Attack Warning Red Wine: Your Local Pub During Nuclear War
The Four Minute Warning could begin its bleak countdown while you’re in the most jovial of settings. Maybe you’re in the pub, a cosy place where locals in flat caps gather to scoff pork scratchings, play darts and swap stories. It’s your turn to get a round in. The kindly landlady beams as she pulls you another pint of bitter.
Suddenly, the small grey box behind the bar that up until now had been issuing a steady tick suddenly begins to wail. It’s a shrill, rising and falling whine, intermittently interrupted by a metallic voice: ‘Attack warning red! Attack warning red!’
This is it. The missiles are on their way.
If you had lived in a rural community during the Cold War and been beyond earshot of the mechanical air raid sirens ubiquitous to towns and cities, your local pub could indeed have been responsible for sounding the alarm in the event of a nuclear attack, all thanks to a small grey box nestled behind the bar, between the peanuts and bottles of bitter. This is the story of one of those pubs, which in 1966 was afforded the dubious honour of calling last orders for humanity…
Originally built in the 16th century, the Hest Bank Hotel is located a stones throw from the seaside resort of Morecambe, and stands on a quintessentially quaint village green of the type frequently seen strewn with victims in Midsomer Murders. In the late 1960s, the hotel’s landlady was Mrs. Emmeline Taylor, who ran the pub alongside her West Highland Terrier, Skipper. Mrs Taylor had previously had a run in with the law – she was fined £30 in 1963 for selling alcohol after licensing hours – so we can imagine the sinking feeling she must have experienced when, in early 1966, she received a knock on the door from the police.
Mrs. Taylor needn’t have worried: the policemen were working on behalf of the UK Warning and Monitoring Organisation (UKWMO), and came bearing a perfectly innocuous, not at all worrying request: “Good afternoon, madam. We were wondering if you’d object to having an early warning nuclear attack system installed in your home? No? Good. May we come in?”
Speaking jovially to the Lancaster Guardian in February 1967 about the ‘brand new appliance in her kitchen’, Mrs Taylor stated that she had been amazed when the police had first arrived on her doorstep. Pulling a pint of bitter for the journalist – who must have been off his face by the end of the interview – she explained that the police had returned to the pub several days after their initial visit armed with tool boxes. They had set to work installing a Receiver Carrier WB400 nuclear alarm in Mrs Taylor’s apartment, conveniently locating the device next to the fridge and above the washing machine, so that she could be alerted to impending armageddon while putting a wash on.
The installation of Mrs Taylor’s new alarm meant that – alongside a myriad of other pubs, schools and vicarages – the Hest Bank Hotel became one of 11,000 ‘Warning Points’ allocated by the UKWMO across the country. If the Ballistic Missile Early Warning System at RAF Fylingdales had detected an incoming attack, UKWMO staff would have leapt into action and done two things: first, they’d probably have wet their underpants in terror, and second, they’d have transmitted alerts to Warning Points across the country. The receiver behind Mrs. Taylor’s bar would have emitted a shrill, rising and falling note. This sound was supposed to be an attention-grabbing siren, although I have to argue that the noise more closely resembled a yodelling Chipmunk. This would then be followed by a metallic, Dalek-esque voice: ‘Attack warning red! Attack warning red!’
Upon hearing the alert, operators at major Warning Points such as police stations would flip the switch to set their town’s mechanical air raid sirens blaring. As for isolated publicans receiving the warning, what were they supposed to do? Let’s ask Mrs. Taylor.
‘What I should have to do if it ever goes off,’ the landlady told the probably intoxicated Guardian journalist, pulling him yet another pint, ‘I have no idea.’ Terrific. That’s comforting, then.
Operators were supposed to be provided with a hand-cranked air raid siren. If their Carrier Receiver had issued a red warning, the operator was supposed to dig their siren out from under the stairs, lug it outside and alert the neighbourhood to an incoming attack, and all within four minutes. That was the theory, anyway. In reality, once the UKWMO had finished installing their equipment and driven away into the sunset, many warning point operators found that they never received their siren. This led to all manner of ridiculous ‘How I’ll Alert My Neighbours to Impending Nuclear Doom’ plans being improvised by operators. In the tiny village of Monyash, Derbyshire, for instance, pub landlord Deccio Tatoni explained to the BBC that in the event of an attack, he planned to jump on his bike and ride about the village yelling, “The Russians are coming!” Foolproof, I’m sure.
Back in Hest Bank, Mrs. Taylor’s armageddon plan was, in my humble opinion, much more sensible: she planned to have a booze-up. Only a four minute long booze-up, mind you, but a booze-up nonetheless. Smiling, she told the reporter that, had the bell tolled, she would open the bar for her regulars and declare, “It’s all yours!” It’s a delightful image: the end of the world is nigh and Mrs. Taylor, having decided to cast her responsibilities to the winds, is getting hammered with her mates, knocking back bottles of vodka before the bomb drops. If the landlady had to meet her maker, she was jolly well going to meet Him with a hangover to be proud of.
On the day of the Guardian reporter’s visit to the Hest Bank Hotel back in 1967, the UKWMO was scheduled to carry out one of its six-monthly tests of their Warning Point broadcast systems. Having sat silent since it had been fitted, Mrs. Taylor’s Carrier Receiver now had to be switched on by its red dial to await a mock attack warning. A steady tick, as regular as clockwork, struck like a heartbeat from the small grey box on the kitchen shelf, indicating that the world was running as it should be. Then, sharp on three o’clock, the warning claxon, ‘rather like a fire engine siren speeded up’ burst into life.
The humans in the pub weren’t worried. Mrs. Taylor stood back and smiled, ‘amused and unperturbed’. A local propping up the bar quipped that he could think of no better place to be at the end of the world. Everyone thought the whole carry on was jolly silly and had a good titter. Everyone, that is, except Skipper. Remember him? Mrs. Taylor’s faithful companion, Skipper the West Highland Terrier? This clever little chap was the only one who saw the Carrier Receiver for what it was. Even before the device had begun to wail, Skipper ‘pricked up his ears and became apprehensive’, appearing ‘not too pleased’ when he was asked to pose next to ‘the thing’. Once the test began, he descended into angry growls and terrified whimpers.
There could have been a logical reason behind Skipper’s behavior. The Carrier systems ran on signals not normally audible to the human ear; perhaps Skipper’s sensitive pooch ears found the frequency uncomfortable. Maybe. Then again, his discomfort could be a classic example of animal precognition. We’ve all heard of dogs becoming uneasy before natural disasters, explosions and fires. Perhaps, as the Carrier Receiver wailed, Skipper foresaw a mushroom cloud rising behind the Heat Bank Hotel’s bar…
Someone get that dog a drink.
Skipper. Clever dog.
Rebecca Shaw
Sources
Attack Warning Red: How Britain Prepared for Nuclear War, Julie McDowall.
The Daily Mirror, 30 June 1966.
Lancaster and District, S. Ashworth and N. Dalziel.
The Lancaster Guardian, 3 February 1967.
Nuclear War in the UK, Taras Young.
http://www.ringbell.co.uk
The Scotsman, 8 November 1966.
subbrit.org.uk
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