PM Macmillan wanted to stay in the " nuclear club", Dean Rusk was worried the UK would " move in on our independence". The reality was the Brits wanted the bomb as a deterrent to Russia in Europe.

From the National Security Archives.






Lewis L. Strauss, shown when he was a member of the Atomic Energy Commission during 1946-1950, would become chairman of the AEC during the Eisenhower administration, from 1953 to 1958. After a meeting with British experts in October 1957 [see Document 2], he declared that the U.K. should get out of the nuclear weapons business, a sentiment that was shared by senior State Department officials during the Kennedy administration. (Photo from Harry S. Truman Presidential Library)







The British Bomb and the United States - Part One | National Security Archive (gwu.edu)