CAB80-32 — Page 63

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(b) that the Brighton group of towns (Brighton, Hove,

Shoreham, Portslade, Southwick, Worthing and Littlehampton) should be added to the evacuation scheme.

General Considerations.

6.

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The Civil Departments appreciate that it is impossible to forecast with any certainty the course of events, or the decisions which might have to be taken, and, therefore, consider that the evacuation plans must be both flexible and easy to understand.

7.

Moreover, the scheme involves the co-operation of large numbers of local authorities and of other civilian authorities, who are already overburdened with other work which may be equally important and urgent. It is most important that the plans, once made, should be altered only if changes in the military situation make this absolutely essential.

8.

The Civil Departments wish also to draw attention to the disadvantages of premature evacuation:-

(1) If the invasion threat was not sufficiently present

in the minds of the civil population, passive resistance might result and this, on a large scale, could not be coped with.

(2) The stoppage of industrial production in a town

such as Ipswich is a serious matter.

(3) The billeting of families, as distinct from

school-children, in the reception areas will cause irritation and discontent unless the invasion risk is obvious.

(4) After a few weeks, the evacuees would tend to try

to make their way back.

(5) A second evacuation after a false alarm would be

much more difficult to carry through then the first,

Evacuation of school-children.

9.

In the light of these considerations it is necessary as a preliminary matter to consider whether the separate evacuation of school-children should be retained. It was intended that the children should go out some time, possibly some weeks, before the rest of the population. This would also be a signal for those who could make their own way out of the thirty-one towns to leave, thereby reducing the burden if and when the full scheme had to be put into operation. Under this scheme, the children would be separated from their parents, and there could be no question, in the disturbed conditons which would prevail, of attempting to link up parents and children in the reception areas. If the evacuation of the entire population is to be completed some time before zero, the case for a separate compulsory evacuation of children becomes less. Accordingly, if it were proposed to evacuate school-children at, say, zero minus 30 days and the rest of the population at zero minus 21 or 14 days, there would be little advantage and many disadvantages in breaking up the family group.

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