Written Across the Landscape of Britain in Concrete and Barbed Wire
I have started the preliminary research for my next possible book*. If I can get it published, it will be a bridge from my previous work on parapolitics to my desire to explore different literary avenues.
The first bit of research has been easy. It involved tracking down two key books from the 1970s and 1980s – Beneath The City Streets and War Plan UK – which now only seem to exist in the twilight worlds of university libraries and specialist bibliophiles
Anyone who has read Secrets & Lies will know how much professional respect I have for Duncan Campbell. They will also have a hint about just how important to me his 1982 book War Plan UK was. Not only did it solve the childhood mystery of the tower, it scared me witless over the prospect of nuclear war and helped open my young eyes to the true nature of state power. Although by disposition I have always been a curious bastard, War Plan UK, Edge Of Darkness and the incident in the woods and all combined to help propel me towards a career in investigating the world of shadows and conspiracy.
Therefore I was looking forward immensely to re-reading War Plan UK as part of scouting the territory for the possible book I would like to write. However, I quickly discovered that War Pan UK is long out of print and the most useful edition now retails for more than £180. This placed it out of my budget for what is at this stage a speculative project. I eventually got hold of a copy via Manchester University, but only for five days.
This put me in a tricky situation. I needed longer to read it and make notes. However, the next chance for a loan they could offer was a two-week window at the end of March 2007. As an author I have issues with the photocopying of books, but I really could not face the length of the wait. Much as I hated doing it, I took War Plan UK down to a copy shop where I knew the management would turn a blind eye to my flagrant breach of copyright and photocopied more than 400 of its pages. The £30 cost was a lot more reasonable than paying the current collectors price for the book. If I ever meet Duncan Campbell in person, I will make it up to him by happily buying him drinks all night.
Thanks to the library of Durham University, I also managed to get hold of the 1970 edition of Beneath The City Streets by Peter Laurie. This is the book that inspired Campbell and opened up the whole field of researching the secret places of the state in Britain. I have foregone photocopying it despite the fact it that even 36 years after publication it still has interesting things to say. It is also still offers strong hints concerning methodology when trying to unlock the mysteries of covert citadels and underground cities. I think Laurie was right when he called his investigations ‘contemporary political archaeology’.
The world has changed so much since Campbell and Laurie first surveyed the structures of the hidden state. Yet some things remain the same. The points that both books make about the psychology of a system of government that puts so much money and effort into placing itself safe from the reach of its own people remain valid. Instead of being scared by the prospect of nuclear war detailed in the books, they now frighten me by reminding of neglected corners of history.
One marrow chilling fact covered was the issuing of a million burial forms in 1939 and the discussion of whether to dump the expected bodies into the Thames at high water or create mass graves in the gravel pits west of the present day site of Heathrow airport. The reductionist, dehumanising logic used was redolent of dozens of Civil Service reports I had to read as a lobbyist. The planning between the World Wars for citizens fleeing London from aerial bombardment to be sent to concentration camps before being returned to their homes at bayonet point only echoes plans I have personally seen detailing the aftermath of a dirty bomb attack on London. The attitude that saw British politicians send in warships to break up the 1919 police strike in Liverpool has not disappeared.
The machinery and mindset of a government willing to turn on its own people to survive has not gone away. The paranoia of power expressed in bunkers, radio towers and subterranean complexes remains. The evidence for the armour of the state – every aspect of it designed to serve the preservation of the leadership elite from both external foes and its own people – is still written across the landscape of Britain in concrete and barbed wire.
*As with every other possible book I am currently thinking about, it will be a co-authored work. Writing can be too lonely sometimes.
The first bit of research has been easy. It involved tracking down two key books from the 1970s and 1980s – Beneath The City Streets and War Plan UK – which now only seem to exist in the twilight worlds of university libraries and specialist bibliophiles
Anyone who has read Secrets & Lies will know how much professional respect I have for Duncan Campbell. They will also have a hint about just how important to me his 1982 book War Plan UK was. Not only did it solve the childhood mystery of the tower, it scared me witless over the prospect of nuclear war and helped open my young eyes to the true nature of state power. Although by disposition I have always been a curious bastard, War Plan UK, Edge Of Darkness and the incident in the woods and all combined to help propel me towards a career in investigating the world of shadows and conspiracy.
Therefore I was looking forward immensely to re-reading War Plan UK as part of scouting the territory for the possible book I would like to write. However, I quickly discovered that War Pan UK is long out of print and the most useful edition now retails for more than £180. This placed it out of my budget for what is at this stage a speculative project. I eventually got hold of a copy via Manchester University, but only for five days.
This put me in a tricky situation. I needed longer to read it and make notes. However, the next chance for a loan they could offer was a two-week window at the end of March 2007. As an author I have issues with the photocopying of books, but I really could not face the length of the wait. Much as I hated doing it, I took War Plan UK down to a copy shop where I knew the management would turn a blind eye to my flagrant breach of copyright and photocopied more than 400 of its pages. The £30 cost was a lot more reasonable than paying the current collectors price for the book. If I ever meet Duncan Campbell in person, I will make it up to him by happily buying him drinks all night.
Thanks to the library of Durham University, I also managed to get hold of the 1970 edition of Beneath The City Streets by Peter Laurie. This is the book that inspired Campbell and opened up the whole field of researching the secret places of the state in Britain. I have foregone photocopying it despite the fact it that even 36 years after publication it still has interesting things to say. It is also still offers strong hints concerning methodology when trying to unlock the mysteries of covert citadels and underground cities. I think Laurie was right when he called his investigations ‘contemporary political archaeology’.
The world has changed so much since Campbell and Laurie first surveyed the structures of the hidden state. Yet some things remain the same. The points that both books make about the psychology of a system of government that puts so much money and effort into placing itself safe from the reach of its own people remain valid. Instead of being scared by the prospect of nuclear war detailed in the books, they now frighten me by reminding of neglected corners of history.
One marrow chilling fact covered was the issuing of a million burial forms in 1939 and the discussion of whether to dump the expected bodies into the Thames at high water or create mass graves in the gravel pits west of the present day site of Heathrow airport. The reductionist, dehumanising logic used was redolent of dozens of Civil Service reports I had to read as a lobbyist. The planning between the World Wars for citizens fleeing London from aerial bombardment to be sent to concentration camps before being returned to their homes at bayonet point only echoes plans I have personally seen detailing the aftermath of a dirty bomb attack on London. The attitude that saw British politicians send in warships to break up the 1919 police strike in Liverpool has not disappeared.
The machinery and mindset of a government willing to turn on its own people to survive has not gone away. The paranoia of power expressed in bunkers, radio towers and subterranean complexes remains. The evidence for the armour of the state – every aspect of it designed to serve the preservation of the leadership elite from both external foes and its own people – is still written across the landscape of Britain in concrete and barbed wire.
*As with every other possible book I am currently thinking about, it will be a co-authored work. Writing can be too lonely sometimes.
1 Comments:
i still think that governments only see their constituents as 1) taxpayers for their endless schemes and 2) bodies to be shipped wherever for waging war against someone else.
there will never be a shortage of people unless something completely catastrophic happens.
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