This film is one of 93 sent in by West Yorkshire Police, which makes up a grand total of 23 hours of fascinating footage from 1939 to 1985. The other films in the collection vary; there is footage of a Rolling Stones concert at Roundhay Park in Leeds, 1982, a home guard inspection from 1942, recruitment reels from the 1960s and 70s, various educational videos aimed at youths, documentary footage of cadet training, various footage of police control at Elland Road during Leeds United matches,...

This film is one of 93 sent in by West Yorkshire Police, which makes up a grand total of 23 hours of fascinating footage from 1939 to 1985. The other films in the collection vary; there is footage of a Rolling Stones concert at Roundhay Park in Leeds, 1982, a home guard inspection from 1942, recruitment reels from the 1960s and 70s, various educational videos aimed at youths, documentary footage of cadet training, various footage of police control at Elland Road during Leeds United matches, footage of the miner’s strikes of the 1980s and a compilation of appeals to find the infamous serial killer the “Yorkshire Ripper”, plus much more. This collection has significant historical value as it shows the political and social issues which concerned the country in the almost 50 year time frame. As the videos include footage of the British public, it also shows us how clothing styles, cars and architecture have changed throughout the years.

This particular film is footage of a CND (Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament) rally at RAF Finningley in 1960, which is now part of Robin Hood Airport.  The base was used to store three different types of nuclear weapon; Green Grass in Yellow Sun, Violet Club and Blue Steel. The CND was first launched in 1958 as a response to a growing fear of nuclear war that had started to dominate the country.

The only times a nuclear bomb has ever been used as warfare was on 6th August 1945 and again on 9th August, when the USA dropped the “little boy” and the “fat man” on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Hundreds of thousands of innocent people were killed in these blasts and many more died of radiation sickness and cancer in the years and decades afterward; the rate of birth defects was higher for those exposed to radiation too. The effects of these two bombs where utterly horrifying and devastating, forcing many to question the morality of US president Harry S. Truman’s decision to bomb Japan.

When the news of these attacks reached Britain, it sparked a post-war anxiety which was exacerbated by the proliferation of nuclear weapons in both the USSR and the US  in the 1950s through to the 1980s. Concerns began to develop about the health and environmental effects of these weapons as well, giving the British public all the more reason to favour Nuclear Disarmament. The unique aspect of the CND demonstrations was that they consisted of a wide variety of protestors – a true cross-section of British society united over one common goal.

The event that brought the world closest to Nuclear War was the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962; the Soviet Union was found to have been installing nuclear missiles in Cuba, just 90 miles from the Florida Coast, threatening the USA to the point where urgent negotiations where set up between the White House and the Kremlin. Fortunately, an agreement was made between US President John F. Kennedy, Soviet Leader Nikita Khrushchev and Cuban Prime Minister Fidel Castro and the world breathed a sigh of relief as the missiles were removed from Cuba. The following year, a ban on nuclear testing in the atmosphere was agreed between the US, Soviet Union and Great Britain. The CND had become closer to realising its goal of multilateral disarmament.

After the Cuban Missile Crisis, public interest shifted from nuclear disarmament and focused instead on the controversial American war on Vietnam. The CND still continued but as a smaller movement, with protests still happening mostly in Scotland, where nuclear submarines had been based. The decade saw some political problems for the organisation; the new Labour Government was not concerned with the anti-nuclear sentiment in Britain and instead favoured a conservative pro-nuclear policy. During the 1970s and 80s, the US and Britain had formed a “special relationship”. US President Ronald Reagan and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher shared an anti-communist and anti-Soviet sentiment; President Reagan once famously nicknamed the Soviet Union the “Evil Empire” in one of his speeches.

This attitude only worsened the threat of nuclear war and a large section of the British public was unhappy with the government’s policy of allowing US nuclear weapons to be based in Europe. The CND continued to grow again, with protest rallies all over the country and membership increasing hugely. Civil Defence became a major public concern with this renewed threat. The government released a series of pamphlets called “Protect and Survive” which included information on what to do in the event of nuclear attack. There was also a television and radio version prepared, to be aired only in the event of attack.  

Protect and Survive was used by anti-nuclear organisations, because it highlighted the irony of the government spending £5 trillion on the trident nuclear missile programme, but was not willing to spend much on protecting the public. An anti-nuclear pamphlet was released by E.P Thompson, called “Protest and Survive” which parodied the original. This tongue-in-cheek poke at the government’s attempt to protect the British public helped the CND gather steam and gain further popularity during the 1980s. Cartoonist Raymond Briggs wrote a haunting graphic novel called When the Wind Blows which was released in 1982; it is the fictional story of an elderly couple who try to follow the advice given in Protect and Survive when Britain is victim to a nuclear attack. They survive the initial blast, but despite their efforts they fall victim to lethal radiation poisoning – highlighting the futility of civil defence against such a powerful and destructive weapon.

The type of protest seen here is a peaceful one; men, women and children are seen sitting at the gates of the RAF base, refusing to move out of the way for the trucks trying to enter. The police simply pick up the protestors, who do not struggle, and put them into the back of a police van. The CND disapproved of causing civil disobedience, and wanted their demonstrations to focus on educating the public with a well-formed argument. The CND tended to direct its protests towards MPs and the British Government and took place mainly in London; however, interestingly, an off-shoot of the CND, named the Committee of 100, was formed in the same year as this film, with Bertrand Russell resigning as the President of CND in order to become the President of this new group. They advocated a more direct action approach to raising the issue of nuclear weapons, organising peaceful acts of civil disobedience, similar to the kind of sit down action seen in this film.  

Remnants of the Cold War are still visible in Yorkshire. In Acomb, a suburb of York, there is an underground Cold War bunker which is now owned by English Heritage, and tours are available to the public. The bunker was in commission for 30 years starting in 1961 and closed down with the end of the Cold War in 1989 and subsequent collapse of Soviet Union in 1991. It was one of 29 command centres set up in the event of nuclear attack. RAF Menwith Hill near Harrogate is a site shared by UK and US governments, and is used primarily as a communications interception base, but also routes data as part of the US missile defence system.  It has been in use since 1966.

References:

The History of CND

Rockoff, Hugh, America’s Economic Way of War: War and the US Economy from the Spanish-American War to the Persian Gulf War, Cambridge University Press, 2012.

Hogg, Jonathan, British Nuclear Culture: Official and Unofficial Narratives in the Long 20th Century,  Bloomsbury Academic, 2016.

Davis, Tracy C., Stages of Emergency: Cold War Nuclear Civil Defence, Duke University Press, 2017.

Interactive Map of nuclear Britain

Further Reading:

Read a pdf of Protect and Survive

RAF Finningley