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Refreshers contain caffeine. Margaret Thatcher famously said, every Prime Minister needs a willie. Hers was Willie Whitelaw and who served as her home secretary between 1979 and 83. And it was in this role, when he tried to compel Britain's local authorities to engage in civil defence exercises, that the Prime Minister's Willie was embarrassed. He had been forced in the summer of 1982 to cancel Operation Hard Rock, a huge nationwide nuclear war planning exercise which would have involved all the local authorities in the country. I say it was cancelled. Willie insisted it was merely being postponed, but everyone knew this was just being said to save his blushes. Hard Rock was effectively cancelled. In the Hard Rock exercise, an attack scenario had been drawn up. Targets had been chosen. It was decided who was going to get what megatonnage on their heads and the councils would have tested their planning to see how they would cope with that scenario. It would have been the biggest war planning exercise since Britain had cut back its civil defence efforts in 1968. But now cold War tensions had surged back and so Hard Rock was needed to test our mettle. Where are local councils ready for the big one? Well, we didn't get to find out because in July 82, the government were forced to announce it'd been cancelled. And it was because so many local councils across Britain, those who objected to civil defence planning, who saw it as futile or even dangerous and so had declared themselves nuclear free, had refused to take part. They had, bold as brass, snubbed the government. In London, 20 out of 54 county councils refused to participate and seven others said they would only do the absolute bare minimum. So without the full participation of the local governments, there was no point in Hard Rock. But there were some who argued that there was never any point to Hard Rock because the attack scenario it presented was so unrealistic. The last nuclear war exercise before Hard Rock had been called Square Leg. That had been conducted in 1980 and it produced lots of bad headlines for the government. And so, reluctant to stir up more anti nuclear feeling, they decided to tone it down a bit. For Hard Rock, Square Leg had bombarded Britain with 200 megatons. Hard rock would only give her 50. It presented a scenario where the Soviet Union goes through a strong military build up and then proposes that we all dissolve our military alliances. That means, of course, that we dissolve NATO. NATO refuses. As the Soviets exert pressure, nations near the eastern border notice a buildup of Soviet troops. And so NATO forces are deployed to the border regions to match them. Relations between east and west deteriorate. In Western Europe, we begin to see frightening acts of sabotage. There are huge peace rallies in the cities, panic buying and unofficial evacuations from urban areas and fuel shortages. We see all that in threads, of course, and we know that Mick Jackson and Barry Hines attended the Civil Defence Training College in Yorkshire when they were researching threads. Hard Rock then says various acts of terrorism occur in Britain. The Prime Minister does a broadcast urging us to remain calm. At this point, the Soviets call up the reserves and British holidaymakers try desperately to get home. But there are delays at airports. NATO calls up her reserve forces, panic buying intensifies. Local authorities begin putting their emergency plans into action. Schools are closed and any premises earmarked for wartime use are now requisitioned. At this point, police are asked to check that their carrier control points are in order, as these will be used to trigger the sirens across the country. The next day, Protect and Survive appears in the newspapers and is scheduled for broadcast on radio and tv. Again, we see that occurring in threads the following day in the Hard Rock exercise, government staff go to their bunkers and in a detail that we don't see in threads, because the film is of course, concerned with the civilian side. Hard Rock says, quote, there have been a number of reports of frogmen coming ashore who it is suspected may be Soviet saboteurs. Soviet ships have been mysteriously stranded at Britain's eastern ports, supposedly as a way of blocking access. Acts of terrorism and sabotage increase. The roads out of London are jammed with evacuees and fuel runs even lower. This leaves many cars broken down on the roads, causing further traffic chaos the next day. 26th of September, in the Hard Rock exercise, the war starts, but so far it's with conventional weapons only. The Soviet forces attack RAF bases and ports. There is now a nationwide shortage of building supplies which have been recommended for constructing shelters and protecting Survive. So people in desperation resort to the black market or to ripping up garden fences. The economy slows down as people stop going to work. TV and radio continues for now with Protect and Survive shown frequently. Hospitals, who are already struggling with casualties from the conventional bombing try to release as many long stay patients as they can into the community. Most prisoners are also released. As this is happening, the demands of the Hard Rock war game would have had local councils again, as we see in threads, trying to work out the responses. How would we deal with these fuel and food shortages, with the traffic chaos, with rioting and panicking, and then the sirens wail and the nukes are incoming. So this is all quite standard stuff for a countdown to nuclear war. But where the Hard Rock exercise differed was in the intensity of the nuclear attack and in its target selection. The journalist Duncan Campbell, who I'm sure we all know was the author of the Great War Plan uk, he wrote about Hard Rock at the time and he ridiculed how limited and unrealistic was its attack scenario. He says that in comparison with previous exercises, Hard Rock was minuscule. With only 54 bombs falling on Britain. He wrote in the New Statesman, the exercise was based on the most absurd conception of nuclear war ever to have graced the desk of a military planner. Former exercises had seen us receive 200 megatons, but hard rock gave us only 48. And the nuclear targeting was just plain odd, with bombs hitting relative empty spaces like Mallague in the Highlands or Bideford in Devon. Not a single bomb fell on a NATO or a US airbase or on the submarine bases on the Clyde. London wasn't hit. Quote, in this exercise, bombs explode everywhere except on important military targets or large cities. Duncan Campbell said that Hard Rock had been constructed with public relations in mind. And what would be the benefit of plotting such a measly attack? And then asking local government to respond to would have meant that central government could surely use it as proof that civil defence plans can indeed be effective. But local authorities were wise to this and they refused to collaborate in what they considered nothing more than a confidence trick. Many people saw Hard Rock as a trick, a con. You want us to believe that nuclear war is survivable, so you present us with a weird, lopsided, unrealistic nuclear attack with very odd targets chosen, and then expect local councillors to jump up and down, waving their little paper plans in the air in triumph, saying, see? It does work. London was right all along. So we had various Labour led councils across the country choosing to either boycott Hard Rock or only do the legal minimum. And that is what forced central government to abandon the exercise because it would be pointless with such patchy participation. So they ditched Hard Rock and C and D, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. They saw this as a victory because they'd been ridiculing Hard Rock and of course ridiculing the very notion that you can plan to survive nuclear war. And they had commissioned their own nuclear war scenario, which they had said would present the horrible reality of a nuclear attack on Britain, the reality which Hard Rock was trying to duck. And they called their exercise hard luck. So when the government's Hard Rock was cancelled, the front page of the Guardian declared, white law calls off exercise to glee of C and D, central government had been forced to retreat. Now the local councils were able to rebel in this way because they were working under the Civil Defense act of 1948, which placed a requirement on them to keep plans for emergencies. Keep plans, yes. But there was no requirement in the 1948 law to actively update those plans and to test them and to train for them. It was sufficient to dash out an emergency plan on the back of a fag packet and then leave it in a drawer to gather dust. That meant the rebels could say to London, yeah, yeah, we've done our bit, we've written up a plan, now get off our backs. In other words, take your Hard Rock and shove it. And so, having been humiliated by the local councils, the rebels, central government was now determined to close the loophole which allowed the rebel councils to duck their civil defence duty. So the following year, 1983, new civil defence regulations were created which altered the 1948 law. These new regulations compelled councils to make civil defence plans for nuclear war. Yes, as had been the case before, but now there was a requirement to keep those plans up to date and to participate in training exercises and also to start properly preparing premises. That's a bit of a tongue twister as an emergency headquarters in case nuclear war did indeed kick off. So these new regulations allowed London to grab the rebel councils by the scruff of the neck and say, right, you show me your workings. As you would expect, the Labour opposition in Westminster and the various rebel Labour councils across the country were outraged. Storm over civil defence orders, said the Guardian. And the chairman of the Greater London Council's Public Services Committee told the paper his council would be totally unscrupulous in using the legal process to find loopholes in these new rules. Whilst I have sympathy with them at this point, you do wonder, were the rebel councils always objecting to civil defence on moral grounds or was it often just a good way to give the Conservative government a bloody nose? But then you could flip that on its head, of course, and wonder whether the Conservative government likewise were using this debate to portray these Labour councils as the so called loony left, a term you don't really hear anymore, but which was regularly used in the 80s as an insult to left wing Labour. I suppose it should be no surprise to any of us that politics was going on amongst all these politicians. The shadow Home Secretary at the time, Labour's Roy Hattersley, who died a couple of weeks ago, said, there is unanimous agreement that the Labour Party must explain and expose the absurdity of expecting councils to perform civil defence tasks which are beyond their capabilities. And I must agree with him on that. People often like to patronize local councils as being concerned with humdrum things like emptying the bins, cutting the grass, repairing the roads. Are they also expected to somehow leap into protecting us from the nuclear holocaust? Aren't we expecting a bit much from them? It is just local council, after all, the people that you have patronised as being concerned with the bins and the roads and the parks. So Roy Hattersley, Willie Whitelaw's opposite number in Westminster, led the attack against these new regulations. And the rebel councils across the country also roared in disapproval. In Cumbernauld, the new regulations were said to be an attack on the independence of local government because it saw London seeking to tell them what to do and how to do it. In Harlow, a councillor said, I am not in favour of spending ratepayers money in conning them to believe they're going to be protected During a nuclear war up in Dundee, it was said the regulations were fraudulently persuading the public that something could be done to limit the effects of a nuclear attack. Another counsel told his local paper, the government are more intent on organizing corpses after a nuclear war than in protecting the public before one. And the opposition to these new regulations didn't just come from politicians. In February 1984, a statement from the Fire Brigades Union called the new rules a confidence trick of the most cruel and heartless kind. The Fire Brigades Union, along with other bodies, has seen through these proposals for what they really are, a crude and heartless attempt to give credibility to the government's war games, a portrayal that purposely misleads the public into believing that nuclear war is survivable. But again, remember the politics of Britain in the early 80s, where the trade unions were often regarded as Margaret Thatcher's greatest enemy, and the Fire Brigades Union, along with many other unions, of course, was, and I believe still is affiliated to the Labour Party. So, again, obviously, politics is at play here. It wasn't just a matter of pure ideology or moral objections to civil defence planning. Now, everyone in this debate is obviously entitled to their stance on whether civil defence is worthwhile in the context of nuclear war. And some may call their opposition a kind of conscientious objection. And that's fine, that's laudable. But we must always be aware that some of this debate might simply have boiled down to grumble, grumble, I hate the Tories, or grumble, grumble, I hate the lefties. But there can be no doubt that in the midst of all the murky politics, there were honest campaigners who truly believed, as I do, that a civil defense plan for nuclear war is dangerous because it can encourage the belief that such a catastrophe, the ultimate catastrophe, is survivable. It lumps nuclear war in there with every other type of war or emergency. But of course, on the other side of the debate, there are some who would argue that you would be crazy not to plan for some kind of survival. But let's just be aware that this debate, because it leaned so close to politics and offered both sides a way to attack their rivals, it was surely exploited by some for political gain.
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so whilst left wing local government fought it out with right wing central government, there was one relatively calm voice in the middle. And fittingly the organisation providing this CAM voice was called solus, which stands for the Society of Local Authority Chief Executives. SOLACE was the body representing the non political senior guys and local councils. The people who are not elected, those who get their jobs via interview, not election, and who are not guided or shouldn't be guided by ideology. They are there to do admin and management and budgets and all that important local government stuff. So being separate from the push and pull of ideology and party politics, they stood in the middle and tried to offer a detached and neutral view of the whole argument on whether civil defense had a meaningful place in local government. So they commissioned a reports on the state of British civil defence and whether local councils should accept the duty or not. And what were they doing with that duty? I have the Sollus report here. It's entitled the State of Civil Defence. I found it in the archives at London South Bank University and I will upload it to the archives section of my Patreon page so you can read it in full there if you remember and if you're a real civil defence local government geek. The report was conducted by Solace's civil defence panel who issued a questionnaire to their members in the summer of 1982 and the very first paragraph of the report contains the chilling reminder that council chief executives will take a very strong view on civil defence duties because if nuclear war comes they are the individuals who will become the so called controllers of their area. Quote they therefore have an individual responsibility to prepare themselves for this obligation. I think the subtext here is left wing local councillors across the land who hate the Tory government in London. Okay, fine, let them make their protests and their speeches. Let them declare they love nothing to do with civil defence that's fine. We live in a democracy and they are politicians after all. They do need to appeal to their voters. But we, the chief executives, we need to be above the politics and the mudslinging and the scoring of points against hated rivals. We need to be the adults here. We need to be serious. How serious? Well, serious enough that if it happens, we will be the controllers. And we all know how awesome and quite terrifying were the responsibilities which would fall on a wartime controller. Remember this sinister, smiling chap from the famous Panorama episode?
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But central government plans may be wildly optimistic. In the early stages after nuclear attack, the highest level of government may be at no more than local authority level. In the Humberside County Council bunker just outside Hull, local government, police and fire officers, soldiers and ladies from the WRVs are briefed by the Chief Executive in wartime, known as the Controller. In the end, it comes down to one man, a man with more power than he could ever have imagined, even in his grossest dreams or nightmares. Keith Bridge, a former accountant. How much power do you have as controller as soon as the bomb goes off? Total power, Theoretically. That would include power over the police, fire brigade, all that sort of thing? Yes. And life and death powers of life and death? Yes. What does that mean? That if people were looting, it would be within my competence to instruct that they be executed. Do you expect that coming of situation to arise?
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It's quite possible.
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It's feasible. Does having that kind of power, total power, worry you?
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No. So the Solus report says that they questioned all the chief executives across the country, across England, Wales and Scotland, about their duty to drop civil defense plans, covering things obviously like shelter, feeding public health information and nuclear war. And they asked whether they considered their own plans to be substantially complete. Most of them said no, their council plans were not complete, their plans were not operational. And so we might ask, why then did central government think now was the time to pile yet more civil defence responsibility onto these councils? Well, as we discussed earlier, perhaps it was being done as a punishment for the rebellion over Hard Rock. It was being done to pull them into line. And the Solace Report is surprised that most councils haven't completed their civil defence plans. Quote, we would expect a fundamental statutory duty to be performed, but it is not. Moreover, in the wide range of local government services, we know of no other significant statutory duty upon local government which has not been complied with consistently over a number of years. It adds, civil defence is uniquely a significant duty imposed by law, which local government does not carry out. And the report mentions that the Home Office has been tolerant thus far of this local government foot dragging. The report also stresses that many chief executives say there's been no problem in planning for peacetime emergencies like setting up a feeding centre or a shelter after a local flood or storm. So this suggests again, the ideology is at play here because local governments seem quite happy to do emergency planning for disasters, just not for nuclear war, just not for that particular disaster. The report concludes that the state of affairs disclosed about civil defence planning is unsatisfactory and may be regarded by those concerned for the well being of the civilian population in time of conflict as disastrous. The conclusion of the Sollus Report is while the risk of war between nations continues to exist, it is logical to maintain an appropriate degree of civil defence at home for the population. We consider current levels of civil defence to be inadequate. And the report finishes by saying civil defence in the local government context is a humanitarian service provided by local authorities for the community. So I definitely get the feeling from the Sollus report that the chief executives and their senior colleagues, the non political people, remember, might have regarded themselves as superior to the elected councillors. That lot will come and go subject to the whims of the electorate. They might argue and prance and posture in order to please the voters or to grab a headline, but the real sensible work is being done by us. The vibe is very much ah well, I suppose it's up to us to sort it all out. We are the adults in the room. Now. That tone of course does seem quite patrician. We know best. We are the senior people, the men in suits, the men on the high salaries. Local politicians will say something, anything, perhaps to get some votes or to get in the paper whilst we behind our desk will sigh and shake our heads and go on with the real hard work. But of course you could argue that Whitehall had the same patrician approach to local government. These little part time politicians and their little local councils tending to the bins and the parks and the potholes. And then when it comes to civil defense, they try and act the big guy, try to cause trouble for the real government, the important politicians there in London, they use civil defense as a tool to attack us. They need to be slapped down. So it does seem to me that both the senior guys in local government, the chief execs and the people down in Whitehall or Westminster, both had perhaps a patronizing attitude towards local councillors. But then I can understand the frustration of local councillors who rebelled because at the same time as being patronized, they're being told to save everyone, uphold civilization and then rebuild it via civil defense plans. So it does seem that central governments and the chief execs, they want to have their cake and eat it. You can't dismiss the efforts and the capabilities of local councils and then at the same time expect them to save everyone and rebuild the country after nuclear war. Do you want your local councillors emptying the bins or rebuilding civilisation? It seems to me you can't really have both, at least not without a massive increase in their budget. So I hope you've enjoyed that little look at the the battle sparked by hard rock between right wing central government and left wing local government. And as I say, I have put the Solace report up on my Patreon page. If you remember, go along to patreon.com Atomichobo and I've added it to the Archives section and I thank you for listening
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Hello American podcast listeners, Max Rushton here from the Guardian Football Weekly, which I think you should give a listen. It is good. It comes out three times a week and the podcast delivers you analysis, news, both the good and the bad from the Beautiful Game and maybe even the occasional laugh. He's angry about everything. He doesn't have a great poker face, does he? I would like to play cards with Bruno Fernandez. You can listen to the Guardian Football Weekly wherever you get your podcasts. Hopefully see you soon.
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Com.