Protect/Protest: British nuclear fiction of the 1980s

Abstract

Analyses of nuclear fiction have tended to focus on the literature of the United States, particularly that of the 1950s. This article not only switches attention to British literature, but makes the case for the 1980s as a nuclear decade, arguing that the late Cold War context, especially renewed fears of global conflict, produced a distinctive nuclear literature and culture. Taking its cue from E.P. Thompson's rewriting of the British government's civil-defence slogan, 'Protect and Survive', as 'Protest and Survive', it identifies a series of issues -gender and the family, the environment and socio-economic organization -through which competing nuclear discourses can be read. In particular, it argues, British fiction of this period functions by undercutting the idea that protection is possible. Hence, although few nuclear texts advocate particular policy positions, they are characterized by a politics of vulnerability. Proposing for the first time the existence of a distinctive 1980s nuclear culture, it seeks to suggest the broad parameters within which further research might take place.

The politics of the unknown: Uncertainty and the nuclear threat in Britain, 1979–1985

“…While these two subjective and diametrically opposed positions rightly suggest a polarization of British opinion on the nuclear weapons issue in the early 1980s, an investigation into the politics of the unknown around the nuclear threat should move beyond such a binary “Protect/Protest” opposition (Cordle, , pp. 656–659).…”

Review of periodical literature published in 2012

“…Bingham gives attention to the role of popular British newspapers in shaping the nuclear culture of the postwar period. Cordle offers an analysis of Britain's distinctive nuclear literature and culture during the 1980s.…”

Urban civil defence: imagining, constructing and performing nuclear war in Aarhus

“…Here, the article diverts from current main historiographical trends that focus on the propagandistic, emotional and legitimizing function of civil defence or on popular resistance to civil defence. 10 The article builds on works of scholars who have rooted their civil defence histories within specific places. 11 I insist, however, on the intimate connection between locality, materiality and imaginaries.…”