ABSTRACT
In March 1957 the USA, in the face of world wide protest, carried out a series of nuclear weapon tests in the Pacific. The World Health Organization warned of the genetic effects of radiation and when it became known that a further series of tests was planned for May and June by Britain, Russell in an article for The New Scientist of 28 March 1957, entitled “The Tests Should be Stopped,” argued for the abandonment of all nuclear testing. Russell believed that “an agreement to abandon tests would be a step towards peaceful co-existence” and that such an agreement cut across rival political interests because the hazards resulting from tests affected all of humanity equally. Russell felt that since “the Soviet Government has, on occasion, seemed willing to enter into such an agreement” the Western Powers “ought to show more readiness to test Soviet sincerity.” In Russell’s view the H-bomb tests diminished rather than increased security:
We know authoritatively from Mr. Dulles that we have been on the brink of war several times in recent years. These are the risks to which we have exposed ourselves by the vain search for security.
Can anybody with any plausibility maintain that there would be greater risks in a policy proclaiming more universal aims and a greater regard for the future of mankind? And if risks must be run, is is not better to run the risks in pursuit of something ennobling and splendid rather than in the perfecting of weapons of man’s destruction? For such reasons, I should rejoice if the British Government were to abandon not only the projected tests, but the manufacture of H-bombs.
