Thread by @lewis_goodall

Continuing my obsession with all things Chernobyl, have been reading about the British govt's response at the time and I am pleased to report that the spirit of omnishambles was alive and well long before the twitter age came.

The radiation arrived in Britain on a bank holiday weekend. The public started to panic.

William Waldegrave, then Energy minister, was put in charge in PM's absence (Thatcher was in Japan).

Waldegrave took to the radio to reassure the nation but mistakenly gave out the telephone number for the Department of the Environment drivers' pool instead of Whitehall's technical information centre during the interview.

The drivers pool number was jammed for days afterwards. Thatcher was furious. She assured the country she'd be back soon and the disarray would come to an end.

But that wasn't all. The govt offered up John Dunster, the head of the National Radiological Protection Board to reassure an axious public. He did so by telling the nation that the death toll in Britain would run to mere "tens of people."

Mr Dunster was forced to clarify his remarks. He confirmed that the deaths would occur slowly from cancer in the next thirty years or so, during which time millions would die from cancer which had nothing to do with Chernobyl anyway.

So nothing to worry about then.

And no you horrible lot, the young Chris Grayling was not in government then.