Science Policy Under Thatcher
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Science Policy under Thatcher Science Policy under Thatcher Jon Agar First published in 2019 by UCL Press University College London Gower Street London WC1E 6BT Available to download free: www.uclpress.co.uk Text © Jon Agar, 2019 Jon Agar has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as author of this work. A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from The British Library. This book is published under a Creative Commons 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0). This license allows you to share, copy, distribute and transmit the work; to adapt the work and to make commercial use of the work providing attribution is made to the authors (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). Attribution should include the following information: Agar, J. 2019. Science Policy under Thatcher. London, UCL Press. https://doi.org/10.14324/111.9781787353411 Further details about Creative Commons licenses are available at http:// creativecommons.org/licenses/ Any third-party material in this book is published under the book’s Creative Commons license unless indicated otherwise in the credit line to the material. If you would like to re-use any third-party material not covered by the book’s Creative Commons license, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. ISBN: 978-1-78735-343-5 (Hbk) ISBN: 978-1-78735-342-8 (Pbk) ISBN: 978-1-78735-341-1 (PDF) ISBN: 978-1-78735-344-2 (epub) ISBN: 978-1-78735-345-9 (mobi) ISBN: 978-1-78735-346-6 (html) DOI: https://doi.org/10.14324/111.9781787353411 For Kathryn, Hal and Max, and my parents Ann and Nigel Agar. Contents List of tables vii Acknowledgements viii 1. Introduction 1 2. Who made science policy? 18 3. The central debates on science and innovation 62 Coda: AIDS and bioethics 122 4. Power/leaks 139 5. Radioactive privatisation 170 6. The Strategic Defense Initiative and the politics of research 188 7. Environment and science 221 8. Science policy under and after Thatcher 261 Bibliography 279 Index 289 vi List of tables Table 6.1 Areas identified for UK SDI research, September 1985. Source: PREM 19/1445. Annex A, Mottram to Powell, 25 September 1985. Sciences identified by the author. 211 Table 6.2 UK SDI Research validation experiments pro- posed by the Ministry of Defence, September 1985. Source: PREM 19/1445. Annex B, Mottram to Powell, 25 September 1985. 214 Table 8.1 Government laboratories transferred to agency status, 1989–92. 274 vii Acknowledgements I have benefited enormously from discussions and comments from many people. I would like to thank Duncan Wilson, Michael Huber, Stuart But- ler, Jacob Ward, Emmeline Ledgerwood; Stephen Davies, Mat Paskins, John Langrish, Jack Stilgoe, Steve Miller, Tiago Mata, Dimitriy Myelnikov, Brian Balmer, Melanie Smallman, Simon Werrett, Jon Turney, Dominic Berry, Simone Turchetti, Carsten Timmermann, Ian Miles, Claire Craig, Kieron Flanagan, David Aubin, Graeme Reid, Joe Cain, Frank James, Norma Morris and Kathryn Packer. I would also like to thank Efstathios Arapostathis, Stephen Pollock, Tatjana Buklijas, Marina J. S. Schütz, Solveig Crompton, Peter Reed and Bex Coates for their interest. Thanks to the audiences who have engaged talks on my research for this book, including Histoire des sciences, histoire de l’innovation, Paris, 2016; the Royal Society Wilkins-Bernal-Medawar Prize Lecture 2017; BSHS Annual Conference, York, 2017; Fred Jevons Science Policy Lecture, Manchester Institute of Innovation Research 2017; Thatcherism Now conference, Liverpool, 2018; and the Nucleus archive centre, Wick, 2018. I am especially grateful to Peter Collins and UCL Press’s anony- mous reader for critical comments on the whole manuscript. Thanks also to Catherine Bradley for editing the text, and Sarah M. Hall for proof- reading it. I would like to thank all the staff and students of the Department of Science and Technology Studies, UCL for their support. I am very grateful to Rachel Hall and colleagues at the Campaign for Science and Engineering (CaSE) for welcoming me into their archives. As ever, I have found the National Archives at Kew to be a friendly, calm and efficient place to study. Finally, thanks to Chris Penfold, Alison Fox, Pauline Hubner and all at UCL Press. viii 1 Introduction It was the winter of late 1985, halfway through the decade of British politics dominated by a science-trained Prime Minister, and Britain’s scientists were in open revolt. In October a small group of academics had met and shared stories of low morale, declining science funding and rumours of a new brain drain of disaffected talent. Quietly, they had begun canvassing fellow scientists, seeking modest sums to support the placing of a half-page advertisement in The Times, aiming to draw atten- tion to their collective plight. ‘Within a few days of the first letters going out subscriptions began to flow in, and by Christmas £12,000 had been donated by over 1500 supporters from across the scientific spectrum … The initiators, having tentatively probed for signs of support, were over- whelmed by a gusher’.1 The advert, which duly appeared on page 5 of The Times on the morning of Monday 13 January 1986, announced the existence and aims of a new, urgent, campaigning organisation, Save British Science: Basic science has given us radio and television, plastics, computers, penicillin, X-rays, transistors and microchips, lasers, nuclear power, body-scanners, the genetic code, … All modern technology is based on discoveries made by scientists seeking an understanding of how the world works, what it is made of and what forces shape its behaviour. … Today’s basic research enlarges our conceptions of the world and our place in it and underlies tomorrow’s technologies, the basis of future prosperity and employment. Yet British science is in crisis: opportunities are missed, scientists emigrate, whole areas of research are in jeopardy. The Government’s support for research is declining, falling further behind that of our main industrial competitors in Europe whose policy is to increase investment in scientific research. 1 There is no excuse: rescue requires a rise in expenditure of only about one percent of the Government’s annual revenue from North Sea oil. We can and must afford basic research, Britain’s investment for the future.2 Supporters were urged to contact the Save British Science campaign, via a PO Box in Oxford, and to ‘ask your member of Parliament to help save British science before it is too late’. Several observations can be made about the abrupt revolt of the scientists expressed by Save British Science. First, the mood was one of widespread despair tending to existential crisis, of historically low morale and of suffering in silence.3 ‘The state of morale among British scientists is at its lowest ebb in living memory,’ Tony Watts, a biochemist who had been lured back from West Germany to a lectureship at Oxford, told a BBC reporter. ‘In other countries, scientists feel they’re doing a job that someone wants them to do. Here, we’re fighting for survival.’4 The ‘senseless mutilation of the best elements of the research base’ was ‘totally demoralizing and is making us the laughing stock of our scientific and industrial competitors’, according to Colin Blakemore, the neurobiol- ogist and epitome of fast-rising, British scientific talent. In the same letter to his MP, he added that for ‘the first time in my life, I am now thinking seriously of leaving this country’.5 ‘The real significance of the extraordi- nary explosion of support for the advertisement,’ argued John Mulvey, the Oxford scientist who co-founded Save British Science, ‘is the measure it gives of the intensity of frustration, the depth of the concern so widely felt about the damage being done to scientific research – and the teaching of science – in this country’. Second, the feeling was that the old political settlement of science was failing. Funding through the research councils had been kept level, but the funding going to universities to maintain these institutions in a condition able to conduct research had been cut. Even the leading fig- ure of the research councils, Sir David Phillips, an able friend of science, had told scientists that the best they could hope for was a steady state: ‘What scientists are rebelling against is the realisation that to meet the challenges of the future, we have to ask how we can raise the money by stopping something’.6 While a few leaders among the science community had spoken out – for example, Sir Hans Kornberg, as President of the British Association for the Advancement of Science had used his presi- dential address of 1985 to complain of the cuts – the rank and file of Save British Science strongly felt that their needs were not being defended in political debate. This silence was seen as having deep, cultural roots: 2 SCIENCE POLICY UNDER THATCHER scientists, to preserve their autonomy and independence, should refrain from political intervention; politicians should likewise desire an autono- mous and independent science and preserve it by ensuring it was finan- cially secure. Nevertheless, as Save British Science told a Parliamentary select committee in 1986: ‘Ministers have stated that they were surprised by the “silence” of the scientific community. We fear that … while the damage to science research in the UK has become alarming to those in a position to understand it, the Government has been misled by the tradi- tional hesitation to speak out’.7 Third, attention should be paid to the relationship assumed by these academic scientists between ‘basic’ science and industry. The technologies of the modern world, and the economic prosperity they generated, were founded on prior basic science.