BBC's dilemma over who would announce a nuclear attack
"This is the Wartime Broadcasting Service. This country has been attacked with nuclear weapons." In the normally prosaic world of public safety announcements, they were probably the two most chilling sentences ever recorded in readiness for release across Britain's airwaves.
But secret documents released today, revealing for the first time the full text of the warning to be broadcast by the BBC in the event of a nuclear war, show that Whitehall was obsessed as much with the voice that would be used to announce Armageddon as it was with protecting what was left of the British population.
Senior civil servants in charge of drawing up the pre-recorded radio announcement became concerned that only a recognisable broadcaster should be used for fear that an unfamiliar voice would create the impression that Auntie had been "obliterated".
The quandary was deepened when it emerged that the only BBC employee to have been given the appropriate security clearance for the project was a relatively unknown retired newsreader called Hugh Searight. None of the BBC's star broadcasters – Angela Rippon, Michael Parkinson, Frank Bough or Richard Baker – were judged to have been checked to the required level. The apocalyptic tussle between the Beeb and three Whitehall departments in 1973 and 1974 is detailed in documents released at the National Archives in Kew, west London.
Read entire article at Independent (UK)
But secret documents released today, revealing for the first time the full text of the warning to be broadcast by the BBC in the event of a nuclear war, show that Whitehall was obsessed as much with the voice that would be used to announce Armageddon as it was with protecting what was left of the British population.
Senior civil servants in charge of drawing up the pre-recorded radio announcement became concerned that only a recognisable broadcaster should be used for fear that an unfamiliar voice would create the impression that Auntie had been "obliterated".
The quandary was deepened when it emerged that the only BBC employee to have been given the appropriate security clearance for the project was a relatively unknown retired newsreader called Hugh Searight. None of the BBC's star broadcasters – Angela Rippon, Michael Parkinson, Frank Bough or Richard Baker – were judged to have been checked to the required level. The apocalyptic tussle between the Beeb and three Whitehall departments in 1973 and 1974 is detailed in documents released at the National Archives in Kew, west London.