During the bitterly cold British winter of early 1963, a small group of anti-nuclear activists calling themselves the ‘Spies For Peace’ trudged for hours through the Berkshire countryside, following a chance tip-off. They were searching for a secret government bunker, the Regional Seat of Government 6. This was part of a network of bases spread throughout the UK from which the nation would be governed following a nuclear attack, given the likelihood that London would not survive.
Incredibly, the group, who were members of the direct action group Committee of 100, found what they were looking for. They went on to document and publish what they found inside, exposing the government’s covert plans for nuclear attack. ‘It came as a shock for many ordinary people that their rulers were making detailed plans to fight a nuclear war and to ensure the survival only of the politicians and civil servants without democratic consent,’ writes Natasha Walter, whose parents Ruth and Nicolas were two of the Spies.1
