THE BRITISH CONSERVATIVE GOVERNMENT ELECTED IN MAY 1979 had, by August 1980, taken three decisions in respect of nuclear weapons and civil defence which in portent had had few peacetime parallels. These decisions naturally had a technical as well as a political dimension yet, until at least the spring of 1981, the involvement of the British scientific community in public discussion of the underlying issues remained negligible. No similar decisions could be taken, or even contemplated, in the United States without provoking a response both substantial and professional from American scientists. How does one explain the attitude, or lack of it, in this context of their British counterparts? Why, when these decisions were announced, did British scientists behave, or appear to behave, as political eunuchs? Are there no matters which rouse them to political involvement? Or are they perhaps more politically effective precisely because they pursue a low-profile course? These questions are important and it is worth trying to answer them. Before attempting to do so, however, it will be helpful both to identify the British decisions of 1979–80 referred to above, and also to outline such reaction to them on the part of the British technical community as had, in fact, occurred by the spring of 1981.

BARON HOLBACH'S EPIGRAMMATIC DESCRIPTION OF RELIGION as ‘the “eau de vie” of the people’ will undoubtedly outlive the memory of its author. On the other hand, Kingsley's advocacy of Christian socialism to the masses clearly implied the presumption that religion could also be their amphetamine. This latter possibility was systematically explored by Troeltsch with reference to Christianity. Weber deepened the analysis of the revolutionary potential of religion and extended it to the other world religions of salvation. There was something the philosophes did not know; religion could be revolutionary.

ONE APPROACH TO STUDYING THE CONSTITUTIONS OF THE People's Republic of China (PRC) has been to conclude that they are really a sham, designed to conceal the absence of citizen rights, and therefore presumably of little benefit as documents for study. Constitutions, however, are forms of political expression, and are perhaps best approached as reflections of changes in policy orientation. Their purposes include the formal institutionalization of past changes, the expression of immediate political priorities and laying the foundations for reorientations in basic policy.

IN THIS PRESENT-DAY WORLD, THE STATE - AND THIS IS TYPIcally the more or less sovereign national state - is both indispensable and inadequate. It is an indispensable instrument to get many things done, to provide many needed services and to deal with many real problems. But it is inadequate to cope with an increasing number of other problems of life and death for many of its inhabitants. No state today can protect the lives of its citizens in the case of thermonuclear war against it, nor against the poisonous fall-out from thermonuclear war outside its borders. No national state can protect the world's ecology, the oceans and the atmosphere, nor can any one state sove the problems of worldwide population growth or lack of raw materials, energy or food. In all these respects, the first and basic promise of government - to protect the lives of its citizens - has become illusory.