Echoes from history

During the 1970s a series of films were made by the Central of Information during the energy crisis. These films all implored people to “Switch off Something” - a campaign from government aimed at energy conservation during the three day week. It’s interesting that in the more than 45 years between these and the recent Corona virus/Covid 19 information films from UK Government these are many parallels; their presentation is pretty much as austere now as they were then. They’re very direct and imposing your get across the message of national crisis. They are an interesting series of films and give a view of how government responded to national crisis and how it intended to inform the public nearly 50 years ago.

The Waking Point (1951) is a Civil Defence film aimed at increasing recruitment to the now long-abandoned Civil Defence Corps. I think this film is really about covering three main themes; recruiting to Civil Defence; explaining Civil Defence and trying to legitimise it. Unfortunately the film tends to demonstrate all too clearly the limitations of civil defence in the nuclear era. Unintentionally I think it explains that civil defence would break down almost immediately in the face of nuclear attack. Within the film just about all the serious deficiencies of civil defence that's been discussed in the nuclear era are all too apparent. The narrative of the story is set around an "every man" character in Joe Mercer ( John Slater , 1916-1975) who comes to realise that civil defence is universal after a mishap with his son getting trapped in a sandpit. At the end of the film he realises there is "still time" to train in civil defence after he dreams about ...