| dc.description.abstract | This thesis investigates how successive postwar British Governments formulated a civil
defence policy aimed at ameliorating the effects of an enemy attack in the cold war. It
shows that civil defence was a nuanced response to the prospect of nuclear attack
framed in the changing political, economic and strategic contexts of cold war Britain.
Beginning as a genuine life-saving measure, thermonuclear-era civil defence became an
integral part of Britain's wider deterrence strategy. By locating civil defence within
Britain's wider defence strategy, this thesis demonstrates the importance of civil
defence as a key policy of the cold war state. It examines how civil defence policy was
formulated, with studies of the effects of nuclear weapons and estimates of the
consequences of an attack on British cities, and of the individual policies which were
developed - especially evacuation, shelter, the voluntary Civil Defence Corps, and
public information. It charts the changes in how civil defence was conceptualised and
justified from the early cold war era to the period of detente after the Cuban Missile
Crisis, details the responses to key cold war crises, and explains how economic
retrenchment and developments in nuclear weapon technology, as well as detente,
undermined civil defence policy and led to it being placed on a care-and-maintenance
basis in 1968. | |
