Patriotic Volunteers: Britain’s Cold War Home Front

Hear from Dr Matthew Grant as he discusses the role of civil defence groups in Britain during the Cold War.

From the early years of the Cold War, Britain faced the threat of attack from both atomic and conventional weapons. To help defend the nation, the government resurrected two services from the Second World War in the form of the Civil Defence Corps (1949-68) and the short-lived Home Guard (1952-57). Hundreds of thousands of volunteers signed up and started training to fight a future war.

Yet there was a tension at the heart of this engagement. Despite the large number of volunteers, civil defence remained in constant crisis as it fell short of the government’s ambitious recruitment targets, and the renewed Home Guard failed to capture the public imagination.

In this insightful talk, Dr Matthew Grant will examine the reasons for this disconnect between political and popular attitudes, while also explaining why patriotic voluntarism could be considered both a failure and a success.

About the speaker

Matthew Grant

Dr Matthew Grant is a historian of Britain’s experience of the Cold War. He has published widely on the topics of civil defence and the threat of nuclear war, and is currently finishing a book called 'Britain’s Cold War Home Front' for Oxford University Press.