Soviet Domination - A Red Dawn story

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January 1985: Britain and Western Europe

Violence hit urban areas of England in the New Year. The worst of it, smaller than in other places but more-deadly (literally), was on Tyneside around the Meadow Well council estate in North Shields. A riot started a few days into January one night following police arresting of stone-throwing youths who targeted police vehicles responding to a break-in of a home which turned into a murder. Some food had been stolen but then things had gotten out of hand with a homeowner killed. Local kids did what they did, joined by young adults including many young men who should really have been in uniform but Britain hadn’t taken to full conscription because it just couldn’t afford it. The police responded with reinforcements and a petrol bomb (where did the fuel for that come from in times of national shortages?) was thrown which engulfed an officer. In a counter-response to that, shots were fired from armed officers against another young man carrying a similar weapon. Some of the mob ran but the rest were enraged and attacked the police with fists, boots and improvised weapons. Suddenly overwhelmed, the police retreated and in the darkness lost contact with a few of their officers. They went back to get them and found bodies: two officers beaten to death. A couple of unlucky youths, who may or may not have been involved in those killings, ended up dead themselves. Tensions were high and the violence the police met was extreme yet this was deliberate and thus inexcusable. Word spread in the wider community and in the following days another half a dozen people lost their lives: three policemen and three more civilians. Eventually, the Army – Home Defence Force (HDF) soldiers – showed up and covered the estate with men and enforced a dusk-to-dawn curfew. A lot of rain and some bitterly cold weather came in with those soldiers and the local troublemakers decided that this was a fight they couldn’t win. Thirteen deaths occurred in total, all over a few loaves of bread and some leftover meat cuts.

Birmingham, Coventry, Liverpool and Manchester each saw similar events though with a far lower death toll where local situations spiralled fast out of control. In Bristol and London, there was rioting as well where parts of these locations were hit with violence which fast took on a racial nature. Fighting the police or each other was one thing though when soldiers turned up, things changed fast despite it being the police who actually shot people rather than the Army who came ready with plentiful weapons. Each time it was all about small matters, usually thefts and robberies of rationed food and sometimes expensive goods to be sold on the black market – which was thriving – to buy more food. However, this violent rioting came alongside further anti-war protests which were taking place. To the authorities, that was what this was all about. Arrests were made of those behind the ongoing marches, events not co-ordinated on a national scale but which were still being seen up and down the nation.

‘No War, No More – We Don’t Want Your F**king War!’

The same chant was heard again and again, through other parts of the nation beyond those places in England where the violence was. There were scuffles with police and sometimes stone-throwing though never petrol bombs, outright murder or even targeted shooting at these events. Even over in Northern Ireland, where English rioters could learn what rioting was really all about, there was nothing on the scale of what happened on Tyneside. It must be said though that there was a particularly nasty incident in South London where an ambush saw a police van disabled, set on fire and the officers inside barricaded within before they forced their way out. They suffered burns but escaped alive: there had been eight of them who came pretty damn close to being killed in such a horrible manner. Organised attacks on food distribution centres by criminals eased up some in the New Year due to a larger military presence with HDF patrols increasing to take the burden off the police. Again, the sight of full-armed men in combat gear put off those people who branched out to smaller robberies instead, much of that setting off the rioting in urban areas in a knock-on effect. Food-wise, rations were increased in January when the government took the step of releasing part of their barrier stocks – a risky move; the Soviets could increase their scaled-back attacks on shipping – in a move to head off nationwide anger of what ‘little’ people received. Extras in the form of treats (more tea, sugar, chocolate) came too, all given by a government playing a Late Santa but whom so many people now wouldn’t have minded seeing strung up. That risk was taken with releasing some conserved stocks to the ration list because there had come some extra shipping that had arrived. Part came from distant overseas countries yet some more came from closer to Britain’s shores.

France shipped over ‘foreign aid’ with freight aircraft and also ships crossing the Channel. None of this had to be paid for and Britain really needed what was sent. There was food but also came munitions too. Crates of ammunition specific to military weapons in British service were sent as part of this aid package. What Britain wanted as well was oil – for ships and aircraft – but that France was unable to provide. All that food and ammunition was still very much welcome though. Whether any outside country, one specifically, wanted to complain was up to them: the shipments were still made regardless of France’s neutrality and Britain’s status as a wartime belligerent nation.

Warships would have been something that Britain would have liked to have France give them as aid too. France didn’t have them to supply. It was just something on Britain’s wish list if someone else wanted to play a Late Santa too. December and then January saw many losses occur and the wartime tally reach the halfway mark late in the month when it came to losses and major damage being done to the Royal Navy in terms of hulls. All those ships sunk or burnt out and dragged back to port added up. Shipyards were busy patching up many of those damaged or salvaging bits and pieces from the ones beyond repair so the figure of available ships was due to rise again… unless the Soviets struck hard again. The knowledge that the Soviet Navy was nearly a gutted shell, in a worst state than the Royal Navy, was a consolation but they still had many submarines left untouched. Submarines could sink a British ship just like barrages of missiles from their surface vessels could. On the matter of Soviet submarines, there was one of them which arrived in British waters in the middle of the month. It was a nuclear-powered attack model, one trying to slip through the North Channel between Scotland and Ulster to get into the Irish Sea. With torpedoes and missiles, or laying mines, even delivering commando frogmen, it could have caused a world of hurt. Instead, the Royal Air Force used a Nimrod to drop depth charges atop it. The submarine had been closing in towards the Clyde Estuary at the time and there had been the fear that it could be on its way to strike at Faslane or Holy Loch: the bases from where the Polaris and Trident strategic submarines of the Royal Navy and US Navy operated from. An emergency meeting in London took place while the hunt was on for the submarine after it was first detected and lost where the War Cabinet discussed using nuclear weapons (the Soviets had just done so in the Baltic Exits) to blow up this enemy vessel. Low-yield underwater blasts could have occurred. There was talk of a line being crossed, one drawn on a map. Arguments commenced over the potential act of using nuclear weapons on ‘British soil’ – it was British waters to be honest – but before then the submarine was detected elsewhere and attacked from above with conventional blasts. It surfaced and four crewmen popped out. They, and the RAF aircraft above, expected the submarine to sink. It did no such thing. The submarine floated, taken by the tides towards land. The sailors in the water were rescued by helicopter, only done because there was one nearby and the still-afloat submarine was present. They were in a bad way: not just being in the freezing water but suffering from radiation poisoning. There had been a nuclear accident aboard. In London, the politicians had a collective panic attack. It could break up on the shoreline off Belfast or the Clyde Estuary and give UK soil a nuclear disaster to deal with! Another discussion was held on the possibility of using nukes to stop a nuclear disaster… because that made sense, didn’t it? Then the decision was taken out of their hands. That Nimrod, still circling and awaiting orders, heard explosions underwater and then a huge air bubble reached the surface. That was the end of the submarine which went down in (relatively) open water. Its reactor didn’t explode and it appeared that it had been intentionally sunk by what crewmen were left aboard. There remained many questions and an effort would be made to find out the exact sequence of events plus look at that reactor, but the worst hadn’t happened. Many thanks were given to higher deities.


Over on the Continent, in an unofficial capacity, there were British representatives in Maastricht when a treaty was signed there between several Western European nations forming the European Defensive Alliance. The alliance was referred to in London as the ‘EDA’ or the ‘Maastricht Bloc’. It was a sort-of new NATO formed from eight nations. France, Italy, West Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg were the core nations who’d been discussing this for a while – and arguing over its meaning – and before they signed their agreement in the Dutch town, the leaders of those nations were joined by the Danish prime minister and the new Swedish foreign minister. Denmark and more-importantly Sweden were part of the EDA. The former had just been threatened with war by the Soviet Union and weeks before backed away from a fight while the latter had foreign troops on its soil who’d fought their way in causing huge casualties. Both were now part of a pan-European defensive alliance. To add to the geo-political shockwave this caused, the very next day saw the arrival of EDA (mainly French with smaller contributions from others) forces inside of the two Scandinavian countries. They came to defend Danish soil and also to stop any more of Sweden being occupied.

The Italian government was a big player in the EDA though it remained French-led as the country pushed for superpower status. Mitterrand acted for French interests first and then those of Western Europe in doing all of this. The West Germans went along with him and so did the Low Countries, effectively bullied into that joint action for what this one man wanted. He spoke of collective defence and the need for them all to protect each other yet he really was dragging them to eventual war. Denmark was quite the step to take but Sweden was even more so. The entry into Sweden of French forces put them right in the firing line of the stalemated Soviet-Swedish conflict. They were positioned in southern Sweden outside of the immediate frontlines yet the distances from Soviets forces still exchanging fire with the Swedes and where the French turned up wasn’t that far. Their 11th Airborne Division (some West Germans came along for the trip: paratroopers and mountain troops) arrived in the Gothenburg area by air with Swedish assistance then given to transferring in French combat aircraft through the last days of January. The 6th Light Armored Division was already rolling into Denmark – across from West Germany – joined by a mixed Italian brigade including Belgians and Dutch, while the French 9th Marine Infantry Division (light armour rather than marines) began a sea transfer from northern France also heading for Gothenburg. This would mean going through the North Sea and then the outer Baltic Exits, the latter of which those dozen-plus Soviet ships from their Baltic Fleet had recently fought their way through. The French secured from London information on certain parts of the Skagerrak to avoid, areas where the Royal Navy had just mined.

French entry of military forces into Sweden, as well as the moves by more forces into Denmark, made the EDA not just a piece of paper full of empty threats. Those two countries on the Baltic were now firmly part of a French-led military alliance ready for war with the Soviet Union. From Paris, the Soviets were forcefully informed that no more Swedish soil was to be occupied and there then came the demand that Soviet forces leave… though no direct deadline was given on that, something Bonn had secured from Paris. Through West Germany and down into the Med., there were other forward deployments which while not on the scale of Scandinavia still mattered a great deal. Mitterrand was giving the Soviets an answer to all that they had done to France and its interests. They had done all they had – including still holding his daughter as a hostage – but he was settling scores with them now. The alliance formed in Maastricht and the military deployments made brought war between Western Europe and the Soviets right to the brink.

Your move, Tovarich Vorotnikov.

I am somewhat surprised that the internal situation of the UK seems to be that bad. Sure, fewer imports coming in won't help the economy but the UK should be ok in key areas such as energy. Firstly, the North Sea is at peak production at that time, secondly the coal mines are still there and a smart government would do whatever it takes to end the Miners strike there and then!
Petrol rationing will be useful but the rations are likely to be fairly large even with a goal of reducing civilian consumption by 50% and private motoring will likely bear the brunt of the cuts.
Food wise the UK was 78% self-sufficient in food in 1984 and 95% self-sufficient for indigenous food types. I got that data from Defra, the stats are available webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20130123162956/http:/www.defra.gov.uk/statistics/files/defra-stats-foodfarm-food-trade-selfsuff-120904.xls.
Therefore, large scale rationning is unlikely to occur, especially of bread and other staples. Bananas and fruits will become more expensive, chocolate will also become dearer.

Money wise, the UK is actually less indebted in 1984 than now. The compulsory savings suggested but not adopted by Keynes in WW2 may make a reappearance here if the government is pragmatic and willing to think outside of the box. The war will be costly for sure, but then the UK may be in a good position post-war toi repay its debts fast. Why? The Soviet, Mexican Gulf and some Middle Eastern oilfields will be out of action so the North Sea may reap the benefits ...

I can imagine that the country will be bitterly divided internally though and riots are not unlikely.

.....Battle of the Fulda Gap, going eastwards this time?

The Electricity grid is not necessarily an easy target, because its a grid. Take out one part and the other part can take-up sone of the slack.
Power stations could be fairly easy to known down if the transformers are destroyed. There's no need to attack the maon buildings etc, just take out the transformers and the electricity simply can't get out. There's a caveat though, its a relatively small target that will be easy to miss with bombing or even with missiles whose accuracy is always approximate + or - 100m or thereabouts. 
Back in 1984 the UK also had a lot more power stations and spare capacity than now. Energy saving measures will further help too.

What may have significantly screwed up the UK is poor pre-war planning. All planning was for a nuclear war that hasn't taken place. The current situation was not planned for so this may have significantly complicated things.