/4 ideas, so if any of them seem particularly promising or interesting let me know @jon_agar or jonathan.agar@ucl.ac.uk!)

This paper argues that historians of science should pay more attention to science diplomacy, which in the UK would mean studying Foreign Office records, and outlines some research findings already made.

I started drafting this paper in 2011, and below is version from 2016. Since then there have been a couple of excellent special issues of journals that have moved the study of the history of science diplomacy on significantly. So I am now sharing what I have done, and then I too can move on.

(Oh, and it also cites documentary evidence that the ‘linear model’ did exist in the 1970s.)

==

Britain, Science and International Relations, 1970-1983

Paper for “Science Diplomacy in Europe” workshop 28-29 September 2016 (to be read/summarised, with thanks, by David Aubin) (** DRAFT**)

Abstract. In this paper I propose to survey some of major preoccupations and issues facing the British Foreign Office (FO, sometimes Foreign and Commonwealth Office). In particular I will be sharing research on recently opened archives, covering the 1970s to mid-1980s, during which period the UK began its (apparently, unfortunately, temporary!) membership of the European community. The paper is therefore responding to the question set by the organisers: what is science diplomacy and what is it needed for? I will outline what, from the position of Britain’s main governmental body responsible for such matters, was seen as the goals and practice of diplomacy through science and for science. Areas covered will include European relations (including bi- and tri-lateral), and relations with particularly interesting cases (including Japan and China, although less on the latter since I have published on UK-China science diplomacy elsewhere).

I intend my paper to be provisional and open to be moved in other directions, hopefully through collaboration. I would be able to explore, for example, British ends of other case studies that planned to be discussed. The Foreign Office would be one site, but other governmental (for example, aid managing bodies, which have tended to be separate) or non-governmental organisations that have historically shaped international relations (such as the Royal Society), could be other sites of research.  Finally, while the paper would focus on a particularly interesting decade and a half, the wider project (again possibly a collaborative or comparative project) would be to extend the account further back and forward in time.

 

International Science and International Relations

Science has always been international. Henry Oldenburg at the early Royal Society in London and Marin Mersenne in Paris were at the centres of international networks of exchange of scientific information. The 18^th century age of exploration globalised the phenomenon of scientific encounters. From the mid-19^th century international congresses have coordinated disciplines, while centres such as the Naples zoological station became sites of international pilgrimage and research. In the 20^th century, as science-based industries flourished and the scale and cost of science increased, so international relationships mattered even more, especially as governments were increasingly generous patrons but also demanded a return on investment. Science has been an avant garde of international relations.

The pace picked up after the Second World War. 58 new inter-governmental and similar organisations were set up in the first decade after 1945, more than the preceding 20 years; there were over 300 international scientific organisations by 1976.[1] Other major new organisations – UNESCO, NATO, OECD – had broad remits with large scientific components.

The landscape of international science is fiendishly complex, even when viewed only from any one country. We have, for example, ties between private industries, including multinationals. Many separate government departments – but especially the departments of trade, the Foreign Office, overseas development – watch and influence inter-governmental co-operation. The Royal Society has a special and historic role as the main representative of non-governmental collaboration. The context of the Cold War encouraged a slew of programmes. The European project did likewise. UK annual subscriptions from the middle of my period (1977-1978) to organisations give a sense of the priorities: the £37m to the European Space Agency, £24m to CERN, £20m to NATO (plus a further £4.5m just for the relevant NATO secretariat), 9m through the UN, £7m to Eurocontrol (air traffic control), almost £5m to the World Health Organisation, over £1m to organisations such as the IAEA and EMBL.[2]

My proposal is that the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office (hereafter Foreign Office[3]) is the organisation that in particular requires further historical examination to understand the development of science, science policy and science diplomacy. From the work of other historians (including work underway or proposed) we have a good sense of the factors shaping CERN, NATO’s science programmes, or the Royal Society’s international roles.[4] But it was the Foreign Office that was the lead diplomatic body for the UK government. The Foreign Office was not necessarily the organisation with everyday responsibility in the management of scientific relations[5], but, I think more importantly, it was where science issues needed to be balanced against other diplomatic factors and demands. It is where we see the value of science diplomacy tested. In this paper I will discuss UK science diplomacy in relation to the European Community, Japan, the Eastern Bloc and China, but it is also the case that any one of these histories would be best be explored collaboratively. Historiographically, science diplomacy must be understood from within from each centre, and the results integrated. My offer is to contribute the detailed archival work and analysis from the UK side to such joint, transnational collaborative projects that might be proposed at this meeting.

 

Europe

Let’s begin the exploration of this landscape with Europe, because I want to say what the newly released documents tell us about the implications for and roles of science as Britain joined the EEC on 1 January 1973.

John Krige emphasised four points in his synthetic overview of European scientific and technological collaboration. The first is that the ‘a fundamental point of reference in understanding European scientific and technological collaboration is, of course, the United States …European scientific and technological development has been reactive, an answer to what has been happening in the United States… We have reacted, they have initiated’; it has been a game of catch up.[6] Second, ‘it is important’, Krige argues, ‘not to forget that this scientific, technical and industrial collaboration is part of the post-war political and economic reconstruction of Europe. It actually underlies the political integration of Europe into something like a unified block’.[7] Third, this process required active political will, and always demanded asking the question of what was gained in return for releasing sovereignty. Points 2 and 3, I say, are what makes the question of Britain and European scientific and technological collaboration important, especially, as Krige says, as such collaboration ‘has been a driver, a forerunner, of political and economic integration which has come afterwards’.[8] Finally, he notes that European collaboration is ‘constantly threatened by the centrifugal pull of national interest’.

Prior to 1973, some of the projects Krige has in mind are as follows. First, CERN, set up in the 1950s, with British physicists ambivalent. As the powerful synchrocyclotrons and proton synchrotrons came on stream, so European physicists were able to compete with Americans. The funding, scale and indeed sheer amount of data produced by CERN required international collaboration. And it was also a way of building Europe, in Krige’s sense. CERN has been a model polity in several ways. It is well known how the world wide web started as a tool to manage CERN’s documents. CERN was also a model and inspiration for European collaboration in other fields, especially space (ESRO, ELDO and ESA) and molecular biology (EMBO). It was Edoardo Amaldi, a CERN founder, who recommended a European space organisation in 1959, as soon as the commissioning of the CERN’s first large particle accelerator demonstrated that European large-scale scientific collaboration could work[9], while the foundational meeting of EMBO took place at CERN in 1962 between Leo Szilard, CERN director Victor Weisskopf, James Watson and John Kendrew.[10]

Other projects include Euratom, JET and the Franco-German Laue-Langevin Institute. Euratom was one of the pillars of the European communities. The Joint European Torus fusion project, sited at Culham, was the ‘first joint undertaking created by the European Communities’.[11] The British siting of JET illustrated the advantages of joining discussions early. The older Laue-Langevin Institute, built around a high flux neutron source, shows what happens when the UK joined discussions late. Physicists at Munich and Grenoble had both benefited from Atoms for Peace initiatives.[12] In the 1950s and 1960s, improved relations, exemplified at the top by those between Adenauer and de Gaulle, meant that both governments ‘were looking for ways of showing their good will’. Scientists, especially Heinz Maier-Leibnitz in Munich and Louis Néel in Grenoble seized the opportunity. It was never going to be easy for the UK to join a project designed to display the strength of the Paris-Bonn axis. Furthermore it was only after the minister for education and science, Margaret Thatcher, turned down a national high neutron flux reactor in 1972 that British scientists pushed to join the ILL. The Science Research Council subscribed to ILL on the same day as Britain joined the EEC – new year’s day 1973. However, despite paying one third of capital costs, the request to add the name “Bragg” to the Laue-Langevin Institute was turned down.[13]

Even before the UK was allowed into Europe, a mechanism had been found to manage the negotiation of European collaboration beyond the borders of the EEC, especially of research on a smaller scale to the giant institutions of CERN or space research. In the 1960s, as part of a general trend for European governments to respond to international competition by articulating explicit science policies (reflecting a model that science was crucial for economic advantage), the Council of Ministers of the Europe of Six set up a Committee for Medium-Term Economic Policy (in 1964) followed by a sub-committee on science and technology (PREST, in 1965).[14] PREST produced two reports – known after their chairs as the Maréchal Report of October 1967 and the Aigrain Report of March 1969 – which identified areas and specific proposals for European cooperation.[15] As a result a new body – Coopération Européenne dans le domaine de la recherché scientifique et technique, or COST – was launched in November 1971, firstly, as a ‘a vehicle for carrying out “a la carte” concerted action projects outside community programmes’, and second , to provide European countries that were not members of the Community with ‘an opportunity to participate in Community programmes’.[16] COST was opposed by countries (such as Belgium) that favoured a single integrated Community research policy. COST was supported by those (including the UK before and after joining the EEC) who saw advantage in flexibility. By 1978 COST consisted of 9 EC members (including by then of course the UK) and 10 others.[17] By then, given the free choice that the COST mechanism allowed, the UK was party to 11 of 14 projects.

That gives a flavour of some, but by no means all, European science collaboration. Now, what do we learn now the archives have been opened?

First, we can note that the commentators have viewed COST as a ‘paradoxical success’, in that despite its ‘institutional instability’ and an ‘extremely troubled existence’ it coordinated a lot of research.[18] The new documents show that the specific reasons, at both high and low levels, what the nature of this instability was. So, for example, the record of a the high-level but informal tripartite meeting between the UK, Germany and France, chaired by Alan Cottrell in November 1972, is quite explicit about the different visions for European collaboration found among the three and outside.[19] Germany wanted to COST to push forward on a programme of coordinated fundamental research projects; by choosing fundamental science ‘administrative and political complications’ would be kept to a minimum, and an exemplary record of success achieved. The alternative would be that OECD would step in to the void which was a ‘danger’, ‘scientifically and politically’. France ‘felt that co-ordination of fundamental research’ was precisely what COST should not do. The UK favoured a different set of projects again. At a low level, the documents reveal complaints and gripes as the gears of European bureaucratic coordination ground slowly. For example, one civil servant recorded the ‘rather dismal experience’ of COST project 43 (on ocean data buoys): ‘meetings heavily weighted with politics, bedevilled by squabbles between the French and Germans and largely devoid of science’.[20] Or you find revealing gossip – for example, as one civil servant confided to another:

There was another scandal over a vast Institute of Practical Philosophy which apparently would make science (and other) policy decisions in a scientific and unambiguously correct way. It now has 71 staff but has not yet got around to making a decision. However the director, von Weiszacker, plays chess with the Federal Chancellor…[21]

However, the headline finding from reading the released archives is that the UK’s position was a sceptical one towards the idea of a single science or technology policy at a European level – or indeed to coordination of European science or technology policies in a significant way. In the late 1960s, with entry into Europe on the horizon (but following the French veto of the UK’s entry into the Common Market in 1968), the approach was to welcome scientific and technological cooperation conditional on widening Europe. For example, here is Harold Wilson’s handwritten minute on whether to accept a proposal to move forward on the Aigrain report:

As long as we are not forthcoming. Our job is to prove that real cooperation is impossible outside a united and widened community.[22]

Once the issue of widening Europe had been settled, the scepticism towards a single science or technology policy was articulated directly. The European Commission saw enlargement as an opportunity to consider objectives afresh and to propose a new coordinated policy, in a strong form as urged by the energetic european commissioner for industry, research and technology Altiero Spinelli and in a more pragmatic form after Spinelli’s remit was split by the commissioner for science and education Ralf Dahrendorf.[23] While impressed by the personal characters of both Spinelli and Dahrendorf, the UK position was that a unified science or technology policy was unwelcome. Brian Flowers, chair of the UK’s Science Research Council, and from November 1974 appointed chair of the new European Science Foundation, noted in March 1972 that he found in conversation ‘quite a number of people still think in terms of an overall science policy, and believe in the linear model: research -> technology -> industrial innovation -> profits’.[24] (Note: the ‘linear model’, as an actors’ term, certainly did exist!) A policy statement from March 1973 stated bluntly that a separate science or technology policy ‘cannot sensibly be developed’, instead policies only meant sense when analysed at sectoral level: ‘the application of technology should be part of and should serve industrial policy’.[25] Not all countries should need to cooperate on every project, and a door should always be open beyond the communities to third parties. Activities should be cost effective. Inter-governmental cooperation was often to be preferred to Community organisation of projects.

The extra ingredient here was the background of Heath’s new national science policy exemplified by the Rothschild proposals to link some national decisions to the customer-contractor principle. As the same document stated: ‘in Europe as in the UK, research and development should be undertaken only to meet the needs of particular sectors by(??) the customer-contractor principle’.[26] As one official wrote, after a sceptical review of the Spinelli proposals: ‘floreat Rothschild’.[27] (The significance of Rothschild’s customer-contractor principle – the customer states what research they want, the contractor provides it, for a named price – is that it represents market – ie neo-liberal – language in science policy in an early, distinct and ultimately influential form.)

How are we to understand this position? It seems to me that there are three positions: first, that it was a principled position, which started with Rothschild and deduced a European position. This seems unlikely, as similar sentiments can be found in the 1960s. Second, that it was simply an extension of the absence of a single science policy at home. Since science policy was essentially sectoral at home, then this was the position to take in Europe. Third, however, it is a hypothesis that can be advanced (but not tested until more archival work has been done), that this approach strengthened as preparations for entry into Europe allowed UK officials to witness the  ‘meetings heavily weighted with politics, bedevilled by squabbles between the French and Germans and largely devoid of science’, noted earlier. The gossip turns out to have a substantial, accumulative impact on policy.

 

Japan

Since we are focussing on the Foreign Office, we can keep a broad eye on the whole diplomatic landscape. The case if Japan should, a priori, be interesting because by the 1980s the country is seen as a potential model for the encouragement of competitive, high-technology industries. But the diplomatic view in the 1970s was often, as we shall see, still looking backwards to the past. It is therefore an open question about how science and technology diplomacy with Japan developed.

The changing relations between Britain and Japan can be gauged by examining the responses to despatches sent from the Tokyo embassy to London in the 1970s. Three ambassadorial despatches are of particular interest: two from Sir John Pilcher (‘Japan in the 1970s: the Trade Mark and the Sword’ in 1970, and the follow up ‘Guns and Butter’ of 1972) and one from Sir Michael Wilford (‘Japan is Entering the Electronic Age’ of 1978). Pilcher had acted as a student interpreter in the Japan consular service before the Second World War.[28] After stints in Tsingdao, London (including time as head of the Japan and Pacific Department in the Foreign Office), Rome, Manila and Vienna, Pilcher was appointed ambassador to Japan in 1967. He sent a ‘first impressions’ despatch in February 1968, in which he wondered whether ‘the myriad chimney stacks that link Tokyo with Osaka’ were really “all that remains of the dreams of warriors”; in ‘the Trade Mark and Sword’, Pilcher returned to the question: ‘is the old militarism dead, quiescent or about to be revived?’[29] Following defeat, the Japanese people had blamed the military for leading the Emperor and society down the wrong path. An alternative path, a civil path to economic prosperity, had been chosen. A now prosperous nation was being asked to contribute to its own defence, which in turn meant rearmament (including even nuclear armament) and a rehabilitation of the military. Yasuhiro Nakasone was the politician leading this rearmament. Japanese sensibilities, young and old, included a strong distaste for dependence on other nations. The United States had withdrawn from Okinawa, while still committing to defence of Japan. In 1968 young rioters had demanded a rejection of the Security Treaty. Pilcher summarised the situation:

The stage is now set for the time when the Self-Defence Forces, adequately armed and rehabilitated in the public mind, could effectively undertake the task of defending Japan, within the framework of the Security Treaty with the United States. In the process of rehabilitation, some recourse has been had to the old military traditions of Japan. The sanction of the Emperor, once the tool of the military has been invoked. The old experts have become involved in plans for rearmament. In the back ground the basic virtues of loyalty and patriotism are still present; the sense of cohesion remains. The ingredients for a military revival are all there. Will they be misused?

Pilcher thought, on balance, the answer was no. The ‘old with their rancours’ were dying away. The middle-aged embraced the path to prosperity and ‘looked realistically at the facts’, and were represented by Nakasone. The young, ‘emancipated by prosperity from the restraints of the past’ had few of the complications that beset the middle generation. While there remained a small risk that ‘Ersatz religions of false ideologies might occupy their minds’, so long as the young remained prosperous then a return to militarism was unlikely.

On 20^th and 21^st December, 1971, Edward Heath met Richard Nixon in Bermuda, an attempt to initiate a new Anglo-American relationship, which, firstly, was seen in some quarters to have become less close, and, second, needed reconsideration in the light of the decision taken for the United Kingdom to enter the EEC. Other topics under discussion included relations between the west and China: Nixon’s triumphant visit to China would take place the following February and the United States did not want the waters muddied.[30] Bermuda seems to have warmed Anglo-American relations, and mutual support was evidence over issues encountered in late 1971 and early 1972, including the renegotiation of military bases in Malta, troubles in Northern Ireland and Christmas bombings in Vietnam.[31] Also discussed, it is clear, was Japan. Under the heading “Bringing Japan into the Western family”, the private secretary of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office wrote to his counterpart in the Cabinet Office: ‘In the light of the P.M.’s talks with President Nixon in Bermuda we have been looking at the present extent of Anglo-Japanese contacts with a view to recommending improvements’. Presumably a decision was taken by Western powers to embrace Japan further to counter adverse reactions to the opening of relations between the United States and China.

Into this mix, in January 1972, came Pilcher’s second despatch on the subject of Japan in the 1970s. The ambassador described the pressures pointing towards Japanese rearmament. Three American moves had prompted a change of mood: Nixon’s Guam doctrine of 1969 told western allies ‘assume the primary responsibility of providing the manpower for [their own] defense’. There would be no repeat of Vietnam. Second, on 16^th July 1971, Nixon had, without consulting allies, in particular Japan, announced a reversal of US-China policies. Third, on 15^th August 1971, the president ended the Bretton Woods system that had structured international financial relations by declaring that dollars and gold would no longer be directly convertible. The last two announcements were labelled in Japan the two “Nixon shocks”. ‘Somewhere in the package sought by the Americans’, noted Pilcher of the consequences, “was a commitment that Japan should support, with more purchases, the ailing but politically powerful United States armament industry’.[32] Alternatively the Japanese arms industry could expand. Within the Japanese state, the ministries of finance and foreign affairs favoured the former; while MITI and the Defence Agency favoured the latter. ‘Many people in Japan’, Pilcher observed, echoing Eisenhower, ‘see a greater danger in an industrial complex manipulating military policy and extending military potential than in a recrudescence of militarism in its classical sense’. However, there was ‘no doubt that industrialists control contemporary Japan and that by comparison with them the military occupy a humble situation’.

There was no more controversial issue in Japan than the question of nuclear weapons on home soil. The possibility was ‘political dynamite’, wrote Pilcher; he continued:

It is admitted that in present circumstances, now aggravated by United States policies, Japan must look to her own defence as soon as she can in a world still afflicted by strife between armed nations and in which a nation cannot feel safe without some form of nuclear defence. But it would still be outside political possibility for any democratic Japanese government today to proceed overtly towards a breach of Japan’s three nuclear principles, i.e. No possession, No admission and No manufacture. I am nonetheless of the opinion that these principles could be breached by the end of the decade.

Again the choice, if such a path was taken, was between home development or buying in nuclear defence from abroad. On the one hand, Japan had begun to acquire ‘uranium enrichment technology and the Japanese Space programme could be the basis of a delivery system’, recorded Pilcher, while on the other, ‘a leading Japanese industrialist has suggested that his country might rent its share of the US nuclear umbrella, both to dispense with the need for the creation of a national deterrent and also to satisfy US demands for financial support without damage to the Japanese armaments industry’.

Overall, Pilcher summarised the Japanese choice in the early 1970s as one between spending the accumulating national wealth on ‘guns or butter’. While at present the Japanese had chosen ‘butter’ – pollution control, housing, schools, hospitals, drainage, improved retirement pensions, shorter working hours and cheaper imported food – to ignore the gathering pressures to choose rearmament would be ‘ill-advised’.

It was in this context that science and technology diplomacy initiatives developed in the 1970s and 1980s. My first impression is that Japan became increasingly a point of comparison, especially with regard to industrial competitiveness during the period, yet we do not know what the consequences were for what this attention might have shaped or even displaced, not least with regards to Europe. A historical project on transnational science diplomacy needs to keep these broad comparisons in view.

 

Eastern Europe

An interesting area of new policy in the late 1960s and 1970s were the increasing number of International Technology Agreements signed between the UK and other countries. Starting with Romania, Hungary and Poland in 1967, these agreements had a primarily Eastern Bloc focus. By 1971 these three countries had been joined by the Soviet Union (1968), Czechoslovakia (1968), Yugoslavia (1968), Bulgaria (1969) and Argentina (1971), with further memoranda of understanding signed with Finland (1970) and Italy (1969).[33] These agreements did not cover ‘scientific exchanges of a pure research type, nor the exchange of specialists in narrow fields of interest’, which could be covered by separate “Cultural Agreements”. Nor did they offer direct technical aid. What they did do was aim to ‘create a favourable climate and “sponsorship” for collaboration’, leading to sales of products, patents, licenses under patents, and other trade opportunities. The lead organisation on the British side was the International Technological Collaboration Unit (ICTU) within the DTI, while the main participants were firms. There was always a danger of time wasted through ‘rather ritual sessions’, or misunderstandings over what each side could bring to the table. Formal encounters were therefore downplayed, and less formal study tours and fringe meetings encouraged. The Agreements were considered to be more flexible and targeted than the equivalent tools of foreign technological policy deployed by France and Italy.

The supporters of the Agreements struggled, it has to be said, to produce quantitative evidence of their “value”, insisting instead that they must be seen as initiative that would repay effort on a longer term.[34] They were more robust, however, in their rejection of charges that the Agreements ‘encourage or promote a drain of valuable technological information to the other side with no corresponding advantage to the UK’. Instead, firms were put under no pressure to release technological information and if they did so it was because the firms themselves saw commercial advantage.

So what? The first point is that here was an area of new science and technology diplomacy where the Foreign Office was not the lead department. Second, how do these agreements compare to French, German and other bilateral agreements? Were they similar or different? Competitive or coordinated? Were the agreements at all influential in economic terms, or were they merely symbolic, a means of keeping diplomatic doors ajar? Did the agreements matter for history of technology?

I think these Agreements are interesting first as a policy means of organising encounters for science-based industries in the years of relative Cold War détente, and second as a model which later and ultimately perhaps more significant relationships were built, especially with China. In 1975-1976, the ICTU had canvassed industrial opinion about a possible bilateral scientific and technological agreement with China, and had received the response there was no need for one, indeed that it might ‘do positive harm’.[35]

 

China

(Note: I have written up this section in much more detail elsewhere.[36])

The late 1970s were pivotal years for the history of modern China. The Cultural Revolution had encouraged attacks on Chinese experts and centres of research and learning, with few institutions (primarily military research ones) emerging unscathed. A period of stasis ended with the death of Mao in 1976, followed by the high-level strife of the Gang of Four, and finally the consolidation of power under Deng Xiaoping. From the West’s perspective, one visible sign of change was the new policies directed outwards from China to acquire … Science and technology were crucial in this process…

To get a sense of the dramatic changes in attitude and the consequences for the UK’s scientific relations with China, let’s start in the early 1970s.

Scientific contacts between the UK and People’s Republic of China, active since Cyril Hinshelwood’s visit in 1959, had been ‘brought to an abrupt end [in 1966] by the Cultural Revolution’.[37] In October 1971, the Foreign Secretary of the Royal Society, Kingsley Dunham, had written to the Academica Sinica, regarding the resumption of relations. In January 1972, Yueh Chih-chien, acting secretary of the Academica Sinica, replied saying that Dunham’s letter had been ‘carefully studied’, and agreed that both sides might ‘send some scientific workers to visit each others countries and carry out scientific exchanges’.[38] Dunham in turn proposed a visit by a Royal Society party, including the president, Alan Hodgkin, Dunham and the secretary D.C. Martin in May of that year.[39] Privately, however, the Foreign Office was less than impressed by the modest opening:

The general tone of the letter seems to show that the present regime in China are no more able to make an open-handed and generous gesture than any of their predecessors. The careful restriction upon the numbers and background of any admissible visitors is true to for and surely makes a bit of a nonsense of any real exchange.[40]

Outside of these high-level institutional channels, for example, scientists had little success gaining entry to China for research. The pressure brought to bear by the (ex-?)MP Malcolm MacDonald, via the Foreign Office, in1972 to let in John MacKinnon and his wife, both naturalists, to study pandas, was unsuccessful.[41] (MacKinnon, a protégé of Jane Goodall and Niko Tinbergen, and now an expert on Chinese biodiversity finally got to China in 1987.[42])

Nevertheless, the Royal Society and Academica Sinica arranged exchanges of delegations in May and October 1972.[43] The reports of the visit of the Royal Society delegation led by Alan Hodgkin in May 1972 makes fascinating reading. The devastation wrought by the Cultural Revolution is diplomatically recorded, as well as overall personal impressions (lots of bicycles, ‘drab’). The overall conclusion – expressed in the Royal Society report as a specific comment on the Peking National University, but interpreted by the Foreign Office as a more general conclusion[44] – was that there was ‘nothing in what we saw… to lead us to think that exchanges … could be profitably contemplated in the near future’.

Chinese scientific visits to the UK, on the other hand, picked up, with visits occurring every year. In 1975, for example, three delegations concerned with machine tools, agricultural research and high-speed photography visited, while the British Council enabled 38 Chinese students to also make the trip. Technological missions included link-ups Chinese students at Hawker Siddeley, British oil engineers visits to China, and a deal over the Spey aero engine. These low-level exchanges were also to be found between China and other countries, notably Germany and France. ‘Increased scientific contacts with China, which is fast becoming an important market for nuclear and advanced technology, could be seen as an investment in the future’, noted the Foreign Office, ‘if we can make Chinese scientists and technicians familiar with British methods and equipment we could be better placed to compete for commercial contacts when the opportunities arise’.[45] Even in the nuclear field, where the ‘possibility of substantial nuclear trade’ remained ‘some years’ away, ‘if we do not take advantage now of China’s present positive attitude, we may [fall]… irretrievably behind the French’.

The arguments for encouraging scientific relations with China were threefold: encouraging trade (at the expense of competitors), the desirability of scientific international contact in and of itself, and finally strategically this placed science in an avant garde position: ‘Britain has a broad political interest in involving China more closely with the EEC and ourselves and science is a field where this can be achieved’.[46] Arguments against the first two were that there was a danger that the traffic of technological expertise would be ‘one-way’, while the restrictions, such as low quotas and refusal of access to much of China, on scientific exchanges, as well as the feeling that there were ‘few fields in which [UK] scientists have much to learn from the Chinese’, made them of much reduced value.[47] So it was perhaps the third, strategic, reason that encouraged the FO to watch for and support further openings.

The opening came in early 1978. In China, a landmark was the lengthy speech made by Fang Yi, minister in charge of the State Scientific and Technical Commission, at the National Science Conference, Beijing?, on March 1978.[48] (The conference also heard a speech by the president of the Chinese Academy of Science, 86-year old Kuo Mo-jo, titled ‘It is springtime for science’. Deng Xiaoping also probably spoke.[49]) Fang Yi placed science at heart of the four modernisations, and announced a series of dramatic expansions in resources, personnel and facilities, as well as specific policies for agricultural science, energy research, materials, electronic computers, laser and space science, high energy physics, and genetic engineering. Finally, Fang Yi announced that ‘a logical corollary to a philosophy which maximises the pursuit of scientific knowledge’ was an ‘approach of utilizing the experience of others and avoiding the duplication of their pioneering efforts’, which in turn meant greatly increasing scientific and technical cooperation.

An ad hoc meeting of Whitehall representatives gathered in March and agreed that a new attempt to secure a scientific and technological agreement would now ‘do no harm and might do some political good’.[50] Industry (for example Hawker Siddeley) supported the move.[51] Simultaneously, the Chinese embassy in Tokyo signalled that, following ‘China’s decision to modernise every aspect of her industry and agriculture’ exchanges should be explored.[52] ‘My impression’, glossed the UK’s scientific counsellor in Tokyo, was ‘that they need technical help and are prepared to go to considerable lengths to get what they want’.[53] Adding nuance, he added, after a discussion with more Chinese diplomatic staff, that the Chinese were weighing up to what extent to buy in expertise (and from whom) and to what extent ‘they “should go it alone”’.[54] The ignorance of the professional observers of science and technology in China should not be underestimated. As one informed commentator at the Department of Industry noted, for example, ‘it wasn’t a question of what, if any, research was being done at a specific university: no-one was certain of that University was still in existence’.[55]

The UK’s rivals here were primarily Japan but also France and Germany. Paris received the same signals as London, and had speedily signed an agreement on scientific and technical cooperation in February. British diplomats wheedled the document from French diplomats in Tokyo, and it was read with interest. It was judged to be ‘very unremarkable’.[56] The French had no desire to ‘let things get out of control or proliferate like their scientific relations with the Russians’, which had become burdensome. The Germans followed a similar path.[57] So the UK saw an opportunity, so long as a better agreement could be made. As a model, the UK government turned to its technological agreements made through ITSU. Professor John Ashworth, of the Central Policy Review Staff, wrote:

As you know, there is a growing fear here that we are not doing enough to stimulate trade with China and a bilateral agreement along the lines of the ones we have with East European countries might help. Such an agreement would involve science and technological matters as well as economic and trade concerns…[58]

In late April and May, diplomats received further signals that cultural, scientific and technological agreements would ‘receive favourable consideration’ by the Chinese.[59]

In fact, of the other agreements in the works, none were so advanced as the scientific one, partly it seems because Taiwanese complications did not arise or were not raised.[60] Again, therefore, science was an avant garde. A second general Whitehall meeting on 17 May 1978 agreed that it was in UK interests to negotiate a bilateral science and technology agreement. The model would be the ICTU-arranged agreements with the Eastern Bloc. Thus China was taken to be, at least in this instance, a larger Romania.

The Royal Society and the research councils were consulted, with the Royal Society stating that it ‘had no evidence that their existing contacts would be at risk if we failed to conclude an Agreement’.[61] John Ashworth now wrote to the Lord Privy Seal (Fred Peart) urging the formal, ministerial level opening of negotiations.[62] On 23 June 1978, Peart in turn asked Shirley Williams, as secretary of state for education and science, to proceed.[63]  She visited China in July 1978.

The contrasting experiences of three British scientists who wanted to visit China were also used, at this critical juncture, to draw policy implications. Professor Cocking and Dr Sunderland were both botanists funded by the Royal Society. They visited the Dr Man-chang Wiu and were unimpressed by his well-publicised genetic engineering experiments with goldfish. However, they were both impressed by Chinese plant genetics, judging the wheat and maize work to be ‘undisputedly’ world leading. Cocking, who spoke no Chinese, was subsequently invited to work at the Institute of Plant Physiology in Beijing. In contrast, Dr Stephenson, a Newcastle university-based astronomer, was refused entry, despite the fact that he spoke Chinese and wished only to consult records. ‘The difference’, noted the British Embassy to the FCO, was that ‘Professor Cocking possesses knowledge which China wants; Dr Stephenson does not’.[64] The Chinese approval of Dorothy Hodgkin’s visits to China to work on insulin fitted the same pattern. It was an example of one-sided, self-interested exchange that those negotiating the proposed agreement must seek ways to avoid. But also the existence of world-leading Chinese science made the agreement desirable.

One interesting feature of the growing scientific links between the UK and China in this period is that the Royal Society and the UK government followed separate tracks that only occasionally met. The UK government approach was dominated by issues of strategy, trade and competition with rivals. (To give a – excuse the pun – concrete example of what was being pushed, officials urged the highlighting of Pilkingtons’ new Cemfil, a glass fibre for reinforcing cement.[65]) The Royal Society approach covered science, extending to ‘applied science’ but not, as the Society Foreign Secretary Michael Stoker explained to John Ashworth ‘technology, with its commercial and industrial implications’.[66] The occasion of this explanation was Stoker’s writing to Ashworth with regards to the expansion of links between the Royal Society and the Chinese Academy of Sciences. He suggested a ‘meeting of interested parties’ ahead of the Chinese academicians visit in October 1978 to ‘consider and coordinate our initiatives and responses’, adding that ‘Depending on the Chinese attitude, we might even continue meetings subsequently to formulate strategies for prompting strong scientific links with China’. The point I want to draw from this is that these meetings had not happened before.

Closely foreshadowing the main event, the Royal Society and the Chinese Academy of Sciences signed an Agreement on Scientific Cooperation in early November 1978. It provided for a range of scientific interchange, including short-term visits and lectures by senior scientists, exchange of junior scientists, participation in seminars and meetings, joint research projects and exchange of scientific materials and publications.[67] The Chinese began extracting the best of British science, for example soliciting a state-of-the-art bubble chamber, based on the device at CERN.[68] The Royal Society formed its China Committee, with members drawn across the research councils, academia and elsewhere, to review relations.[69]

The senior bilateral intergovernmental Science and Technology Agreement was drafted in autumn 1978 and signed at Lancaster House, London, on 15 November 1978 by David Owen and by vice-premier Wang Chen.[70] It was the first treaty signed between China and the UK since the communist victory of 1949.[71] The agreement between the Royal Society and the Chinese Academy of Sciences was considered to come under its ‘general umbrella’.[72] It was, in the judgement of British diplomats and officials, a better agreement than the French and Germans got.[73] [more from George letter on details] On a wider stage, it was also considered to be a good visible counterweight to lack of progress on defence matters.[74] Some of the sticking points in the negotiations are intriguing. For example the Chinese did not recognise the category of ‘fundamental science’:

One immutable point, which we tried several times to get round, was the Chinese insistence that fundamental science should be treated in the same way as other possible fields of cooperation, since the Chinese do not themselves recognise fundamental science as different in kind from applied science. Indeed, given their way of controlling intellectual activity in this country, their position was hardly surprising. (Earlier, and perhaps not consistently, they had hinted that they would not be prepared to include fundamental science at all.)[75]

It is a matter for further investigation to find out how the Royal Society and the Chinese Academy of Sciences negotiated this issue of ‘fundamental science’. (As an aside it is precisely because this kind of research reveals assumptions behind the nature of science in different societies that makes it particularly valuable.)

Immediately, scientists and engineers, as well as science-based industrial firms, took up the opportunity of selling their wares in China. The exchange was also symbolic. In July 1979, for example, 6 Sinclair calculators were proudly given as gifts.[76] [more in CAB 164/1430 and 1431] One of the first, and most enthusiastic, missionaries was Peter Jost, self-proclaimed founder of the science of tribology – the science of surfaces in contact: of wear, friction, traction and lubrication. The British Tribology Mission to China left in May 1979.[77] Fittingly, then the science greased the wheels of diplomacy.

 

Conclusion

The goals of the Foreign Office for diplomacy were very broad and played for high stakes. Science diplomacy, it has to be said, was only one of many moves within this game, and any historical project on the subject needs to address this subordinate role. Even after the entry of the UK into the EEC in 1973, the goals were often national in terms of interest, and before entry the manoeuvres in science diplomacy may be seen as steps towards more important objectives (not least securing entry itself). In this paper I have argued that the period of the 1970s and 1980s is especially inviting for historians: there is a wealth of unstudied documents, there are key events, and the world was pivoting towards the present in ways we need to re-examine. I have also sketched some of the potential topics and questions that could be explored. In the case of the EEC one question might be the extent a single European science policy was seen as possible or desirable. Another set of questions would focus on specific projects, such as facilities, technological systems or institutes. In the case of the Eastern Bloc, there are comparative questions to be asked about bilateral technological agreements. In the case of China, UK efforts were, firstly, seen as in competition with parallel German and French moves to re-establish post-Mao relations; and, secondly, science diplomacy played its – typical, common? – role as an advance guard for later, more trade-related diplomatic moves. In all of these cases, the broader diplomatic goals, in which Europe was balanced with initiatives in relations with the United States, Japan and China, to name just three important axes, need to be kept in view.

In general, we need further, deeper research to understand UK science diplomacy as both competitor and co-operator in European science diplomacy. I repeat my sincere offer: I am very keen to contribute to collaborative, historical research to answer these, and similar, questions.

 

[1] COI, Britain and International Scientific Co-operation. COI Reference Pamphlet 81. 2^nd edition (1^st edtion 1968), London: HMSO, 1978.

[2] COI, op. cit.

[3] The FCO (Foreign and Commonwealth Office) was formed in 1968 from the merger of the two offices. The Commonwealth Office had only existed for two years, and had its origin in the Colonial Office.

[4] For the latter see, for example: Peter Collins, The Royal Society and the Promotion of Science since 1960, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015.

[5] So the Department of Industry provided the administrative support to the Overseas Technical Information Unit, which briefed Britain’s Scientific Counsellors (essentially science diplomats) in Washington, Paris, Bonn, Moscow and Tokyo, as well as coordinating Britain’s contributions to EEC programmes. The Department of Education and Science was responsible for research council functions. The Ministry of Overseas Development dealt with aid. Other government departments might have international connections stemming from specific projects. The Royal Society was the main representative in non-governmental collaborations. The British Council covered more ‘soft power’ cultural cooperation and mutual understanding projects.

[6] John Krige, ‘Historical synthesis’, in John Krige and Luca Guzzetti (eds.), History of European Scientific and Technological Cooperation, Luxembourg: Office for Official Publications of the European Communities, 1997, pp. 439-444, pp. 439-440.

[7] Krige, op. cit., p. 441.

[8] Krige, op. cit., p. 443.

[9] John Krige, Arturo Russo and Lorenza Sebasta, ‘A brief history of the European Space Agency’, in Krige and Guzzetti, op. cit., pp. 195-220.

[10] Michael Morange, ‘EMBO and EMBL’, in Krige and Guzzetti, pp. 77-92.

[11] Edwin N. Shaw, ‘Joint European Torus’, in Krige and Guzzetti, op. cit., pp. 165-178.

[12] Dominique Pestre, ‘The prehistory of the Franco-German Laue-Langevin Institute’, in Krige and Guzzetti, op. cit., pp. 137-143.

[13] Harry Atkinson, ‘Commentary on the history of ILL and ESRF’, in Krige and Guzzetti, op. cit., pp. 144-153, p. 146.

[14] Jean-Luc Roland, ‘The history of COST: an unexpected successful cooperation’, in Krige and Guzzetti, op. cit., pp. 355-368, p. 358.

[15] Maréchal identified seven areas (informatics, telecommunications, transport, oceanography, materials, environmental protection and meteorology) while Aigrain listed 47 research proposals.

[16] Roland, op. cit..

[17] Austria, Finland, Greece, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey and Yugoslavia.

[18] Roland, op. cit., p. 367.

[19] TNA FD 9/1017. ‘Informal tripartite talks on issues of science policy’, 7 November 1972.

[20] TNA FD 9/1017. R.J.H. Beverton to Odgers, 12 December 1972.

[21] TNA FD 9/1017. S.F. Edwards to Odgers, 20 May 1975.

[22] IMG4946

[23] TNA FCO 55/907 …

[24] TNA FCO 55/909. Brian Flowers, ‘European policy for science and technology’, 2 March 1972.

[25] TNA FCO 55/1051. ‘United Kingdom policy towards science and technology in the European Community’, by Industry, Science and Energy Department, CO(??), 16 March 1973.

[26] TNA FCO 55/1051. ‘United Kingdom policy towards science and technology in the European Community’, by Industry, Science and Energy Department, CO(??), 16 March 1973.

[27] TNA FCO 55/908. Holdgate to Reiners, ‘R and D in Europe’, 19 July 1972.

[28] Hugh Cortazzi ‘Pilcher, Sir John Arthur (1912-1990), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.

[29] TNA FCO 55/899. John Pilcher, ‘Japan in the 1970s: the trade mark and the sword’.

[30] K.A. Hamilton, ‘A “week that changed the world”: Britain and Nixon’s China visit of 21-28 February 1972’, Diplomacy and Statecraft (2004) 15, pp. 117-135.

[31] Alex Spelling ‘Edward Heath and Anglo-American relations 1970-1974: a reappraisal’, Diplomacy and Statecraft (2009), pp. 638-658, p. 646.

[32] TNA FCO 55/899. John Pilcher, ‘Japan in the 1970s: guns and butter’.

[33] TNA FCO 55/899. ‘International technological agreements’, December 1971.

[34] TNA FCO 55/899. ‘International technological agreements’, December 1971.

[35] TNA CAB 164/1383. Ashowrth to Priston, 8 March 1978.

[36] Jon Agar, ‘“It’s springtime for science”: renewing China-UK scientific relations in the 1970s’, Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London (2013) 67(1), pp. 7-24.

[37] TNA CAB 164/1474. ‘Scientific exchanges between the UK and China’, 29 March 1976. TNA CAB 164/1385. Royal Society, ‘Relations with the Academy of Sciences of the People’s Republic of China. Background note about relations between the Academy and the Royal Society’, 1978.

[38] TNA FCO 34/153. Yueh Chih-chien to Dunham, 29 January 1972.

[39] TNA FCO 34/153. Dunham to Yueh Chih-chien, 9 March 1972.

[40] TNA FCO 34/153. Lamb to Vines, 23 March 1972.

[41] TNA FCO 34/153. MacDonald to Morgan (Head of Far Eastern Department, FCO), 22 February 1992.

[42] Sean Gallagher (Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting), ‘Featured expert: John MacKinnon’,  http://pulitzercenter.org/blog/untold-stories/china-wetlands-john-mackinnon#

[43] See for example TNA FCO 34/153. Royal Society, ‘Report of visit of Royal Society Delegation to China as guests of the Academica Sinica, 20-30 May 1972’.

[44] TNA FCO 34/153. ‘Delegation of scientists from the Chinese Academy of Sciences’, by Cultural Exchange Department of FCO, October 1972.

[45] TNA CAB 164/1474. ‘Scientific exchanges between the UK and China’, 29 March 1976.

[46] TNA CAB 164/1474. ‘Scientific exchanges between the UK and China’, 29 March 1976.

[47] TNA CAB 164/1474. ‘Scientific exchanges between the UK and China’, 29 March 1976.

[48] TNA CAB 164/1383. ‘National Science Conference’, notes by Canadian embassy, Beijing.

[49] TNA CAB 164/1385. ‘’Mrs Williams’ visit to China. Brief No. 6’, July 1978.

[50] TNA CAB 164/1383. Ashworth to Priston, 8 March 1978.

[51] TNA CAB 164/1383. Steele to Ashworth, 10 May 1978.

[52] TNA CAB 164/1383. Minutes, ‘Meeting at the Chinese Embassy – Wednesday 8 March’.

[53] TNA CAB 164/1383. Prentice to Goodman, 14 March 1978.

[54] TNA CAB 164/1383. ‘Visit by Mt Chen, Mr Chang and Mr Wu of the Embassy of the People’s Republic of China – Wednesday 15 March – 3.00PM’, 18 March 1978.

[55] TNA CAB 164/1383. Goodman to Ashworth, 31 March 1978.

[56] TNA CAB 164/1383. Macrae (British Embassy, Tokyo) to Lovelock (Energy, Science and Space Department, FCO), 10 February 1978.

[57] TNA CAB 164/1383. Telegram, Davies (Peking) to London, 21 April 1978. Telegram, Ehrman (Peking) to Hannay (FCO), 8 May 1978.

[58] TNA CAB 164/1383. Ashworth to Prentice, 27 April 1978.

[59] TNA CAB 164/1383. Telegram, ‘Anglo-Chinese relations’, 2 May 1978. TNA CAB 164/1384. Telegram, Peking to London, 31 May 1978 and 7 June 1978. See also TNA CAB 164/1383, Goodman to Ashworth, 9 June 1978: ‘I was buttonholed last night at the Anglo/Finnish Joint Commission reception by Mr Chi Te-Yu the Third Secretary with responsibility for scientific affairs at the Chinese Embassy. Unprompted, he leapt enthusiastically into the possibilities of the above Agreement’, although on the issue of British progress ‘He smiled. I was unable to interpret why’.

[60] TNA CAB 164/1383. ‘UK/China bilateral agreements’, 18 May 1978. Agreements in the works were: an air services agreement (initialled in 1975 but unsigned because of Chinese conditions relating to Taiwan), a shipping agreement (negotiations suspended), the proposed scientific agreement, a cultural agreement and a consular agreement.

[61] TNA CAB 164/1383. Minutes, ‘Meeting to discuss a Science and Technology Agreement with China….19 June 1978 a 3.00pm’, 20 June 1978.

[62] TNA CAB 164/1383. Ashworth to Lord Privy Seal, 21 June 1978.

[63] TNA CAB 164/1383. Peart to Williams, 23 June 1978.

[64] TNA CAB 164/1383. Ehrman (Second Secretary, British Embassy) to Dean, 8 June 1978.

[65] TNA CAB 164/1385. Holdgate to Ashworth, 7 July 1978.

[66] TNA CAB 164/1385. Stoker to Ashworth, 4 July 1978

[67] TNA AT 82/139. ‘Agreement on scientific cooperation between the Royal Society of Londonand the Chinese Academy of Sciences’, November 1978.

[68] TNA AT 82/139. Minutes, ‘Meeting with members of delegation from PRC Academy of Sciences, at the Royal Society, 8 November’.

[69] TNA AT 82/139. Todd to Holdgate, 16 November 1978. Representatives came from the SRC, NERC, DoI, MRC, Department of Environment, British Council, ARC, ITCU, the Great Britain China Committee, DES, seven fellows of the Royal Society (including Joseph Needham), with the President, Todd, as chair and the Foreign Secretary, Stoker, as deputy chair.

[70] TNA CAB 164/1429. ‘Agreement on scientific and technological cooperation between the government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the government of the People’s Republic of China’. A separate Protocol was signed by Gerald Kaufman and Liu Hua-che’ing.

[71] The treaty itself is in TNA FO 93/23/68.

[72] TNA AT 82/139. Todd to Holdgate, 16 November 1978.

[73] TNA CAB 164/1429. George to Hannay, 13 November 1978.

[74] TNA CAB 164/1429. ‘Scientific and technological cooperation agreement with China’. 2 November 1978.

[75] TNA CAB 164/1429. George to Hannay, 13 November 1978.

[76] TNA CAB 164/1431. Franklin to Ashworth, 20 August 1979.

[77] TNA CAB 164/1430. Speech by Peter Jost, April 1979. Records of the British Tribology Mission to China, May 1979.