ABSTRACT
The early 1980s proved to be a particularly traumatic time for the Royal Navy. The economic crisis that was gripping the nation prompted a re-examination of government defence spending and the spotlight fell on the Royal Navy. A new Defence Minister, John Nott, raised fundamental questions about the nature of its existence and concurrent cost to which the service struggled to respond in a politically effective manner. It was the height of the Cold War and British naval strategy had become heavily orientated toward the threat from the Soviet Union and antisubmarine operations. Sea-control strategies and the maintenance of a wide range of capabilities like amphibious warships were the hallmark of this era. The dominance of surface ships within the Royal Navy reflected the preferences of institution toward this type of warfare.1 Governments immediately prior to the Thatcher administration had also been willing to fund such an explicit bias within the service and the Royal Navy perpetuated the implicit preferences of the service through the inculcation in future naval officers of the historic experiences of the service. In contrast, Margaret Thatcher’s government wanted to provoke significant changes in the strategic outlook of the Royal Navy through the 1981 defence review. John Nott failed to recognize the existence of an underlying philosophy towards naval strategy; consequently, his measures did not alter the institutional bias of the Royal Navy. The new strategic vision of the government promoted capabilities that had traditionally lower status within the Senior Service, particularly nuclear weapons and nuclear-powered submarines.
