View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by University of Salford Institutional Repository `No protection against the H-bomb' : press and popular reactions to the Coventry civil defence controversy, 1954 Barnett, NJ http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14682745.2014.968558 Title `No protection against the H-bomb' : press and popular reactions to the Coventry civil defence controversy, 1954 Authors Barnett, NJ Type Article URL This version is available at: http://usir.salford.ac.uk/id/eprint/51770/ Published Date 2014 USIR is a digital collection of the research output of the University of Salford. Where copyright permits, full text material held in the repository is made freely available online and can be read, downloaded and copied for non-commercial private study or research purposes. Please check the manuscript for any further copyright restrictions. For more information, including our policy and submission procedure, please contact the Repository Team at:
[email protected]. ‘No Protection against the H-bomb’: Press and Popular Reactions to the Coventry Civil Defence Controversy, 1954 This article examines British popular and media reactions to America’s Bravo test shot in April 1954 and Coventry City Council’s subsequent decision to abandon Civil Defence. The article finds three key motifs emerged which relate to Britain’s broader sense of national identity in the 1950s. First, the controversy formed part of a cultural battle for national identity between a conservative and potentially militaristic culture, and one which was more progressive and opposed war and nuclear armaments. Second, opponents labelled the councillors as Moscow stooges and this revealed underlying anti-communism.