LONDON, Dec 30 — In the early 1980s, the world was gripped by thoughts of nuclear war. Soviet leaders were convinced the US and its allies were on the brink of a pre-emptive strike. In Britain, museum officials were worrying about what, in the event of apocalypse, they should do with all their paintings.

Government documents released at the National Archives in London today show how the UK tried to prepare for nuclear war, with guidelines drafted on building a home nuclear shelter and a debate that lasted years about where to store art treasures.

The argument began with a memo from the Ministry of Defence to the Home Office, discussing a request from the Department for Education & Science for somewhere to put Britain’s great works of art should war break out.

“If DES is asking for a safe hole guaranteed to survive nuclear war, they cannot be thinking straight,” wrote a clearly irritated MoD official. “I cannot see what advantage the anonymous director of a national institution imagines he will derive from having a deposit readily accessible from London — is he thinking of open days perhaps?”

The plan to get art out of London was first drawn up in the wake of the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, under the codename Operation Methodical. By the 1980s, it was out of date. The Manod slate quarry in North Wales, used during World War II to store pictures from London’s National Gallery, was being reopened as a mine.

Planning disarray

A military exercise in March 1983, codenamed Wintex-Cimex, showed the plans “to be in disarray — to say the least,” according to a subsequent account included in the file.

“Nobody really knew what would be moved, from where, by whom, to where or when,” the note went on. “Indeed there were grave doubts, not only about feasibility, but about the policy of using scarce resources to protect ‘things’ rather than people.”

An alternative North Wales location was identified, at Rhydymwyn, where in World War II top secret work had been carried out on the atomic bomb and chemical weapons. The Welsh Office was asked if its museums had anything worth saving.

“Although we do have a few valuable items, we are not really to be compared with the great national treasure houses,” came the modest reply. The Welsh planned that, should war come, they would store their valuables “in the most suitable sub- basement accommodation.”

Toxic gases

Elsewhere in government, scientists were trying to design a nuclear shelter that anyone could build in their home using easily available materials. It wasn’t straightforward. The sheeting proposed to line the shelters gave off toxic gases when exposed to heat. The planners estimated people would have to stay in the shelters for as long as 10 hours, but that they would only have enough air to last out three hours.

Having come up with their designs, they set about building each one, coming up with a list of materials and an estimate of the time required. One design required 14 kilogrammes of nails and 125 sandbags. It would cost £394 (about US$570 in the mid-1980s) and take 248 hours to build. “Twenty days, working 12 hours a day,” someone scrawled at the bottom of the report.

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was being urged to prepare for a covert war against Russia.

Julian Amery, a Conservative member of Parliament who had been involved in the covert Special Operations Executive in World War II, wrote to her in 1980, urging her to set up a similar organization now. “This is a type of operation for which we have many qualified people and a certain national flair,” he observed.

‘Old hands’

Amery’s letter was passed to MI6, Britain’s overseas intelligence service, which reacted with horror to his suggestion that “old hands from SOE” be drafted in to offer advice. “Our friends see no advantage in this and a number of potential disasters,” the prime minister was told. Parts of Thatcher’s reply to Amery, presumably dealing with MI6’s capabilities for foreign covert action, are still classified.

The extent of MI6’s abilities is revealed elsewhere in the files, which contain new details of how Oleg Gordievsky, one of Britain’s most important spies inside the Soviet Union, was spirited out of the country after he came under suspicion.

Summoned back to Moscow from London in 1985, he was drugged and questioned. He sent a message to his British handlers that he needed to escape. A man walking past him on the street carrying a Harrods bag and eating a Mars bar was the sign his message had been received.

In an operation personally approved by Thatcher, Gordievsky was then smuggled across the border to Finland in the boot of a car by two MI6 officers: Viscount Asquith — great-grandson of the Liberal prime minister who took Britain into World War I — and Andrew Gibbs.

In the weeks that followed, there was a series of tit-for-tat expulsions of Russian and British diplomats from Moscow and London before the UK ambassador to Russia, Bryan Cartledge, urged a halt.

“Never engage in a pissing match with a skunk: he possesses important natural advantages,” he cabled London.— Bloomberg