Fifteen years ago, I worked for
the Civil Service, in one of the huge provincial offices that used to be dotted
around the United Kingdom like a necklace of bee hives. This one was in the
North of England, but not to its farthest and fullest extent. The Department of
Work and Pensions building was on a site where social housing had once sat, and, a few hundred years before then, it had been the hill where public executions
were carried out, so there was a fairly high probability that it was haunted by
at least one disgruntled working class ghost. Around 1,500 people worked in the
building, and there was a shop and a pub and a gym and a canteen and a
dentist’s and hairdressers and, right in the middle, a swimming pool. This
building was a public sector citadel, a hub of hubbub, a palace of bureaucracy
nicknamed (by me, it never caught on) ‘The Ministry of Love’.
As the staff swarmed in each
morning, they were met by three immutable things: two chunky security guards, both
called Ken, looking at every single ID, and a sign that, rather like the menu
outside a bistro, displayed the day’s specials – the BIKINI STATE, the alert
code that indicated how close the UK was to war, terrorism or civil disorder.
The alert codes ran from white to red, white being stable, red meaning that
shit is either coming down or is on its way, scudding across the clouds to take
out this building and everyone in it in a flash of blinding light.
In the five years I worked there,
the alert state was always at Black Special, an intermediate level that meant
that there was an increased likelihood of attack, but no defined target. It
could have been worse, of course, but, instead, was just incredibly sinister.
Something awful was in the air, but it was also secret, unknown, undesignated,
undiscovered. It was a constant, low hum of foreboding. But, ultimately, there
was nothing you could do, so we did nothing – or, rather, we got on with our
jobs, working towards a future we couldn’t be sure would arrive.
The peril of the world situation has not
improved since I left the civil service, but they have changed the way it is measured. The Bikini
State was replaced in 2006 by UK Threat Levels. The Threat Levels rely on words
rather than colours, and run from Low to Critical. The current level is Severe,
and has been since August, 2014. This means an attack is highly likely. It’s
worth quoting the expected response to such an alert, remembering that perhaps
a hundred people were consulted around the wording of the definition:
‘Additional and sustainable protective security measures reflecting the
broad nature of the threat combined with specific business and geographical
vulnerabilities and judgements on acceptable risk’.
In other words, just do what you can
and be afraid, be very afraid. In other other words you are probably fucked,
but we’ll have to let you know. I preferred Black Special, with its cheerful
pink lettering, slither of hope and diplomatic inversion of Lottery logic that, hey, with a
thousand targets out there, it might not be you.
