Survivors: The Spectre of Threads

You bastard!

This is "BBC Two,” where tonight's

major drama production, THREADS,

is introduced by John Tusa.

Good evening.

In the 40 years of the nuclear age,

we've grown accustomed to its vocabulary

and even somewhat hardened to its ideas,

Fallout, radiation sickness,

zones of destruction,

mega tons, even mega deaths.

The phrases have become part of everyday speech.

But recently, a new one's been added

that has introduced a fresh sense

of urgency into the nuclear debate, the nuclear winter.

That's to say, the belief of some scientists on both sides

of the East-West divide

that a large-scale nuclear exchange would not only wreak

the vast destruction and death

that we all think we know about,

but would throw so much dust

and smoke into the atmosphere

that the planet's climate would be drastically altered.

The Sub-Zero temperatures

of a nuclear winter would threaten the survival

of the survivors.

This thesis is the subject of several high-level inquiries,

even one backed by President Reagan himself.

The onus, as one authority put it, is for those

who doubt the nuclear winter, now, to disprove it.

When we start tonight with the advent

of a nuclear war itself,

what would happen if Britain came under nuclear attack?

How would ordinary people survive

the impact of the blast, and the conditions

that scientists say would result from the nuclear exchange?

THREADS is a drama, but characters

and events are fictional,

and it deals with something that has never happened,

but it draws on a vast amount

of scientific information amassed over the last 40 years

on the likely effect and destructive power of nuclear war.

Some of the scenes which follow may well distress you.

THREADS was made in,

and with the cooperation of the people of Sheffield.

When you hear the attack warning,

you and your family must take cover at once.

The most widespread danger is fallout.

Fallout can kill, though you cannot see it,

feel it, or smell it.

There is danger outside, so don't go outside.

No one can tell where the safest place will be.

You are better off in your own home.

Stay.

Although the danger from fallout will get less

and less as time goes by,

you will never be able to judge for yourself how bad it is.

It certainly will not be safe for you to go outside

the house until the radio tells you.

More details are given in the booklet,

"Protect and Survive."

Sheffield, city on the move.

Sheffield, Yorkshire's largest city, is one

of Europe's cleanest industrial centers.

Sheffield gained its worldwide reputation for quality

and craftsmanship from her steel and cutlery industries.

Today, backed up by one of the most

technologically-advanced manufacturing research programs

in the UK.

Sheffield has widened its industrial base

to cover the most sophisticated needs of the 20th century.

It was a time of political polarization

and social tension, really.

We see the collapse of the economic model

that has sustained prosperity in the post-war decades.

So, from the mid-1970s, we see the return

of mass unemployment.

We see rising inflation, we see decline in heavy industry,

and manufacturing, and that was causing real problems,

particularly in Northern England

and Central Scotland and South Wales.

We have the ramping up of Cold War tensions,

the renewal of the tension between the US,

and the Soviet Union.

We also see the election

of real Cold War warriors in both the United States

and the United Kingdom.

Ronald Reagan, who uses the rhetoric

of an evil empire in relation to the Soviet Union,

and Margaret Thatcher, known as the Iron Lady

for her Cold War stance.

We must ensure that the strong defense

of the West is preserved at every step.

We must watch the strategy, watch the tactics,

and watch the presentation.

- I remember growing up in the early 1980s,

and it was grim.

Awful unemployment.

There was soup kitchens, there was poverty.

Sheffield industry was devastated.

All major centers of population

and industry will have been destroyed.

Industry, what industry?

We ain't got no industry in Sheffield.

Yes, and if the mayor hadn't-

The miner strike was very close to hand.

We had the steel strikes beforehand.

You know, there was lots of poverty going on.

You know, people from my kind of background were affected.

- That bred, that sort of feeling that we'd been left behind

and that Mrs. Thatcher had sort of deliberately targeted

this part of the country because of the fact

that we were elected Labor MPs.

I presume this is to enable us

to sweep Britain clean of socialism.

- Sheffield is very much a labor city, a trade union city,

famously known as Socialist Republic of South Yorkshire.

And there was a sense that local areas, cities,

local councils had to be at the forefront of resistance

to Thatcherism or to try

and create alternative political spaces.

The campaign for nuclear disarmament,

which had been in being for a quarter of a century.

But back in the 1980s, when the tensions rose again

between the Soviet Union

and the US in particular, there was a feeling

that there really did need to be a strong campaign

to warn people that we were, once again, drifting

into the danger of a potential nuclear war.

We see protest marches,

and protest events with six-figure numbers, 250,000 people.

We see a reinvigoration of feminism in the 1970s.

Many parts of that Feminist Movement were deeply interested

in peace and sort of taking on the militaristic

and patriarchal establishment

and were deeply committed to anti-nuclear policies.

And famously, they protest at Greenham Common, which is

where the US cruise missiles were gonna be based

in the UK.

There are four missiles in the first lorry.

The buttons which fire them in the second.

In time of nuclear alert, they will set off

to secret launch sites deep in the English countryside.

I was 18 when I come here in 1980,

and I was instantaneously politicized.

Sheffield had a real vibe about it.

It felt like a kind of a place which had a bit of a mission

to look after itself and to look after the people inside it.

For us, the Political Movement was centered

around CND and the Anti-Nuclear Movement.

In the wider region of Yorkshire,

we'd seen the US installations as part

of what was dubbed "Star Wars,” and the danger

that if there had been a nuclear conflict,

our region would've been targeted

because of the nature of what was actually installed.

- I remember Ronald Reagan coming down to London,

and he was proposing that cruise missiles will come

on our soil in Britain.

- They seem to think they have a simple answer to warfare,

that if we just lay down our weapons

and stand back empty-handed,

that somehow, peace will come to the world.

They haven't stopped to figure it might be

the peace of the grave.

I remember piling down and being

in Trafalgar Square,

- I remember that people were very radical about

what was going on, particularly with the nuclear concerns,

and I was certainly one of the people that went on lots

of marches, CND marches, which were fantastic.

I mean, there were huge, unprecedented marches.

I think I felt even as a young person then,

that I could make a difference,

and one person multiplies into millions.

Then hopefully, we can, it's a shame

that not more people are doing it today,

given the threat that we have.

- At that pivotal point, it was absolutely crucial

to get those cruise missiles away from the UK

and not to be used as a launchpad.

- Radical local authorities across the country were saying,

"How can we get this debate going?

How can we ensure that people are warned

of the real dangers?

And arising from that came the idea

of so-called, in quotes, "Nuclear-Free” zones.

Well, of course, they weren't nuclear-free,

and they weren't zones,

but they certainly got a lot of debate going.

They had the resonances of the kind

of the '60s folk music,

which even in my time, felt a little bit old-fashioned.

So they would always,

any sort of like demonstration you have,

we'd have a fellow called Roy Bailey,

who was a folk singer.

You know, almost doing the...

Type things, which, well,

I've never liked that sort of thing.