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BBC Radio Studio at Cultybraggan Bunker, Perthshire

The Wartime Broadcasting Service is a service of the

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that is intended to broadcast in the United Kingdom either after a nuclear attack or if conventional bombing destroyed regular BBC facilities in a

conventional war Conventional warfare is a form of warfare conducted by using conventional weapons and battlefield tactics between two or more states in open confrontation. The forces on each side are well-defined and fight by using weapons that target primari ...

. It is unclear if the Wartime Broadcasting Service is still operational as plans are kept mainly secretly with the

...
and government officials. According to an article by the BBC, recordings of a nuclear attack warning are still re-recorded and kept up to date periodically.

Origins and history

The origins of the service lie in pre-

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

plans to disperse BBC staff to facilities such as Wood Norton to guarantee due functioning of the corporation if cities such as

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...

Belfast Belfast ( , ; from ga, Béal Feirste , meaning 'mouth of the sand-bank ford') is the capital and largest city of Northern Ireland, standing on the banks of the River Lagan on the east coast. It is the 12th-largest city in the United Kingdo ...

Cardiff Cardiff (; cy, Caerdydd ) is the capital and largest city of Wales. It forms a principal area, officially known as the City and County of Cardiff ( cy, Dinas a Sir Caerdydd, links=no), and the city is the eleventh-largest in the United Kingd ...

Glasgow Glasgow ( ; sco, Glesca or ; gd, Glaschu ) is the most populous city in Scotland and the fourth-most populous city in the United Kingdom, as well as being the 27th largest city by population in Europe. In 2020, it had an estimated popul ...

and

Edinburgh Edinburgh ( ; gd, Dùn Èideann ) is the capital city of Scotland and one of its 32 Council areas of Scotland, council areas. Historically part of the county of Midlothian (interchangeably Edinburghshire before 1921), it is located in Lothian ...

were attacked by the

Luftwaffe The ''Luftwaffe'' () was the aerial-warfare branch of the German ''Wehrmacht'' before and during World War II. Germany's military air arms during World War I, the ''Luftstreitkräfte'' of the Imperial Army and the '' Marine-Fliegerabtei ...

. In the post-war era, plans were revised so that the Wartime Broadcasting Service would have coped with a nuclear strike by installing 54 low-powered transmitters and keeping (what remained of) the main transmitter network in reserve, in case

Soviet The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...

bombers used them to home in on targets. Although vague, plans from the mid-1950s were to provide both a national and regional radio service 24 hours a day (mirroring peacetime BBC operations at the time) with the objective of providing "instruction, information and encouragement as far as practical by means of guidance, news and diversion to relieve stress and strain". "Diversion" was to be in the form of music and selected pre-recorded programmes. BBC executives drafted a schedule made up of music, drama, comedy, and religious programmes to be broadcast over a period of 100 days after a nuclear attack on the United Kingdom. The BBC had studios and production equipment at many government nuclear bunkers such as the

Central Government War Headquarters The Central Government War Headquarters (CGWHQ) is a complex built underground as the United Kingdom's emergency government war headquarters – the hub of the country's alternative seat of power outside London during a nuclear war or conflict ...

Corsham Corsham is a historic market town and civil parish in west Wiltshire, England. It is at the south-eastern edge of the Cotswolds, just off the A4 national route, southwest of Swindon, southeast of Bristol, northeast of Bath and southwest o ...

and the regional seats of government. By the end of the decade, existing transmitters had been fitted with emergency

diesel generator A diesel generator (DG) (also known as a diesel Genset) is the combination of a diesel engine with an electric generator (often an alternator) to generate electrical energy. This is a specific case of engine generator. A diesel compression- ...

s and fallout protection. From the 1980s, the BBC planned to broadcast for only a few hours a day and for a few minutes each hour, the intention being to conserve the batteries in domestic radios. There was to be no entertainment content for this reason and so that official messages could get through. With the end of the Cold War, the BBC deactivated the studios and emergency transmitter networks in 1993 as surplus to requirements. Many of these studios have become exhibits in bunkers, like the

Kelvedon Hatch Secret Nuclear Bunker The Kelvedon Hatch Secret Nuclear Bunker at Kelvedon Hatch, in the Borough of Brentwood in the English county of Essex, is a large underground bunker maintained during the Cold War as a potential regional government headquarters. Since being de ...

, which have now been converted into museums.

Post-Cold War

With the

Cold War The Cold War is a term commonly used to refer to a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. The term '' cold war'' is used because the ...

having ended, the BBC and

British Telecom BT Group plc (trade name, trading as BT and formerly British Telecom) is a British Multinational corporation, multinational telecommunications holding company headquartered in London, England. It has operations in around 180 countries and is th ...

developed the National Attack Warning System in 2003. This system was able to warn by television, radio and telephone (the latter only in some areas) of an impending attack using existing infrastructure. The BBC was capable of doing so within ten minutes using their existing broadcasting procedures. By the time of the 2011 digital switchover, this was becoming obsolete because television and radio have limited warning capability. According to a report in the ''Daily Telegraph'', there were suggestions that the warning message would be recorded by

Jill Dando Jill Wendy Dando (9 November 1961 – 26 April 1999) was an English journalist, television presenter and newsreader. She spent most of her career at the BBC and was the corporation's Personality of the Year in 1997. At the time of her death, her ...

, actress

Joanna Lumley Dame Joanna Lamond Lumley (born 1 May 1946) is an English actress, presenter, former model, author, television producer, and activist. She has won two BAFTA TV Awards for her role as Patsy Stone in the BBC sitcom ''Absolutely Fabulous'' (1992 ...

Carol Vorderman Carol Jean Vorderman, HonFIET (born 24 December 1960) is a Welsh media personality, best known for appearing on the game show ''Countdown'' for 26 years from 1982 until 2008, as a newspaper columnist and nominal author of educational and diet ...

. Under the

Broadcasting Act 1980 The Broadcasting Act 1980 (1980 c. 64) was an Act of Parliament in the United Kingdom. It was repealed by the Broadcasting Act 1981, though the provisions of the Act remained in force. The most significant effect of the Act was to amend the Ind ...

, the government still has the legal right to take over editorial control of radio and television in the event of a

national emergency A state of emergency is a situation in which a government is empowered to be able to put through policies that it would normally not be permitted to do, for the safety and protection of its citizens. A government can declare such a state du ...

. Also, the BBC agreement allows the government to ask the BBC to broadcast messages in an emergency:

Operation

The decision to activate the service would have been taken at Cabinet level late in the crisis phase. On being given the order, the

...
and

ITV ITV or iTV may refer to: ITV *Independent Television (ITV), a British television network, consisting of: ** ITV (TV network), a free-to-air national commercial television network covering the United Kingdom, the Isle of Man, and the Channel Islan ...

were to suspend normal programming, broadcast the frequencies for the Wartime Broadcasting Service and go off-air an hour later (with television used only to broadcast ''

Protect and Survive ''Protect and Survive'' was a public information campaign on civil defence. Produced by the British government between 1974 and 1980, it intended to advise the public on how to protect themselves during a nuclear attack. The campaign compris ...

public information film Public information films (PIFs) are a series of government-commissioned short films, shown during television advertising breaks in the United Kingdom. The name is sometimes also applied, ''faute de mieux'', to similar films from other countries, ...

s and unavailable after an attack due to its susceptibility to

electromagnetic pulse An electromagnetic pulse (EMP), also a transient electromagnetic disturbance (TED), is a brief burst of electromagnetic energy. Depending upon the source, the origin of an EMP can be natural or artificial, and can occur as an electromagnetic fie ...

). At this point, one single national programme would have been broadcast on

BBC Radio 4 BBC Radio 4 is a British national radio station owned and operated by the BBC that replaced the BBC Home Service in 1967. It broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes, including news, drama, comedy, science and history from the BBC' ...

from Wood Norton. This would have consisted of official government announcements and information interspersed with filler material, such as music, news and warnings. The

four-minute warning The four-minute warning was a public alert system conceived by the British Government during the Cold War and operated between 1953 and 1992. The name derived from the approximate length of time from the point at which a Soviet nuclear missile ...

itself was to have been injected from a special studio at

Broadcasting House Broadcasting House is the headquarters of the BBC, in Portland Place and Langham Place, London. The first radio broadcast from the building was made on 15 March 1932, and the building was officially opened two months later, on 15 May. The main ...

and been broadcast nationally on all television and radio stations when a coded signal from

RAF High Wycombe RAF High Wycombe is a Royal Air Force station, situated in the village of Walters Ash, near High Wycombe in Buckinghamshire, England. It houses Headquarters Air Command, and was originally designed to house RAF Bomber Command in the late 1930s ...

was given. This studio would also have been used by government ministers to broadcast messages and announcements until the government left London late in the crisis phase (or during the precautionary period). After an attack, there would also have been a regional service tailored to local needs located in regional seats of government. Regional controllers were to use these smaller BBC studios to give out local messages to communities and would have been manned by BBC staff. If conventional air attacks destroyed peacetime broadcasting facilities, the Wartime Broadcasting Service would also have been activated. Regular drills and training exercises were held to give an air of realism, but many BBC staff saw them as pointless or declined to serve during a national emergency because they would not be allowed to take their families with them. One anonymous insider said, "I can't blame them for deciding there were better ways to go than to sit in a bunker with a group of local radio engineers."BBC Post-attack broadcasting plans

Programmes for broadcast

Initially, a post-attack statement was to be broadcast confirming a nuclear strike had hit the United Kingdom and warning of the dangers of

fallout Nuclear fallout is the residual radioactive material propelled into the upper atmosphere following a nuclear blast, so called because it "falls out" of the sky after the explosion and the shock wave has passed. It commonly refers to the radioac ...

. It would have been broadcast every two hours on all radio frequencies set aside for the BBC for the first twelve hours after the attack. The script was released by the BBC under the

Freedom of Information Act Freedom of Information Act may refer to the following legislations in different jurisdictions which mandate the national government to disclose certain data to the general public upon request: * Freedom of Information Act 1982, the Australian act * ...

on 3 October 2008. It was recorded by

Peter Donaldson Peter Ian Donaldson (23 August 1945 – 2 November 2015) was an English newsreader on BBC Radio 4. Early life Donaldson was born in Cairo, Egypt, and moved to Cyprus in 1952 at the time of the overthrow of King Farouk. He was a frequen ...

, chief

continuity announcer In broadcasting, continuity or presentation (or station break in the U.S. and Canada) is announcements, messages and graphics played by the broadcaster between specific programmes. It typically includes programme schedules, announcement of the ...

for

. Jim Black, a BBC executive, compiled a schedule consisting of classic BBC drama, comedy and religious programmes to maintain morale. These included ''

Round The Horne ''Round the Horne'' is a BBC Radio comedy programme starring Kenneth Horne, first transmitted in four series of weekly episodes from 1965 until 1968. The show was created by Barry Took and Marty Feldman, who wrote the first three series. The fo ...

'', '' I'm Sorry, I Haven't A Clue'', ''

Hancock's Half Hour ''Hancock's Half Hour'' was a BBC radio comedy, and later television comedy series, broadcast from 1954 to 1961 and written by Galton and Simpson, Ray Galton and Alan Simpson. The series starred Tony Hancock, with Sid James, Sidney James; the r ...

'' and the

Rodgers and Hammerstein Rodgers and Hammerstein was a theater-writing team of composer Richard Rodgers (1902–1979) and lyricist-dramatist Oscar Hammerstein II (1895–1960), who together created a series of innovative and influential American musicals. Their popu ...

musical ''

The Sound of Music ''The Sound of Music'' is a musical with music by Richard Rodgers, lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II, and a book by Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse. It is based on the 1949 memoir of Maria von Trapp, '' The Story of the Trapp Family Singers''. Se ...

''. Drama programmes included ''

The Afternoon Play ''The Afternoon Play'' is a British television anthology series, which consists of standalone contemporary dramas first shown during the daytime on BBC One. The first episode, entitled "Turkish Delight", aired on 27 January 2003. Since, a total ...

'' and ''

Thirty-Minute Theatre ''Thirty-Minute Theatre'' was a British anthology drama series of short plays shown on BBC Television between 1965 and 1973, which was used in part at least as a training ground for new writers, on account of its short running length, and which t ...

''. From the 1980s until 1993, the entertainment content was dropped and only official announcements would have been broadcast in order to conserve energy.

References

*
File 16 Civil Defence Communications and Warning, from Subterranea Britannia
accessdate=2009-10-04
Script of the BBC's post-attack statement
accessdate=2009-10-04

Notes

External links

BBC Radio 4 programme from 28 January 2008 about BBCs preparations for war during the 1960s–1980s
.ram audio file
BBC Radio 4 newsreader Peter Donaldson about his pre-recorded radio warning messages.
YouTube video file from

The Culture Show ''The Culture Show'' is a British magazine programme about books, art, film, architecture, music, visual fashion and the performing arts. The show was broadcast weekly on BBC Two between 2004 and 2015. Early history Launched in November 2004, th ...

, broadcast 2 February 2008 {{Authority control Defunct BBC national radio stations Cold War history of the United Kingdom Emergency management in the United Kingdom Emergency population warning systems Continuity of government