Nuclear-free councils must unite

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West Midlands county coun cillor Dave Spencer reports THERE ARE now 144 local councils who support the Nuclear Free Zone concept and regard the idea of civil defence in the event of nuclear war as a farce. These councils refused to take part in the government's war planning exercise, Operation Hard Rock, last September.

As a result of this, CND's plans tur an opposing parallel exercise (Hard Luck), and NALGO's advisory circular to its members in Town Halls, Wille Whitelaw 'postponed' the whole operation.

At the same time he threatened to amend the regulations under the 1948 Civil Defence Act in order to furce cruncils into line. The Home Office produced its proposals on October 6. These are to be discussed by councils by December 10, then taken to Parliament and made law by April 1983.

The haste of all this shows the fear with which the Tories view the growing peace movement.

The new regulations include new powers for the Home Secretary to give individual councils specific directives. Failure or refusal to comply with a directive would allow the government to take over the job and charge costs to defaulting councillors.

Local authority workers will also be compelled undergo civil defence training ll is regaraed as benig appropriate to their normal work. Council will expected to provide suitable war headquarters and to equip them with communications and other equipment. They will also be obliged to organise 'civil defence volunteers.

Delegates from the 144 NFZ councils met at a special conference in Manchester on December 3, and discussed an 8-point action plan. The most important item in my view is point 7: 'Work with local peace groups to promote public awareness of the government's proposals"

Important in this are the links made with public sector unions whose members can be conscripted into civil defence training - for example NALGO, hospital workers' or teachers'" unions, and so on.

Failed

In the past Labour courcils and the labour movement have failed to unite against the government and the courts on the cuts, on cheap fares, and so on. This time there is no question of money or rate increases — it is a plain political and moral question. Again there seems to be m leadership coming from the Labour Party nationally.

With the general elertion coming up and the Labsour Party conference committed to unilateral nuclear disarmament, you would have thought this was an election issue which ought to be taken up by the Labour Party in a big way. It is up to rank and filé Labeur Party members to run campaigns involving leaflets. film shows, etc, to bring home the issue of civil defence and not to leave the Nuclea: Free Zone resolu tions on paper only. "THE FUNCTION of civil defence is not to encourage war, or to put an acceptable face on it. It is to adapt ourselves to the reality that we must live with, and to prepare ourselves so that we could alleviate the suffering which war would cause if it came"

With this humane explanation, William Whitelaw and George Younger introduce the pamphlet 'Civil Defence: Why We Need It' the government's official apologia for its civil defence plans.

For anybudy with half an eye on survival, however, such words cannot be taken as face value.

The Christian Aid/Oxfam sponsured journal New Internationalist provided he tot wine electing 1ccount o ... just one ten megaton bomb exploding over the average city hall..." Such a bomb would:

•Flash quicker than the eye can blink, burning out the irises of people over 200 miles away who. were looking in that direction.

• Leave a crater one and a half miles wide and deeper than London's deepest underground railway.

• Smash all houses, shops, offices, factories, bridges and railways for a further eight to ten miles.

• Burn melt most things, including cars, houses, trees and people up to twenty miles away.

• Create a firestorm a flaming pillar sucking in winds of up to 150 miles an hour.. within 25 miles of the city hall, the firestorm would suffocate and roast everyone in shelters.

• Dump lethal radioactive dust and rubble downwind from the explosion.. in a corridor 20 to 30 miles wide and 100 miles long, everyone not in a wellequipped shelter would be killed by radioactivity"

But, as the magazine points out, a nuclear war would see more than one bomb dropped. Indeed, the recently cancelled Hard Rock civil defence exercise planned for last autumn was based upon a scenario in which 105 nuclear missiles would hit Britain.

These would be equivalent to 13,000 bombs of the type that destroyed Hiroshima and killed 140,000 people.

How does the government propose to protect us? Mass evacuation? Deep communal shelters? A shelter for every family? Oh no - this would be far too expensive.

The Civil Defence pamphlet states, "the risk of war is considered so slight that the enormous expense of providing shelters to every family in the land could not be justified ... As it is, more is being spent on civil defence than previously - about £45 million a year by 1983-4"

Our frugal . masters appear less thrifty when it comes to the actual weaponry of mass destruction. The replacement of the Polaris missile by the Chevaline warhead is costing some $2,400 million, and Trident £5,000 million.

Whilst huge sums are spent on tooling up the British state, we, its subject people, are given ludicrous advice on how to save ourselves on the cheap.

"If you live in a block of flats... five storeys high or more, do not shelter in the top two tioors... Use the cupboard under the stairs (as shelter)... You may have casualties from an attack which you have to care for, perhaps for some days, without medical help. Be sure you have your first aid requirements in your survival kit. household medicines and prescribed medicines. And at least aspirins or similar tablets, adhesive dressing, cotton wool Don't forget the aspirins. The blast may give someone a headache!

But while the rest of us huddle under the stairs, top