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How the mighty have fallen.
Nuked? Put the kettle on
Recently declassified documents show British authorities were worried about a tea shortage in the event of a nuclear attack
From Tuesday's Globe and Mail
May 6, 2008 at 4:35 AM EDT
LONDON — Even in the nation's darkest hours, nothing has traditionally given so much comfort and succour to the British soul as a nice cup of tea.
So much is the beverage bound up with the national character that recently declassified documents showed yesterday that British contingency planners worried there would be a dramatic shortage of tea in the aftermath of a nuclear attack.
The shortfall of the staple British beverage would be "very serious" if the country were to come under attack with atomic and hydrogen bombs, according to a memo drafted between 1954 and 1956 released under the Freedom of Information Act by the National Archives in southwest London.
"The tea position would be very serious with a loss of 75 per cent of stocks and substantial delays in imports and, with no system of rationing, it would be wrong to consider that even one ounce [28 grams] per head per week could be ensured," it said.
Brian Gable/The Globe and Mail
"No satisfactory solution has yet been found" said the memo, from the now defunct Ministry of Food.
Paul Addison, a postwar historian, told The Scotsman newspaper that the revelations were "extremely interesting" and that the concerns would have been driven by the "hangover" of Second World War rationing and shortages.
"Churchill had very strong feelings about tea," said Mr. Addison, author of Churchill: the Unexpected Hero.
"He thought the British morale depended on it, possibly quite rightly."
Another memo, written in April of 1955, warned: "The advent of thermo-nuclear weapons ... has presented us with a new and much more difficult set of food defence problems."
It said the country should plan to be "completely ready to maintain supplies of food to the people of these islands, sufficient in volume to keep them in good heart and health from the onset of a thermonuclear attack on this country."
It added, however: "It has become increasingly clear that the severity of the attack which the enemy could launch would produce a catastrophe in the face of which past measures would be fatally deficient."
The contingency planning documents listed a number of issues for discussion including arrangements to ensure stockpiles of food and the availability of bread, milk, meat, oils and fats, and tea and sugar.
Agence France-Presse and staff
The British beverage
The British drink 165 million cups of tea daily - or 60.2 billion a year - compared with about 70 million cups of coffee a day.
The largest per-capita tea-drinking nation in the world is the Republic of Ireland, followed by Britain.
Ninety-six per cent of British tea is made from tea bags and 98 per cent is taken with milk. The milk does not appear to affect tea's antioxidant properties.
Green and black teas come from the same plant, Camellia sinensis.
Tea contains only half as much caffeine as coffee.
There are about 1,500 varieties of tea.
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