Cold War Britain - Episode 2 of 3

[Music] how can i be sure in a world that's constantly changing how can i show [Music] it's easy to forget that for almost 50 years britain stood on the brink of armageddon [Music] [Applause] [Music] it was a war that shaped our society [Music] welcome to cold war britain the nuclear standoff between east and west took us all to the edge of destruction [Music] but the cold war was also touched with a dark glamour it was fought on surprising new battlefronts amidst a growing moral murkiness but there was much more to this great conflict than secrets and spies [Music] there was a war between two different ways of life a war of ideas a war of shadows and a war of the imagination [Music] [Applause] [Music] if there's one moment that captures the cold war in our imagination it's the early 1960s on berlin's front line its presence hung heavy armed soldiers barbed wire military checkpoints [Music] but in britain the struggle between east and west was moving on to a surprising new front and at the heart of this new battleground was the suburban household hello i think in this program i better tackle a job that i've been putting off for a long time in 1962 this house in ealing west london had a glamorous tv makeover at the hands of diy expert barry bucknell fairly new this idea of having the adhesive actually on the tile so there's no spreading of adhesive over the floor in the hands of barry bucknell this place became a temple to modernity [Music] but it's pink the show was watched by some seven million viewers the kind of aspirational young people who dreamed of making the very best of their homes but as part of britain's new army of diy enthusiasts they'd also been recruited as foot soldiers in the great ideological struggle between capitalism and communism [Music] half a century before our love of property porn more and more ordinary families were falling in love with home improvement and getting a kick out of buying shiny new mod cons this was a genuine watershed in our modern story the moment when we began to define ourselves less as citizens than as consumers active members of the affluent society and the home furnishings boom was also a sign of just how much more the capitalist west could offer its people than the communist east in 1959 most ordinary people were more likely to live somewhere like this than in one of the ideal homes in the brochure but if they worked hard and put money by then they could reasonably hope to live somewhere much much better and that was one of the key things that divided them from their counterparts in the eastern bloc since the late 40s the welfare state had given people support and security and in an age of full employment and soaring living standards marxism appealed only to a tiny minority of idealistic intellectuals so by the end of the 1950s it wasn't communism that seemed likely to deliver a better future but for the first time another c word consumerism you know karl marx once said that religion was the opium of the people but who needs religion when you've got white goods [Music] in just two years after 1957 the number of british homes with a fridge rose by a staggering 60 percent and even at the highest diplomatic level the world's leaders recognized the importance of the domestic front in 1959 the soviet leader nikita khrushchev took on american vice president richard nixon at a moscow trade fair is telling mr nixon that russia will catch up to america and wave as she passes us by so he says in words and actions [Music] in the west few people were convinced by khrushchev's bravado but while the capitalist powers were confident of winning the contest for consumers hearts and minds they were increasingly worried that in other fields they were falling behind over the pursuit of material satisfaction loomed the dark shadow of the cold war each side was hunting for the technological breakthrough that could mean global domination and at the beginning of the 1960s russian scientists pulled off a feat so impressive so historic that even the west couldn't help but applaud suddenly it was the soviet union that looked glamorous and sophisticated the crucible of modernity [Applause] in july 1961 manchester came out to greet a very special visitor major yuri gagarin [Music] come and take a trip in my rocket ship as the first man in space gagarin had shot to international fame on both sides of the iron curtain [Applause] [Music] a century earlier communism's founding fathers karl marx and friedrich engels had seen manchester as the epitome of cutthroat capitalism but now the city turned out to applaud communism's latest pin-up when gagarin arrived on his goodwill tour despite the inevitable mancunian reign he was hailed as a local hero so away we'll steal in my space mobile a supersonic gagarin was driven here to manchester town hall for a grand civic reception in his honor outside more than 6 000 people were waiting many of them wearing little pins with a hammer and sickle the police said it was the biggest crowd here since ve day and as his car drew up they hoisted the red flag alongside the union jack and the band struck up the soviet anthem moscow could hardly have wished for better propaganda [Music] the people of manchester weren't alone in falling for the major but uh you thought he was handsome i certainly did he gave me a big harp job well i said their best friend good luck i liked uniforms especially you've been listening to the girls haven't you yeah [Applause] for most people the sheer thrill of conquering space transcended the ideological divisions of the cold war not everyone was so enthused by the kremlin's achievements i still feel that um the western world is very much in advance and that this thing is just a matter of trying to get there first every time but i think it's going to make the people very nervous of what's going to happen next [Music] the soviet union's conquest of the skies upped the ante in an intensely competitive arms race following our american allies lead britain was investing in increasingly sleek and sophisticated arms and aircraft and many people took pride and reassurance from our independent arsenal of atomic hardware but some were becoming increasingly critical of britain's dangerous infatuation with high-tech tools of death [Music] in january 1958 a group of high-minded activists made their way to the heart of the city of london meeting in the shadow of saint paul's cathedral they committed themselves to a new mass campaign against britain's nuclear obsession as the playwright jb priestly put it three glasses too many of vodka or bourbon on the rocks and the wrong button might be pressed so britain they thought should lead the world we must give up our nuclear weapons and persuade other countries to follow suit by the force of our moral [Music] [Applause] the idea that we might only be the push of a button away from armageddon would dominate the nightmares of a generation [Music] and this was the inspiration behind the new campaign for nuclear disarmament [Music] that easter cnd's idealists marched from trafalgar square to the atomic weapons research establishment at aldermarston cnd was a classic movement of the well-meaning guardian reading middle classes and almost by accident they came up with a unique british contribution to the iconography of the cold war and one of the most successful pieces of branding of the 20th century all thanks to the cnd supporter and graphic designer jerry holtam [Music] now there are different explanations about where he got the idea from one is that it's a version of the christian cross another is that it incorporates the semaphore symbols for n and d but holton himself said that his inspiration was rather more artistic specifically this painting the third of may 1808 by the spanish artist francisco goya i was in despair holtom said deep despair so i drew myself the representative of an individual in despair hands outstretched palm outwards and downwards in the manner of goya's peasant before the firing squad when you formalize that in a drawing you get this jerry holtom's even better at it than i am now if it had been me i would have trademarked this and moved to the caribbean on the proceeds but jerry holton was actually quite a nice guy so he didn't and the result was one of the most iconic and recognizable international symbols of the last half century the arrival of cnd triggered an urgent debate about perhaps the biggest moral quandary britain had ever known and provoked passionate disagreements between hand-ringing idealists and hard-headed realists if we have another atomic war of this kind it's the finish for britain and i personally feel that it's time the people of britain realised it do you think we should keep the age bomb well because the other countries do i think we should yeah if we really are interested in the future of our children this is the smallest thing we can do to join this procession [Music] russia's got it and she's producing it on mass production really and what we're good what should we stop it [Applause] [Music] the strange paradox of british life in the early 1960s is that most people were both more secure and less secure than ever we were richer more comfortable better fed and better housed and yet the world might end at the touch of a button [Music] nothing captured the tension between prosperity and paranoia better than the adventures of post-war britain's most enduring and most dashing hero a man who became synonymous with the superficial glamour of the cold war on the 10th of october 1963 the times announced the latest development in the cold wars nuclear game with the news that france's mirage 4 atomic bombers had just come into commission but interestingly it devoted rather more attention to a very different kind of story the review of a new film a second outing for a secret agent who according to the times is reviewer acts out our less reputable fantasies without ever going too far [Music] and the extraordinary record-breaking successor from russia with love is a reminder that the cold war wasn't just the stuff of nightmares could also be the stuff of fantasy you're one of the most beautiful girls i've ever seen thank you but i think my mouth is too big no it's the right size [Music] in fleming's james bond had little time for moral introspection find you wrestling with your conscience isn't easy when you're also fighting off a woman with daggers in her boots [Music] bond is an old-fashioned square-jawed british hero updated for the modern world of the cold war horrible woman yes she's had her kicks but the bond phenomenon also reflected a society that was more aspirational and more materialistic than ever even before the first bond film had been released the books were enormously popular selling more than one and a half million copies but the real key to their success was this cheap paperback format which made them immediately accessible as fleming himself put it the lower classes find them equally readable although one might have thought that the sophistication of the background and detail are outside their experience and in part incomprehensible but this was a newly affluent britain in which fleming's cocktail of sex snobbery and sadism was a winning formula [Music] hello agent bind james no charlie number o [Music] bond rapidly became a fixture of british popular culture and an obvious candidate for the carry-on treatment i am dr crow you are surprised yes i am i expected you to be a man oh woman i am both [Music] britain's manufacturers were also quick to cash in on bond's famous gadgets the message being that in the technological field britain still held its own but not everybody bought into bond it's the consumer goods ethic really that everything around you all the dull things of life are suddenly animated by this wonderful cache of espionage the things on our desk that could explode our ties which could suddenly take photographs these give to a drab and materialistic existence a kind of magic the man who saw through bond's glittering veneer to the moral void beneath was another spy novelist the former british intelligence officer john le carre and he had no truck with fleming's crude world view and materialistic fantasies [Music] in 1961 the year the communists built the berlin wall john le carre was stationed in bonn and with one of his british embassy colleagues he traveled here to berlin to see the situation for himself now le carre knew better than anybody the kind of ethical compromises required by the cold war and he realized at once that the coming of the berlin wall would only make the moral fog murkier than ever [Music] the atmosphere of le carre's most powerful novel the spy who came in from the cold hangs heavy with existential doubt it was published in 1963 at the height of bond mania but it could hardly be more different from one of ian fleming's escapist thrillers le carre's book doesn't really have a hero it has an anti-hero alec lemus a very different kind of character from the dashing james bond bond is tall and debonair lemus is gray and shambling bond lives in fashionable chelsea lemus in rundown bay's water bond's flat is smart and modern lemus's is small and squalid bond drives an aston martin lemus catches the bus the grubby reality of cold war espionage was underlined by the film adaptation deliberately shot in black and white it starred a haggard richard burton his legendary good looks now worn and weary what the hell do you think spies are moral philosophers measuring everything they do against the word of god or karl marx they're not they're just a bunch of seedy squalid bastards like me little men drunkards queers hen packed husbands civil servants playing cowboys and indians to brighten their rotten little lives do you think they sit like monks in a cell balancing right against wrong the story ends at the berlin wall his mission accomplished lemus has the chance to return from the east and come in from the cold but by now our faith in his moral mission has been fatally eroded because amid the twists and turns of le carre's narrative alec lemus has left the ethical high ground far behind in 1966 le carre gave an interview to the listener magazine we in the west he said i've always argued that in a non-communist world the one thing we have in common is our belief in the individual rather than the idea and yet in the cold war we are sacrificing the individual in the battle against the collective and this of course was the dilemma that britain was facing the moral quandary at the heart of the cold war [Music] during the 1960s these ethical contortions were brought home to the british public by a wave of genuine and very seedy spy scandals and more than any other it was the story of john vassell that felt like it might have come straight from one of john le carrey's novels if there's one sex and spying scandal that most people remember from the 1960s it is of course the profumo scandal of 1963. but i think it was the vassal case a year earlier with its illicit homosexuality and its unambiguous treachery that did most damage not just to harold mcmillan's conservative government but to the british establishment more generally [Music] it all began when a young clerk working at the british embassy in moscow visited a high-class hotel for a private dinner party after dinner the british clerk began to feel a bit woozy so his host suggested that he lie down on a convenient divan and then the tone of the evening began to change i can recollect the clark said later having my underpants in my hand and holding them up in the air the request of others then i was lying on the bed naked and as far as i can recollect there were three other men on the bed with me i cannot remember exactly what took place but the clark's little memory lapse was neither here nor there because unfortunately for him the whole thing had been photographed by the kgb [Music] the russians used the explicit images to blackmail john vassell into giving them top secret documents first in moscow and later back in london years afterwards he ruefully reflected on his plight it's rather like a spider's web once you are inside the web there is no way of getting out the finesse and the way with which they do these things is beyond the comprehension of most people in fact i would say that the russians do it better than anybody in the world that was how vassal signaled when he wanted to arrange an urgent meeting with his russian contacts it was alleged at beau street today a chalk circle on this plane tree here in duchess of bedford walk just half a mile away from the russian embassy [Music] so the british press this was a new kind of front page scandal prurient voyeurism dressed up as pious concern for our national security and of course fleet street loved it as one sensational headline followed another britain's prime minister harold macmillan seemed completely adrift but he couldn't say that he hadn't been warned [Music] the story goes that in the spring of 1962 mcmillan's cabinet secretary warned him that a clerk from the admiralty was selling state secrets in the clubs around victoria but mcmillan was having none of it nonsense he said there are no clubs around victoria [Music] mcmillan's rather offhand remark would come back to haunt him because when vassal's treachery became public the prime minister's greatest strength his reassuringly tweedy patrician persona became his greatest weakness at vassell's trial it emerged that for years he had been living in a fashionable apartment well beyond his civil service means all thanks to his soviet paymasters and yet nobody had smelt a rat vassell went down for 18 years though harold mcmillan clung on to his job in many people's eyes he was now on probation [Applause] but in the autumn of 1962 macmillan had other things on his mind hello can you hear me now yes sir i hear you very clearly and i'll hand the phone for one week in october the prime minister was in almost daily conversation with the president of the united states as the cold war came terrifyingly close to turning hot i call upon chairman khrushchev to haul and eliminate this clandestine reckless and provocative threat to world peace on the 22nd of october the very day vassell was sentenced john f kennedy revealed that soviet missiles had been discovered in cuba hello the cuban crisis plunged east and west into a deadly game of high-stakes poker as the nation watched and waited macmillan was desperate to ensure that britain would have some say over the fate of the world now mcmillan was almost 70 whereas kennedy was just 45 but mcmillan was well aware that in this conflict it was the younger man the american who was really calling the shots and that he himself was basically just a junior partner but mcmillan always liked to see himself as the wise old counselor offering all the benefits of his experience the greek to kennedy's roman [Music] i wanna be happy the world stood at the edge of darkness and this wasn't one of ian fleming's escapist fantasies this was a genuine doomsday scenario that might mean the end of civilization itself [Music] some people could only think of their nearest and dearest among all the stories about british reactions to the cuban crisis this one strikes me as particularly moving a father of six kept his three eldest children from school yesterday so that the whole family could be together during the cuban crisis mr peter gardner a 44 year old company director from shoreham sussex explained i could not protect my children in a bomb raid nor could anyone else but i feel we should all be together at this dangerous time we [Applause] with the third world war apparently only moments away this was as close as britain ever came to nuclear annihilation and then the kremlin blinked the soviet union agreed to dismantle the missiles the crisis was over [Music] the british people could breathe a great sigh of relief [Music] and so could harold macmillan [Music] but the reality was much much more frightening than either macmillan or the british people had ever guessed because if the missile crisis had escalated we would have been the launch pad for the americans attack on the communist bloc all thanks to a deal struck in the 1950s the arrangement was called project emily it sounds innocuous enough but under the terms of the deal the americans installed 60 thor ballistic missiles on raf sites up and down the united kingdom [Music] by hosting the thaws the government had effectively drawn a target on britain and invited the kremlin to take aim and what neither the public nor more shockingly macmillan himself knew during those long days and nights in october was just how close to that attack britain almost came when kennedy talked to macmillan on the phone he took care to sound inclusive and considerate i will talk to you he promised on the 26th of october before we do anything of a drastic nature but a month later in a secret meeting with his intelligence chiefs mcmillan found out that he had been kept in the dark according to sir kenneth strong the director of the joint intelligence bureau the americans had been prepared to go it alone either irrespective of what their allies thought or without consulting their allies at all according to strong the americans had seriously considered a pre-emptive strike sending their bombers east to hit the keys soviet missile sites and if a strong feared the attack had failed then the russians would have hit back unleashing nuclear armageddon [Music] the cuban crisis was a chilling reminder of britain's vulnerability it left many people convinced that a devastating nuclear war was now not a possibility but a terrifying probability the government's rather rose-tinted hope was that if the worst happened the british people would rediscover the stoical spirit of the blitz helped by a small army of civil defense wardens and a flimsy pamphlet telling you how to turn your house into a fallout shelter but the wardens were advised to expect something of a challenge [Music] good morning mrs wells well what is it i'm your soul defense morton is there any help or advice i can give you no i'm sure you've read the householder's handbook haven't you no my husband says there's not going to be a war all this panic's going to blow over anyway i've got plenty to do without sitting around all day reading books thank you very much the instructions in the householder's handbook are extraordinarily detailed the stuff here about the different kinds of sirens how to prepare your fallout room how to protect yourself against radiation even the kind of things that you'll need in your shelter kettle towels rubber gloves even poignantly toys for the children yet the tone of this pamphlet is surprisingly brisk even a little bit upbeat with all the nice pictures it feels like a diy manual and that i suppose was the point that with a proper preparation you could get through world war three almost unscathed [Music] that was very far from the truth but in cold war britain the authorities thought it better to maintain public confidence than to be absolutely honest but a bbc director called peter watkins had no time for the government's half-truths and he set out to show the public the awful reality time 9 13 a.m [Music] his film was called the war game this family couldn't afford to build themselves a refuge this could be the way the last two minutes of peace in britain one of britain's first docudramas it showed what might happen if a nuclear bomb landed on kent and in this scenario there was no dashing secret agent to come and save the world at this distance the heat wave is sufficient to cause melting of the upturned eyeball third degree burning of the skin and ignition of furniture 12 seconds later the shock front arrives one of the first things that peter watkins did was to put together this extraordinary list of 112 questions for all sorts of scientists and experts and organizations not just here in britain but all over the world some of them are genuinely chilling does radioactive dust taste is it gritty in the mouth can one ever see it or this what's the effects of mental depression likely to be an increased wish for suicide for perhaps killing off one's family scary stuff you see watkins was determined absolutely determined that nobody was going to discredit his film on the grounds of inaccuracy when the carbon monoxide content of inhaled air exceeds 1.28 it will be followed by death within three minutes this is nuclear war but the war games vision of a britain where the unlucky ones survived was so horrific that the bbc refused to show it because the subject was so contentious whitehall officials had been shown a preview they let it be known that while it wasn't their decision to make they'd prefer the war game not to be broadcast and so the bbc was placed in a tricky situation the bbc executives had a lot of respect a lot of admiration for the power and integrity of watkins's film and they also felt they had an obligation as an independent broadcaster not to be cowed by the government but they were facing what they saw as a genuine moral dilemma their greatest duty was to the national interest in this case they thought that would be served by not showing a film that might undermine the nuclear deterrent that might undermine support for something they believed was keeping us safe from the threat of communism [Music] [Music] while people at home were debating the moral complexities of the cold war there was one group of british citizens for whom the conflict was still very much a matter of us and [Music] stationed in west germany with some 55 000 british troops [Music] this was the british army of the rhine [Music] they were joined by their families thousands of women and children for whom bases like this one at ryan darling were now home the strange world of the british army of the rhine captured in microcosm the two fronts of the cold war a tense military standoff and a battle for material satisfaction [Music] for the families stationed here ryan darling the facilities were second to none and this postcard rather captures the sheer modernity of it all there were schools churches swimming pools even cinemas indeed in many ways the families here actually had a much better deal than a lot of their friends and relatives back home in britain and if you were mrs gray from swansea getting this postcard you might actually be a little bit envious [Music] [Music] [Applause] well social life we have the messes to go to normally we'll go on wednesday night when the show film we go on a saturday night when they have some social honor and i can imagine if we lived from syria street probably the nights that were at the mess we would spend it home watching television the soldiers knew that at any moment they might be called into action but in a sense their family's roles were just as important [Music] while the men on exercise were out shooting their wives were out shopping and although they were living in west germany they were still playing their part in britain's consumer revolution [Music] but maintaining the british presence in germany came with a hefty price tag in the late 1960s the cost of keeping the british army of the rhine for just 12 months was a cool 180 million pounds and this was only a fraction of britain's total defense bill which in 1970 came to a whopping 2.8 billion well over a tenth of our entire national budget and beneath all the facts and figures of the balance sheet there was a deeper more long-term cost you see while britain was spending so much money on arms and armaments we were being overtaken economically by our old rivals west germany and japan both of which ironically were effectively prohibited from spending so much money on defense now when you think about the international pressures of the day you can understand why successive british governments felt they had to spend their money as they did even so it is tempting to wonder what britain would be like if they'd chosen differently and that's something to think about next time you're left waiting an hour for your train [Music] but while the british economy was beginning to stutter we could console ourselves that we now led the world in popular culture and that was to prove just as potent a weapon in the war on communism as any tank or missile in the mid 1960s four young british men infiltrated the enemy lines the stradnik beatles paul mccartney george harrison [Music] the beatles were the most famous example of the most dynamic and successful british export of the 1960s pop music in the capitalist west pop was teenage entertainment but in the east pop was political dynamite with its unbridled celebration of sex choice and freedom it seemed a shocking challenge to communist values now the beatles never played east of the iron curtain but here in moscow they were seen by many people as the supreme champions of western values [Music] soviet music served the interests of the state it promoted russian patriotism and ideological conformity but the beatles were different theirs was the music of individual self-expression of course most ordinary russians didn't understand the lyrics but what they loved was the sound the style the sheer youthful exuberance that seemed to represent an altogether different way of life [Music] to the kremlin it appeared that the beatles had opened up a dangerous new front in the cold war so the soviet sensors decided to keep them out [Music] despite all the state surveillance some beatles records did get through what happened was that underground studios would cut illicit bootleg flexi disks out of old medical x-rays earning them the nickname rock and roll on bones but as the black market and beatles records boomed the soviet authorities upped the stakes commissioning a film that dismissed the fab four as degenerate western puppets [Music] when this failed the kremlin tried to co-opt the beatles with the help of the state record label melodial [Music] [Music] you might recognize this one it's melodia's cover version of the beatles obladie obladar and personally i rather prefer it's the original but melodia didn't just bring out cover versions they also issued some originals so the late 1960s they brought out this compilation album which had a catchy title the 8th of march international women's day and side 1 track 5 we find girl credited here to the beatles quartet and described oddly as traditional folk music a case i suppose of lost in translation none of this washed with soviet beatles fans they wanted the real thing [Music] but while russian fans were daydreaming of life in the west the beatles wrote a song infused with nostalgia for the east [Music] well sort of in august 1968 here at abbey road they recorded back in the ussr paul mccarney said later that he imagined the lyrics with the thoughts of a soviet spy stationed for years in america and now on his way home to mother russia and there is something refreshingly unexpected even a little bit irreverent about taking a quintessentially american sound and wrapping around the details of life behind the iron curtain oh show me around your snow peak mountains way down south take me to your daddy's farm let me hear your balor likers ringing out come and keep your comrade warm back in the ussr [Music] the beatles appealed to soviet youngsters because they seemed to embody the very best of the west and yet at home their appeal was now bound up with their increasing skepticism about the western way of life [Music] in britain they were challenging convention and becoming outspoken critics of bourgeois capitalism our society is run by insane people for insane objects objectives half the people watching this are going to be saying what's he saying what's he saying you know that you are being run by people who are insane and you don't know in 1969 john lennon even returned his mbe in protest at britain's support for the american war in vietnam an extraordinary gesture coming from the former darling of british pop but his frustration with western capitalist values was typical of a new angry and alienated generation bred in affluence and now questioning their own values [Applause] [Music] the moral compromises of the cold war that turned many young men and women against the west and they focused their anger on the supposed failings of liberal democracy what we have got to do is find out how within the educational sphere we can smash this they were not however drawn to the straight-laced socialist realism of the kremlin instead they flirted with the more glamorous exotic elements of the far left communism as cool [Music] and they rejected the manifold crimes of western governments militarism [Music] exploitation and the encouragement of mindless consumerism [Music] violence is used constantly by the americans against the vietnamese violence is used by the cops violence is actually inscribed on the face of society you know the capitalist society's got blood under its fingernails the whole time [Applause] the police are after me there who are so funny i hit one of them by the 1970s this new student left had become so vocal and so visible that they were irresistible targets for prime time teasing i don't think lennon would have left it like that yes i was the only one who stood up to the police dog oh i wasn't frightened i passed it got a chair [Music] but not all tv producers saw comedy in communism [Music] like britain's youngsters themselves the bbc had moved with the times [Music] having sided with the establishment over the war game britain's public broadcaster now found plenty of room for those more interested in the certainties of the class war than the complexities of the cold war to be a good communist is not easy your first loyalty is to the party to its politics for this leadership [Music] if there was one program that was forever exposing the rotten underbelly of bourgeois capitalism or celebrating the revolutionary potential of the oppressed proletariat then it was play for today no script was too worthy no subject too depressing [Music] a classic example was leeds united a tale of northern factory workers taking on their exploitative bosses [Music] based on a true story it was one of the most expensive single tv dramas ever produced [Applause] the real enemy is still up there the bloody masters the most ruthless arrogant and vindictive bosses in contemporary industrial britain [Applause] [Music] [Applause] now not every play for today was a hand ringing denunciation of the evils of capitalism but to be honest quite a lot of them were and given the cold war tensions of the day some observers were genuinely worried that more suggestible viewers might be brainwashed by all this far-left propaganda [Music] the strident voice of the new left was now a potent force in british culture and some of its critics took great delight in puncturing the posturing narcissism of the worst offenders [Music] just at the moment of maximum entropy when late capitalist structures are beginning to fall in on themselves those of us in the vanguard of the struggle have suddenly been afflicted with an unaccountable paralysis as a famous radical at the university howard has a senior lectureship there he's still active in the town's radical causes and in the radical journals where he writes often he edits a sociology series for a paperback publisher and has published a second book the death of the bourgeoisie for many people the new trendy lefties of the 1970s were ripe for satire and nobody did it better than malcolm bradbury in his book the history man so you want to do sociology it's the only genuinely relevant subject in the curriculum and it's entirely comprehensive it takes in everything decimal currency abortion coronation street you name it [Music] [Applause] you'll finally begin to learn something about life it's a question of opening your minds [Applause] for the likes of howard history was on their side capitalism was doomed marxism was the future [Music] but of course most ordinary people didn't think that way they were too busy shopping for a new carpet or buying a new color tv to worry about world revolution and when they did think about the cold war they look back on 15 years in which from the marches of cnd to the novels of john le carre black and white have given way to infinite shades of grey but things were changing a new political generation was poised to take power spearheaded by a retired hollywood film star and a grocer's daughter from grantham and under their leadership the cold war would once again become a battleground of good against evil [Applause] [Music] next time as a new political generation takes power britain revels in rampant consumerism [Music] and the gloves come off in the cold war comedy comes from heaven here on bbc2 pauline's mom-in-law is making herself at home next whilst it's cold war drama for bbc four alec guinness is george smiley in the first episode of the classic series of tinker taylor soldier spy [Music]

Channel: LukesXWing

Views: 110,838

Keywords: Cold War (Event), United Kingdom (Country), Soviet Union (Country), 1960s (Event), James Bond (Fictional Character), The Beatles (Band), Yuri Gagarin (Scientist), Manchester (City/Town/Village), Space Race (Event), Barry Bucknell, John Vassall, Harold Macmillan (Author), Cuban Missile Crisis (Event), John F. Kennedy (US President), Nikita Khrushchev (TV Personality), Richard Nixon (US President), Communism (Political Ideology), Consumerism (Exhibition Subject)

Id: GWMwIO7jRds

Length: 59min 3sec (3543 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 17 2013