Most people in Britain, I am sure, dismiss the notion of civil defence against nuclear attack as absurd. Twenty years ago or more, Peter Cook in Beyond the Fringe made a delicious mockery of the notion that you should get into a paper bag in order to protect yourself against nuclear fall-out, and the Government's recent pamphlet, 'Protect and Survive', caused both protest and satire. But to dismiss civil defence as absurd without thinking further is not enough. Proposals for expenditure on civil defence keep reappearing. We need to ask ourselves why the subject recurs like this? What is the actual policy in Britain? And what could be done?

LRB 1 April 1983 | PDF Download