COMPARED with today, the world was safer while the government were boozing it up in Downing Street and British voters were self-isolating with a Brussels-free reduced sausage diet.

In November 1983 Michael Jackson's Thriller single was released; the first cruise missiles from the USA were welcomed on to UK airfields; and £26million of gold was stolen from the Brinks Mat store at Heathrow.

It was also the year when 100 million people watched the TV film The Day After about nuclear war. Relevant today, in November 1983, 19,000 US troops landed in Europe as America raised its war alert status to Defcon 1 and relocated its command structures to secret locations.

This was exactly what Soviet predictions for the start of nuclear war looked like and Soviet nuclear arsenals were put on alert, jet planes were fuelled and loaded ready to scramble, and the Soviet defence machine braced for immediate counter strikes for over four days.

As Russia sat with fingers poised on buttons, Nato realised a real war was imminent due to a game of war, because this was Nato exercise ‘Able Archer 83’ going wrong.

Today Britain plans to send an extra 8,000 soldiers to man the 2,800-mile west Russian border as part of a war game involving tens of thousands of extra Nato troops to show its strength to the Russian government.

All these soldiers are risking another Able Archer 83 disaster as Johnson and Truss need Ukraine to keep fighting for their own career prospects.

DUGALD LAMB
By email