Beale was often directly involved in media activities around the atomic tests, as was William Penney; on some occasions they were a double act. Strictly controlled interactions between journalists and senior test scientists or government officials were held from time to time to diffuse unauthorised journalistic inquiry. The Supply secretary Frank O’Connor rather wistfully wrote to the chief information officer for the UK Ministry of Supply, Iyer Jehu, on 9 November 1956 in relation to a Chapman Pincher story about nuclear testing activities. O’Connor described Pincher, who covered the tests in Australia for the British Daily Express, as a ‘scoop journalist employed by a scoop newspaper and the moment he stops scooping he will be replaced by someone else’. He observed that ‘philosophically, we have to recognize this is just part and parcel of the democratic set up… My own view of the press is that it is imperative to have good relations with them, but as to whether our relationships are good or bad is a matter that is mainly in our own hands’.
When the first Buffalo shot was delayed for a couple of weeks, Beale had to deal with media speculation and hostile parliamentary questioning that suggested Maralinga might not be the ideal place for a permanent test site. The lead-up to the Buffalo series was uncomfortable for Beale, the most recognisable face of the tests in Australia, because Maralinga was a new, expensive, untried venue. A huge front page banner headline in the Sydney Sun on 25 September 1956, ‘Latest on the bomb!’, had directly beneath it in large type an actual cable from the reporter, saying, ‘Hope to be back by Xmas. In meantime could you [send] further £15. Have done 6/700 word special on whether £6-million Maralinga is a white elephant’.
The story went on to explain that the Sun special reporter who composed the telegram had been ‘waiting for a fortnight for scientists to set off an atom bomb in the first of several tests’. It quoted the reporter asking, ‘Have the British and Australian governments blundered in picking Maralinga as their test site?’ More people were asking this question, including the Opposition. The government, with Beale leading the charge, consistently defended Maralinga.
Beale was in the public eye throughout the Buffalo program, dealing with both media and political pressure. The Australian Labor Party (ALP) leader Doc Evatt attempted a censure motion in parliament to condemn the government’s support of British atomic tests. The Sydney Sun reported that Beale had taken the opportunity to reiterate that the test program would continue. ‘Beale said that the Governments of Australia, Britain and the US were doing their best to achieve a working agreement, which would allow abandonment of atomic tests and the nuclear arms race. “But we have no intention of stopping until we get some form of safeguard that the Free World will not be overwhelmed by an avalanche of Russian atomic arms”, he said’.
A remarkable two-page memorandum showed that 1956 was a watershed year in media and public perception of the British tests. A departmental briefing document titled ‘Press Reaction to Atomic Trials’ set out in terse numbered points an overview of the attitude of the media to date. It noted the favourable early media treatment after Totem in October 1953, before public opinion began to turn in 1954, ‘partly due to the death of a Japanese fisherman injured by radio-active fall-out from an American H-bomb explosion in the Pacific’. The memorandum also pointed to other factors changing community attitudes, including the ‘apparent Soviet policy trend towards peaceful co-existence’ and the international Peace Campaign ‘fostered during 1954 and 1955 by people of many shades of thought’. It described how the press, ‘chameleon-like, began to offset any articles showing pride in British technical advances with far more attention to the dangers, both political and physical, implicit in atomic trials’, and in particular how ‘the Truth/Mirror chain of papers, began definitely to oppose any further tests in Australia’.
The memorandum specifically noted the impact of Mosaic G2. A Gallup poll in March 1956 showed a majority of Australians ‘apparently against’ tests, although Western Australia and South Australia, the two states where they were held, came out in favour. So while the announcement of the permanent test site at Maralinga ‘was soberly and well presented by the major national newspapers’, newspapers felt compelled ‘to be critical of atomic tests because of the whipped up, if unthinking, public outcry against them. The near-hysteria built of flimsy misconceptions following the second Mosaic explosion is indicative of the difficulties now to be faced from a volatile Press, public opinion and political situation’. The writer concluded by arguing for a concerted campaign ‘to refute the major false issues’ concerning trials and for public education through newspaper and magazine articles ‘to restore the confidence and pride which only three years ago marked the ordinary Australian’s attitude towards co-operation with the U.K. in this vital defence matter’. But the Australian public never again evinced the patriotic fervour that had greeted Hurricane and Totem. If Mosaic had turned the tide, Maralinga increasingly made them uneasy. The public relations machine could not fix this entirely. After Operation Antler the media were shut out, and the dangerous Vixen B minor trials that followed Antler were not reported.
By 1957, then, public opinion had hardened towards the tests generally, and the world was moving towards new treaties that would limit atomic testing. Bipartisan political support for the tests had collapsed in the wake of the second Mosaic test, and the Opposition began to ask questions in parliament about their continuation. In June 1956, after Mosaic G2, the ALP caucus voted to oppose future atomic tests in Australia. The Australian media reported that political pressure was escalating as the ALP moved to an anti–nuclear weapons policy stance.
The next Federal Labour [sic] Government would vote no money for tests of nuclear weapons or the development of means of waging nuclear warfare, the Deputy Leader of the Federal Opposition, Mr Calwell, said today. Mr Calwell said that developments after the Monte Bello atomic explosion last week showed that if nuclear weapons tests were permitted to continue there, radio active dust, despite all precautions, might be carried across Australia.
Pressures were bearing down on the government from growing anti-nuclear sentiment in the community and increasing questions in parliament. Mosaic G2 had been a huge political issue for Menzies, and he did not want it repeated at the new test site. Also, Australia had by now grown rather tired of being kept in the dark about the details. The proposal for Antler was typically vague, with the main point being the plan to test five bombs (later amended to six, although in the event only three were tested) in tower-mounted trials. As Operation Grapple was gearing up to test a British H-bomb in the Pacific, the government wondered if the British planned to defy the terms of the Maralinga agreement and test a thermonuclear weapon. In some ways this seemed likely, since thermonuclear weapons were now the main game and Maralinga was the permanent British test site. The terms of the Maralinga agreement had not exactly proved an insurmountable obstacle to the British before.
Consequently, approval was slower than usual in coming. The Australians first received a request for the Antler series on 20 September 1956 but took until 16 May 1957 to grant approval. Despite this uncharacteristic delay, Antler took place as scheduled in September 1957. Initially the British named this series Operation Sapphire. However, in early 1957, without warning or explanation, they changed the codename to Operation Volcano. The horrified Australians rejected it outright. The name suggested violence and destruction. Antler was chosen after the Australians voiced their concerns.