Tomorrow is the 30th anniversary of the fall
of the Berlin Wall, leading to the reunification of Germany 11 months later, (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutions_of_1989) and with it, the beginning
of the end of the Cold War stand-off between east and Western Europe, and the
Warsaw Pact and NATO.
To mark this
important anniversary, the BBC interviewed the former Soviet Communist party
General Secretary and USSR leader Mikhail Gorbachev, who was president of the
Soviet Union at the time of these momentous political and diplomatic events.
Now nearly 90, he made news warning that that current tension between Russia
and the West is putting the world in "colossal danger" due to the
threat from nuclear weapons. "All nations should declare—all nations—that nuclear
weapons must destroyed. This is to save ourselves and our planet." (“Mikhail Gorbachev tells the BBC: World in
‘colossal danger’, ”BBC 4 November 2019; www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-europe-50265870/mikhail-gorbachev-tells-the-bbc-world-in-colossal-danger)
. But the other British media totally ignored
his concerns, being obsessed by Brexit and the upcoming General Election. (“To Avoid World War III, Gorbachev Says All
'Nuclear Weapons Must Be Destroyed'”; Common Dreams, 4 November 2019;
www.commondreams.org/news/2019/11/04/avoid-world-war-iii-gorbachev-says-all-nuclear-weapons-must-be-destroyed)
A very good insight
into how the Cold War stand-off began was to be found at six-month long exhibition
at the UK National Archives (www.nationalarchives.gov.uk)
in Kew, west London, under the theme: “Protect and Survive: Britain’s cold war
revealed”, which also ends tomorrow.
Here are some
extracts I recorded during personal visit this week.
Displayed was a
diplomatic cable from Frank (later Sir) Roberts, then a British diplomat at the
embassy in Moscow, who wrote to UK Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin on 28 March
1946: “[Russia] has grown around a small principality in Moscow, with no natural frontiers and always surrounded by unfriendly neighbours - Tartars, Poles, Turks,
Teutonic Knights and Swedes. At the very birth of the new Soviet State the whole
world seemed united against her, and the fears aroused by foreign intervention
after 1917 cannot yet have been eradicated from the minds of the rulers of Russia, any more than the fears of
Communism ha sbeen eradicated from that of Western leaders.”
Bevin’s boss, Labour
Prime Minister Clement Attlee had set out his concerns over the militarization - with nuclear weapons of mass destruction
(WMD) - of the post-World War Two relations with the Soviet Union, a British
ally during the war. He wrote in a Cabinet office memorandum, dated 28 August 1945 – barely three weeks since
the United States dropped its second atomic bomb, on Nagasaki, in Japan – that:
“This sort of thing has in the past been
considered a Utopian dream.It has become today the essential condition of the
survival of civilization and possibly life on the planet. No Government has ever
been placed in such a position as
ours today. The Governments of the UK and the USA are responsible as never
befor efo rth efutur eof the human race.”
Attlee proposed that
he, US President Truman, and Soviet President Stalin “should forthwith take counsel
together…time is short.”
But instead of a post
WW2detante, a Cold War was promulgated. Another memo dated 1951 shows the Paymaster General, Lord Cherwell, who had
been a close confident of Churchill through WW2, informing
Winston Churchill - Attlee’s successor
as Prime minister- that he had kept the spending on atomic weapons concealed in
the “Estimates” to Parliament. A few years after, Churchill informed the young
Queen Elizabeth in a letter dated 16 July 1954 ( by chance 9 years to the day that
the US first tested an atomic bomb ‘Trinity’ at Socorro in New Mexico) that the
British Cabinet was considering developing a hydrogen ‘H’-bomb. [The UK had
tested its first atom bomb the previous year.] The Cabinet subsequently gave the
go ahead on 26 July 1954.
A television documentary
broadcast on BBC4 on 4 November, chillingly entitled “A British Guide to the End
of the World” - as part of the Arena series – contained extraordinary footage and
reminiscences of servicemen who attended
the first test of the British H-bomb on Christmas Island in the middle of the
Pacific Ocean in 1957.
Here are some recollected
observations made former soldiers interviewed.
“Nobody knew why we were there [on Christmas
Island]”
“We were never given
any information on the size ( ie explosive power) of the [H-] bombs.”
“It [ the bomb] was
an angry , evil looking thing.”
“The bomb [detonation]
emptied an entire a lagoon.”
“What goes up, must
come down—the rain was black.”
“With a weapons like that
you wouldn’t fear anybody… you could destroy nations.” “We really did believe
we were that close to nuclear war- Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD).”
Defensive systems were
built in the UK to protect the nation from atomic attack. One such was
constructed by RCA - originally the Radio
Corporation of America, which later made musical records and other electrical goods
- in the north Yorkshire moors, at
Fylingdales. One worker at Fylingdales’ memorable white domes commented:”You
are constantly training for war all the time.”
A decade later, in
1979, the UK Government began a series of so-called Civil Defence exercises
under the title of ‘Wintex-Cimex’. The National Archives exhibition showed a
film made by a young reporter, Jeremy Paxman, for a BBC Panorama programme titled “If the Bomb drops.” (The BBC itself would
become the Wartime Broadcasting Service)
The text of a [fictional]
speech written as if to be delivered by the Queen on 4 March 1983 - at the
height of a ‘Wintex-Cimex’ exercise, when the military planners envisaged conflict had escalated to nuclear
war - stated chillingly:
“We all know that the
dangers facing us today are greater by far than at any time in our long
history. The enemy is not the soldier with his rifle, nor even the airman prowling the skies above our cities and
towns, but the deadly power of abused
technology.” (emphasis added)
It is interesting to
note that even MOD war gamers regarded nuclear weapons as “abused technology “ at the height of the
Cold War!
Yet we have seen again
this week how the political power of nuclear weapons dangerously seduces otherwise
sane politicians during an election
Asked on Morning
Television on 5 November this week why she could never support a Corbyn government,
Liberal Democrat leader Jo Swinson's instant response was because he would not
be prepared to order submarine commanders to fire British nuclear missiles.(“ 'Jeremy Corbyn is not fit for job of PM,' Jo Swinson says, as Lib Dems
launch campaign,” Daily Telegraph, 5 November 2019; www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2019/11/05/jeremy-corbyn-not-fit-job-pm-jo-swinson-says-lib-dems-launch/)
Meantime, it is salutary to note from a Pathe News film
shown at the National Archive exhibition, that the name given to the small
community constructed in the Nevada desert, to see what would be the destructive
effect of blast on building of different construction, from British atomic bombs
of different explosive capacity detonated nearby: ‘Doomtown’.
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