UKWMO

As stated many times in my posts, the United Kingdom's government gives all their records over to the national archive after twenty years.  It does this to give the United Kingdom an insight into what was going on during that time and a way of seeing what the issue of the time where.  It is a great way of making sure that there are no secrets (Which is ironic considering the post I am going to do after this one), and a way of seeing what government was up to.

The reason I bring this up is because I was looking through the file and found a few requests relating to the UKWMO air raid siren in Bolton.  For those of you who do not know the UKWMO stood for the United Kingdom Warning and Monitoring Organisation. It was a way of ensuring that the public was warned in the event of a national attack and was there to ensure that the public was given a signal when things were clear.  

Since this organisation was from 1957, it was therefore more than likely that this all been transferred to the national archive (or the archive that is from the local area), but that doesn't mean that people haven't still asked the government. Looking through the Pile, someone called “Paul” wanted to know about the UKWMO in Bolton.  He asked the Home Office, Ministry of Defence, and the Cabinet Office about the station that was in the Bolton area.

The answer that he got was the same in that he was told that all of the records had been given to the National Archive. Again this must have been annoying for him, but still gave a signpost to where to find his information. So a little digging from me found the National archive gave some policy on the UKWMO during that time, and it also found the Manchester Archives.

So why even think about this post.  It shows that people are still interested in what came before us and shows how important the archive that we have are. Because of this man's posts, I now know about the UKWMO.  I want to know more about them. It also shows how people still forget how important the National archives are and what they do for the country as a whole. Without this little gem, we would never know what the UK government did for us in a time of nuclear warfare or learn the lessons from them. Interesting stuff isn't it?