Graduate School of Social Sciences
MSc. Political Science: International Relations
‘Civil Defence, it’s common sense!’
Examining historical and contemporary British
public preparedness campaigns in the midst of
modern insecurity
Name: Rachel Hunter
Student Number: 11125632
Submitted: 24
thJune 2016
Supervisor: Marieke De Goede
Second Reader: Polly Pallister-Wilkins
Abstract
It can be noted that in recent times, there has been a development of a ‘world risk society’ accompanied by a proliferation of international terrorism. With this assumption, this study sets out a key research puzzle which questions how the British government prepares its population for the possible impacts that the risk and threat of terrorism carries. This thesis asks a series of questions that fundamentally seek to uncover the narratives, advice, guidance, meanings and conceptualisations contained within preparedness materials released to the British public.
Analysing both historical and contemporary preparedness materials, this thesis uncovers the ways in which the public is defined and imagined within these sources. Additionally, an attempt is been made to identify how threat is constituted and visualised within these preparedness materials, uncovering how they work to project specific conceptualisations of threat onto the public. Furthermore, based on the assumption that threats cause tangible emotional and psychological effects on the populations who navigate life as targets, this study will seek to uncover the extent to which governments address notions of fear, insecurity and terror through these preparedness strategies.
Drawing on research from across the academic spectrum, this investigation seeks to bridge the gap between threat, preparedness and emotion to provide a new conclusion to the ever-debated and highly topical notion of preparedness.
Contents Page Number Title Page 1 Abstract 2 Contents 3 Chapter 1: Introduction 7
1.1 Modern day risk, preparedness and emotion 7 1.2 Physical answers to a psychological problem 8
1.3 Research questions 10
1.4 Outline and structure of this thesis 11
Chapter 2: Publics, threats and fears 12
2.1 Introduction 12
2.2 Who is the public and what calls it into being? 12
2.3 Modern threats and popular geopolitics 16
2.4 Fear of threats 19
2.5 Concluding remarks 22
Chapter 3: Preparedness 23
3.1 Introduction 23
3.2 Futurity and anticipation 23
3.3 Politics and the visual 27
3.4 Concluding remarks 29
Chapter 4: Research Methodology 30
4.1 Introduction 30
4.2 Case study selection 30
4.3 Method selection 33
4.4 Material selection 34
4.5 Elements for analysis 36
4.6 Concluding remarks 38
Chapter 5: Historical Analysis 39
5.1 Introduction 39
5.2 Representations of the public 39
5.3 Presentation and construction of the threat 44
5.4 Addressing emotion 47
5.5 Practical advice 50
5.6 Visual design 54
5.7 Concluding remarks 56
Chapter 6: Modern Analysis 57
6.1 Introduction 57
6.2 Representations of the public 57
6.3 Presentation and construction of the threat 60
6.4 Addressing emotion 62
1 Referenced from here on as P+S 2 Referenced from here on as DNS 3 Referenced from here on as THB
Chapter 7: Conclusion 73
7.1 Final remarks 73
7.2 Recommendations for the future 77
7.3 Limitations and future study 78
Bibliography 79
List of Tables
1 List and description of historical sources 36
2 List and description of modern sources 36
3 Discourse analysis framework 37
List of Images
1 WW1 poster Bread (IWM, 2016) 32
2 WW1 poster Are YOU (IWM, 2016) 32
3 WW1 poster Join army (IWM, 2016) 32
4 WW2 poster Gas Mask (IWM, 2015) 32
5 WW2 poster Look (BBC, 2014) 32
6 WW2 poster Keep Calm (IWM, 2011) 32
7 Protect and Survive 1
(TNA, 1981, INF 12/1257) 40
8 P+S symbol (TNA, INF 12/1257: 1981) 40
9 Domestic Nuclear Shelters2 (TNA, 1981 HO 322/960) 40 10 The Hydrogen Bomb3
shelter (TNA, 1957: INF 13/281) 40
11 THB refuge (TNA, 1957: INF 13/281) 40
12 Advising the Householder on Protection against Nuclear Attack4
basement (TNA, 1963: T 227/152)
41 13 P+S constructing (TNA, 1981I, NF 12/1257:) 42 14 Needed in RESCUE poster (TNA, 1960: INF 2/122) 42
15 P+S building (TNA, 1981: INF 12/1257) 43
16 ATH shelter cores (TNA, 1963: T 227/152) 43
17 Civil defence is common sense (TNA, 1959: INF 2/122) 43
18 THB women (TNA, 1957: INF 13/281) 43
19 ATH food shelves (TNA, 1963: T 227/152) 43
20 Needed in WELFARE poster (TNA, 1960: INF 2/122) 43 21 Think its hopeless (TNA, 1957: INF 2/122) 44 22 THB H-bomb distance (TNA, 1957: INF 13/281) 45
23 P+S impact (TNA, 1981: INF 12/1257) 45
24 P+S fallout (TNA, 1981: INF 12/1257) 45
25 P+S mushroom (TNA, 1981, INF 12/1257) 46
26 ATH mushroom (TNA, 1963: T 227/152) 46
27 THB mushroom (TNA, 1957: INF 13/281) 46
28 ATH government (TNA, 1963: T 227/152) 47
29 ATH head office (TNA, 1963: T 227/152) 47
5 Referenced from here on as SSF 6 Referenced from here on as P4E 7 Referenced from here on as RHT
31 Civil defence questions (TNA, 1960: INF 2/122) 48
32 ATH Refuge inner (TNA, 1960: T 227/152) 51
33 P+S Building refuge (TNA, 1981: INF 12/1257) 51 34 P+S flat shelter (TNA, 1981: INF 12/1257:) 51 35 P+S stairs shelter (TNA, 1981: INF 12/1257) 51 36 DNS instruction guide (TNA, 1981 HO 322/960) 52
37 ATH outside cover (TNA, 1963: T 227/152) 53
38 P+S shelter from fallout (TNA, 1981: INF 12/1257) 53 39 P+S toilet instructions (TNA, 1981: INF 12/1257) 54 40 P+S practical advice (TNA, 1981: INF 12/1257) 54 41 Join civil defence corps (TNA, 1957: INF 2/122) 55
42 ATH doorway (TNA, 1963: T 227/152) 55
43 THB faces (TNA, 1957: INF 13/281) 55
44 DNS scale rating (TNA, 1981 HO 322/960) 55
45 DNS value table (TNA, 1981 HO 322/960) 55
46 Best in you (TNA, 1960: INF 2/124) 56
47 Just like you (TNA, 1960: INF 2/124) 56
48 Needed in RESCUE poster (TNA, 1960: INF 2/122) 56 49 Stay Safe film5
crossing (Gov.uk, 2015b) 57
50 SSF office (Gov.uk, 2015b) 57
51 Preparing for Emergencies6
box (HM Government, 2004)
59 52 RUN, HIDE, TELL7 rare event (NPCC, 2015) 60 53 Counter Terrorism Week8
probably nothing (Gov.uk, 2015a)
60
54 SSF armed police (Gov.uk, 2015b) 61
55 SSF film police (Gov.uk, 2015b) 61
56 SSF café shot (Gov.uk, 2015b) 62
57 SSF station (Gov.uk, 2015b) 62
58 SSF train (Gov.uk, 2015b) 62
59 P4E protect U.K. (HM Government, 2004) 63
60 P4E information (HM Government, 2004) 63
61 CTW tweet (Twitter, 2015) 64
62 P4E calm (HM Government, 2004) 64
63 P4E Go in, Stay in, Tune in (HM Government, 2004) 65
64 RHT logo (NPCC, 2015) 66
65 SSF run (Gov.uk, 2015b) 67
66 SSF hide (Gov.uk, 2015b) 67
67 SSF tell (Gov.uk, 2015b) 67
68 SSF instructions (Gov.uk, 2015b) 67
69 P4E bombs (HM Government, 2004) 68
70 P4E bleeding (HM Government, 2004) 68
71 CTW tweet 2 (Twitter, 2015) 69
72 CTW tweet 3 (Twitter, 2015) 69
74 CTW probably nothing (Gov.uk, 2015a) 70
75 P4E first aid (HM Government, 2004) 70
76 NaCTSO note 1 (NaCTSO, 2015) 70
77 NaCTSO note 2 (NaCTSO, 2015) 70
78 RHT full leaflet (NPCC, 2015) 71
79 P4E front page (HM Government, 2004) 71
80 P4E face 1 (HM Government, 2004) 72
81 P4E face 2 (HM Government, 2004) 72
Chapter 1: Introduction
1.1 Modern day risk, preparedness and emotion
Mimicking the ‘cultural turn’ that took place in the 1980s, arguably modern times has witnessed its very own ‘risk turn’ within social sciences (Mythen & Walklate, 2006: 124). From issues ranging from pandemics to immigration flows, financial crises to environmental destruction, such risks - whether happening, potential or imagined - enter and contribute to the “world risk society” apparent today (Beck, 1999). It has become a world now teeming with “unpredictable, uncontrollable” consequences of risks that circulate and take form on an increasingly global and interconnected scale (Beck, 2002: 40). It can be said therefore that it is not life itself that has become more hazardous, but rather it is that “risk is now de-bounded, in spatial, temporal and social terms” (Pain, 2009: 469) and societies must now act to “feign control over the uncontrollable in politics, law, science, technology, economy and everyday life” (Beck, 2002: 41; Pain, 2009).
Turning attention within this field to specifically that of security, it can be contemplated that any “illusion of security by distance has been shattered” by this time-space compression as exemplified through the attacks on the United States in 2001 (Pain & Smith, 2008:4). A string of other high profile attacks around the globe which targeted London, Madrid and Bali to name a few, have further ushered terrorism to the top of political agendas. 9/11 and the era that has trailed has seen terrorism catapulted to crucial issue status, inciting a new phase of political and social struggle, military conflict and legislative change (Furedi, 2005). In short, “the world has changed forever” as a result of the proliferation of terrorism and consequentially, systematic governmental responses have been required (Mythen & Walklate: 2006). One of the governmental responses to this rise in security threats is the use of preparedness strategies. Preparedness emerged in response to “high-profile threats to liberal-democratic life” and aspires to mitigate and alleviate the effects of an event from disrupting normal, everyday and “valued life” (Anderson, 2010: 791). Involving all levels of government and often including inputs from the private sector and nongovernmental organisations, preparedness initiatives continuously identify threats
and determine vulnerabilities before ascertaining the required resources or processes needed to limit effect and impact (Lakoff, 2007).
Casting attention to a specific strand of preparedness, civil preparedness or ‘civil defence’ is a response to perceived threat that specifically targets individuals, populations, and communities (Preston, 2012). The function of civil defence is not to “put an acceptable face” on war, threats or risks, rather it helps to educate populations and help them adapt to the reality of the world or condition they inhabit (The National Archives9
: HO 322/979, 1981). Civil preparedness acts to prepare people in a way that could alleviate potential future suffering, through measures that can range from physical shelter provision and evacuation, to advice and guidance through campaigns. These campaigns can be materialised through publications, films, broadcasts, posters, and advertisements. They aim not only to “alter individual cognitions concerning emergencies” but also act to modify behaviours in anticipation of possible catastrophe (Preston, 2012: 2).
1.2 Physical answers to a psychological problem
In light of these discussed world risks, this thesis began uncovering a key puzzle that comes with the practice of preparedness in response to the threat of terrorism. Though there are many definitions of terrorism, definitions too vast for this thesis to accurately discuss, it can be said that terrorism is, at its very core, a form of psychological warfare (White, 2003). It is practiced with the intent of “inducing fear in populations” (Tanielian & Stein, 2004: 689), aiming to create sense of terror that “attacks the body and mind” (Schmid, 2005:137). Terrorism is designed to have a reach further than just of its immediate victim or target. Instead, it seeks to have widespread repercussions, inciting fear, insecurity and anxiety across cities, nations and continents (Hoffman, 2004). This fear feeds into the wider discourse of the politics of emotion. This field explores where risk and politics “touches down” and works its way through the spaces and places that everyday citizens navigate (Skelton, 2013: 4). This field connects together the micro and the macro of politics, addressing how people negotiate political anxieties within their own commonplace lives (Hörschelmann, 2008). It is acknowledged that risk and fear is increasingly being
expressed in these personal “everyday and intimate spaces” (Gregory & Pred, 2007: 6) with a widespread realisation that dangers and threats are much closer “than they used to be” (Pain & Smith, 2008: 4). Everyday emotional landscapes are now muddied with fears and anxieties of international terrorism; fear has thus become the “wallpaper of our lives” (Weber, 2006: 684).
Looking to real world examples, the Paris attacks in 2015 were clearly an event that, like other terrorist attacks before it, caused fear, incited panic, suspicion, paranoia and anxiety across the world. What is hugely startling then is that despite this knowledge that terrorism causes fear, that it feeds into emotion and worms its way into the psychology of everyday life, the British Government chose to respond to the Paris attacks with a practical advice guidance note regarding possible future attacks (NaCTSO, 2015). While there is no doubt that practical advice as to what to do in a terrorist attack has relevance and meaning, it seems strange that an event with such profound emotional and psychological impacts incited a need for purely physical advice.
This real world example set up a core puzzle for enquiry. If terrorism is known to have psychological and emotional effects, why is the British Government responding with just physical advice? This puzzle opened up a genuine space of questioning that this study wishes to further explore. It wishes to dig deeper than just this initial question and perform a more expansive analysis on preparedness publications and campaigns in response to threats. It wishes to explore past the surface level publication and dismantle the preparedness in practice to examine: what is actually being done to prepare people? What is being advised and in what way? What threat is being addressed? How is it constructed and visualised? What is missing from these campaigns and, ultimately, how can they be made better? A key line of enquiry in here is unravelling who is actually being targeted by these campaigns and how they are imagined. This query arises from the extensive discussion surrounding the conceptualisation of ‘the public’ and how it is formed, something hotly debated by a range of scholars such as Dewey (1927), Lippman (1925) and Mateus (2011). It explores preparedness campaigns through the understanding that there can be multiple
imaginations of publics aside just that of the democratic public body, formed on multiple grounds and around multiple causes.
Additionally, inspired by Mythen & Walklate who stated that “the vacuum left by the evaporation of the Cold War enemy has been eagerly filled by the new terrorist”, this study wishes to take its examination one step further to investigate how people were prepared for threats historically in the U.K. (2006: 131). Modern preparedness strategies are merely the present formation of a long-standing and continuous process of managing and dealing with threats in the U.K. Indeed, in present time the opponent and threat type may have changed, but the idea that publics feel fear of threat remains the same. For this reason, the historical enquiry will add value to this study as it will establish how things were and how things have changed. Examining how historically people were prepared will enable a deeper appreciation and understanding of cause and effect in relation to threat and government protection.
1.3 Research questions
It is with these understandings that this thesis wishes to address the rarely unpacked engagement between governmental preparedness strategies and everyday fears and emotions. As addressed more fully in the methodology chapter, this study focuses on the U.K. as a case study due to its interesting history with civil defence and its prominence as a modern target for terror.
This study is henceforth operationalized through the following research questions: 1. During the Cold War period with the threat of nuclear attack persistent, how
were the U.K. public imagined, prepared and informed using civil defence strategies?
2. During the time of 2004 to 2015 with the threat of terrorism prominent, how were the U.K. public imagined, prepared and informed using civil defence strategies?
3. To what extent did (and do) these campaigns address emotion, insecurity or fear?
These research questions will fill a gap in preparedness literature and aim to bring into the forefront of political research the everyday geopolitics of fear and the
formal politics - something that has become “invisible” (Pain & Smith, 2008: 2). This thesis seeks to bridge formal academic considerations of governmental civil defence and preparedness and with the less explored area of the “little things” within politics, the smaller, personal navigations of the political on an emotional level (Thrift, 2000: 24). The motivation for this study is, at its core, a desire to bring the people back into politics. It wishes to expand the ‘emotional turn’ in social and specifically political science research, hoping to critically constitute the embodied and complex lived realities of life within that of government and democratic processing.
1.4 Outline and structure of this thesis
This thesis begins with chapters 2 and 3 which set the foundations for this study by discussing the range of theoretical underpinnings and arguments that surround the academic fields of the public, preparedness, emotion and visuality. Chapter 4 will then move to outline how this study will operationalise and investigate the research questions through a specifically chosen and developed methodology. Chapters 5 and 6 will then put forward an in-depth and critical analysis of the civil preparedness strategies of two different periods of time within the U.K. Finally, chapter 7 will draw this thesis to a conclusion, making final assumptions about the state of preparedness historically and presently, before offering some brief recommendations for the future.
Chapter 2: Publics, threats and fears
2.1 Introduction
This chapter seeks to give a brief overview and outline of the academic field within which this study is placed and of the literature that surrounds its core concepts. This section will specifically look at material relating to the public, threats and fear. These core concepts were identified from a key puzzle set out in chapter 1. It seeks to first explore the notion of the public – the starting point of enquiry – as it is the entity that faces terrorist threat, that feels emotion and is targeted by preparedness campaigns. A further discussion will aim to address modern threats and will assist enquiry by outlining what specifically is threatening publics today and how these threats are increasingly being presented and constructed in every life. Finally the concept of fear will be analysed in order to form a solid basis for discussion around the emotional effects of the threat of terrorism. This chapter will additionally use the key concepts discussed to inform the study directly, using previous literature and theories to identify and create specific elements of the preparedness campaigns that will be analysed in chapters 4 and 5.
2.2 Who is the public and what calls it into being?
Theorisations of the public are vast in number and run through the fields of communications, sociology, law, politics, geography and economics. The public today is a “difficult notion to grasp” given its multitude of types, appearances, instances and forms (Mateus, 2011: 275).
So what are publics made of? Well, other than being made “of people” there is no ‘ready-made’ concept of the public (Marres & Lezaun, 2011: 1). Many different theorists have offered answers and conceptualizations that range from the public as a social experience, an audience, a democratic body, a group created for action, a group merely with “shared symbols, language and ideals” and an ambiguous group that fluctuates between “everything and nothing” (Dewey, 1927; Marres, 2015; Mateus, 2011: 279; Marres & Lezaun, 2011). As declared by Dewey, ultimately “like most concepts which are introduced by a ‘The’” the public is a concept “too tied up” with
controversies to be of easy use and, like with all contemplations of philosophy must suffer “futile speculation” (Dewey, 1927: 6).
Wishing not to be held constrained by that of just one, this thesis wishes to include in its discussion explanations from across this range, including elements of many to create a theorisation that both situates the debate and suits the core argument of this specific academic enquiry regarding preparedness strategies.
This thesis-specific theorisation begins with the idea that the public as a social experience. It makes reference to the arguments put forward by Mateus (2011) who regarded the public as the result of a ‘publicness principle’ which encompassed social representations, extended belongings and where successive layers of shared experiences and common emotions are constructed. When looking specifically at the field of security, these shared perceptions and feelings come as a result of the “atmospheres of fear” that have settled upon those perceived to be at risk (Hörschelmann, 2008:147). Unbounded to just that of terrorism, risks that create publics and thus public imaginations and emotions include deadly diseases, climate change and financial crises. It is these threats that create a public, one that is joined by common emotion or experience associated with perceived risk and threats to its maintenance, security, safety and survival. Here takes place a synthesis of a “general mental state” possessed by individuals signifying the creation of some sort of “affective identity” or “social representation of personal feelings” that allows positive and strong ties to be realised through “collective representations” (Mateus, 2011: 279). The public therefore is an “endemic category of symbolic processes” that are lived out and practiced in everyday life (Mateus, 2011: 279).
This definition is in keeping with Dewey’s assumption that a public is formed when ordinary citizens share an experience or affect that is an out of their control. It agrees with his assertion that a public does not exist until a substantial externality “for good or evil” calls it into being, however he does not agree that publics always go on to organise themselves to address it (Dewey, 1927: 35). Ultimately, “no single individual” who belongs to the public “has any real commitment” and therefore does not always need to move to address the publics cause or threat (Mateus, 2011: 277).
This makes further reference to arguments put forward by Lippmann who suggested that the public was by no means a “fixed body of individuals” but could fluctuate based on those who where at any given time interested or affected by a stimulus (1927:67). This would suggest why publics often lack enough cohesion or organization to fully address a problem.
A differentiation here is crucial between that of a social experience and that of socialisation. Whilst a crowd can be defined by its similarity and physical proximity, the public that is formed here is one of strangers who do not share a social context or engage on a practical or physical level, but instead find themselves jointly implicated in common and mutual emotion, problem or threat. It is here that Marres’ phrase ‘no issue, no public’ comes into clarity (2015). Here, Marres’ statement represents the wider understanding that instabilities or threats are important to public life because they “disrupt engrained ways of doing things that put out habits and habitats at stake” (Marres, 2015). Because of this possible disruption, attention is held and the possible outcome has an impact on citizens inciting the production of a public.
This thesis’ discussion of the public also wishes to include elements of the public as an audience within the elements of social experience. This thesis disagrees with Mateus’ claim that the public and the audience are “to be described as autonomous concepts” and not to be “mingled” (2011: 276). Instead it sees the public as one originally formed when citizens are audience to event – often through mass media – and develop an embodied reaction to it. This thesis also disagrees with Lippmann’s suggestion that the public is simply just a “deaf spectator in the back row” (1925: 13) as through knowledge gained as an audience, the public can become consciousness of concepts and problems and develop understanding around a certain situations.
In short, this definition of the public indicates that the public being (or needing to be) prepared by governments is one formed socially by common emotion and experience relating to the risk of terrorism. However, it is here that this thesis recognises that there is a discrepancy and divergence between the public formed by the threat (theorised by social and audience processes), and the public thought to be in need and thus the one targeted by preparedness strategies. In other words, there is one public
formed when risk of a terrorist attack is perceived, and another public that is formed by the campaigns or preparedness strategies by the government.
When governments themselves perceive the threat level to be high enough they will step in to provide civil defence policies (as seen with the British Government’s response to the Paris attacks). In doing so they release ‘public statements’ or ‘public advice’ that in turn constitute the public as laity, a population that politically and constitutionally organised. This public is governed around the democratic and legislative principles of that state, or, in other words, is seen as the political ‘general public’ or the “public as a political state” (Dewey, 1927: 35; Wickson, Delgado and Kjølberg, 2010). What this action fails to acknowledge is the public already formed in response to the on-going threat or risk level. Although this thesis disagrees with Lippmann’s claim that the public is always merely a “phantom” (1925:1) in everyday life, it recognises this ‘phantom’ trait in government preparedness strategies as they often fail to include or incorporate public opinion or need into its action or decisions.
Consistently in the modern era, governments merely make public statements and public press releases that target the ‘democratic public’ as a whole. As one single body or entity not made up of individual publics with individual emotions, perceptions, understandings, fears and worries. By ignoring the social aspect of public definition, governments create a universal, impersonal, “abstract and aloof” population within which individuality is marred by collectivity and formal and rational argumentation replaces the embodied and expressive reality (Mateus, 2011: 277). Public problems seem to be increasingly defined in terms of “totalising terms” within which the whole of society is summed up as one when there are in fact “many publics” with many needs that need personalised responses (Mateus, 2011: 279; Marres, 2015).
When analysing and contemplating these notions of the public, it brings to light important considerations which form the basis for analysis within this study. Literature surrounding the definition, constitution and classification of the public leads this study to wonder how this can be seen within preparedness campaigns, how do these campaigns themselves define, visualise and depict the public. This therefore
forms the first element to be examined when investigating the research questions and in the analysis in chapters 4 and 5: representations of the public within the campaigns. The theorisation of publics as a social experience, created from atmospheres of fear demonstrates how publics can be formed around issues of terrorism and threat. These publics vary based on different fears relating to terrorism, different understandings of what to do, differing approaches to being active or passive or altering perceptions and needs due to age, disability, gender, race or religion. This study wishes to examine this, looking to see if these preparedness campaigns work to address these specific publics and in what other ways they envisage the population.
2.3 Modern threats and fear
This section now moves to outline what threats currently face populations and the ways in which these threats impact emotions and can create feelings of fear. Uncovering discussion around these two themes helps to better approach the key puzzle of this study by uncovering two things. Firstly it provides a strong understanding of what it is that people are being prepared for. Secondly it helps to determine exactly how emotions are effected by threat which helps to better determine what, specifically, preparedness campaigns should be addressing psychologically.
Historically, threat may have been restricted to risks primarily situated in local settings. But increasingly, risk and fears - both real and imaginary - are portrayed, experienced and discussed as globalised phenomena, especially since the onset of the ‘War on Terror’ (Pain & Smith, 2008). Terrorist groups are now defined by “amorphous aims and disparate organisational structures” alongside their capacity, ability and desire to strike across different continents (Mythen & Walklate, 2006: 125). This ‘new’ terrorism, which is unbounded from the tyranny of geography, is said to be more threatening to human existence due to the capacity of active terrorist cells to launch a spectacular, unannounced “high-lethality act” which directly target innocent, everyday civilians (Mythen & Walklate: 2006: 126). Random atrocity events and threats have therefore arguably simply become “part of modern weather” (Bruns, 2010: 238), catalysed and sensationalised through the media documentation of the “rising up of enemy powers” which has subsequently created a chilling
“climate of fear” (Butler, 2004: 117). Arguably, 9/11 deepened political bewilderment and entrenched perpetual uncertainty, “deeply engineering” risk into “all process that sustain life in advanced societies”, something that has been catalysed further by the explosion of communication and information technologies in the years since the attacks (Beck, 2002: 46).
As well as outlining risk and threats within society, additionally needed is a strong understanding of the tangible effects this has on publics. It can be noted here that threat has a seemingly paradoxical relationship with reality. On the one hand, threat or a promised threatening future, achieves some form of effect in the present through say fear, anxiety and terror. On the other hand, that future has “no actual existence” because it “has not and may never happen” (Anderson, 2009: 229). It can be seen than that without the effects of threat, whether they may be real or imagined, threat would ultimately have no actual handle on reality.
Generally considered as a form of psychological warfare, terrorism’s aim is to advance political objects through the spreading of fear which is why a consideration of emotion is so important within this study. This section now seeks to clearly identify how citizens have now developed to “think security” and incorporate the lived effects of fear, anxiety, worry and distress around the ever apparent and ever encroaching notion of terrorism (Mythen & Walklate: 2006).
This section turns attention to where politics “touches down” on “the ground in the places and lives that people inhabit” (Skelton, 2013:4; Pain, 2009). Politics is part of the “intimacies of everyday life” and its affects infiltrate the “innermost recesses of the human body” (Pain, 2009: 472). Fear, feminist inquiry has long substantiated, is an emotional response tied to politics, life and lives within “topographies, histories and daily insecurities” (Pain and Smith, 2008). Of course fear has not simply “dropped” into western countries in the years witnessing the proliferation of the ‘War on Terror’. Rather, fear has always remained embedded and present within complex places and identities, constantly entwined with local and international negotiations of threat and risk, constantly being critically challenged, reshaped and redefined with reference to context, knowledge and experience. This idea takes reference Pain &
Smiths ‘double helix’ relationship between geopolitics and everyday life which highlights the connections, events, movements, dialogues, encounters, actions, things and affects that conjoin them (2008: 7).
Despite in post-attack rhetoric, people are encouraged to revert back to ‘business as usual’ as soon as possible, this does not prevent the lasting effects of attacks on societies and individuals, as exemplified when Allen & Brown (2011) described 7/7 an on-going, living project for residents of the U.K. Interestingly, despite the fact that far more Londoners have been killed riding bikes in the city than in terror attacks in the last 15 years, a quarter of British people would still consider avoiding travel to central London as they “felt nervous a fellow passenger may be a terrorist” (The Guardian, 2015a; Evening Standard, 2016). Additionally, around 19% said they had “felt risk” while in a theatre, club or cinema, and a staggering 23% said they had taken time to work out what to do in the event of a terror attack when in a venue (Evening Standard, 2016). So, whether it is simply lurking paranoia on transport or panic over abandoned suitcases in public spaces, it appears it is “easier said than done, this keep calm and carry on business” (The Guardian, 2015b). It can be understood therefore that what people fear to be real is therefore real in its consequences as it creates its own reality with the space between what actually ‘is’ and what ‘might be’ seemingly shrinking.
It appears fear is incited from the fact that risk seems to lie in more and more places, and fear is exacerbated constantly through popular culture, social media and the press. Media and popular culture are increasingly tapping into individualised insecurities and fears and using the language of politics to do so. With each new event or popular culture reference, it causes peoples fear and anticipation levels to yet again “creep up another notch” (Duffy, 2003: 1). Fear is, it seems as Pain & Smith alleged, “on the up” (2008:1).
This demonstrates how fear from risks are now commonplace. They are normalised, regular and are life’s unsettling wallpaper. Thus, fears from global political threats do not simply dribble down from political events into absorbent populations as Furedi implied (2007). Rather, fear is already lived, negotiated, felt, resisted, navigated,
evaluated, played, replayed, revisited and reconstituted in people’s lives on an “almost daily basis” (Pain, Panelli, Kindon & Little, 2008: 28). The discourse of ‘new terrorism’ can therefore seek to invite and initiate fear within many aspects of human life, from the construction of risky activities (i.e. taking public transport), to risky places (i.e. bars or shops), to a general flooding of examples of risk and fear in popular culture and everyday life. This therefore lays the underpinning for the fourth element of preparedness campaigns to be assessed in this study: do these campaigns work to address notions of fear, insecurity and emotion? This element therefore seeks to uncover to what extent governments work to address not just the physical impacts terrorism can have on a population, but also the emotional ones. This works on the basic understanding that governments fundamentally work to protect citizens, and provide them with safety and address, as well as alleviate, their political concerns or anxieties.
2.4 Construction of threat in everyday life
This section leads directly on from the previous which explained the effect threat can have on human emotion. Taking reference from Katz, it can be understood that “everyday, routinized, barely noticed reminders of terror or threat” creating a feeling that the presence of terrorism is always “in our midst” (2007: 358). What is meant by this is that threat has become part of the everyday world that people inhabit. Through the discussion of the prominence of constructed threat in ordinary life, this section moves to better understand and uncover how threat is actually constructed in this everyday world, how it appears, what it appears as and how it is conceptualised and visualised. This references back to the core research objectives of this study as it moves to highlight the way threat is already constructed in life, before ultimately asking the question, how is it constructed and imagined in preparedness strategies?
It can be said that there has been an increase of ‘banal terrorism’, an idea first put forward by Katz (2007) which outlines how within material urban environments, terror fears have now become normalised, accepted and routinized through increased safety practices that no longer warrant much attention including armed police, CCTV use and amplified security checks. These banal safety precautions can work to instil constructions of risk and threat in an “everyday way” allowing for global fears to be
acutely present in much of everyday life and to “creep into subconscious minds and routinized actions” (Pain & Smith, 2008:13). Ultimately, despite many risks being actually unknowable, unlikely and remote, terrorism is materialised in everyday life spaces and works to create emotion around the “open-ended and clearly never-ending ‘War or Terrorism’” (Katz, 2007). As more and more terrorist attacks happen, more spaces enter the foray of that which is considered possibly ‘risky’ and what is constructed as threatening. Usual sites of risk included airports and transport networks, however this has been expanded in light of recent attacks in Tunisia, Paris and Kenya which targeted beaches, universities, shopping centres, concert venues and bars. Constructions of threat work to produce constructions of places that contain “superimposed meanings” and have an “embodied politics” interwoven into its reality (Halbwachs, 1992: 204). In other words, these material sites associated with “accompanying identities” and meanings of threat and insecurity (Dodds, 2005: 5).
Extending this understanding of modern threat, attention must be given to the field of popular geopolitics, a branch of geopolitics. Geopolitics itself mobilises ideas about “places and populations” to construct a way of seeing the world, as seen through the spatialisation of boundaries, of dangers and also representations of ‘self’ and ‘other’ (Dodds, 2005: 1). Popular geopolitics looks specifically popular culture through a geopolitical lens, considering sources such as mass media, cinema, novels and cartoons to see how these materials contribute to how ideas about people, places, boundaries, dangers and events are framed and constructed.
This idea and consideration goes beyond simply ‘popular culture’ or ‘representation’, rather it outlines how the world of new, social and electronic media is evolving understandings of politics, war and peace. These concepts demonstrate a key element of this study, that the ‘high’ cultures of politics are not somehow disconnected from the ‘low’ cultures of the everyday (Dodds, 2005: 75). This contemplation of geopolitics seeks to fundamentally build up an idea of the landscape and world people navigate everyday - a world full of stimuli that people take reference from, learn from, develop emotions and ideas from and react to things because of, both consciously and unconsciously.
In regards to this study, popular geopolitics can explain how highly emotive notions of the political manifest themselves in the ordinary lives of people through the media and popular culture. It can also help explain how threat is constantly defined and visualised in the world that people live. The proliferation of threat within popular culture leads this study to question the many ways that threat can be demonstrated, visualised and imagined. Whether it is by playing video games such as ‘Medal of Honour’ or ‘Call of Duty’, watching Hollywood blockbusters such as ‘Zero Dark Thirty’ or ‘London Has Fallen’, people constantly bare witness to a different construction of threat, what it is, who it is, where it is. It is a plethora of materials that has (and continues to) build up imaginaries of risk and threat on a constant, endless, persistent and daily basis. As argued by Furedi, the media has become “increasingly interested” in the subject of terrorism, and “terms like ‘risk society’ and ‘risk perception’ now regularly feature in most newspaper columns (2002: 5). This injects the terrorist threat once more into everyday and mundane life seen when someone simply checks the news or watches a film. This affirms the ideas of Beck (2002) who stated that the media serves to socially explode imaginations of threat that otherwise would have been largely absent from mundane public life.
This idea is not something constrained to just modern times, indeed during the Cold War period threat was also constructed and visualised through films and television programmes. This included: ‘Threads’, a docudrama released on the BBC in 1984 showing the effect of nuclear war on Sheffield; ‘The War Game’ produced in 1965 which showed the prelude to and immediate aftermath of a nuclear attack in Britain and ‘On the Eighth Day’, a documentary about the effects of a nuclear winter on the U.K.
Overall this section has demonstrated how threat is constantly visualised and demonstrated in life through banal terrorism, the construction of ‘risky’ places and through popular culture. Having discussed how prolific threat is in life, and in how many different ways it is constructed, it inspires this study to identify the way threat is presented and constructed within preparedness campaigns. This enquiry wishes to fully uncover how campaigns visualise and conceptualise threat, something that is already done continuously in popular culture and everyday life.
2.5 Concluding remarks
Overall, this chapter firstly outlined theorisations around the notion of the public, forming an understanding of the public as not one static and totalised body, but instead something formed multiple times and on numerous occasions by a social experiences. This chapter then moved to outline the relationship between the proliferation of threat within life and increasing senses of fear and risk within everyday contemplations. Finally, this chapter outlined the modern threats that face civilians today, threats that are continually navigated and constructed in everyday life through media and popular geopolitics. Through these discussions, three elements for analysis were created to be studied at in the examination of historical and current civil preparedness campaigns.
3) Preparedness
3.1 Introduction
This chapter is a continuation of the previous, seeking to give a brief overview and outline the academic fields within which this study is placed, specifically those related to preparedness, futurity and visuality. As with the previous chapter, these core concepts were identified from a key puzzle set out in chapter 1. An examination of preparedness will be completed in order to properly examine the intentions and core aims of what the preparedness campaigns seek to do. An examination of futurity will be completed in order to better understand how preparedness seeks to manage the potential and impending political, emotional and physical landscape. Additionally an enquiry into visuality will be made in an attempt to understand how governments utilise the visual to construct narratives and meaning. This chapter additionally provides further identification of elements for analysis in chapters 4 and 5.
3.2 Futurity and anticipation
Emergencies can happen anywhere, at any time and in any sector or domain of life. Typically, emergencies are known to be situations or events of unknown but limited duration, and in a form of which can bring about harm or damage in the midst of emerging. It can be said however that emergencies are not merely unpredictable and rare occurrences in an otherwise stable life, but instead - and especially in the wake of ‘the War on Terror’ - emergencies are commonplace in politics and life. For many, life is lived “in a state of emergency” and in the presence of an anticipated and expected emergency and, within the realm of the politics of emergency, “the state of exception has become the rule” (Adey, Anderson & Graham, 2015: 2). It is within this situation however that emergency and threat must be governed in, by and through.
Massumi explains how threats are used to enable and justify action in the present as a “threat [or its promise] is the future cause of a change in the present” (2005: 35). By taking action now, futurity is made present through an “effective expression” that brings it into the present, but without causing it to cease being a futurity (Massumi, 2005: 36). It can be said then that the process of securing life involves two steps.
Firstly, the dangerous hazard must be described and disclosed in the present in order to call forth and incite futurist action. Secondly, action is then taken over whatever is be secured, forcing a “transformation” to occur under the premise of a “hoped-for future” that somehow controls, mitigates or manages the threat (Anderson, 2010: 229). Considering the focus of this study it must be asked, how can this knowledge of futurity and action be applied in the context of the threat of terror and attempts to manage and anticipate this threat? And how is the promise of security against such threats achieved through certain techniques?
It can be understood that governments pursue a range of logics that involve action before a terror threat comes to pass. It can exercise a range of concepts such as preemption (Amoore, 2014), precaution, premeditation and preparedness (Anderson and Adey, 2011). Whilst all these concepts ultimately act through the same two steps listed above, each herald a different way of viewing the future and practice a slightly different manner of acting on and relating to the future. Preemption is seen to anticipate threat by predetermining the form of the future (i.e. direct action to address or change the threat) whilst precaution acts as a preventative logic within which decisions are made to constrain or halt the threat from fruition, before its effects become irreversible.
Preparedness instead aims to make present “as many of the possible paths, or possible worlds, that the future could be imagined to take” (Grusin, 2004: 28). It seeks to embrace uncertainty and order the “radically uncertain” future, thinking the unthinkable and imagining the unimaginable (Aradau, 2010). It does not wish to alter, change the threatening future and its effects, rather it treats occurrences of risk and emergency as imminent and ultimately “to be expected, to be anticipated and to be prepared for” (Anderson, 2012: 332; Lakoff, 2007). It works to frame the contemporary security environment through its “mitigation of vulnerability” in terms of the uncertainty of threats rather than the complete absence of threat (Zebrowski, 2010: 5). Based on the notions of futurity and anticipation, it ultimately works to “capture, seize… or take possession” (Anderson, 2009: 229) of future emergencies, acting on the assumption that impending threats are “to be anticipated and actionable” (Lakoff, 2007: 260). Furthermore, what is key here to note is that preparedness is a
securitising “process” rather than a stagnant routine as it constantly acclimatises to discoveries and developments in order to best “secure life” (Anderson, 2009: 229).
It can also be understood that the logic preparedness lies at the limit of insurance, or, in other words, at the “heart of a new ratio” which challenges or replaces statistical calculability (Aradau, 2010; Lakoff, 2007). As potential dangers appear now as unpredictable and indeterminate, they cannot be predicted, only enacted. Rather than “taming” dangerous events through statistical probabilities or relying on actuarial data, preparedness speculates not just about the future, but a range of possible futures that may arise (Aradau, 2010). It generates a dystopian contemplation of the future, imagined using “precursory signs” of what threatens to happen (Anderson, 2009: 232). This process renders the future actionable and allows for the testing of “imaginative” (Salter, 2008: 11) and “visionary” (O’Malley, 2004: 5) techniques which would be utilized in an actual response.
Within this negotiation of hypothetical possibilities that could become realities, states often employ a tactic of “responsibilisation” or in other words, approaching the practice of preparedness through the promotion of civil self-protection (Mythen & Walklate, 2006:134). Here the states strategy is provide information on possible events and thus, possible futures. Parallel to this information runs advice that encourages how citizens can protect themselves through action and provision. This in effect “stimulates and disciplines individual imaginations” and offers a pragmatic way to approach, deal with and prepare for the future (Anderson, 2010: 330). Civil preparedness works to have a double effect to audiences, working both to convince people for the need to prepare, and informing them how to prepare and react as if the threats were real (Lakoff, 2007).
Civil preparedness is a concept that has been put into practice in both modern times and historically within the U.K. During the Cold War period, it was used for “rendering a potential nuclear confrontation imaginable, manageable” and, most of all capable of being “acted upon, at least in part” (Zebrowski, 2010: 13). The nature of the Cold War meant that “nobody [could] be certain that the United Kingdom will never be attacked… there must always be a risk, however small” (TNA, 1983: HO 322/1028). Within these conditions, it was perceived that it was the duty of “any
humane government” to cater for these eventualities, however “remote they may be” by maintaining a level of civil preparedness and civil defence “proportionate to the degree of risk” (TNA, 1983: HO 322/1028). Here it was understood that preparing and training people for the event of nuclear war had “political value well beyond its cost” (TNA, 1984: HO 322/1143a) and was just like enforcing that people “wear a seat belt in a car” because it “lessens the chance of serious injury in a crash” (TNA, 1981: HO 322/979).
In modern day, preparedness practiced at all levels of government within the U.K. through an Integrated Emergency Management system which comprises of six related activities: anticipation, assessment, prevention, preparation, response and recovery. (Cabinet Office, 2012). In regards to emergency management specifically in place for terrorism threats, the U.K. government has a strand of its counter-terrorism strategy called ‘CONTEST’ that specifically called ‘Prepare’ (Home Office, 2015). The aims of ‘Prepare’ and ‘CONTEST’ are both housed under the aims of the umbrella legislation of the U.K. Civil Contingencies Act (UKCCA). The UKCCA released in 2004 followed a review of U.K. emergency planning focused specifically on improving the U.K.’s ability to deal with “natural, technological or man-made crises and disasters in peacetime” (Cabinet Office, 2003). Drawing on lessons learnt during the Cold War, the labour strikes of the 1970s/80s and 9/11, the Act puts forward a range of “statutory civil protection duties” including risk assessments, emergency planning, distribution of advice and the undertaking exercises (Cabinet Office, 2003).
Inspired by the debates around preparedness and how it seeks to take action in the present in the name of futurity, this study wishes to uncover how this is translated into preparedness materials for the public. It wishes to draw on the idea that “precursory signs” of what threatens to happen (Anderson, 2009: 232) incite the production of “imaginative” (Salter, 2008: 11) advice that could be used in an actual threatening situation. This works to create the fourth element that will be analysed when investigating civil campaigns in chapters five and six. Based on the assumption that preparedness works to minimise the impact of an emergency, this study will investigate: the practical and physical advice given in light of nuclear war and terrorist threats. This will seek to uncover how preparedness was actualised and
materialised, both historically and in modern times, within the physicalities of the public sector when faced with imminent risk.
3.3 Politics and the visual
This section will turn analysis to how governmental preparedness is envisioned, how it manifests itself with the realm of the public through sight, meaning and message. Visuality is a key concept to consider in addressing the key puzzle of this research study as it reveals how the visual can construct narratives and advice for preparing for threat. Preparedness is not always generated through visual politics, however it is focused on here for two reasons. Firstly, due to the time and length restraints of this project, it helps to narrow down the area of analysis; otherwise this study could have included a range of other material including speeches and debates in regards to public preparedness. Furthermore, it was chosen due to the interesting ability of the visual to consistently over time, simultaneously elicit, placate and manage fear, understanding and action.
Images have always played a fundamental role in the political communication process and governments and politicians will go to “great lengths” to ensure messages are effectively communicated through “optics” (Schill, 2012). It is therefore important in the analysis of preparedness to witness how images play a function, how their meaning is conveyed and message displayed within a “visual economy” that contains relations of power that are linked to wider social and political structures and narratives (Campbell, 2007).
Despite its importance and relevance both historically and presently, scholars have traditionally overlooked examining visuality and imagery within research and it remains one of the least studied and least understood areas of focus. This study seeks to challenge the myth that visuals have “limited importance in politics, operate superficially, or are of trivial consequence” (Semetko & Scammell, 2012:133). This study contends that visuals are not simply images, but have multiple functions within politics and constitute meaning, discourse and narrative. Images themselves are forms of governance within “we are able, allowed, or made to see” (Campbell, 2007: 30) depending on the function of the visual. There are of course many functions a visual
policy, create identification, develop emotion, put forward an argument and transport the audience (Semetko & Scammell, 2012). Governmental images can demonstrate strength of its services to show trust; they can depict familiar “ordinary people” as a form of audience connection or work to portray specific groups such as the ‘Other’ to establish a communal narrative (Hansen, 2011). Visuals are not simply sites of governance but also technologies with their specific design intended to have a specific effect on the audience seen for example with photography and cartoons. Whilst they may depict the same event, photography is witnessed to document, whilst cartoons critically narrate (Hansen, 2011). Other visuals will be chosen to instil a sense of fear in the audience in a specific effort to conduct scaremongering or alarmism. This tactic appeals to the audience’s emotions, playing on perceptions of fear and uncertainty to influence the public in the hope of manipulating thought and action (De Vocht, 2014).
Regardless of form or meaning, visuals are used to have a tangible and meaning effect on audiences. They can act as a dominant mode of learning with power over senses of self and consciousness through easily understood imageries and messages. Visuals are also said to have an “enormous” impact on attitudes and beliefs with one study even suggesting a single photograph can impact an electorate’s choice of candidate when voting (Semetko & Scammell, 2012: 121). Visuals are especially important to investigate as audiences tend to “believe what they see more than what they read or hear” meaning images often become more memorable and have a greater impact when to attempting to “draw in”, sway, influence, instruct or inform the viewer (Semetko & Scammell, 2012: 121; Zebrowski, 2010). As Garland suggested, the states strategy is not to “command control” but rather to persuade and align, to “organise and to ensure that actors play their part” (2001: 125). Key to this aim, Garland continues is that public campaigns target “the public as a whole” (2001: 126).
Within preparedness campaigns, visuals are used for many of the reasons discussed in this section. It is for this reason that this study will look at visuality in regards to its fifth and final element of analysis, specifically looking at the visual message and image meaning within the campaigns. In this enquiry, an attempt will be made to study what images have been used, what messages are they trying to convey, what is visually missing, what information has been held back, what visual tropes or
non-verbal cues are on display, what behaviour or action is being addressed or encouraged and what emotions are being engaged and targeted.
3.4 Concluding remarks
Overall, this chapter has worked to outline literature surrounding the concept of preparedness and the way governments can actualise political messages through the image. It has demonstrated the link between emergency/preparedness the political/visual and used these relationships to construct of two final elements to be used in the analysis of preparedness campaigns in the following two chapters.
4. Research Methodology
4.1 Introduction
The main objective of this chapter is to outline the various research methods performed within this study whilst also “throwing light” on the advantages and the limitations of the methods chosen so as to “help us to understand, in the broadest possible terms, not the products of scientific inquiry but the process itself” (Kaplan, 1964: 23). As methods are the “nuts and bolts of research practice”, careful consideration was given to the methodology chosen for data collection and analysis in this study so as to best study the ways in which publics are understood, constituted, approached, imagined and visualised through preparedness campaigns (Carter & Little, 2007: 1325). So as to provide the means to competently and expertly address the research questions posed in chapter 1, a range of documents, booklets, manuals, posters and leaflets - produced in both the historical and modern period of analysis - were collected for analysis.
4.2 Case study selection
For this study, the United Kingdom was chosen as the focus of enquiry as it is an interesting case study, both historically and in recent times. As a liberal democratic western nation, the U.K. can widely be seen as a target for “new terrorism” in modern times (Wilkinson, 2007:37). Although the U.K. has not experienced the somewhat ‘spectacular’ act of terrorism as seen on 9/11, the event of 7/7 in which 52 people were killed by four bombings in London and a threat level of ‘SEVERE’ for international terrorism indicate the important foothold terrorism has on the U.K. today (MI5, 2016; Wilkinson, 2007). Numerous foiled attacks and bomb threats such as one in May 2016 which targeted schools across the U.K. and threatened to take “children’s heads off” highlight how the threat of terrorism is ever encroaching on those who live in the U.K., both through the media and in real life (Independent, 2016). Additionally, the U.K. was chosen due to practical considerations and language constraints in regards to accessing and understanding the materials for analysis.
Within this modern analysis section of this study, a time period of 2004 – 2015 has been selected. It begins analysis in 2004 at a time when the U.K. implemented its Civil Contingencies Act which directly addressed and revived preparedness in light of 9/11. It ends its analysis in 2015 around the time of the Paris Attacks which itself sparked a revival of preparedness in the U.K. It can be seen that within this eleven year time period, random atrocity events simply became “part of the modern weather” in the U.K which makes it an highly important period of analysis (Bruns, 2010: 238).
To develop further the insight gained in this study, a historical comparison was performed to enable an investigation of any broader trends or consistent narratives in the U.K.’s preparedness strategy. As comparisons are a “cornerstone of contemporary social sciences and history” it permits the examination of long standing processes, decisions and their outcomes regarding civil preparedness and allows for examination of how things were and how things have changed, providing a foundation for recommendations for the future (Osinsky & Eloranta, 2015). This study however does not contend to draw a straight comparison between historical and modern approaches to preparedness as it recognises the geopolitical landscape, resources, publics, communication capabilities and threat itself are different. Rather this study seeks to explore the practice of preparedness historically as a way of addressing critical questions about the present and future of state of preparedness.
The U.K. was also chosen for the historical part of this study due to its interesting history of civil preparedness strategies. The advent of civil defence was roused initially by the bombing of civilian areas during the beginning of the First World War which brought to the governments attention the need for information and preparedness campaigns alongside the establishment of the Civil Defence Service. Posters such as images 1, 2 and 3 below where used nationally during the First World War to engage with the public key information, advice and messages. The start of World War Two brought with a resurgence of civil preparedness with campaigns such as images 4 and 5, and the renowned ‘Keep Calm and Carry On’ (image 6) distributed nationwide on preparation for attack.
Image 1 (IWM, 2016) Image 2 (IWM, 2016) Image 3 (IWM, 2016)
Image 4 (IWM, 2015) Image 5 (BBC, 2014) Image 6 (IWM, 2011)
The U.K.’s use of civil preparedness continued into the period of the Cold War, a time that although saw no physical conflict, was saturated in risk, threat and fear of an attack. The characteristics of the Cold War period are part of the reason this era was specifically chosen for historical analysis within this study. Whilst there are important distinctions, it bares similarities to the threat of modern terrorism as politically, both are ideological struggles with enemies “that despise freedom and pursues totalitarian aims” (Pain & Smith, 2008:49). Physically, the two threats hold similarities in the sense both find risk amongst everyday landscapes with war transported from distant battlefields to the homes and cities navigated by populations. It also draws similarities regarding the element of surprise and fear of the unknown as unlike in periods of conventional warfare, nuclear warfare and modern terrorism are not comprised of open confrontation. Intriguingly, after the Cold War there was a “strange death” of UK civil defence and preparedness which further makes it an interesting case study as it presents the most recent time, in British history, that preparedness campaigns were
used nationally to address physical security and concerns relating to wide scale threat (Preston, 2014: 1).
Within the Cold war era, the time frame of 1957-1981 was chosen. This was identified inductively after the bulk of the research had been completed. The time span was chosen as it contained an interesting mix of preparedness materials for analysis and because it covered a frame of time where the threat level was constant meaning the need/want for preparedness was at a constant.
4.3 Method selection
This study uses an inductive research method within which observations mark the starting point of the study, with theories and patterns emerging from that which has been observed. Inductive reasoning is often referred to as a “bottom-up approach” as it is the observations that are used to build up an abstraction or to describe phenomena (Lodico et al, 2010: 10). Thus this research did not begin with claims or theorisations as to how campaigns prepared, constituted and imagined both publics and the threat. It instead deduced patterns, discourses, configurations and meaning from the material before making critical conclusions and assumptions. The work done in chapters 2 and 3 helped to lay a theoretical groundwork of material surrounding this study which the historical and modern examination works to build upon through discovery and analysis.
For the historical analysis within this study, archival analysis was performed at the National Archives in London, the official archive for the U.K. government for England and Wales. Archival research allows for the process of investigation into historical organisations, uncovering invaluable, consequential and meaningful insights. Records are “principle depositaries” of “imaginaries” and demonstrate historical thinking and understandings of reality that took place within specific locations and time frames (Lobo-Guerero, 2013: 121). Referred to as the “memorialization of moments of the past”, archival research allows for singularities to be weaved together, forming a complex and multifaceted construction of narratives and discourses present across the materials (Foucault 2004: 7). It is here therefore that the archive can become a “field of surprise” as through interrogating the minutiae
