Spies for Peace

Spies for Peace was a British group of anti-war activists associated with the Committee of 100 who publicized government preparations for rule after a nuclear war. In 1963 they broke into a secret government bunker, Regional Seat of Government Number 6 (RSG-6) at Warren Row, near Reading, where they photographed and copied documents. The RSGs were to include representatives of all the central government departments, to maintain law and order, communicate with the surviving population and control remaining resources. The public were virtually unaware what the government was planning for the aftermath of a nuclear war until it was revealed by Spies for Peace.

They published this information in a pamphlet, Danger! Official Secret RSG-6. Four thousand copies were sent to the national press, politicians and peace movement activists and copies were distributed on the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament's Easter march from Aldermaston.

The pamphlet said it was “about a small group of people who have accepted thermonuclear war as a probability, and are consciously and carefully planning for it. ... They are quietly waiting for the day the bomb drops, for that will be the day they take over.” It listed the RSGs and gave their telephone numbers. Most of the pamphlet was about RSG-6, which Spies for Peace described in detail. They said that “RSG-6 is not a centre for civil defence. It is a centre for ”, and they listed the personnel who were to staff it. The pamphlet described emergency planning exercises in which RSG-6 had been activated, including a NATO exercise in September 1962, FALLEX-62. Spies for Peace asserted that the exercise demonstrated the incapacity of the public services to cope with the consequences of nuclear attack and that the RSG system would not work. The exercise, they said, “proved once and for all the truth of the 1957 Defence White Paper that there is no defence against nuclear war.” In a hint at the source of their information, Spies for Peace said that FALLEX-62 “convinced at least one occupant of one RSG at least that the deterrent is quite futile”. The pamphlet claimed that at the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis, a month after the NATO exercise, RSG-6 was not activated.

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