An alternative 21st century strategy for deterrence against nuclear attack, and less expensive than Star Wars, would be to spend half the defence budget on making Britain indispensable to the rest of the world, through developing Britain as a centre for high tech medical facilities.
I am afraid that some modern fanatic will try to import nuclear bombs into this country by the heroin route, with retaliation deterrence being quite impracticable against fundamentalist Islamic or other fanatics, and in any case the source of the attack may not be known. So whereas no one can keep all suicide fanatics out, we can make them not want to come in. If their friends or fellow nationals had received high tech medical treatment in Britain, they would be likely to refrain from attack - just as the Argentinians told the captain of HMS Endurance during the Falklands War that they would not try to sink his ship because they had eaten dinner with him.
Respect for medicine and fear of illness has deterred aggression in the past: for instance, the Jewish biochemist Professor Warburg was unmolested throughout the whole Nazi era because Hitler feared cancer more than he feared the Jews.
I should emphasise that only half the defence budget is to be transferred. This leaves us, however, with more than half the security, as it is well known that defensive security is non-linear and doubling a budget merely adds a small increment.
And, although I think we should consider a citizen army, like the Swiss, I do not believe that we could do it until the Catholics and Protestants settle their differences.
With my scheme it is part of the logic that other countries must not be able to be self-sufficient in this sphere: the defence medical work would have to be treated more like the drug industry, with the end results made freely available, but with others relying on us through not knowing the details of the methods used. It would be work with huge machines because these are what the defence contractors make at present, and the reason for medical work to replace defence work is that it keeps the defence contractors solvent; and people want to pay for it with taxes.
Aid to the poor world (or any other altruistic scheme) cannot meet these criteria. Since the cholera epidemic and the Chadwick Act, the British people have expressed a determination to pay for public health.
Fred Allen, 13 Shelly Row, Cambridge, CB3 OBP. This proposal won a Social Inventions Award.