ONLY a few years ago I heard an aged Dennis Healy say (almost ruefully) on TV: “There never was a Soviet threat.” I thought: well, now he tells us. Peter A Russell (Letters, November 10) records the historic duplicity of the British Labour Party over nuclear weapons as if this were a matter of pride, and not the disgrace it is.

The whole demonology of deterrence is bogus. The idea that the Soviet Union, having lost 50 million dead and suffered economic devastation in the Second World War was eager to invade Europe and start World War Three is an absurdity not worth considering. The creation of obnoxious Stalinist client states in eastern Europe was a defensive reaction, driven by the fear that America would use the nuclear bomb for a third time.

This fear was well founded. As early as July 1945 the US Joint Chiefs of Staff recommended, “with atomic weapons a nation must be ready to strike the first blow if needed. The resultant war plan – JIC 329/1 – singled out for obliteration 20 Soviet cities from Moscow and Leningrad, to Tblisi and Tashkent. The Russians were not to have a nuclear bomb for four years.

Professor Joseph Rotblat was the last living survivor of the Manhattan Project. Speaking at the Pugwash Conference of Dec. 1992, he demolished the myth that the atomic bombs had been developed “to shorten the war and save lives”. He quoted General Leslie Groves, head of the Manhattan Project, who said in March 1944: “From two weeks after taking up the post, there was never any illusion on my part that the main purpose of the project was to subdue the Russians.”

Stalin had every reason to fear that the Soviet Union would be destroyed in a nuclear blitzkrieg. So, it could be well argued that deterrence has worked – but in the very reverse way we imagine. Had the USSR not developed a nuclear arsenal, America would almost certainly have used the bomb for a third time.

The post-war Attlee government was the most progressive and radical – the creation of the NHS, nationalisation of coal, rail, and so on. However, in defence and foreign policy it was vitiated by British chauvinism and uncritical support for US imperialism.

Brian M Quail,

2 Hynfland Avenue, Glasgow.