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Peace and Power in Cold War Britain Media, Movements and Democracy c. 1945-68
Christopher R. Hill
London: Bloomsbury, 2018 Hardcover. xiii+306 p. ISBN 978-1474279345. £85
Reviewed by Lindsay Aqui University of Cambridge
Christopher R. Hill’s Peace and Power in Cold War Britain explores the relationship between the anti-nuclear movement and the changing media landscape from the end of the Second World War to 1968, the year in which the radical forms of protest characterising the movement reached their peak. In the period 1945-1968, ‘the call among a section of the middle class for the right of the “ordinary citizen” to decide whether or not Britain manufactures and tests nuclear weapons was inextricably linked to the emergence of televisual forms’ [7]. Moreover, the call for nuclear disarmament gained strength at a time when Britain was becoming a postcolonial power. Hill’s work is notable not only for bringing together these complex relationships, but also for its emphasis on the variety of methods and actors involved in the anti-nuclear movement and the divisions between and within the different groups campaigning for nuclear disarmament. Despite the new opportunities for public exposure afforded by television, at first the anti-nuclear movement struggled to gain coverage. Its associations with pacifism and appeasement were partly to blame. Even after the press started to give the movement more coverage, it was downplayed by the broadsheets and camouflaged by the BBC because of ‘public morale’. The media was more receptive to the anti-nuclear movement after Anthony Eden announced H-Bomb tests on Christmas Island in 1956. It was in this environment of increased opportunities for anti-nuclear information to circulate publicly that the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) launched two years later. The leadership of CND was formed by a powerful group of public intellectuals, including John Boynton Priestley and Ritchie Calder, with connections to radical politics and the media. They sought to gain publicity for their message through public meetings, and yet many of these were ignored. In the Cold War context, the media sought ‘balanced’ coverage and the meetings were viewed as too ‘one-sided’ to report [92]. Although the use of public meetings was never abandoned, intellectuals were more likely to gain coverage through current affairs programmes, where their opinions could be challenged. Other methods too, such as educational broadcasts and television dramas were also adopted. Visual demonstrations of the destructive capabilities of nuclear weapons, like Priestley’s Doomsday for Dyson had an ‘emotional power unattainable in literature and sound’ [102]. Just as broadcasts and film helped the anti-nuclear movement to communicate its message, news coverage also raised the profile of marches and public demonstrations. Marches, such as those at Aldermaston, were also important for showcasing the diversity of the anti-nuclear movement. As Hill points out: In opening up the anti-nuclear movement to the news media and wider public, the Aldermaston marches represented a breakthrough for radical, rank-and-file and young protestors who were previously marginalised from representation by hierarchic regimes’ [183]. Yet marches and demonstrations were also normalised in part by the public’s exposure to them through television. Thus, innovative forms of protest, such as direct action, were also adopted. With new techniques came new divisions. When direct action became a more popular form of protest, relations between CND and the Direct Action Committee against Nuclear War (DAC) were strained due to the news coverage that the DAC received. CND felt it was doing the ‘work that really matters; but direct action was gaining publicity’ [207]. For the Committee of 100 (C100), another anti-war group in Britain, direct action alone was not sufficient. It wanted to gain as much publicity as possible by moving direct action into high-profile public spaces, rather than drawing public attention to the ‘built manifestations of nuclear weapons programmes’, as DAC had done at North Pickenham [210-211]. This tactic, C100 hoped, would not only gain public attention, but would put authorities in a predicament through mass arrests. Within the Labour Party there was considerable diversity of opinion over the aims of the anti-nuclear movement, particularly when it came to the question of multilateral or unilateral disarmament. The debate went beyond the particulars of nuclear weapons and touched on the constitutional framework and identity of Labour, dividing the traditional left and the revisionist right. However, in practice the ‘distinction between multilateral and unilateral disarmament did not mean much to the ordinary citizen and was more a reflection of the arguments that had occurred within the Labour Party’ [184]. Chapter 7 expands the book’s analysis to include the anti-Vietnam War movement. The discussion is not as in-depth as that of the anti-war movement; as Hill admits, this would be the subject of another book. Yet the analysis brings out similar themes, including the wide array of actors involved in the movement. The book culminates with a discussion of what was at the time ‘the most violent [demonstration] to take place in post-war Britain’, the March 1968 demonstration at Grosvenor Square. It resulted in ‘pitched battles with police, around 300 arrests and 170 injuries, two-thirds of which were inflicted on police officers’ [238]. The key difference between this anti-Vietnam War demonstration and the anti-nuclear protests organised by DAC and C100, Hill points out, was that ‘no attempt was made by the organisers to appeal to public sympathy over civil liberties’. Instead, the demonstration was ‘unapologetic and unvarnished’, hence the author’s characterisation of the year as the moment when radical forms of protest reached a peak in postwar Britain. Moreover, this came at a time when news coverage tended to give ‘precedence to the more violent elements of protest’ [241]. Throughout the book, Hill rightly insists on the circular relationship between the media and the anti-nuclear movement. As the movement’s tactics evolved, so too did the media’s coverage and vice versa. As the final reflections emphasise, the movement encompassed a wide spectrum of views, methods and peoples. The movement offered many possibilities for social change, the realisation of which ‘was heavily directed and influenced by mass media’ [247].
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