Abstract
John Nott, Secretary of State for Defence from 1981 to 1983, nearly succeeded where his predecessors had failed, or not tried, in both further centralising the central defence organisation and conducting a defence review. Nott was appointed with the full support of the Prime Minister. Unlike his predecessor Nott was in total agreement with the Prime Minister on the need for cash limit controls on government spending and, unlike Pym, Nott had experience as an economics minister.
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Notes and References
Personal communication.
Healey interview by Taylor.
John Nott, ‘Pounds, Shillings and Defence’, Analysis, BBC R4, 19 June 1985.
Nott interview by Taylor.
John Nott had previously held the offices of: Minister of State Treasury 1972–75, Secretary of State for Trade and Industry 1979–81.
Elinor Goodman, ‘Pym Rejects £500m cut in Defence’ The Times, 29 October 1980.
Financial Times, 21 January 1981.
Guardian, 21 January 1981.
The Times, 16 April 1981.
Heseltine interview with Taylor.
John Nott, ‘Our Defences All at Sea’, The Times, 5 October 1987.
Nott interview by Taylor.
Personal communication.
Personal communication.
Personal communication.
Personal communication.
Personal communication.
R. M. Hastie-Smith, ‘The Tin Wedding’, Seaford House Papers, 1974, p. 26.
Richard Sharpe, letter to the Editor, The Times, 9 October 1987.
Nott interview by Taylor.
Nott, The Times, 5 October 1987.
Nott, HCom., 19 May 1981, col. 164.
Nott, Analysis, BBC R4.
Frank Cooper, ‘The Ministry of Defence’, in Gretton and Harrison (eds) Reshaping Central Government.
‘The UK Defence Programme: the Way Forward’, Cmnd 8288, June 1981 (London: HMSO) p. 3.
Ibid., p. 4.
Ibid., p. 7.
Ibid., p. 11.
Lord Lewin interview by Taylor.
Lord Hill-Norton interview by Taylor.
Personal communication.
Ibid.
Lewin interview by Taylor.
See Chapter 1, Jacob-Ismay Report.
Lewin Interview by Taylor.
See Maurice Johnston, ‘More Power to the Centre: MOD Reorganisation’, RUSI Journal, 128(1), March 1983. Plus Brian Taylor, ‘Coming of Age: a Study in the Evolution of the Ministry of Defence Headquarters 1976–82’, RUSI Journal, September 1983.
Personal communication.
‘The UK Trident Programme’, Defence Open Government Document 82/1 (London: HMSO, 1982) p. 6.
Ibid., p. 6.
Ibid.
Personal communication.
Personal communication.
See letters between UK and US re Trident, Cmnd 7979, 1980.
Personal communication.
Personal communication.
‘The Falkland Islands Review’, Report of a Committee of Privy Counsellors. Chaired by Lord Franks. Cmnd 8787 (London: HMSO, 1983) p. 83.
Hennessy, Cabinet, p. 116.
Ibid.
Franks, ‘Falkland Islands Review’, pp. 95–96.
Armitage interview by Taylor.
Franks, ‘Falkland Islands Review’, Cmnd 8787, 1983.
Maria Laura Avignolo, ‘How Galtieri Got It Wrong’, Sunday Times, 17 November 1985.
‘The Falklands War’, Sunday Times Insight Team Sphere, 1982.
Ibid.
Simon Jenkins and Max Hastings, The Battle for the Falklands (Michael Joseph, 1983) p. 67.
Margaret Thatcher, HCom., 3 April 1982.
Michael Foot, HCom., 14 June 1982.
The Times, 15 June 1982.
Colin Seymour-Ure, ‘British “War Cabinets” in Limited Wars: Korea, Suez and the Falklands’, Public Administration, Vol. 62, Summer 1984. Hastings and Jenkins, The Battle for the Falklands, p. 81. Plus personal communication. Lewin interview by Taylor.
Macmillan: ‘I did try and help her about how to run a war because it’s such a long time since anybody’s run a war…. You have to have a War Cabinet’. Reflections BBC TV1 20 October 1983. Quoted in Hennessy, Cabinet, p. 118.
Personal communication.
Personal communication.
Personal communication.
Personal communications.
Lewin interview by Taylor.
Ibid. Seymour-Ure, ‘British “War Cabinets” in Limited Wars’.
Cooper in Gretton and Harrison (eds), Reshaping Central Government, p. 114.
Seymour-Ure, ‘British “War Cabinets” in Limited Wars’, p. 198.
See ‘groupthink’, Chapter 1. Irving Janis, Victims of Groupthink (Boston, Mass.: Houghton Mifflin, 1977). Irving Janis and Leo Mann, Decision-Making, (New York: Free Press, 1977) pp. 129–133.
Seymour-Ure, ‘British “War Cabinets” in Limited Wars’, p. 195.
Lewin interview by Taylor.
Personal communication.
Hugh Tinker, A Message from the Falklands (Penguin, 1982) p. 169.
Ibid., p. 176.
Ibid., pp. 178, 179, 198. Time, 28 June 1982, p. 28.
John Lehman, Secretary of the Navy, Interview by David Dimbleby, ‘An Ocean Apart’, BBC TV, June 1988. Observer, 29 May 1988.
Lewin interview by Taylor.
William Casey quoted by Bob Woodward in ‘Veil: the Secret Wars of the CIA 1981–87’, reported in Guardian, 3 October 1987.
Personal communication.
See Robert Harris, Gotcha: the Media, the Government and the Falklands’ Crisis (London: Faber, 1983). Derek Mercer, The Fog of War (London: Heinemann, 1987).
Cooper evidence to the Defence Committee, ‘The Handling of Press and Public Relations During the Falklands Conflict’, 1982–3, HC 17. HMSO.
Mercer, The Fog of War, p. 211.
Personal communication.
Nott interview by Taylor.
Hill-Norton interview by Taylor.
Nott interview by Taylor.
Nott, Analysis, BBC R4.
Stanford interview by Taylor.
Bramall interview by Taylor.
Mark N. Franklin, ‘The Falklands Factor’, Contemporary Record (Autumn 1987) pp. 27–28. David Saunders et al., ‘Government Popularity and the Falklands War: a Re-Assessment’, British Journal of Political Science, Vol. 17, pp. 281–314. Laurence Freedman, ‘The Falklands Factor’, Contemporary Review (Autumn 1987) pp. 28–29.
Ibid.
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© 1990 Malcolm McIntosh
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McIntosh, M. (1990). John Nott, Secretary of State for Defence, 1981–3. In: Managing Britain’s Defence. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-10535-9_4
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