How 1950s propagandists claimed dreich weather would protect public from nuclear Armageddon

Captain H.E. Sanderson, director-general of training for civil defence (Scotland), was having none of the havering nonsense spouted by nervous ninnies about an imminent apocalypse. “To those who say, ‘you can't do anything about the atomic bomb,’” he thundered, "nonsense! It is not what it is cracked up to be." 

The good folk of Dunfermline at the meeting in 1952 must have been as relieved as the other people who had attended previous civil defence lectures. They, Captain Sanderson assured his audience, had “lost all fear of the atomic bomb. They knew what to do and how to protect themselves. They had complete peace of mind.” The survivors of Hiroshima and Nagaski may have had a slightly different opinion. 

As a new exhibition at the National Museum of Scotland about Scotland’s role in the Cold War highlights, Captain Sanderson and many like him considered an atomic exchange survivable, and so the defence of post-bomb civil society was taken pretty seriously, at least in the 50s and 60s.  

Civil defence wasn’t new in Scotland. The reminders of the Second World War’s ‘Home Front’ lingered on well into the 1950s. Some houses still had blackout curtains up. Forgotten gas masks hanging in dark cupboards scared nosy kids. ARP helmets were sometimes re-purposed to make sandcastles. Grudges against overzealous neighbourhood watchers were still warm.

Civil Defence force

The next war, many thought, would be like the last war, and there was still a lot of enthusiasm for wearing tin hats and shouting at people to put that light out. In 1950, the Home Secretary Sir David Maxwell Fyfe boasted that UK Civil Defence had over 400,000 members, which he proudly noted, “was better than the efforts made by other countries”.

Training was available to volunteers. In Paisley, the Civil Defence headquarters on the High Street screened the educational film, ‘The Atomic Bomb’, a detailed look at the devastation a blast above a “typical British city” would cause, and how to survive it.

Naturally, all this information is delivered in a plummy cut-crystal accent. To our eyes, it is mind-boggling in its naivety, at one point reassuring viewers that if the bomb dropped during a day of “heavy mist, rain or fog” then the blast reach could be halved. Suddenly Scotland's dreich weather looks like a defence mechanism. 

Officials in Scotland’s cities drew up detailed plans. Ambitious schemes to evacuate Glasgow and Edinburgh were carefully plotted. In Glasgow, particular care was taken to make sure that families from Catholic and Protestant parts of the city were dispersed to “suitable” areas. Train timetables were calibrated to ensure smooth evacuation. 

Babies in a post-apocalyptic world

The Women's Royal Voluntary Service was pressed into service to deliver the One-In-Five Scheme. Enthusiastic ladies were sent out to encourage one-in-five women to prepare themselves for the aftermath of an atomic attack. Talks were held all over the country, on subjects such as how to build a refuge room and caring for the sick.

The advice wasn’t always given the gravitas it demanded. In the North-East of Scotland, one speaker gave a presentation to senior schoolgirls. At the end, she asked her young audience what might be needed in a refuge room.

One girl replied: “One male preferably tall, dark and handsome to carry on the race.” Our sonsie lassie had no idea just how horrific delivering a baby in a post-apocalyptic world would have been. 

Mass graves

Birth was one thing, death quite another. Local authorities, central government and the military got themselves into a quagmire of memos, files and meetings about what to do about the dead. There was little agreement.

Most people couldn’t even comprehend the sheer scale of the death toll. The Scottish Office bought a few thousand flatpack Ikea-like coffins for the entire city of Edinburgh. In Ayrshire, there was talk of using fields and empty factories as “holding sites” for corpses, presumably until the bodies could be claimed. 

The Home Office knew better. Limited circulation memos made it clear that this just would not happen. Many bodies would never be identified, “even with scientific assistance, from the remains”. 

Mass cremation was considered. Filling ships with the dead and sinking them at sea was an option, as was the digging of huge burial pits. Naturally, a labour force would be needed for this terrible work. It was suggested that “the unemployed” could be used. Apparently, the bomb spared those without work. 

Futile and dangerous

By the middle of the 1950s, Civil Defence officials were not quite so chipper. Volunteer numbers were dropping. One Edinburgh man of the cloth wrote to the press, blaming  this disinterest on the newly emerged welfare state. It's more likely that people were becoming aware of the truth of the bomb, and its aftermath. 

In 1961, ‘The Atomic Bomb’ was shown in Brodick as part of a Civil Defence information evening. A local man, Stephen Gill, wrote a review of the event. It’s fair to say he was not impressed. The film, he pointed out, was more than ten years old. Warheads had more than doubled in size since 1950. They were told that the Holy Loch, only 45 miles away and now home to a US nuclear submarine base, was not a target. 

He added with a sort of weary glee that most of the audience that night under the age of 30 were members of CND, and the only ones to ask any questions. For Gill and those young people, the talk of refuges, evacuations and post-bomb survival was not just futile, it was dangerous. They knew there would be little chance of surviving. And would you want to? 

Civil Defence limped on until 1968, when it was quietly wound down. But, if you visit the exhibition, you’ll see that the Cold War didn’t thaw for a very long time.