The grant from the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland enabled Dr Jim Gledhill FSAScot to undertake significant archival research at the National Archives in Kew, London. 

I have now successfully concluded the main portion of my research on this project with the grant kindly awarded by the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland. In April 2024, I spent two weeks working at the National Archives in London. There I was able to study documents from the Festival of Britain’s Scottish Committee, with a particular focus on the Committee’s deliberations around the atomic energy display in the 1951 Exhibition of Industrial Power held at the Kelvin Hall in Glasgow. Having previously viewed architectural designs and artwork in the collections of Historic Environment Scotland in Edinburgh, I now have a more nuanced view of the political and intellectual rationale for the Glasgow exhibition and its portrayal of atomic energy. 

At Kew I examined extensive records from the Scottish nuclear industry from its origins in the early 1950s to its civil expansion in the 1960s, including archival material relating to the following atomic energy stations: the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority’s Dounreay Experimental Reactor Establishment and Chapelcross Works, and the South of Scotland Electricity Board’s Hunterston A power station. These documents included high-level, in some cases previously classified documents from government departments and the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority, as well as correspondence with the Scottish electricity boards, private companies and key individuals. 

In the National Archives I consulted a range of military sources pertaining to nuclear weapons and the armed forces’ plans for defending Scotland against nuclear attack by the Soviet Union. These included the Air Ministry’s plans for the Scottish elements of ‘Operation Rotor’ (1950 – 1957), a scheme for renovating the Royal Air Force’s control and reporting system and one of the most ambitious defence infrastructure projects in British history. This followed my earlier research on the post-war development of air defence in Scotland and attempts to adapt it for the age of nuclear weapons and jet aircraft after 1949. I gleaned that Scotland, and the Highlands and Isles in particular, featured far more prominently in strategic planning in this period than I had hitherto realised.   

Additionally, I looked at RAF operations record books for units stationed in Scotland to fill certain gaps between official plans and how they were implemented on the ground. This not only gave me fresh insights into the strategic and tactical dimensions of air defence in the nuclear age, but also new perspectives on the social life of the RAF in Scottish rural communities. From the RAF unit diaries, I discovered more about the role played by aircraftwomen of the Women’s Royal Air Force and Women’s Royal Auxiliary Air Force in this period.

Whilst at Kew, I accessed substantial material about the deployment of British and American nuclear weapons in Scotland. In particular, I looked at the Royal Navy’s Polaris and Trident missile projects on the Clyde in conjunction with the development of nuclear submarine propulsion at the Admiralty Reactor Test Establishment in Dounreay. I approached this subject from an economic standpoint as well as military and political perspectives. Within the limitations of the declassified documents available, I also focussed on the topography of the nuclear defence sites themselves. My research on nuclear defence infrastructure in Scotland has allowed me to make a comparative analysis from the first projects in the 1950s through to Trident in the 1980s.   

In May 2024, I travelled to Caithness to conduct research at the Nucleus Archives in Wick on the Dounreay experimental fast breeder reactor programme. Having studied the high-level historical record in London, my aim at Nucleus was to consider the impact of nuclear technology at the community level.