COBRA has become part of the everyday language of news – the new Prime Minister in August 2026 has held such a meeting to discuss the wild fire risk during the rainless summer. A file at the National Archives at Kew, PREM 19/1628, freely downloadable, shows the counter-terrorism origins of COBRA.
It has nothing to do with snakes but stands for Cabinet Office Briefing Room (COBR), as set out in a secret minute of June 1979 by the Cabinet Secretary Sir John Hunt to the new PM Margaret Thatcher, who had come to power as Britain’s first female PM the month before. Hunt took three typed pages to cover ‘the contingency arrangements for dealing with terrorist incidents’ – of use, for one thing for the Iranian Embassy siege in west London by Arab Iranians who took hostages in May 1980, ended by an assault by SAS soldiers. Such terrorism – also hijacks of aircraft – was a recent phenomenon then. Sir John gave the example of a ‘successful German intervention’ at Mogadishu in 1977, when the then West Germany freed its holiday-making citizens from a Lufthansa jet. As Sir John wrote, that example had prompted Britain to extend its plans for such a contingency (an act of terrorism in the UK was a police matter; the politicians would be bound to have to make a decision about any deployment of force overseas).
Mrs T visit
Hence an exercise in Cyprus in July 1979 on that theme, controlled from COBR; which Mrs Thatcher went to see. She, and the rest of government, were plainly familiarising themselves with such scenarios; in that July exercise, officials took the part of ministers, who authorised a ‘simulated military assault on terrorists taking hostages’. Hence regular exercises, to test communications; who ought to be in political charge – Department of Energy (in a case of theft of nuclear material, or an attack on an ‘offshore oil installation’ in the North Sea), or Department of Trade (in charge of airports, in a case of an aircraft hijack) or Foreign Office (something overseas) or, as it turned out, the Iranian Embassy siege, controlled by the Home Secretary Willie Whitelaw, who did keep Mrs Thatcher informed.
COBR had been activated twice before Mrs Thatcher’s premiership: in January 1975 for the hijack of a British Airways plane at Heathrow; and in September 1976 for the hijack in the United States of a TWA flight by Croatian nationalists who made demands of the federal Yugoslavia – COBR becoming necessary when the hijackers headed towards Europe, and London denied it permission to land; Paris did instead.
Smoked Salmon
In December 1979 came a command and control exercise, named Smoked Salmon, to test response to any terrorism against an off-shore oil or gas installation. Described in the file as ‘more modest’ than the July exercise – it didn’t have any troops – among those in the chair in the briefing room was the Home Secretary. Mrs Thatcher was informed; but chose not to take part. That was not so much a sign of lack of interest but of the sheer amount of demands on a PM’s time. She evidently read a document of October 1979 about counter-terrorism protection in the nuclear sector, and made queries. The paper set out that the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment (AWRE) at Aldermaston, had armed Ministry of Defence Police guards. Whereas the Civil Nuclear Constabulary of the 2020s is 100 per cent armed, the equivalent UKAEA Constabulary of 1979 did not carry weapons but had armouries, ‘and it would take five to 20 minutes’ to bring weapons to bear. As for any terrorist threat to a nuclear site – or, arguably more vulnerable, a convoy of nuclear material – the file records that any terrorists would need to know where the material was; and there was no evidence of terrorists contemplating such an attack. What civil servants termed ‘the indigenious anti-nuclear movement in the UK’ had ‘shown a reluctance to use violent action’, the file noted. Hence the threat to nuclear was assessed as low (which Mrs Thatcher queried), ‘when compared to targets such as British Airways at London Airport’ (Heathrow).
North Sea oil
Otherwise the file is about protection of North Sea oil. Britain’s annual counter-terrorist exercise in 1985 was ‘a simulated take-over of an oil installation in the North Sea’, a first ‘offshore scenario’. Humberside Police would control the police response, and COBRA would be open. Among those taking part were the Royal Marines, and oil firm BP. Like other such tests. It was not intended to ‘attract any publicity. A press line has been prepared if unusual activity at the police headquarters is noticed locally’. Britain had already worked with Norway (because each country was drilling in the North Sea, and might want to draw on the other in case of an act of terror). That included exercising between the two countries’ police; and readying the necessary legalities – to allow British troops to go to Norwegian oil rigs in their waters, and vice versa; and share any costs.
