BRITISH CIVIL DEFENCE

Press, Volume XC, Issue 27367, 4 June 1954, Page 11

BRITISH CIVIL DEFENCE

Plan For Use Of Armed Forces (N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) (Rec. 8 p.m.) LONDON, June 2. The British Government plans to use mobile columns from the. armed forces to bolster the country’s inadequate civil defence organisation. The Government published today the text of a bill seeking Parliamentary sanction to train annually 30,000 National Service reservists and other soldiers who, in war time, would be assigned as civil defence “flying squads.” Part-time training will begin next year for 15,000 men who have completed their two years’ compulsory service, but who remain on the reserve. The trainees will be schooled for two weeks a year over three years. The aim is to create 11 or more mobile columns which, in war time, could be diverted to bombed areas to fight fires, assist in decontamination work, carry out rescue work and deliver food and medical aid. Britain’s Civil Defence Organisation is at present manned almost entirely by volunteer civilians, but so far the Government has recruited only about 300,000 of the 500,000 minimum considered necessary for effective service.

The recruiting drive suffered a sharp setback when several municipalities, including the war-blitzed city of Coventry, decided to abandon civil defence. They argued that it would be useless against the hydrogen bomb. Last night the Gelligaer Urban Council, one of the largest civil bodies in South Wales, unanimously voted action similar to Coventry’s.