Read the announcement in full

Secret plans for a pre-recorded radio announcement to be broadcast in the event of a nuclear attack were drawn up by the BBC and the Government in the 1970s to reassure listeners that the corporation had not been obliterated.

Details of the plans, which were kept strictly classified to avoid mass panic, will be made public today by the National Archives. They reveal the fear of a nuclear strike that permeated Whitewall during the Cold War.

Officials corresponded — and agonised — for more than three years over the proposals, which would have resulted in pre-recorded tapes with advice for survivors of a nuclear holocaust distributed to strategic broadcasting centres across the country.

They were to be used as a “last-ditch expedient ... in circumstances in which suitable personnel for live broadcasting are not available”.

A draft script of the announcement written in 1974 warns: “Remember that there is nothing to be gained by trying to get away ...The safest place is indoors.” It tells people to turn off gas and fuel supplies, conserve their water and food, and stay in their “fall-out room”.

“If you leave the fall-out room to go to the lavatory or to replenish food or water supplies, do not remain outside the room for a moment longer than necessary,” it reads.

But the documents also show a planning process mired down in technicalities, with the Home Office fretting over the precise wording of the announcement, the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications (MPT) debating the relative merits of recording on reels or newfangled cassette tapes — and the BBC worrying about pulling in an audience.

“The general tone seems perfectly acceptable,” wrote Stuart Rayner of the BBC in response to the proposed script. “But ... to say, ‘We shall repeat this announcement...’ is not a good way to attract listeners to the next broadcast. We believe it would be better phrased as, ‘We shall be on the air again...’”

Mr Rayner went on to suggest that the broadcast be preceded by three minutes of music.

In another meticulous rewrite, the word "that" as a subordinate conjunction was removed throughout to “bring the script alive”.

Concern was also expressed over the importance of choosing the right person to record the announcement. Not only did the presenter have to be positively vetted by the security services, he also had to have a familiar “BBC voice”.

“The reassurance that ‘the BBC is still there’ would not be gleaned from a recorded announcement by an unfamiliar voice,” wrote Harold Greenwood of the MPT.

“Indeed, if an unfamiliar voice repeats the same announcement hour after hour ... listeners may begin to suspect that they are listening to a machine ... (or even that it has got stuck) and that perhaps, after all, the BBC has been obliterated.”

The correspondence ends in 1976 and it is not made clear whether the tapes were ever made. The BBC said yesterday that it did not hold any recordings of the announcement.

But, said Mark Dunton, the contemporary history specialist at the National Archives, “at least they got the details right”.

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