The Art of Officialdom After the Apocalypse (Part 1)

 

The National Archives at Kew are one of the great treasures of the United Kingdom. The ability for anyone to request and view the files of the machinery of government, from the mundane to the terrifying, and see first hand the thinking that went into the business of state is incredibly powerful.

Last week, Humphrey spent a morning at Kew reading through some of the most terrifying and grim files in the history of the British State. These formerly TOP SECRET documents laid bare the grim realities of planning for the survival of Government in a post nuclear strike environment. The thinking that went into this is both astonishing, depressing and deeply macabre, but also illuminating at the same time.

Having reviewed these files in detail, a number of themes and observations emerge that remain relevant to this day. From diplomatic mistrust, to the eternal Government goal of reinventing wheels, or quibbling over the smallest of pennies, the planning for officialdom in the aftermath of Armageddon is relevant to this day.

This is the first of a two part article on lessons emerging, and why they are still strangely relevant to this day.

Firstly a quick primer is essential on the business of how the British Government planned, in very broad terms, to conduct the business of WW3 from a purely central government perspective. This breaks down into three broad periods – the early Cold War (until the late 1950s) saw plans to use deep shelters in London as the point where government would take cover, and remain for the period of the strike.

The variety of tunnels, shelters and deeper construction was assumed to be blast proof against a limited atomic strike, which would damage but not destroy the continuity of government system.

After the Soviets acquired the hydrogen bomb, this quickly became less credible as a plan. Instead attention turned to moving around 4000 civil servants from London to the West Country, specifically a bunker in Corsham, known as STOCKWELL, TURNSTILE, BURLINGTON and other codenames.

In this plan the centre of government would move quickly, at relatively short notice to the site, and function as the home of the War Cabinet and handle the conduct of the war, and the initial reassertion of control. The site would house the Prime Minister, who in turn would govern what was left of the country. There was also some limited planning done too on fallback sites, which would have taken over had contact with Corsham been lost.

The problem with this plan was that the site was a large vulnerable and fixed target, and it was assumed that the Soviets had identified where it was, and targeted warheads accordingly. To that end, by the early 1960s it was becoming increasingly obvious that the site was fatally compromised and alternate plans needed to be made.

The end result was a system, developed under some of the most tightly controlled and secret planning in the Cold War to deliver a dispersed system of government. This was to be called ‘PYTHON’. Under this plan a nominated series of Ministers would disperse around the country, with small teams consisting of military planners, communication staffs and a cadre of specialists, and be ready to take charge post strike. They would disperse to remote locations and wait out the end of the world.

In this concept, each Minister would have been told the ‘batting order’ that they sat in, and been nominated as the Prime Minister in waiting. After the strike, they would have popped up, tried to make contact with central government, and if after a certain period had elapsed, then in the absence of leadership, the Minister was to take charge as the new Prime Minister.

An enormous amount of planning went into this work, thousands of upon thousands of pages exist in the National Archives, while many more have yet to be released. Among them are a variety of valuable lessons which hint at what the planners were considering.

The first key lesson is “the wheel will always be reinvented, for want of a small amount of money”.

In one file, there is an extensive discussion on the role of the TA ‘Army Reserve’ in the early 1960s. In essence, it was realised that there was a real challenge trying to provide home defence in the run up to, and aftermath of a nuclear attack.

Planning for the Reserves involved the use of some TA reservists to guard key areas and critical points – but they would not be normal TA, but others recalled to the colours. The intent was to create a force of some 20,000 soldiers in 87 units to defend these areas and provide assistance to the Civil Power.

The file (DEFE 24/163) is a good read on the power of inertia. The proposals to make best use of available resources made sense. There was a lengthy debate on the value of reusing extant resources effectively (for example 37,000 CCF  Cadet .303 rifles were to be given to the Police along with 97,000 revolvers), but also where to fund the project to deliver 20,000 soldiers from.

There was an immense series of arguments between the MOD and Home Office over who would pay the sum involved to recruit and equip the troops. The arguments boiled down to funding on in year measures, the challenges of spending rounds and the inability to find headroom in overcommitted MOD budgets to fund a force that would be assigned to the Home Office and carry out purely Home Office related roles.

At one stage the debate focused on the merits of providing uniforms (specifically combat dress) on the grounds that “there is a general feeling that battledress presents the image of an inferior soldier”. Proof perhaps that no matter what the generation, the Army will always want to look ‘ally’.

The upshot of this debate was that after less than a year of arguing between military officers and the Home Office, and a wider expenditure cut, neither department was willing, or able, to find the money to retain the force. The result was that it was disbanded and the troops stood down.

This did not remove the need for the troops to carry out this role though, and by the early 1980s the force was reborn as the ‘Home Service Force’, albeit in a smaller capacity. The need to protect key points against Soviet attack was a key driver here, unchanged from the 1960s, and proof that no matter how often you take a decision to support short term funding measures, it will often be reinvented later on at more cost for less effect.

The lesson here is salutary – there is a strong reservoir of goodwill among many volunteers (particularly reservists) to support output. But when arguments over role, funding and equipment (or not being paid) drag on at high levels in Whitehall, the effects will be felt at local level.

There are shades of this debate felt in the way that last year the RNR ceased all training to solve a short term funding gap, inflicting significant damage on the ability of the Royal Navy to operate, while also damaging longer term morale and goodwill among members. The debate closely mirrors that of the 1960s – short term book balancing is seen as more pressing and vital than long term outputs.

It was not just the volunteers that struggled to find themselves feeling much Whitehall love at times in the 1960s. Wider planning at the time focused on the difficult question of which (if any) foreign governments should be invited to have a place at Corsham, should the need to move arise.

FCO files from the time show that plans were well advanced to invite the ‘old Commonwealth’ nations High Commissioners to move in a small party to the site. The intention was to invite representatives from Australia, Canada and New Zealand to move, bringing with them diplomatic representation and cypher clerks.

The reason for this discussion was likely because Canada, as a NATO member would be caught up in the conflict and British and Canadian forces worked closely together in Europe and at sea. Meanwhile there were substantial (well over 100,000) British forces based in the Far East at the time, including nuclear capable aircraft and warships.

The UK would want to retain communication links to these Commonwealth capitals at all costs to ensure that co-ordination of assets occurred, and in due course supplies for help would be received.

This did though lead to some challenges – to what extent do you trust a foreign government with the plans about your own most sensitive secrets for survival? Sparingly, it seems.

The Canadian Government put not insignificant pressure on the UK during the 1960s to learn what plans were in place, and whether there was a place for them. This led to some debate in Whitehall about how much to tell the Canadians on UK plans, for fear of risk of compromise more widely – would giving away a small part of the secret in time potentially jeopardise the whole affair?

 The UK settled on providing some fairly anodyne comments to the Canadians and confirming that a cypher clerk and the High  Commissioner could travel to the site, but it did pose a challenge for policy makers.

An even bigger challenge was ‘what to do about the French’? There were concerns in the early 1960s that the French probably did need to be consulted, but there was a distinct lack of trust about whether to invite them or not.

The concern over the French was a pragmatic one – do you trust the French enough to tell them that they would have a place, come what may, in the bunker, or do you take a risk and keep them away from it, trusting that they would not need to be spoken to?

This tied into wider debates on the role of multi-lateral nuclear forces (particularly the Polaris force proposed at the time) and how governments could agree to consultations over nuclear release, even if they had dispersed to wartime shelters.

The benefits of bringing the French in was that in ensured that the key NATO nuclear partners were in consultation as to their intentions, and ensuring that direct links between capitals, in theory, remained in place. The Ambassadors and High Commissioners would be able to represent their leadership and its views as required.

In true British fashion, the result was an elegant compromise, agreed at the very highest levels of Government. Plans were made to pull together a diplomatic staff of about 12-18 people from the Commonwealth. It also made a small allowance for the French party to attend, but decided that the long standing British principle of ‘never trust the French’ extended as far as the end of the world.

In a classic Civil Service memorandum, setting out arrangements for representation by diplomats at Corsham, it was noted that:

“It is proposed that the United States and Commonwealth Representatives be given  advance notice of this arrangement at some point during the Precautionary Phase but the French would only be given one hours notice to move!”

In other words, as the UK began Transition To War measures, which could be some weeks prior, the senior US and Commonwealth leadership would be quietly informed of plans for spaces in the bunker for them. Should the decision to move be taken, the French Ambassador would get an hours notice of intention to ‘run away’ by the British Government.

One key challenge during this planning was working out how to deal with the Americans. The British Government had two key goals during its contingency planning stages – the first was to ensure the US Ambassador was in Corsham, along with a small staff to communicate to the US.

The second goal was to ensure that there was reciprocity of planning, and that the British Ambassador would be in the US Presidents wartime location. The reason for this was the goal of ensuring that ‘consultation’ occurred about nuclear release – a pressing concern for the British Government, which hosted a large number of US military facilities, and whose V Force was utterly integrated into the US Governments ‘SIOP’ (nuclear war plans).

The minor problem was that the US Government, and in particular President Johnson did not see the desire to reciprocate. An anxious exchange of memos from the end of 1963 reveals that having approached the US National Security Advisor (George McBundy) to confirm if a place would be offered, there was a very diplomatic brush off.

McBundy stated that “although he personally had no doubt that the President would want the Ambassador to accompany him, the Americans could not give us special treatment in their official planning”.

The American solution was to suggest that during the Transition To War phase, the Prime Minister should write to the President to personally make such a request. This resulted in a discussion about how the War Book needed to be amended to ensure that the FCO told No10 to ensure a draft message was prepared at the appropriate time.

The vision of a British Prime Minister, preoccupied with preparing for nuclear war having to send a special personal message to the US President, asking for the Ambassador to accompany him to his wartime location is not only mildly disturbing, but also indicates the limits, even during the 1960s, of British influence in US thinking.

As a result, the UK did continue to consider whether to tell the US Ambassador or not that he had a place in Corsham – on this no decision was taken.

The lessons from this are salutary – firstly, international relations are built on trust, and trust is hard earned and easily squandered. If nations act in a way that damages that trust, it hurts the possibility of future co-operation and support at a time when it may be required. This is perhaps timely for UK policy makers considering how best to engage diplomatically with other nations on challenging and sensitive issues.

The second lesson is that you should never assume your own national interests equate to another nations perspective on national interests. That the UK found itself in a position where the US was unlikely to support having a British Ambassador able to represent the Prime Minister present, reminds us that nations will act in their own self-interest, whether we like it or not.

It is telling that by 1965 the file on representation at Corsham was closed down, suggesting that as the PYTHON concept was worked up and Corshams original role abandoned, all hopes of a diplomatic presence ended…

Whether the diplomats would have gone to another location though is an interesting question. In the next part of this article, we will learn how the Corsham bunker was likely that it would have been inoperational within 24hrs of being activated for real, due to failure to spend money in adjacent areas – much to the frustration of planners.

We will also discover how the MOD seriously investigated creating a shadow Ministry to ensure the survival of military functions, and the concerns raised by Commanders about how they could operate an HQ like Corsham without any prior training or insufficient people.

We will learn how overly inquisitive British Army officers nearly compromised the whole planning effort at one point, and how a shortage of Royal Signals troops led to an almighty bollocking from a 3* General.

We will also discover how deception planning for the site posed an enormous financial burden for the British Government, and the challenges of maintaining a deception operation sufficiently credible to deceive Soviet intelligence and the journalist Duncan Campbell!

Finally we will learn, among other things, how the only two organisms likely to survive a nuclear apocalypse would be cockroaches and the British Army Staff Officer, thanks to TOP SECRET planning to create wartime groups of staff officers for unclear reasons to ride out the nuclear strike…

Part 2 will follow in due course.