It is now perfectly clear that but for these reforms Great Britain would have fallen into near-chaos under Soviet air attack. And no rocket attack was experienced for more than a fortnight. Until the Soviet Union was prepared to initiate the use of nuclear weapons as a deliberate act of policy, and accept the consequences, it would be taking a wholly irrational risk to allow ballistic missiles to appear on Western tracking screens. Conventional high explosive and incendiary bombing, mixed with chemicals, delivered from manned aircraft using stand-off methods, caused damage enough.
Evacuation of children, food and petrol rationing, the activation of emergency services, the decentralization of administration — all worked smoothly enough. It was the exodus from the towns, particularly from the Midlands and the north towards the west and south, that did most to tax the authorities, even with their new-found powers and resources. It was in movement, too, that there occurred the ugliest scenes of mob violence, rioting and looting.
Lawlessness was particularly in evidence in the towns. Houses left untenanted were an open invitation to burglary. Mugging in the streets, even in broad daylight, was common. Air raids offered particularly favourable opportunities for crime, though it was claimed by some that you were safer on the streets during an alert than after it. The ‘all-clear’ brought the muggers out again.
It cannot truthfully be said that Britain was ever near collapse as an ordered society, though life in it in those few weeks was difficult for many, and dangerous for some, while death and destruction were widespread. Much went on as before. The weather was good. In the country the hay was in, the harvest promising. Industry, the railways, coal mining, went on much as before, though North Sea gas was cut off and little oil flowed. Movement was difficult but rationing hurt very few. Food distribution worked well enough, even under the stresses of refugee movement. Cricket was played. People swam, sailed and fished. There was even some racing. The school holidays were not yet over, though when they were very many schools would not reopen in the same place. People still tended to live a large part of their lives with, and through, television — perhaps even more so than before. Indeed, since television was an aspect of life which, in wartime, at once assumed an enormously enhanced importance, the part it played in the events of August 1985 deserve closer examination.
The war brought immediate censorship to the television screens in Western Europe and the United States. In the years preceding the outbreak of fighting there had been considerable debate as to how far it would be wise to adopt open censorship, with the risk of breaking public trust in the television news, long established as the main source of news. The realities of the war swept those doubts aside. One of the most cogent arguments for censorship in the Second World War — the need to deny the enemy information which would be of value to him — was no longer valid. Soviet space satellites, with the detailed information they could afford, provided an immediate and much more accurate picture of what was happening than could be gleaned from the television screen. Had fear of informing the enemy been the only factor, risks could have been taken. But the risk which no government and no military leader in the West could accept was that of potential damage to civilian morale if the high and horrible cost in human suffering of this war were to be projected night after night into the homes of the public. This was a more important factor in the United States than in Britain and on the Continent, where the pattern of viewing had been much disrupted by the air attacks, which drove people away from their sitting rooms and into cellars and shelters into which they could not usually move their televisions. Here the radio reasserted itself as the main source both of news and of guidance from the authorities. But on the Continent, too, over wide areas, particularly outside the main cities, life was able to continue nonetheless with a considerable degree of normality, and the television screen remained the centre of attention. So the authorities from the outset adopted a policy of allowing the television bodies to cover the war as freely as they could whilst insisting on a rigid censorship of the material which emerged. In practice, this did not prove too difficult a task, for the highly mechanized, rapid, highly scientific nature of the fighting, together with the paralysing effect of chemical warfare on all but those equipped to deal with it, limited drastically the coverage which was possible. Battle losses among television cameramen, even in the comparatively short time the fighting lasted, were high.
