Up Downs and Atom
By EDWARD HODGKIN
T. HERE are only a few things you can do about atom- bombs. You can wait for them to fall, or you can joke about them, or you can make them. In this country the making of atom-bombs is popularly associated with the name of the Berkshire village of Harwell, although it so happens that this is not one of the things which go on there. Harwell is the address of the Ministry of Supply's Atomic Energy Research Establishment, and research is in fact as well as in name the Establishment's only concern.
Preconceptions of a place are often as visually lasting as the sight of a place itself. Before I ever saw Harwell I could imagine something that looked vaguely like giant laboratory— pipes and chimneys and tubes projecting from bare brick walls—all of it enclosed in a high wire fence, probably electrified and guarded with sentries and searchlights. Over the whole vision brooded a miasmic fog, yellow-brown in colour and buzzing with radio-activity. At the gate of this horror lay a small village of thatched cottages and pubs, overshadowed by its utilitarian neighbour, like a plant of willowherb over- shadowed by St. Paul's.
The reality, I need hardly say, is nothing like the preconcep- tion. (Realities never are: mistrust people who say of a place or a house: " It is exactly as I had always imagined it.") The village of Harwell and the Research Establishment are more than a mile apart and invisible from each other. At first sight the Research Establishment looks like an overgrown aerodrome, and this turns out to be precisely what it is It was the R.A.F. not the Ministry of Supply, which was in the first place respon- sible for ruining this once beautiful stretch of Downland. The new owners took over at the beginning of 1946, and converted what they found to their own uses. Hangars now contain offices and laboratories, and the mess buildings now serve scientists instead of pilots. The runways are still black gashes in the grass. Dominating the scene is something which has strayed out of thg-ppreconceptionary world—an enormous brick chimney (the air-discharge from the atomic pile—and none the more beautiful or exciting to look at for that). The real contri- bution which the atomic age has made to the Berkshire scenery, however, takes the form of pre-fabs—thousands of them, scattered around like hail. Here, symbolising the modern civic virtues of equality, anonymity and proximity, the workers on the project cluster around the perimeter fence which divides the secrecy of their work from the normality of their homes.
For of course there is a perimeter fence. It is not very tall (in appearance better designed to keep out foxes than spies), and not noticeably guarded by machine-guns. But presumably it is effective. At the main gate of the Establishment the visitor runs up against the formidable and depressing rigmarole, of security; the gate-house being austerely decorated with the text of the Official Secrets Act, revolvers in glass cases, and police sergeants. Harwell, after all, is not just a place for academic research dumped by chance on the Downs instead of in South Parks Road; it is a very expensive link in the nation's chain of armaments. In the same way, Karl Fuchs is not just an old boy who went to the bad, but a traitor. So although there is no radio-active fog over Harwell, there is (or ought to be) some- thing of that faint smell of insecurity in the atmosphere which " security " always seems to generate.
Physicists may by now have grown so accustomed to their work being confidential, instead of international, that they may find nothing odd or uncomfortable about the Harwell atmo- sphere. They can point with truth to the fact that about half the work done there is not secret, and that there are many other places in Britain—in university and industrial laboratories— where secret work connected with atomic energy is carried on.
What is of particular interest about Harwell is that it is one of those new communities which modern needs have created in the most unlikely parts of the world. It is not so complete or isolated as Abadan or the R.A.F.'s fantastic desert monastery at Habbaniyah; it has only one shop of its own, for example, no cinema and no church. And the beautiful new elementary school serves the nearby cottages as well as the prefabs surrounding it. In a way the Harwell com- munity is most like one of those villages in South Wales or Cumberland, created for and living by a single mine, which could die overnight when the mine shut down. When work is done at Harwell, it is true, a stream of buses flows to Didcot, Abingdon, Oxford and Reading: but these passengers are mostly the contractors' workers. The average atomic worker shows his pass at the gate and walks round the corner to a little house in one of those boulevards where, a dozen years ago, the sheep still had undisputed possession.
The staff at Harwell are Civil Servants, with all the benefits and drawbacks that this implies. Whether the present system is or is not the best possible Way in which to organise research on atomic energy is a matter on which Harwell employees may be expected to have strong feelings, but one of the drawbacks of their present status is that they cannot air these feelings publicly. Last July Lord Cherwell brought forward a motion in the House of Lords (which was carried by a majority of 21) calling on the Government to transfer work connected with atomic energy " to a special organisation more flexible than the normal Civil Service system." He attacked the present system on two grounds; as being inefficient (" the Civil Service is quite unfitted to cope with this sort of undertaking), and encouraging poor security.
In the latest issue of the Atomic Scientists News a number of distinguished scientists have commented on Lord Cherwell's suggestion. Most of them agree that the original decision to place atomic developments under the Civil Service was a wrong one, but there is less agreement about the advantages to be gained by a reorganisation. As Professor M. H. L. Pryce writes: "The advantages and disadvantages of taking control of atomic energy away from the Ministry of Supply have been widely discussed at Harwell (and I believe in the other Establishments) in recent months. At first opinion was fairly evenly balanced between wishing to see it removed to an independent Corporation and wishing to • see it remain under the Ministry. More recently, as the questions were more carefully considered, it has crystallised more in favour of remaining under the Ministry, with strong recommendations of modification of policy in certain respects, particularly in regard to autonomy in staffing and salaries, and publicity. I believe that the feeling that, while it might have been a good thing to work under a Corporation right from the start, it is now undesirable to change over, is shared by many."
By many but not by all, and as Lord Cherwell is presumably still among the critics, and is now a member of the Government, a change of some sort is not unlikely.
" The Ministry," " The Minister." " some more flexible organisation," " modification of policy "—these are echoes from the nightmare incantation which so many people heard during the war and ducked happily away from as soon as they had the chance. It is bad luck on the scientists that they still have to do their work against the mumblings of the same incantation. But then it is bad luck on the Berkshire Downs that they have been turned into an industrial suburb. And it may even be bad luck on- the taxpayer that he has to pay such a lot of money for such an inscrutable return. For it is no use peering over the perimeter fence and trying to see whether what goes on inside is for good or ill. The only question about atomic energy to which nobody at Harwell can give you an answer is the most important question of all.
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