Duck and cover

The UK government Resilence Action Plan (RAP) was published in 14th July so why are we only now hearing about it?

I consider myself fairly switched-on but I don't recall hearing about this before and yet, today, the press and media are full of advice on stocking up at least 72 hours'-worth of basic essentials such as water, tinned food, a first-aid kit, candles and battery powered torches in case of a national emergency. Could it be that the month's delay has been due to the changeover of Prime Ministers? I think the game is given away by the strap-line on the Cabinet Office report to be found on the UK.Gov website: "This was published under the 2024 to 2026 Starmer Labour government".

So during the past month, while parliament is in recess and Labour has been rearranging the deckchairs, we, the British people, have been kept in the dark, effectively left to fend for ourselves as potentially existential international events are swirling about us? The announcement now is supposedly promoted by the climate crisis manifesting itself in drought, wild fires and potential food shortages. These are obviously serious considerations but I suspect the real reason for the sudden focus on the issue a month after the report was first published is the very real fear in government circles that Vladimir Putin might actually be about to go rogue (or roguer) and launch a wave of cyber, drone and sabotage attacks on the UK. In other words, we have moved from a de facto to a de jure war footing.

This evokes a strong sense of deja vu in me. As a kid growing up in rural Yorkshire in the 1960s, the nearest neighbour to us was a pub down the lane - not even really a village pub as we were basically a widely scattered collection of farmsteads - but a community hub nonetheless. This being the case, the landlord was called upon to sound a siren for a test run of the four-minute atomic attack warning (and, presumably, in the event of the real thing).  I vividly recall the haunting sound of that siren, only previously known to me from WWII films and documentaries shown on TV, but it wasn't clear how we were supposed to react, to the test or in reality. As we lived within a mile of a major US military base, this was probably an academic consideration anyway. (It was only years later, on finally seeing the suppressed Peter Watkins 1965 BBC film, The War Game, that the full horror of what we might have faced in the event of a real nuclear attack became clear.)

Sixty years on, our government seems finally to have woken up to the necessity of warning a supine populace of the urgent need to prepare for the worst. As in the 1960s, when taking shelter under the kitchen table was meant to protect us against the dropping of an atom bomb, I suspect this will amount to a performative exercise in which persuading us of the wisdom of hoarding a few bottles of water and cans of baked beans will be seen as job done. Quite apart from the fact that a significant number of Brits barely have the resources to shop for one day, let alone stock up for three days or more, how are we supposed to survive the impending (non-nuclear) winter without electricity, gas or water? It's clearly a nonsense given the scale of the environmental and political crises we are facing but I guess we must wait for parliament to return from its summer recess.

Let's just hope Putin doesn't launch an attack before next Tuesday.

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