"In plain words: now that Britain has told the world that she has the H-Bomb she should announce as early as possible that she has done with it, that she proposes to reject in all circumstances nuclear warfare"
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Priestley’s “In plain words” is less a throat-clearing than a moral shove. He starts by stripping away the fog that usually surrounds nuclear policy: no grand strategy talk, no “deterrence,” no clerical language about “capability.” Just a blunt sequence of actions. Britain has told the world it has the H-bomb; now it should “do with it.” The phrasing is almost domestic, like throwing out something poisonous from the cupboard. That ordinary diction is the point: nuclear annihilation shouldn’t be treated as a specialist’s puzzle but as a civic scandal.
The subtext is a rebuke to postwar British identity management. In the 1950s, the bomb wasn’t only a weapon; it was a badge of relevance for a shrinking empire, a way to sit at the big table with the U.S. and USSR. Priestley implies that this status hunger is precisely what makes the weapon politically seductive and ethically indefensible. By urging an announcement “as early as possible,” he also understands the propaganda clock: once a nation normalizes possession as prudent, renunciation begins to look naive or disloyal.
His most radical move is the demand to “reject in all circumstances nuclear warfare.” No conditional carve-outs, no “last resort,” no loopholes for retaliation. That absolutism is intentionally uncomfortable because it forces the reader to choose between two stories: security as credible threat, or security as moral precedent. Priestley bets on the second. He’s arguing that Britain’s real power, post-Hiroshima, could be the audacity to refuse the logic everyone else is busy calling inevitable.
The subtext is a rebuke to postwar British identity management. In the 1950s, the bomb wasn’t only a weapon; it was a badge of relevance for a shrinking empire, a way to sit at the big table with the U.S. and USSR. Priestley implies that this status hunger is precisely what makes the weapon politically seductive and ethically indefensible. By urging an announcement “as early as possible,” he also understands the propaganda clock: once a nation normalizes possession as prudent, renunciation begins to look naive or disloyal.
His most radical move is the demand to “reject in all circumstances nuclear warfare.” No conditional carve-outs, no “last resort,” no loopholes for retaliation. That absolutism is intentionally uncomfortable because it forces the reader to choose between two stories: security as credible threat, or security as moral precedent. Priestley bets on the second. He’s arguing that Britain’s real power, post-Hiroshima, could be the audacity to refuse the logic everyone else is busy calling inevitable.
Quote Details
| Topic | Peace |
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