"""Come if ye Dare" March of the
Civil Defence Corps"
I was fortunate enough and am proud to
have served in the Civil Defence Corps for the last four years of its
existence. I was initially a member of the Headquarters section, Signal
B sub-section, but transferred to the Ambulance and First Aid section.
Although its primary role was seen as being in the event of nuclear war,
it had also proven its worth in natural disasters and accidents,
including the East Coast floods of 1953, several train crashes (Harrow
& Wealdstone (8 October 1952), Sutton Coldfield (23 January 1955)
and Lewisham (4 December 1957), and the Aberfan disaster (21 October
1966). Since then, many people have questioned whether or not the
volunteers would have responded in the event of war, remember 1,900,000
served and 6,200 members of the WWII Civil Defence Services, gave their
lives.The Corps was formed in response to the 1948
Civil Defence Act, and the issuance of a Royal
Warrant. The Act imposed on Local Authorities a number of
functions under the Civil
Defence (Public Protection) Regulations, 1949. Local Authorities
became "Corps Authorities", they were required to form divisions of the
Civil Defence Corps and to recruit, organise and train volunteers.
The
functions of the Corps were:
The collection of intelligence on
the results of hostile attack
Control and coordination of
action as a result of the attack
Rescue
Protection against the effects of
nuclear, biological or chemical attack
Instruction and advice to the
public
The best way to describe the Civil
Defence structure & organisation is to take that given in CD
Pocketbook No3, although there were minor variations over the
years the basics remained the same, as examples in the early days there
were a Pioneer section, and Rescue was divided into Light and Heavy
Rescue.
ORGANISATION OF CIVIL DEFENCE
CORPS
1. The Civil Defence Corps is a voluntary civilian organisation
raised and trained by Corps Authorities which are, generally
speaking, counties and county boroughs (in Scotland, counties and
large burghs). Each Corps Authority raises a division of the Corps.
The potential resources of manpower available to individual Corps
Authorities for recruitment vary considerably. A division of the
Civil Defence Corps is, therefore, not of fixed size. Local
divisions of the Civil Defence Corps in England and Wales (except
for London) are divided into the following sections:
Headquarters, Warden, Rescue, Ambulance and First Aid, Welfare.
In London, the local divisions are organised by the City of
London, and the Metropolitan Boroughs include Headquarters, Warden
and Welfare Sections. The London County Council administers
centrally the Rescue and Ambulance and First Aid Sections. The
London County Council and the Metropolitan Boroughs share
responsibility for the Welfare Section, the division of duties being
on the broad basis of the peace-time functions of the respective
authorities.
In Scotland, each local division is composed of four sections,
namely:
Headquarters, Warden, Rescue and Welfare.
Organisation of Divisions.
1.2 In England and Wales, each local division of the Corps is
composed of the five sections shown in succeeding paragraphs.
Headquarters Section. The Headquarters Section, which staffs control
centres, is divided into three sub-sections:
(a) Intelligence and Operations Sub-Section -
whose function is to analyse and record information and to prepare
necessary instructions etc., at the controller's: direction.
(b) Signal Sub-Section - responsible for
providing and maintaining communications (including wireless, field
cable laying and despatch riders). (Later divided into Signal A -
wireless & Signal B - field cable & despatch riders).
(c) Scientific and Reconnaissance Sub-Section -
Whose primary task is to advise controllers about scientific and
technical aspects of nuclear warfare (particularly as regards
radioactive fall-out) and also on biological and chemical warfare as
may be necessary. It is also responsible for the provision of staff
for plotting and interpreting information about radioactive
fall-out, and the provision of reconnaissance parties.
Warden Section. The wardens are the link between the civil defence
services and the public to whom they will give leadership and
guidance before, during and after attack. They are responsible for
local reconnaissance and reporting, for the organisation of domestic
'self-help' parties and for the local control of life-saving civil
defence services deployed within the warden post area. They have
special responsibilities for measuring and reporting the degree of
radioactivity of fall-out and for the control of the public. Rescue
Section. This section is responsible for rescue work and first aid
in connection with rescue operations, emergency work on demolition
and debris clearance. Each party carries manpack equipment; heavier
equipment is carried in a special vehicle.
Ambulance and First Aid Section. This section is built up on the
normal peace-time ambulance service provided by county and county
borough councils. The basic units of the section are the Ambulance
Detachment and the First Aid Party and their duties are:
(a) Ambulance Detachment: the evacuation of casualties
to Forward Medical Aid Units (see paragraph 1.7) and to hospitals.
(b) First Aid Party: to render first aid, to place
seriously injured casualties on stretchers and to organize their
removal to the ambulance loading points. In addition a certain
number of ambulances will be retained for the work of the peace-time
service.
Welfare Section. The Welfare Section will be concerned with
the care of those rendered homeless as a result of war conditions or
deprived of normal facilities for cooking, sanitation, etc. These
duties will include work in connection with evacuation, rest centres
for the homeless, billeting, emergency feeding, emergency
sanitation, distribution of clothing, first aid, nursing the sick,
information centres, etc.
In Scotland the functions of the Headquarters, Warden, Rescue and
Welfare sections are similar to those in England and Wales. There is
no separate ambulance and first aid section. The ambulance function
is carried out by the Scottish Ambulance Service and the first aid
function by the Warden Section. The latter has an element not found
in England and Wales, namely, the casualty warden who is the
specialist in first aid in the Section.
Pre-attack disposition of civil
defence forces.
1.3 A proportion of the Section
strengths (with the exception of the Warden and Welfare Sections)
raised in Sub-regions and certain other densely populated districts
will be stationed at operational bases for use in mobile columns
after attack. The remaining strengths will comprise 'home cover'
forces.
Despite an oft-repeated error, the
Civil Defence Corps had no connection with the Territorial Army, they
were a strictly civilian organisation, the Home Office being the
relevant Government department with overall control.
.At the
end of June 1950 the Corps in England and Wales had a strength of
31,000, many of whom had been in WWII Civil Defence. By the end of
March, 1956 there were 330,000 members. Instructors and officers had
been largely recruited from member of WWII Civil Defence or retired
member of the armed forces. Training for officers and instructors had
begun at the Home Office Civil Defence Technical Schools, one at
Eastwood Park in Falfield, Gloucestershire, and the other at Easingwold,
Yorkshire, in 1949. In 1950 a further school opened at Taymouth Castle
in Scotland. The Home Office Staff College also opened at Sunningdale in
1950.
In the early days of the Corps training was based upon the experiences
of 1939-45. It soon became apparent that this was not appropriate, and
that the Corps would have been ill-equipped. In fact the Corps didn't
receive RADIAC equipment for several years.
In 1955 a
whole new training scheme was introduced, with specific targets for
volunteers.
At the same time the role of Scientific Intelligence Officer was
introduced, they were initially known as Technical Reconnaissance
Officers. Their role was to advise controllers at all levels on
technical matters relating to fallout, chemical weapons and the
like.
Training
Exercises
formed a critical element of the training programme and were made as
realistic as possible. Sections would undertake practical training
exercises in addition to the larger scale exercises that were at
Division or area level. A number of training sites were established,
designed to resemble what might be found post attack.Training for the
Corps was conducted during weekday evenings, comprising lectures,
demonstrations, film shows and practical work. During the first session
recruits were required to sign an Official Secrets Acts form. There were
periodic tests, both practical and theoretical. Following initial
training, common to all sections, and completion of the required tests,
a uniform, lapel badge and ID card were issued. Initial training
included basic first aid, Corps structure and organisation, Corps
communications procedures, relationship of the Corps to other voluntary
organisations, the police and military. Volunteers then went on to join
sections where they received specialist training, also followed by
tests.
Every few weeks there were longer one-day training sessions for
sections, and once a year a large-scale exercise, involving a whole
County at one of the Home Office Training Grounds. Additionally there
were Divisional Exercises once a year, some of which were quite
creative.
As an example of the latter, Excercise Thames involved evacuating over
1,000 people from the air raid shelters at the Vickers aircraft factory
at Weybridge, to Walton on Thames using boats provided and crewed by
local owners. Actually it was the same few hundred people evacuated and
then returned by road several times. The exercise involved all sections.
Casualties were rescued either from the cliff-tops of the car park at
Vickers, or from the shelters. They were treated by members of the
Ambulance and First Aid section. From there they were carried by
ambulance to the top of one of the bridges over the River Wey, then
walking casualties walked down to the boats, and others were lowered on
stretchers. At the end of the river trip they were transferred to
ambulances again and thence to the CDHQ, where members of the Welfare
Section and the WVS fed them before they were sent around again. One
incident in particular sticks in my mind, I was in the HQ Signal B
sub-Section. By the time the Field cable party came to set up
communications at the bridge, we had run out of field telephones, and we
couldn't communicate between the top of the bridge and the boat
embarcation point, we solved the problem by acquiring a garden
hose together with two small funnels from a local hardware shop, and
using them as a speaking tube.
Despite a
continuing recruitment programme, the Corps never achieved the hoped for
strength, the maximum number of volunteers being 330,000 in 1956.
National organisation
During
the Cold War, Great Britain was divided into twelve Civil Defence
regions each administered by a Regional Commissioner, ten of them in
England. The commissioners were responsible for co-ordinating all local
civil defence. The Commissioners' role included the assumption of
full state power after a nuclear attack. This required a large permanent
staff from different government departments. In 1951 work commenced on
the building OF thirteen war rooms in England, four of which were in
Region 5 - London. The war rooms were designed to resist a near atomic
explosion, and could operate for at least two weeks using a diesel
generator to provide power, with an air conditioning plant room for
filtered and cooled air. The rooms were rectangular with 4ft 10in thick
reinforced concrete walls, and a 5ft thick roof with protected concrete
vents at one end. Internally, the war rooms were similar to the wartime
regional headquarters, but were on a much larger scale on two floors and
included offices for different government departments, scientific
advisers, the emergency services, a military liaison officer, canteen
and welfare rooms, and dormitories and facilities for both male and
female staff. The picture is of the Civil Defence Control at Alverstoke,
Hampshire, it is now a private house.
The Soviet detonation of their first hydrogen bomb, in 1953, caused a
significant change in civil defence in the UK.Until that time most
planning had been based on the notion of what was known as a nominal
weapon of 20kT, similar to those used at Nagasaki and Hiroshima, or
developments of them into the range of 100 kT or so. With yields
in the megaton range, hydrogen bombs that could destroy great swathes of
land and could affect wider areas for greater lengths of time, were
potentially a completely different matter. In consequence, the
post-explosion recovery period would be greater and each region would
have to operate autonomously for longer, putting a great strain on the
relatively small staff working in a war room. To provide for the greater
manpower necessary to support the Commissioners, a system of Regional
Seats of Government (RSG) was established starting in 1953, with the
London war rooms abandoned altogether. The increase in staffing size (up
to 400), resulted in new purpose-built war rooms being built adjoining
the former war rooms at Cambridge and Nottingham, while other RSGs were
established in abandoned RAF ROTOR bunkers, construction continued until
1963.
As soon as
the RSGs come into service, it was realised that conditions after
a nuclear strike might be even more fractured than first thought and a
decision was taken to establish 25 Sub-Regional Headquarters (SRHQ),
each accommodating a staff of up to 200 to assist during the recovery
phase. By the end of the 1960s a number of SRHQs had been established in
former army anti-aircraft operation room bunkers such as Frodsham
(Cheshire). Others were constructed in purpose-built basements beneath
new government buildings, as at the Civil Service Commission HQ,
Basingstoke (Hampshire). The Home Office originally wanted 29 SRHQs, but
financial restraints curtailed this and some were never built. This
organisational structure was changed once again during the early 1980s,
when England was divided into nine defence regions.
Council buildings constructed from the late 1930s often incorporate
purpose-built civil defence headquarters, as in the case of Norwich
where its CDHQ was beneath the City Hall, completed in 1938. During the
Cold War, earlier headquarters were often re-used and modified to
counter the effects of nuclear weapons. From the 1960s, as the armed
forces abandoned bunkers these were often modified by local authorities,
such as the former Anti-Aircraft Operations Room at Frodsham, Cheshire.
Some local authorities also built new civil defence headquarters in the
1960s, including Walton and Weybridge UDC, who constructed a rather
useless one in the semi-basement of the Town Hall. This was fully
double-glazed, and kitted out when the Civil Defence Corps was disbanded
in 1968. During the 1980s there was renewed interest in civil defence
and a number of local authorities constructed purpose-built emergency
centres.
The Industrial Civil Defence
Service
The
Industrial Civil Defence Service (ICDS) was formed in 1951 when large
companies were invited to form their own civil defence units. It had a
similar organisation to the Civil Defence Corps, but was generally
separate from it. The requirement was that a business employed two
hundred or more people. These units were organised in a similar way to
the Civil Defence Corps, with Headquarters, Warden, Rescue, First Aid
and Fire Guard Sections. The Fire Guard Section manned fire points and
smaller fire appliances, frequently based on Landrovers, there being no
defined standard model. Each unit had its own control post, and groups
of units could form a group control post. Group control posts and
control posts in larger factories had the status of warden posts in
their own right, whereas smaller units answered to their local Civil
Defence Corps warden post. Companies that took part in the scheme
included regions of British Railways, British Leyland, Norvic and
Colmans. All of these organisations were largely manned by volunteers.
By 1956 there were over 200,000 volunteers in the ICDS, and over 50% of
industries were involved. British Railways had a dedicated coach which
traveled the network, for training purposes. The NCB (National Coal
Board) had 20,000 volunteers, in addition to their regular mines rescue
teams. The largest ICDS group was at the D. Napier and Sons aero engine
factory at Acton, with 250 volunteers, they also had the country's first
female rescue team.
Mobile columns
Mobile
columns were to be formed from the Welfare, First Aid & Ambulance,
and Rescue sections. Each was to be headed up by an officer (Column
Leader) with an assistant officer (Deputy Column Leader). Similar
columns were developed for the police, the Auxiliary Fire Service and
the WVS/WRVS, the latter were to be responsible for transporting food as
directed by the Ministry of Agriculture Fisheries and Food.
Modernisation and Disbandment
In 1967 an
extensive review of Home Defence and Civil Defence planning, resulted in
a considerable re-organisation and changes to minimum training
requirements. Twice in that year (June and November) Lord Stonham,
the Labour Minister of State for Civil Defence at the Home Office spoke
of the essential nature of the Corps and the role of volunteers. Its
came as a surprise, then, when Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson
announced in the following January that the Corps, the ICDS and the
Auxiliary Fire Service were to be disbanded at the end of March.
Upon
disbandment each of the 75,000 member of the Corps received a copy of
the letter shown, members were allowed to keep their uniforms! Equipment
either went into storage or was issued to local Emergency Planning
departments. Some was sold off almost immediately. Many RADIAC
instruments and radios, appeared in electronics surplus shops in Lisle
Street, Soho and similar premises throughout the UK. Most vehicles
appeared on the surplus market within just a few years. The National
Hospital Service Reserve was disbanded just over a year later.
As far as the general public were
concerned very little was done about civil defence until the 1980s, when
Protect and Survive was produced, but even then it was not generally
made public. At various times, generally in the wake of major accidents
or natural disasters, there have been calls to reform the Corps.
Government answers to such calls have always said that it would be
prohibitively expensive.
The Civil Defence Long Service
Medal
The Civil Defence Medal was instituted
by HM Queen Ellizabeth II in March 1961 and awarded for 15 years
continuous service in he Civil Defence Corps (CD), the Auxiliary Fire
Service (AFS), the National Hospital Service Reserve (NHSR) and the
United Kingdom Warning and Monitoring Organisation. Qualification was
extended in 1963 to Civil Defence personnel in Gibraltar, Hong Kong and
Malta. On the UK mainland, only members of the United Kingdom Warning
and Monitoring Organisation continued to qualify after the 1968
disbandment, until it too was disbanded in 1992 (the Warning and
Monitoring Organisation on the Channel Islands of Jersey continued until
2007). The medal was awarded in Hong Kong until the territory was
transferred to China in 1997. The medal is still awarded to members of
the Isle of Man Civil Defence Corps.
The Civil Defence Corps still exists in the Isle of Man. The IOM Civil
Defence Corps provides initial support for a variety of events.
This may include rehoming individuals, families or communities as
necessary, assisting with weather incidents or as part of the inland
hill search and rescue team. It is involved in all kinds of emergencies,
including mountain rescue, floods.
The
functions of the Corps were:
