"There were three reasons for this. First, water levels were rising. By the 1950s scientists had known for a generation or so that the climate had been warming for a century, and that this was causing glaciers to melt.

Second, the phenomenon of tilt: the north-west and north of England was gradually rising and the south-east was gradually sinking – or downwarping – a notion that had some popular traction, especially in East Anglia. Downwarping compounded the effect of higher water levels and was also caused by climate change. At the end of the last ice age, glaciation had reached as far south as the line from the Bristol Channel to the Wash. With the weight of ice no longer acting on northern Britain, a gradual correction was taking place – and continues to.

Third, was the idea that changing weather patterns made tidal surges more likely. Sou’westerlies dominated the weather patterns of the region, but strong northerlies were becoming more prevalent, possibly as part of a 200-year cycle. For all these reasons the east coast, and London particularly, faced an increasing threat from the North Sea."

http://theconversation.com/1953-storm-surge-how-britains-worst-natural-d...

"Since the end of the last Ice Age 20,000 years ago, land and sea-levels around the UK coastline have changed in response to the retreat of the ice sheets. As the ice melted, the release of this enormous weight resulted in the landmass slowly tilting back up in the north or down in the south, a process called isostatic adjustment."

“The rate of uplift north of the River Tyne to Scotland increases because the ice sheets there were thicker and heavier. The action of the Ice Age on our landmass has been like squeezing a sponge which eventually regains its shape. The earth’s crust has reacted over thousands of years and is continuing to react...

“Subsidence and rising sea levels will have implications for people and habitats, and will require action to manage resorts, industrial sites, ports, beaches, salt marshes and wetlands, wildlife and bird migrations.”

"Durham’s new map and model also takes into account Newton’s law of gravitational attraction and ‘the Geoid effect’. Melting ice has affected the relationship between the ice, sea and land, and the mass inside the earth’s mantle. These changes have produced a gravitational effect on the surface of the water in the planet’s oceans.

Prof Shennan said: “When a huge mass of ice melts, the land readjusts over time but there’s also a response in the earth’s mantle and this affects the shape of the surface of the earth’s oceans. Changes in our oceans and land uplift and subsidence will continue to have a significant effect on our coastlines this century.”

https://www.dur.ac.uk/news/newsitem/?itemno=8805

"But if climate change was understood to be a factor in the growing threat to the east coast, there was little suggestion that any of it was caused by human activities. Instead, scientists pointed to the shift in and out of ice ages that occurs naturally over many thousands of years. Climate change, considered a force of nature, had yet to be politicised, even as it became a factor in policy making...

The threat climate change poses a given population depends as much on the capacity of the state to build adequate defences as it does on geographical good fortune. The debate of the 1950s and 60s also throws into sharp relief how politically significant anthropogenic notions of climate change have become.

Then, it was a question of defending vulnerable people and infrastructure against apparently natural phenomena, now the question of causation has hugely complicated and politicised possible government responses. This raises profound questions about environmental justice at both a national and global level. As the terrible flood of 1953 and recent events throughout the world have shown, it is poor, marginal people who drown in floods, whether in Britain or elsewhere."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5W80A1JkWGE