Churchill gagged BBC over H-bomb

LONDON, August 21: Winston Churchill was personally responsible for banning the BBC from broadcasting programmes on nuclear weapons and t...

LONDON, August 21: Winston Churchill was personally responsible for banning the BBC from broadcasting programmes on nuclear weapons and the true effects of fallout from a nuclear attack in the 1950s, according to secret state papers released on Thursday.

The Conservative government’s ban covered any programmes which tended to produce a defeatist attitude among the public towards these weapons. The Whitehall files confirm what anti-nuclear campaigners had long suspected: that there was an official ban on the BBC’s broadcasting any programmes suggesting that there was no effective defence for a civilian population against the effects of a hydrogen bomb attack. The ban was imposed in 1955 and continued under the 1960s Labour government — as the controversy over a suppressed nuclear civil defence documentary, The War Game, demonstrated.

Churchill issued his secret instruction to the postmaster general, Earl de la Warr, when he was prime minister in December 1954 after hearing that the BBC was preparing aprogramme on the H-bomb. “I doubt whether it is wise that they should do this,” he said. “I am sure that ministers should see the script in advance in order to satisfy themselves that it contains nothing which is contrary to the public interest.”

Story continues below this ad

He told de la Warr to write to the BBC chairman, Sir Alexander Cadogan, saying that unless scripts “on any programme which contains information about atomic or thermonuclear weapons” were submitted in advance to the government they would be banned by ministerial order.

Churchill’s direct order triggered a crisis within the BBC over its independence. Cadogan initially protested to the cabinet secretary that the request amounted to “a measure of control by the government over the BBC without precedent in peacetime”. But the broadcasting chiefs eventually acquiesced after being promised there would be no direct censorship. The planned programme was dropped and ministers were assured it had been no more than a woman producer talking to nuclear specialistsabout a possible programme.