I need a holiday, a nuclear holiday
May. 10th, 2006 12:10 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ventaI've only just got round to reading the details of the local election results in Oxford. I voted, but I have to admit I found it terribly hard to care very much about these recent elections. My ward re-elected its Green councillor, but even had there been a switch to the close-running second (Labour), I doubt it would seriously have affected my life. Somehow it's difficult to believe that even had the council changed from NOC to one party that there would have been any appreciable impact on day-to-day life.
Whenever elections come round, I'm always reminded that I've only ever cared deeply about the result of an election once in my life, and that was the general election in 1987. I waited for the outcome of that vote in utter terror; I was ten at the time.
Junior school kids have a rare talent for picking select facts from the news, and making their own story to fit. In 1987, "the Yorkshire Ripper will get you" was still a common phrase in my class - for years Darlington was caught between the devil and the deep blue sea in the area between Yorkshire, where the murders occurred, and Wearside, where everyone "knew" the Ripper lived. That Peter Sutcliffe had been behind bars since 1981 had somehow passed us by. To us, he was still a very real threat.
I presume some similar process of logic, which I'm now utterly unable to follow, led to the firm belief among the "top class" of Cockerton School that if Labour won the '87 election, world war three would immediately follow. WWIII would, naturally, be a nuclear show. Brought up on Action Man and toy guns, the boys in my class thought that war would be great fun and were looking forward to it immensely. I can still see four of them walking round the playground the week before the election, arms about each other's shoulders, chanting 1-2-3-4, we want a bloody war. One of the dinner ladies told them off - but only for saying "bloody". They changed it to we want a nuclear war and everyone was happy.
Nuclear war in the late 80s was, to me, a very real prospect. Although I never saw things like the Protect and Survive film, much of that thinking was still in people's consciousness. Occasionally one still saw tips for how to survive or protect, although people were moving round to the idea that nothing would help. It was barely a year since the disaster at the Chernobyl power plant.
References to the nuclear threat were common - for years one of the ladies' toilets in our local Arts Centre had a scribbled message on the wall:
In the event of nuclear attack:
Close all doors and windows
Loosen tight clothing
Put your head between your knees and kiss your arse goodbye
Hardly original, but yet another thing that reminded me that said attack was imminent.
I remember being on holiday in Whitby one year, and CND had staged a demonstration to coincide with the rowing regatta. They handed out photocopied leaflets which read:
They'll give you four minutes warning. We're warning you NOW.
To get to Whitby, of course, we'd driven past the "golf balls", the three huge, white, geodesic domes of RAF Fylingdales which at that time formed the British arm of the nuclear early warning system. I was horrified to discover that all they'd do was give us enough time to send off "ours". I knew that my dad, then a British Telecom employee, had been travelling the area for months fitting the black boxes which would actually relay the alarm to rural areas. The system was in place, ready and waiting for when we needed it. I always saw it as a when, not an if.
Of course, I didn't know what the alarm would sound like. Nor did anyone else, so I guessed that in towns there might be some kind of speaker system. The summer evenings in '87 featured many cars driving around broadcasting loud canvassing - and every one made me jump, straining my ears until it told me about a local candidate instead of delivering a warning to get inside and wait for attack. Even these days, if I hear an unfamilar type of alarm, it is still my first gut reaction to wonder if it's the early warning system.
So, the war was imminent, and all this hung in the balance of whether Labour won the election. I wasn't sure what benefits Labour were offering which might outweigh such a disadvantage, but clearly some people were prepared to risk it - Darlington was (and still is) solid Labour country.
Although I know broadly what my parents' politics are, I have no idea how they voted in 1987. Our household wasn't an overtly political one, and I really knew very little about the situation of the day. Apparently my main contribution to political opinion thus far had been, on hearing Yesterday in Parliament, asking why the backbenchers' mummies let them behave like that. If I'd asked my parents about my nuclear fears I'm sure they'd have given me a much more realistic picture - but I didn't, because it hadn't occurred to me that what I'd heard might not be true. Hearing my parents talk about it would just make it seem all the more real, so I kept quiet.
My political grasp just about extended to understand that Mrs Thatcher had stolen our milk, caused the miners' strike, and closed so many of the pits which employed people in the north east. Yet the news that she'd been elected for a third term was nothing but a relief - war wasn't on the doorstep after all.
Whenever elections come round, I'm always reminded that I've only ever cared deeply about the result of an election once in my life, and that was the general election in 1987. I waited for the outcome of that vote in utter terror; I was ten at the time.
Junior school kids have a rare talent for picking select facts from the news, and making their own story to fit. In 1987, "the Yorkshire Ripper will get you" was still a common phrase in my class - for years Darlington was caught between the devil and the deep blue sea in the area between Yorkshire, where the murders occurred, and Wearside, where everyone "knew" the Ripper lived. That Peter Sutcliffe had been behind bars since 1981 had somehow passed us by. To us, he was still a very real threat.
I presume some similar process of logic, which I'm now utterly unable to follow, led to the firm belief among the "top class" of Cockerton School that if Labour won the '87 election, world war three would immediately follow. WWIII would, naturally, be a nuclear show. Brought up on Action Man and toy guns, the boys in my class thought that war would be great fun and were looking forward to it immensely. I can still see four of them walking round the playground the week before the election, arms about each other's shoulders, chanting 1-2-3-4, we want a bloody war. One of the dinner ladies told them off - but only for saying "bloody". They changed it to we want a nuclear war and everyone was happy.
Nuclear war in the late 80s was, to me, a very real prospect. Although I never saw things like the Protect and Survive film, much of that thinking was still in people's consciousness. Occasionally one still saw tips for how to survive or protect, although people were moving round to the idea that nothing would help. It was barely a year since the disaster at the Chernobyl power plant.
References to the nuclear threat were common - for years one of the ladies' toilets in our local Arts Centre had a scribbled message on the wall:
In the event of nuclear attack:
Close all doors and windows
Loosen tight clothing
Put your head between your knees and kiss your arse goodbye
Hardly original, but yet another thing that reminded me that said attack was imminent.
I remember being on holiday in Whitby one year, and CND had staged a demonstration to coincide with the rowing regatta. They handed out photocopied leaflets which read:
They'll give you four minutes warning. We're warning you NOW.
To get to Whitby, of course, we'd driven past the "golf balls", the three huge, white, geodesic domes of RAF Fylingdales which at that time formed the British arm of the nuclear early warning system. I was horrified to discover that all they'd do was give us enough time to send off "ours". I knew that my dad, then a British Telecom employee, had been travelling the area for months fitting the black boxes which would actually relay the alarm to rural areas. The system was in place, ready and waiting for when we needed it. I always saw it as a when, not an if.
Of course, I didn't know what the alarm would sound like. Nor did anyone else, so I guessed that in towns there might be some kind of speaker system. The summer evenings in '87 featured many cars driving around broadcasting loud canvassing - and every one made me jump, straining my ears until it told me about a local candidate instead of delivering a warning to get inside and wait for attack. Even these days, if I hear an unfamilar type of alarm, it is still my first gut reaction to wonder if it's the early warning system.
So, the war was imminent, and all this hung in the balance of whether Labour won the election. I wasn't sure what benefits Labour were offering which might outweigh such a disadvantage, but clearly some people were prepared to risk it - Darlington was (and still is) solid Labour country.
Although I know broadly what my parents' politics are, I have no idea how they voted in 1987. Our household wasn't an overtly political one, and I really knew very little about the situation of the day. Apparently my main contribution to political opinion thus far had been, on hearing Yesterday in Parliament, asking why the backbenchers' mummies let them behave like that. If I'd asked my parents about my nuclear fears I'm sure they'd have given me a much more realistic picture - but I didn't, because it hadn't occurred to me that what I'd heard might not be true. Hearing my parents talk about it would just make it seem all the more real, so I kept quiet.
My political grasp just about extended to understand that Mrs Thatcher had stolen our milk, caused the miners' strike, and closed so many of the pits which employed people in the north east. Yet the news that she'd been elected for a third term was nothing but a relief - war wasn't on the doorstep after all.
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Date: 2006-05-10 06:47 am (UTC)The Cold War was always there, nucelar annihilation an ever-present threat throughout my childhood and early adulthood. The first time I took Viv anywhere was to see "When The Wind Blows" at the Liverpool Playhouse (my birthday, 30/6/1984, but I digress) which today would be an even odder choice of first date.
Other events we went to included concerts by Lindisfarne, who had a political side to their music. I also followed a lot of the more political music, you'll know the sort of stuff well.
The 1987 general election was the first one in which I hadn't taken an interest, as I had left home by then, away from the political activism of home - my mother was election agent in several elections and constituency party secretary.
Move forward to the present, or just a couple of years past. My sons have no expectation of the Russians (or Americans) blowing us up. The underlying theme of Lindisfarne's "Cruising to disaster" leaves them baffled. They have no concept of the fear with which we grew up. They have never heard the tests of the sirens which were a part of weekly life where I grew up, and which I haven't heard for many years...or even heard mentioned.
I think I'll stop now before this ramble turns into a trek.