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If the government came along to your street,
to your town,

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and said to you and everyone who lives there:

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you have to move. We need this.

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Would you go? Would you accept it?

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Because that's what happened here:

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in the abandoned village of Imber, on Salisbury
Plain.

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In the years leading up to World War 2,

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the War Office, who commanded the Army back
then,

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had steadily bought the land around Imber,

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along with almost all the buildings in the
village.

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They convinced farmers and residents to sell
their property

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and rent it back, on leases that had to be
renewed annually.

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It helped that there was a depression,

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and the government was offering a fair price.

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Salisbury Plain became the largest military
training area in the country.

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By the 1940s, as the Second World War escalated,

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the land around the village was used constantly
for military training.

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And having to make sure that the 150 or so
civilians living in this village

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weren't hit by shells or accidentally shot

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started to get in the way of that training.

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Not to mention that the troops preparing for
the D-Day landings

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needed to prepare for fighting in small rural
villages.

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So in 1943, the residents were given about
seven weeks' notice to leave.

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At first, it was temporary, just for six months;

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then it was until the war ended;

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and then, suddenly, it was permanent.

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A legal battle rolled on until 1961:

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and ultimately it was decided that Imber belonged
to the army,

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and that the residents would never be allowed
to return.

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Most of the houses had been destroyed

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and modern, generic simulations of houses
had gone up in their place.

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And again: this wasn't some ancient time,
some old, centuries past era.

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This is easily in living memory. But there
were some concessions made:

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the road through would be kept open for a
few days a year,

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and the church, built around 700 years earlier,

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would still be able to have services at Christmas,
Easter and a couple of other times.

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There is a Latin proverb, written by Cicero.

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Inter arma enim silent leges.

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In time of war, the law falls silent.

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Now it's been used to comment on America's
internment of Japanese-Americans

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in World War 2 despite the First and Fifth
Amendments,

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and on extraordinary rendition and torture
despite international law in more recent times.

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But this, here, was more subtle: here, the
law didn't fall silent:

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it just spoke in a rather different voice.
Because this wasn't illegal;

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this wasn't a government bending laws and
regulations to their breaking point, or beyond.

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Back at the end of the thirties, as war in
Europe began to look inevitable,

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the British government passed the Emergency
Powers Act.

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The Act allowed the King, and therefore the
government,

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to create regulations as necessary to help
the war effort,

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and to enforce those regulations by any punishment

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including, in the worst case, death.

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It allowed anyone to be detained in the interests
of public safety,

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or defence of the realm, and it allowed any
trial to be held in secret.

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It also allowed property to be searched and
seized at will.

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By the standards of what was possible under
the law, Imber was treated well.

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Now I don't know whether that ever could happen
again,

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and whether in this century, in this country,

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a village of people would -- for the most
part --

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quietly leave their homes to "help the war
effort".

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But I will say this: there are still similar
emergency-powers laws on the books,

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albeit with a few more checks and balances,

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and only for use in times of absolute crisis.

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But I do wonder how much panic it'd take to
find the government

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quietly reaching for those powers again, and
with most of the public supporting them.

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I don't think we've changed that much in the
last century.

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