![]() Winston Churchill called it his “naughty document” not meant for public eyes. One of the starkest displays is the “percentages document”. Unofficially nicknamed “Ma’ammageddon”, the 1983 script reads: “Not for a single moment did I imagine that this solemn and awful duty would one day fall to me.” Photograph: Steve Parsons/PAĬivil servants even mocked up an address for the Queen to deliver to the nation. ![]() Items stored in an under the stairs of a fallout shelter. By dawn on 21 March, the third world war has begun. When British bases are then bombed, Margaret Thatcher gives the go-ahead to launch 29 nuclear weapons at the communist bloc. One imaginative script has the Soviet Army invade Yugoslavia on Friday 13 March 1981, and in the ensuing days, Labour’s leader, then Michael Foot, and the archbishop of Canterbury, then Robert Runcie, arrested at a peace rally – though it was a “mistake” to arrest the archbishop, the memos concede. The iron curtain came down, the Berlin Wall went up, then fell, the Cuban missile crisis rocked the world, and the advent of the atomic bomb raised the stakes to the highest level possible.ĭocuments from Wintex-Cimex, the Nato codename for the exercises designed to test the west’s responses in the event of a nuclear strike, show civil servants preparing for fictional scenarios. ![]() Photograph: Steve Parsons/PAĭocuments, posters, photographs and newsreels on display reveal how, in the corridors of power and in hidden government bunkers, contingency plans were hatched during an era of great political turbulence between 1945 and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. ![]() A collection of posters on display during the preview of the National Archives’ exhibition. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |