New publication: Covering the ‘Scottish position adequately’: Planning Civil Defence in Post-war Scotland, 1948–59

Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Jessica Douthwaite, recently published her article titled, “Covering the ‘Scottish position adequately’: Planning Civil Defence in Post-war Scotland, 1948–59” in the Journal of Modern British History.

The article considers Cold War civil defence policy and planning through a regional lens, arguing that the specificities of Scotland’s governing structures, Second World War experiences and postwar expectations framed the way in which civil defence in the nuclear age was organised. Taking the early period of the Cold War, 1948-1959, as its context, the article periodises attitudes towards nuclear weapons development, highlighting how burgeoning notions of survivability impacted the implementation of policy in Scotland.