You might think – what with climate
change, booming world population, bankers and others grabbing all they can
before capitalism implodes – that we have enough to worry about. Now consider
this.
“I think nuclear weapons are a somewhat overlooked danger today.
“We went through a period of public anxiety, almost panic,
during the Cold War. But human beings can’t maintain that level of anxiety and
fear so they just get used to it. It becomes part of everyday life, almost like
the wallpaper.
“I am very much afraid that that is when things become
dangerous.
“Also they become dangerous when you have decision-makers
who are not experienced and who do not understand what they are dealing with.”
The speaker is my aunt, Lorna Arnold, official historian of
Britain’s nuclear project, who died last week at the age of 98. And boy was she
experienced.
She was born during the Great War when her father – my
grandfather – was working on the airships that then seemed likely to play a big
role in 20th-century life.
At the outbreak of World War II she joined the Civil
Service. By its end, though not yet 30, she was senior enough to be the first
British woman to enter Berlin with the victorious Allies.
As UK secretary to the economic directorate, she had to
negotiate with the Americans, Russians and French over the difficult
administration of newly occupied Germany.
After that came a spell in the British embassy in Washington
before a return to London as a housewife, and then as a single mother.
It was some years after joining the Atomic Energy Authority
in 1959 that she became its historian.
She was awarded an OBE in 1976, but her most important books
– on the H-Bomb, on atomic weapons trials and the Windscale accident – came
later.
Like many in the industry, she went from accepting a need
for nuclear weapons to being a well-informed opponent of them. Her opinion of
nuclear power – initially enthusiastic – underwent a similar change.
Her last two books on nuclear matters, and her book of
memoirs, ‘My Short Century’ (2012) were all completed after she was registered
blind in 2002. The disability did not prevent her from continuing to speak at
conferences well into her 90s – including one at Los Alamos, the New Mexico
site where the first atom bomb was developed.
My aunt Lorna was a remarkable woman. An exceptionally clear
thinker, and a very clear and measured speaker.
If you’re one of those who watch documentaries on atomic
weapons or the energy industry, you’re sure to have seen her. She was for years
the BBC’s chosen adviser on all things nuclear.
It’s a very odd thing to read an obituary of one of your
family in the national press. It was a first for me, and probably a last as
well.
It could be an ambition of mine to earn one – when Lorna was
my age she wouldn’t have seemed a likely subject for the honour. But of course
if I do I won’t be around to read it. And I’m very unlikely ever to have the
dedication to one subject that Lorna had to nuclear history.
Her death has been described, conventionally and
predictably, as sad, but I’m not so sure.
Which of us wouldn’t want to get to 98 still in possession
of all our mental faculties and then fade out, gently but rapidly, with friends
and family around us?
If I live up to Lorna in no other way, I’d like to emulate
her in that.
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