6:58am UK, Monday May 05, 2008

Whitehall officials in the 1950s worried about the survival of the great British cuppa in the event of a nuclear attack, documents have revealed.

Tea fears in the 1950s

The tea situation would be "very serious" if there was a widespread attack on Britain by both A bombs and H bombs, a team drawing up contingency plans for food supplies said.

"The tea position would be very serious with a loss of 75% of stocks and substantial delays in imports and with no system of rationing it would be wrong to consider that even 1oz per head per week could be ensured," noted one official.

"No satisfactory solution has yet been found."

The formerly top secret documents dating from 1954 to 1956 were released under the Freedom of Information Act by the National Archives in Kew, south west London.

A paper drawn up in April 1955, noted: "The advent of thermo nuclear weapons ... has presented us with a new and much more difficult set of food defence problems."

The objective of planning should be to be "completely ready to maintain supplies of food to the people of these islands, sufficient in volume to keep them in good heart and health."

It added: "It has become increasingly clear that the severity of the attack which the enemy could launch would produce a catastrophe in the face of which past measures would be fatally deficient."

A Ministry of Food list "for departmental planning purposes only" puts London, Birmingham, Merseyside, Manchester and Clydeside as H Bomb targets.

Those listed as A bomb targets were Tyneside, Teesside, Leeds, Sheffield, Hull, Derby, Purfleet in Essex, Southampton, Portsmouth, Bristol, Plymouth, Cardiff, Coventry and Belfast.

Arrangements for the stockpiling of food, emergency feeding and equipment and the availability of bread, milk, meat, oils and fats and tea and sugar were listed for discussion.

Studies from the regions had shown that this organisation could "with difficulty" cope with the problems caused by a "few atom bombs" on the principal cities.