‘Top secret’ plan for Soviet invasion is not so illuminating in Blackpool

[emad]

May 02, 2005

By Sean O’Neill
A map that appears to indicate a Cold War plot may have been created by a council officer

ESPIONAGE kept many a double agent and spymaster occupied during the Cold War but those who get their thrills from that world of shadows may find themselves taken in by an electric piece of disinformation: a Soviet plan to invade Blackpool.

A map of the Lancashire resort, labelled in Russian, has come to light and has been seized upon as evidence of a cunning Cold War plan to attack Britain by landing the Red Army on Blackpool Pleasure Beach. A second wave of troops would have come ashore at Cleethorpes, on Humberside, and the Soviets would have sliced Britain in half within 24 hours.

The conspiracy is to be revealed in a BBC Radio 4 documentary, Balalaikas in Blackpool, this month.

But the Russian map may not be the extraordinary document that it seems.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,170-1594493,00.html