The UK Biological Weapons Program - Deadly Cultures: Biological Weapons Since 1945 - page 66

Wansbrough-Jones, writing of the 1956 decision to discontinue sea trials:
“At the DRPC yesterday the Committee wanted, I think, to vote against
BW in general but didn't quite know how to do it so the Chairman was
more inclined to be helpful...Onpresent notions of priority (global war)
it would really come out as priority six with no effort being allocated. I
accepted this without argument, because there really was no point in
arguing.” 74
The upshot of this maneuvering was that the trials were to be included
in the formal defense research program, but no resources would be de-
voted to them. Within the Ministry of Defence, Admiralty representatives
had already stated categorically that HMS Ben Lomond would not be made
available for future biological warfare field trials. 75 Negation was the final
British trial at sea with pathogens. The only concession for germ warfare
was that the DRPC recommended a review of both BW and chemical
weapons (CW) policy “against the background of the use of the megaton
bomb and the possible limitation of nuclear tests.” 76
The status of biological warfare had thus diminished radically during
the 1950s, from being placed on an equal research priority with nuclear
warfare, and assuming a complementary strategic deterrence role, to a
low status in defense policy and supported by a largely defense-orien-
tated research program. This change was, in part, a consequence of the
UK's increasing reliance on a nuclear deterrent and, in part, the result of
cutbacks in defense expenditure. One might have expected the gradual
shifts in program and policy to culminate in a firm Cabinet decision to
adopt a defensive biological warfare policy. Instead, the decision was sub-
sumed under a separate policy decision concerning chemical warfare. In
July 1956 the Cabinet took a highly secretive decision to abandon an of-
fensive CW capability. 77 Specifically, it ended the large-scale production
of nerve gas and the development of nerve-gas munitions and resolved to
destroy the residue of the World War II stockpile of other chemical agents
and weapons.
There was no mention of biological weapons in the record of this Cabi-
net decision on chemical weapons. Nonetheless, the DRPC staff, who
serviced the committee, interpreted the Cabinet decision over chemical
warfare in broader terms, contending: “The arguments which led to the
cancellation of weapons for the offensive use of chemical warfare agents