(c) www.lobster-magazine.co.uk (Issue 43)  | |||
| Summer 2002 |
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Issue 43 | |
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Secret Underground Cities: an account of some of Britain's subterranean defence, factory and storage sites in the Second World War
N. J. McCamley
Barnsley, Yorkshire: Leo Cooper, 1999, £14.95 (sb)
Secret Nuclear Bunkers: the passive defence of the western world during the Cold War
N. J. McCamley
Barnsley, Yorkshire: Leo Cooper, 2002, £19.95 (hb)
Anthony Frewin
On the Aldermaston March in April of 1963 a Gestetner-printed pamphlet was given out with the intriguing title of 'DANGER - OFFICIAL SECRET - RSG6' authored by the anonymous, self-styled Spies for Peace. It detailed the elaborate and unsuspected 'precautions' the state had taken since the birth of the Atomic Age in protecting itself, if not us, should the Dr Strangeloves of the West and the East ever exercise their fingers on the trigger. The state would hunker down in vast underground bunkers, designated Regional Seats of Government, and if we, the populace, came knocking there was just no way we were going to get in.
But not only RSGs - there were secret stockpiles of food, other bunkers, monitoring stations and who-knows-what-else that were going to ensure the state would continue even if there was no one left to govern. Well, we had Civil Defence (whitewash and brown paper bags), but even its most devout apologists finally accepted that it was all kidology and strictly for the mugs.
Now, the amazing thing about these secret installations was that millions and millions of pounds had been spent on them in total secrecy. Further more, there had been no parliamentary or public discussion or scrutiny. Not surprising now, but back then we had a touching faith in elected governments (well, some of the time anyway). It suddenly dawned on us that if they could keep this secret, what else was going on that we didn't know about?
I was fifteen at the time of this Aldermaston March and I duly turned off the main London Road to the Berkshire village with the aptly Nabokovian name of Wargrave to see an RSG for myself. In fact several hundred others did, too, despite Peggy Duff, who had stationed herself by the turn off, loudly declaring over a Tanoy that true CND supporters would keep marching straight on. But then all of us down at the bunker were the awkward squad anyway - Committee of 100 fellow-travellers rather than Labour Party stooges as we then saw CND.
Spies for Peace gave a lot of us a taste for counter-government surveillance and I spent more weekends than I can remember over the next two years being driven about southern England by my girl-friend in her green Mini looking for anything suspicious. We soon knew what the tell-tale signs were: the radio masts, air grilles and vents, cast concrete block houses and so on. But we never did find the Queen's fall-out shelter.
The Spies for Peace didn't identify themselves and despite repeated claims that any moment Special Branch were about to pounce (or 'ponce' as Private Eye used to say at the time), they never did. The Spies got away with it.
We, however, had a good idea who was responsible. We had figured, for reasons that I cannot now recall, that the Solidarity group had something to do with it and Nicholas Walter, whom I had known through the Committee of 100 for a couple of years, was a prominent figure in the group. Nick, who died a few years ago, was one of the sharpest minds I'd ever met and we duly reported our discoveries to him; though I always felt that he was a dozen steps ahead of us on every front and there was nothing we told him that he didn't already know and in great detail.
The Spies for Peace never repeated their scoop and it was left to others to continue the ferreting about. First off was Peter Laurie in Beneath the City Streets (Allen Lane, 1970) who built massively on the original pamphlet and didn't leave a stone unturned, or so we thought at the time. But then Duncan Campbell came along with a Leviathan of a book, War Plan UK (Burnett Books, 1982) and a lot of us felt that he probably knew more about the state's nuclear plans than the state did itself.
Post-Campbell all that could be done was footnoting what had already been uncovered and this is what Nicholas McCamley does admirably in his two volumes. Secret Underground Cities describes in exhaustive and readable detail the underground facilities of the Second World War that in many cases would be the basis for the 'new, improved' nuclear bunkers of the Atomic Age. His final chapter brings the story up to date with an account of the Spies and the RSGs. Cold War Secret Nuclear Bunkers fills in a lot of detail missing from Campbell but the two chapters on the United States seem rather bit lame. He's better on home ground here in the UK. Both volumes are well illustrated, indexed and references and sources are given throughout.
A writer who seems to have missed all of this literature despite being the Attlee Professor of Contemporary British History at the University of London is Peter Hennessy. But then our prof comes from the 'pol-sci' school - if it isn't in the official documents it didn't happen. His recent book, The Secret State: Whitehall and the Cold War (Allen Lane, 2002), Pooterishly recounts a visit he actually made to what was the state's main nuclear bunker at Corsham in Wiltshire. No armchair professor he! There's even a photograph of him standing by the entrance to the complex adjacent to the Box Tunnel on the Paddington to Bristol railway line. Never being one to miss a literary allusion he entitles the chapter, 'To the Cotswold Station'!
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