Dragon Fire

BBC Television Centre, London

Robin Sutcliffe, the head of BBC Newsgathering, was woken at home. Fifteen minutes later a car was waiting to take him to work. He had packed an overnight bag. The call had come from the BBC’s Chief Political Adviser, who herself was woken up by a call from the Home Office. The Home Office was reacting on advice passed through John Stopping’s Joint Intelligence Committee, which had cleared the decision to alert the BBC with the Prime Minister.

Sutcliffe walked straight over to the horseshoe desk of banked television and computer screens on the first floor newsroom, the nerve centre of his department. He told the News Organizer and the Foreign Duty Editor to help arrange a core team to move immediately to Wood Norton, a manor house and country estate in the Cotswolds owned by BBC Resources and used mainly for hosting conferences.

Two correspondents who were working overnight in the Foreign Affairs Unit and for BBC News 24 were seconded, together with editors from Radio News bulletins and World Service Television. Sutcliffe insisted that the presenters, two each for radio and television, came from mainstream news, and not from the more controversial current affairs programmes such as Newsnight or the 5 Live chat shows. Luckily a long-serving presenter from the Today programme had just walked into the building. Radio Four’s morning bulletin newsreader was also there. The television presenters were taken from News 24 and World Service. Attempts were made to bring in a senior Nine O’Clock News presenter, but he did not arrive in time.

Sutcliffe was grateful for the BBC’s shambolic but effective policy of retaining experienced staff. The faces and voices assigned to break news in times of crisis were more or less interchangeable. Sutcliffe telephoned the News Editor, who was his direct deputy, and asked him to come into Television Centre because he was opening up Wood Norton.

The Home Office had explained that a Chinese nuclear strike on a civilian population centre in India could not be ruled out in the next twenty-four hours. It was hoped the conflict could be contained. But the Home Secretary thought Wood Norton should be made ready just in case Television Centre in Wood Lane and Bush House in the Aldwych had to be closed down.

The Wood Norton bunker was hewn into a hillside close to the manor house. It was built at the beginning of the Cold War in the 1950s, and while other Cold War facilities in Britain were mothballed or sold off the BBC retained its ultimate crisis headquarters. As broadcasting equipment modernized and BBC studios were re-equipped, so was Wood Norton. It had been installed with the latest BBC computer network and digital video and audio links. It had the ability to take satellite picture feeds from and conduct live interviews with anywhere in the world.

Sutcliffe’s core team was dropped off by coach at the manor house. Even though it was the middle of the night, there was still activity because the manor was hosting a special visit for fans of the radio serial The Archers, which was set in the area. The guests were breakfasting early to catch the Cotswold dawn. Sutcliffe led the team down a winding, woodland path. The massive metal door had already been opened by the caretaker, who had switched on the air conditioning and cleared away some of the mustiness. It reminded the older members of staff of the old Broadcasting House, drab but efficient, decorated with tough, institutional carpets and gloss grey paint on the walls.

The bunker was built on two floors, with a newsroom of about 180 square metres, off which ran two radio studios and one which had been converted to television. The camera backdrop was the BBC logo and the Union flag. Suggestions that there be a picture of the Houses of Parliament or another national symbol were rejected on the grounds that it might give a false impression. The BBC had to make it clear that it was not on the air from the banks of the River Thames. A second television studio had been set up in the newsroom itself, along the lines of the designs for News 24 and World at Television Centre.

On the lower level was a canteen, a dormitory which could sleep sixty staff, and at the far end a decontamination centre for those who might be affected by nuclear fallout. As they entered, each person was given an NBC suit, with syringes for the antidote to a chemical weapons attack, Fullers powder to decontaminate their own suit and a monitor to measure radio activity. For the first half-hour there was a cacophony of sound around the newsrooms as computer links were set up, the satellite desk was briefed, and the most senior correspondents in the field were told confidentially that they might suddenly be on air not to Television Centre, but to Wood Norton. The team had not been trained specifically for this situation, but once in, they settled down to their jobs as if they were back in London.

‘At 0700, we will begin running dummy programming alongside the output from London,’ Sutcliffe told the first bunker editorial meeting. ‘Television and radio will have one channel each, BBC 1 and Radio 4. We will package material here and until we actually take over the presenters will substitute reporters here for the lives they would do with correspondents in the field. If we suddenly have to stop transmissions from Television Centre, it is imperative that the switch is unflustered, calm and without panic. Those few seconds will do everything to guide the national mood. At some stage, if war does break out, the government may take over editorial control. It is written in the charter. It is the law. Don’t let’s have any complaints about it. We hope to get a relief team down within twenty-four hours. Until then, we’re on our own.’