'Ways out of the Arms Race": The Second International Scientists' Congress

During the 1980's, Maurice Wilkins spent a significant amount of time promoting and campaigning on disarmament and development issues. While maintaining his long running membership of British Pugwash, Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), British Society for Social Responsibility in Science (BSSRS) and the World Federation of Scientific Worker's (WFSW), he also became honorary President of the Food and Disarmament International (FDI) organisation and an active member of scientists' against nuclear arms (SANA). It was the later that led to his involvement in the 'Ways out of the Arms Race' Second International Scientists' Congress held at Imperial College London, on the 2-4 December 1988. The conference aim was for imminent scientists from across the globe to discuss papers on nuclear, chemical and biological disarmament. It succeeded in doing so with the added benefit of providing political pressure by mobilising its attendance to protest on two concurrent political events: the abduction and imprisonment of the Israeli nuclear plant technician, Dr Mordechai Vanunu and the poison gas attacks by the Iraqi Army in Halabja in 1988. Evidence of the petitions and demonstrations are recorded in the papers of Maurice Wilkins which includes candid replies to him from representatives of the Israeli and Iraqi governments.


Campaign relating to Dr Mordechai Vanunu

Dr Mordechai Vanunu, was a former nuclear technician at the Negev Nuclear Research Center from 1976-1985. In 1986, whilst in Sydney, Australia, he met a Sunday Times journalist and revealed knowledge of the Israeli nuclear weapons programme before accompanying the journalist to London. It was during his time in London that the Israeli Government decided to capture Vanunu and hatched a plan to remove him from UK territory by getting an undercover Mosad agent to pretend to be an American tourist, named Cindy who Vanunu agreed to accompany to Rome. In Rome he was drugged and freighted back to Israeli where he was imprisoned for treason and confined for 18 years, including eleven years of solitary confinement.

 During the Congress, a demonstration was organised to the Israeli Embassy in London where a petition would be handed in asking for clemency for Mr Vananu. A significant number of the delegates signed the petition including fellow Nobel Prize winners, Dorothy Hodgkin and Joseph Rotblat.

The following summer, Wilkins received a reply from the Israeli Government's Ministry of Justice:

 

Campaign condemning gas attacks on Kurdish civilians

The Halabja massacre is now well known event due in part to the build up to the Second Iraq war and the fall of Sadam Hussain's regime. However, at the time of their occurence the international response was ambiguous with some international media coverage and western governmental officials siding with the official Iraqi line that no poison gas attacks were used against the Kurdish people. Wilkins sent a letter to the Iraqi ambassador in London and recieved a detailed reply with a number of attachments. The letter provides evidence of the divided media coverage and general lack of facts available allowing for passionate denial of any use of chemical weapons and a dismissal of the claims as part of an anti-Iraqi conspiracy. 

Example of the Second International Scientists' Congress petition against the Iraqi government after the chemical attack on the Kurdish city of Halabja.

  

Campaign to declassify Porton Down laboratory

  In 1968, an intense public opposition to chemical and biological weapons existed in the United Kingdom. This state of affairs was created by public anger and opposition to their use by the American government in the Vietnam conflict. Members of the public and environmental and disarmament groups became increasingly suspicious of the microbiological research establishment (MRE) at Porton Down, which was suspected of producing nerve gas. A campaign began to declassify the MRE at Porton Down.

 The campaign starting point was on 18 July 1968 with Labour M.P. Tam Dalyell's parliamentary question: should the Porton laboratory be transferred from the Ministry of Defence to the Ministry of Health and its work be made declassified? Maurice Wilkins and fellow Nobel Prize winners Cecil F Powell and Fred Sanger wrote to Prime Minister Harold Wilson in support and followed it up by orchestrating a press-campaign involving fellow Nobel Prize winners and Royal Society Fellows.

Wilkins systematically wrote to his fellow scientists about the issue urging them to write to Wilson. He received replies from the likes of Dorothy Hodgkin, Max Perutz, Richard Synge, Conrad Waddington and Sir Lawrence Bragg.

a copy of the letter that Maurice Wilkins sent to his fellow scientists

 Some of those who responded declined to support the campaign, like his former biophysics department colleague, Dame Honor Fell. She, like many of those who declined, although sympathetic argued that the chemical and biological warfare research done by the microbiological research establishment had acted as a deterrent in the Second World War against potential German nerve gas attacks.

 However, the majority of scientists who were asked agreed to support the campaign and twenty-one fellows of the Royal Society, including eight Nobel Prize winners endorsed the campaign. The result of the press campaign and mounting student and public anger was an official open day of the facility announced by Wilson scheduled for the 23-25 October 1968. Maurice Wilkins was one of a number of scientists who were invited to attend and his archive retains a copy of the official brochure produced for the visit.

  Wilkins later recalled that “many scientists came on the Open Day and a more open-minded attitude to the work there seemed to be created. But we came away well aware that with weapons such as these it was difficult to tell what research was for offensive use, and what was defensive, aimed at protecting people from them”.




  Here at King’s College London we have several collections on the work carried out at Porton Down and chemical and biological warfare in the Liddell Hart Centre Military Archives. Our large collection entitled “Gassed: British Chemical Warfare Experiments on Humans at Porton Down” the background research material for a book of the same name by journalist Rob Evans, charts the development of chemical and biological warfare there, the human experiments carried out and interviews with former employees of the lab. Another collection, Bad trip to Edgewood,  provides information on research carried at Porton Down as well as extensive transcripts and notes on chemical and biological warfare research carried by the US Government from 1955 to 1975.