OPPOSITION TO BRITISH TEST

Press, Volume XCV, Issue 28265, 1 May 1957, Page 13

OPPOSITION TO BRITISH TEST

Comrpunists Held Responsible LONDON, April 29. Communist sources were responsible for much of the agitation against Britain’s hydrogen bomb tests, the Foreign Secretary (Mr Selwyn Lloyd) said today. “A good deal of the agitation against our tests really does come from Communist sources, which want to prevent Britain from emerging as a third nuclear Power,” he said.

Mr Lloyd, interviewed on a British Broadcasting Corporation’s programme, was asked if the tests would prejudice Britain’s moral leadership in Asia. He replied: “I see no reason why they should. It is in the interests of Japan and other Asian countries that there should be this deterrent to Communist aggression, and up to now the strength of the opposition to the Soviet tests has really been very small indeed.” Mr Lloyd said it would be “quite fatuous” to devote so much money, materials and men to the making of nuclear weapons and then not test them. He understood and sympathised with the anxieties expressed. “But,” he said, “they come, a good deal, from non-scientific sources. A great deal of this kind of argument comes from people with strong fellow-travelling tendencies and leanings.” "Our coming tests will be completely insignificant,” he said- “I am not the least bit worried about the result of our tests, nor am I worried about the effect of the tests which have taken place up to now.” Mr Lloyd said that another world war, whatever weapons were used, would be fatal to civilisation.

If Britain had no thermonuclear weapons it would mean leaving the supreme power in the hands of the United States and Russia, Mr Lloyd added. "I do not think we should contract out of the influence and power that being a military nuclear Power involves. If we also have this deterrent, that of itself will be. a factor making for peace and stability.”

Mayflower Il’s Voyage.—The Mayflower 11, 10 days out from Plymouth, should, with luck, be near Cape Cod, Massachusetts, in another 40 days, according to a message received in London today from her captain, Commander Alan Villiers. She made 800 miles in the first week of her voyage to Plymouth, Massachusetts. —London, April 29.