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The British government made secret preparations for nuclear conflict throughout the Cold War. Following the disbandment of the Civil Defence Corps in 1968, resources for the defence of civilians were dramatically reduced. The sole measure undertaken after 1968 to minimize civilian casualties in the event of a conflict was the preparation of a public information campaign, Protect and Survive. The material advised civilians to ‘stay at home’ and build makeshift fallout shelters. This article examines the production of Protect and Survive, and some public responses to it. It will be argued that civil servants were left little option but to knowingly prepare inadequate and misleading advice. Public criticism was shaped by anxieties about the likelihood of nuclear conflict, and the impossibility of adequate defence. The individual was seen to be utterly helpless in the face of a nuclear attack. Older institutions designed to facilitate patriotic collective engagement with cold war defence, such as the Civil Defence Corps, were not revived. The government was attacked both by campaigners for improved civil defence, and by a revived and intellectually fertile anti-nuclear movement. Each of these political initiatives represented attempts to develop forms of active cold war citizenship, in contrast to the passivity advised by the state via Protect and Survive. Criticism of the material can therefore be seen to be rooted in a growing scepticism about the state’s ability to act effectively in the interests of the majority, in war as in economic management. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In the early cold war, the British government founded a voluntary civil defence service designed to protect the nation and the population from the effects of enemy attack in the event of war. Although civil defence was a site of massive voluntary effort—around 500,000 people joined—it was also considered a ‘failure’. This article examines the propaganda utilized to recruit these volunteers in the ‘atomic age’, and argues that the messages used reveal a range of concerns about the conflict, patriotism, and voluntarism in the early post-war years that existed in tension. In particular, it analyses the tensions between duty and service on the one hand, and leisure on the other, symptomatic of the wider debates surrounding citizenship and participation in the period. It also explains the importance of the Second World War and the gendered perceptions of civil defence in attempting to mobilize potential recruits. The article concludes that civil defence propaganda succeeded in mobilizing significant levels of participation, but was perceived as a failure due to an understanding of patriotic citizenship rooted in the cultural context of the Second World War. In a period of cultural change, propaganda began to emphasize leisure as well as duty, but struggled to reconcile the two messages in a way capable of convincing recruits in large enough numbers. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article analyses British policy towards Iraq during the period following the Second World War until the 1958 Iraqi revolution. Using British archival sources it demonstrates how Britain covertly tried to stem the rise of communist and nationalist anti-imperialist sentiments in Iraq through an insistence on employing ill-fitting anti-communist propaganda designed as a Cold War weapon with which to counter Soviet influence. Failing to appreciate the level of indigenous politicization, because of their own rigid ideas about the nature of the 'Iraqi mind', British officers were incapable of devising local responses to the growing threat of anti-imperialism, instead inadvertently handing over the initiative to Iraqi political groups to set the agenda. In this way Britain gradually lost the battle for hearts and minds in Iraq despite maintaining a huge propaganda apparatus in the country and the wider region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the 2009 Ben Pimlott Memorial Lecture, delivered by Peter Hennessy, a professor of British history at Queen Mary, University of London. The speech focuses on British government documents related to the Cold War, noting that many were released by the British Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) to the British Public Record Office (PRO) under the "Waldegrave Initiative" campaign. The 1970 British "Government War Book" and policies for military mobilization are explored.

The article focuses on diplomatic relations between the U.S. and Great Britain during the Berlin Crisis of 1961-1962. The author argues that American foreign policy was influenced by the personal relationships between Anglo-American politicians, diplomats, and other officials that went beyond the interactions between British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan and U.S. President John F. Kennedy. Other notable people discussed include British ambassador to the U.S. David Ormsby-Gore, U.S. secretary of state Dean Rusk, British foreign secretary Alec Douglas-Home, and Soviet Premier Nikita S. Khrushchev. The American two-part policy involving diplomatic negotiations with the Soviet Union and the buildup of NATO's (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) conventional weaponry are considered.