We decided it was time to leave the flat and take up our residence in the new EBC fortress.
From what the short-waves were telling us there was little to distinguish the course of events in the low-lying cities anywhere except that in some the law died more quickly. It is outside my scope to dwell on the details; I have no doubt that they will be described later in innumerable official histories.
EBC's part during those days consisted largely in duplicating the BBC in the reading out of Government instructions hopefully intended to restore a degree of order: a monotonous business of telling those whose homes were not immediately threatened to stay where they were, and directing the flooded-out to certain higher areas and away from others that were said to be already overcrowded. We may have been heard, but we could see no visible evidence that we were heeded. In the north there may have been some effect, but in the south the hugely disproportionate concentration of London, and the flooding of so many rails and roads, ruined all attempts at orderly dispersal. The numbers of people in motion spread alarm among those who could have waited. The feeling that unless one reached a refuge ahead of the main crowd there might be no place at all to go was catching as also was the feeling that anyone trying to do so by car was in possession of an unfair advantage. It quickly became safer to walk wherever one was going though not outstandingly safe at that. It was best to go out as little as possible.
The existence of numerous hotels, and a reassuring elevation of some seven hundred feet above normal sea-level were undoubtedly factors which influenced Parliament in choosing the town of Harrogate, in Yorkshire, as its seat. The speed with which it assembled there was very likely due to the same force as was motivating many private persons the fear that someone else might get in first. To an outsider it seemed that a bare few hours after Westminster was flooded, the ancient institution was performing with all its usual fluency in its new home. Questions were being asked regarding the Bomb-the-Bathies policy in the Arctic, and whether it was not an observed fact that the extensive use of hydrogen and other fissile-material bombs in that region was hastening the disintegration of the icefields without producing any patently deterrent effects on the originators of the trouble? Were we not, in fact, working there to our own disadvantage?
The First Lord thought this was probably so. The House had taken the decision to bomb, against expert advice.
In answer to a further question the Foreign Secretary stated that a cessation of bombing now by our forces would make little difference since his information was that the Russians were delivering a greater weight of bombs in their sector than we were in ours or, rather, than our American Allies were, with ourselves. Asked the reason for this sudden Kremlin rightabout, he replied:
'From sources which it would be unwise to disclose we understand that the Russians are showing a greater appreciation of the situation than they have hitherto. It appears that floods in Karelia and the marshes south of the White Sea are extensive, and growing worse rapidly. Further to the east lies an inlet of the Arctic Sea called the Gulf of Ob. To the south of it stretches an immense area of marshland now in the process of inundation. If the rise in the water-level continues it is likely that we shall see the formation in Central Russia of a great inland sea, possibly larger than Hudson Bay a feature doubtless more familiar to members of this House than is the Gulf of Ob.'
We began to hear a lot of Harrogate and district, and it became obvious that a great deal of preparation had been done in the area. For one thing, our own centre of EBC administration was established there in a resuscitated military camp, though, according to our informants at such a distance from the town that the only leisure occupation was to spy by telescope upon the arch-rival concern situated similarly, but on the other side of a valley.
As for ourselves, we began to shake down into a routine. Our living-quarters were on the top floor. Offices, studios, technical equipment, generators, stores, etc., on the floor beneath. A great reserve of diesel-oil and petrol filled large tanks in the basement, whence it was pumped as necessary. Our aerial systems were on roofs two blocks away, reached by bridges slung high over the intervening streets. Our own roof was largely cleared to provide a helicopter landing, and to act as a rainwater catchment. As we gradually developed a technique for living there we decided it was pretty well found.
Even so, my recollection is that nearly all spare time in the first few days was spent by everyone in transferring the contents of the provision department to our own quarters before it should disappear elsewhere.
There seems to have been a basic misconception of the role we should play. As I understand it, the idea was that we were to preserve, as far as possible, the impression of business as usual, and then, as things grew more difficult, the centre of EBC would follow the administration by gradual stages to Yorkshire. This appears to have been founded upon the assumption that London was so cellularly constructed that as the water flowed into each cell it would be abandoned while the rest carried on much as usual. As far as we were concerned bands, speakers, and artists would all roll up to do their stuff in the ordinary way until the water lapped our doorsteps if it should ever reach as far by which time they would presumably have changed to the habit of rolling up to the Yorkshire station instead. The only provision on the programme side that anyone had made for things not happening in this naive fashion was the transfer of our recorded library before it became actually necessary to save it. A dwindling, rather than a breakdown, was envisaged. Curiously, quite a number of conscientious broadcasters did somehow manage to put in their appearances for a few days. After that, however, we were thrown back almost entirely upon ourselves and the recordings. And, presently, we began to live in a state of siege.
I don't propose to deal in detail with the year that followed. It was a drawn-out story of decay. A long, cold winter during which the water lapped into the streets faster than we had expected. A time when armed bands were roving in search of untouched food-stores, when, at any hour of the day or night, one was liable to hear a rattle of shots as two gangs met. We ourselves had little trouble; it was as if, after a few attempts to raid us, word had gone round that we were ready to defend, and with so many other stores raidable at little or no risk we might as well be left until later.
When the warmer weather came there were noticeably fewer people to be seen. Most of them, rather than face another winter in a city by now largely plundered of food and beginning to suffer epidemics from lack of fresh water and drainage, were filtering out into the country, and the shooting that we heard was usually distant.
Our own numbers had been depleted, too. Out of the original sixty-five we were now reduced to twenty-five, the rest having gone off in parties by helicopter as the national focus became more settled in Yorkshire. From having been a centre we had declined to the state of an outpost maintained for prestige.
Phyllis and I discussed whether we would apply to go, too, but from the description of conditions that we prised out of the helicopter pilot and his crew the EBC Headquarters sounded congested and unattractive, so we decided to stay for a while longer, at any rate. We were by no means uncomfortable where we were, and the fewer of us that were left in our London eyrie, the more space and supplies each of us had.