UFOs, ufology and the British public

Officials were at times compelled to make some statement or take some action. One source detailing observations in October 1984 was treated as “quite genuine and has other witnesses”. In all likelihood there was “probably some sort of phenomena to be seen possibly connected with the radio masts or the royal radar”. A comment could be made as “a public relations exercise” - some “official acknowledgment”.

For all these findings, the record on human and extra-terrestrial actual contact is depressingly thin. There has been a very visible death of the British alien abduction. Hornchurch, Essex, in October 1974 (the Aveley Case), seems to have been the last major instance of it. More caché is gotten out of reporting and pondering agricultural phenomena. Crop circles are what enchant the UFO boffin in Blighty.

Such un-identified phenomena sightings are often barometers of social behaviour. Whether it is the communist fifth columnist of the Cold War, intrusive enemy aircraft or fears of millennial apocalypse, the alien phenomenon is often a case of overheated angst.

Lord Wynne-Jones even had time to be flippant in a question in the House of Lords (March 4, 1982), addressed to the government’s Viscount Long: “My Lord’s, does the Answer [from Viscount Long] mean that since there has been a Conservative Government the UFOs have done a U-turn and departed?” Life, as a consequence, is continuously imitating art and digesting political sentiment - the conical alien head, whirling in a curious saucer, or a bright cigar-shaped object.

But there is another feature to the release of these files. Determined, campaign-hardened ufologists, using very terrestrial creatures (the FOI Act and public pressure), become self-appointed freedom fighters combating government secrecy. And that is hardly alien.