Scottish Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament

1970s nuclear war plans revealed

Details

Published on Saturday, 31 December 2005 10:44

Plans detailing how Britain would be run during a nuclear war are among files declassified by the National Archives. The Prime Minister and civil s ervants would be moved to an underground bunker, but there would be no mass evacuation. Emergency legislation would be passed and hospitals would be emptied. The announcement to be played on BBC radio was pre-recorded. Art treasures from London and Edinburgh would be stored in slate mines in Wales. Historian Peter Hennesy said: \"These were the Crown Jewels of genuine official secrecy .. because you didn\'t want the other side to get your war plans. Also the degree of alarm for the civilian population, in relatively tranquil times, that a leakage of this would have produced would have been extraordinary\". In the 1970s and 1980s CND revealed a lot of the detail of \"civil defence\" plans.