‘Stay at Home’: The Politics of Nuclear Civil Defence, 1968–83.

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]