The 1975 Mason Review was a review of UK defence policy conducted by the Labour Government's

Secretary of State for Defence The secretary of state for defence, also known as the defence secretary, is a secretary of state in the Government of the United Kingdom, with responsibility for the Ministry of Defence. As a senior minister, the incumbent is a member of the ...

Roy Mason Roy Mason, Baron Mason of Barnsley, (18 April 1924 – 19 April 2015), was a British Labour Party politician and Cabinet minister who was Secretary of State for Defence and Secretary of State for Northern Ireland in the 1970s. Early life Ma ...

. The review was influenced by a Government decision to reduce the defence budget to 4.5% of

Gross Domestic Product Gross domestic product (GDP) is a monetary measure of the total market value of all the final goods and services produced and rendered in a specific time period by a country or countries. GDP is often used to measure the economic performanc ...

. The review was intended to anticipate defence needs during the period 1975–1985.

Summary

The report made clear that despite the process of East−West

Détente ''Détente'' ( , ; for, fr, , relaxation, paren=left, ) is the relaxation of strained relations, especially political ones, through verbal communication. The diplomacy term originates from around 1912, when France and Germany tried unsucces ...

which was then gathering pace, the principal threat to the security of the UK remained the Soviet Union. Priority for UK defence resources was given to

NATO The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO ; , OTAN), also called the North Atlantic Alliance, is an intergovernmental organization, intergovernmental Transnationalism, transnational military alliance of 32 Member states of NATO, member s ...

commitments. This led to four capabilities being emphasised in the review: *UK contribution to NATO front-line forces in Germany, including the British Army on the Rhine. *

Anti-submarine warfare Anti-submarine warfare (ASW, or in the older form A/S) is a branch of underwater warfare that uses surface warships, aircraft, submarines, or other platforms, to find, track, and deter, damage, or destroy enemy submarines. Such operations ar ...

forces in the eastern

Atlantic The Atlantic Ocean is the second largest of the world's five oceanic divisions, with an area of about . It covers approximately 17% of Earth's surface and about 24% of its water surface area. During the Age of Discovery, it was known for se ...

*Home defence *UK

nuclear deterrent Nuclear strategy involves the development of doctrines and strategies for the production and use of nuclear weapons. As a sub-branch of military strategy, nuclear strategy attempts to match nuclear weapons as means to political ends. In addit ...

To support this focus on

Cold War The Cold War was a period of global Geopolitics, geopolitical rivalry between the United States (US) and the Soviet Union (USSR) and their respective allies, the capitalist Western Bloc and communist Eastern Bloc, which lasted from 1947 unt ...

theatres, most British forces in the

Mediterranean Sea The Mediterranean Sea ( ) is a sea connected to the Atlantic Ocean, surrounded by the Mediterranean basin and almost completely enclosed by land: on the east by the Levant in West Asia, on the north by Anatolia in West Asia and Southern Eur ...

were to be reduced, and there were to be further reductions in the

Far East The Far East is the geographical region that encompasses the easternmost portion of the Asian continent, including North Asia, North, East Asia, East and Southeast Asia. South Asia is sometimes also included in the definition of the term. In mod ...

References

External links

Draft Copy of 1975 Defence Review
{{UK Defence Review 1975 documents History of the Labour Party (UK) Defence white papers United Kingdom defence procurement 1975 in British politics 1975 in military history 20th-century military history of the United Kingdom

Summary

See also

References

External links