ABSTRACT
The protracted debates over the fate of Blue Streak during 1958 had merely resulted in a decision by the Defence Committee at the end of the year to slow its rate of development, so reducing immediate levels of expenditure, and to review the programme in another 12 months' time. The overwhelming victory of the Conservatives at the general election held in October 1959 ensured that it would be Macmillan and his ministers who would consider the eventual results of the Future Policy Study which had been launched during the summer. While the final draft of the Future Policy Study was being readied in the Cabinet Office, the MoD's British Nuclear Deterrent Study Group was busy compiling its own first interim report dealing with the form the deterrent should take in the period up to the early 1970s, Powell finally producing an agreed draft on 23 December 1959.
