Sir Tom Kibble was one of the founder members of Scientists Against Nuclear Arms in 1979, and later its chair in the era of a warming cold war. Tom’s thoughtful, measured and calm approach was key to SANA’s credibility.
This was at the time of Protect and Survive, a ludicrous pamphlet sent out by the Home Office to all UK households with handy hints on how to survive a nuclear bombing. SANA’s critique, London After the Bomb, effectively put an end to Home Office civil defence planning for nuclear attack.
Ronald Reagan’s unveiling of his Star Wars project (the Strategic Defence Initiative, SDI) in 1983 was a bombshell – so to speak – to Margaret Thatcher’s government. It was all very well to think about having an impenetrable shield over the US, but it didn’t do much for the UK nor for the concept of mutually assured destruction. SANA argued that although SDI was technically flawed, developments in anti-ballistic missile technology, with US electronics and sensors outpacing clunky Soviet programmes, would fuel the arms race and encourage a “use it or lose it” mentality for Soviet military planners.
An indicator of the defence secretary Michael Heseltine’s view was that a small group of us, led by Tom, were invited to a meeting at the Ministry of Defence with senior MoD scientists. The purport of this surreal encounter was to reassure us that the MoD understood perfectly well that SDI was more about maintaining US superiority in military technology than achieving a realistic defence. However, as they put it to us, it was “so much better to communicate our concerns privately, through our special relationship with the Pentagon”.
In the past few years, Tom not only expanded his physics interests, but continued to campaign on nuclear issues, most recently co-authoring a submission to the Trident Commission.
He was of course well-regarded as an outstanding physicist; many of us also had the benefit of knowing a warm and understanding friend and colleague.