title: Remembering the Nuclear Past: Uncovering Emotional Histories of Britain’s Nuclear Bomb, 1945-1989.
Creators: name: Gibbs, Emily
Publisher: name: University of Liverpool Repository
Year: 2023

description: This thesis investigates the emotional and social experiences of British civilians in the Cold War era (1945-1989) by analysing oral histories conducted by the author in Belfast, Cardiff, London, Liverpool, and Glasgow. Drawing on recent research in nuclear culture studies and the history of emotions, I argue that current definitions of nuclear anxiety fail to capture the spectrum of emotional responses associated with nuclear weapons in Britain. Civilians did not experience a static presence of nuclear anxiety. Instead, they cited diverse, intermingling nuclear emotions which ebbed and flowed in intensity throughout the period, framed by cultural, political, and personal contexts. These nuclear emotions, such as feelings of anger, passion, insecurity, righteousness, powerlessness, and anxiety, leads to the suggestion that to claim the prevalence of nuclear anxiety can appear exaggerated if placed in histories of the Cold War without efforts to fully historicise. The testimony reflects how British society negotiated and created new understandings of self, community, identity, and nation in the Cold War. In the expanding historiography on nuclear culture in the Cold War era, perspectives with an entirely emotional methodology remain largely underexplored. This thesis contributes to this field by exploring nuclear anxiety through oral history testimony. It uncovers how nuclear weapons and the threat of nuclear war entered the minds of ordinary civilians and shaped their emotional experiences. Moreover, it contributes to debates surrounding nuclear anxiety and argues that there was not a constant nuclear consciousness or a crippling psychic numbing. Instead, individuals recalled flashpoints of nuclear anxiety that were entangled with other emotions and rooted within memory. Additionally, this thesis addresses the geographical context of Cold War “British” experiences, considering stories from England, Wales, Northern Ireland, and Scotland. Regional and city identities were central to many individual’s Cold War imaginations of nuclear war. It underscores the need to consider the diversity of the everyday experience and emotional narratives of the Cold War. It demonstrates that experiences of nuclear anxiety were anchored in memories of the Second World War and the “present-centeredness” of contemporary nuclear uncertainty in 2016-2019. These periods shaped and framed the core narratives of individual recollection and the ways civilians discussed and reflected upon their emotional experiences within the oral history interview. The combination of oral history sources and history of emotions methodologies, including consideration of emotional community and emotives, offers a fresh perspective on civilian communities in Britain. It is also the first study to bring together such diverse oral history testimony to explore emotional experiences of the Cold War. As such, this thesis contributes to the histories of British nuclear culture, emotional experiences in postwar Britain, and the broader Cold War.