Peace and Power in Cold War Britain: Media, Movements and Democracy, c.1945–68

Description

Peace and Power in Cold War Britain explores the ban the bomb and anti-Vietnam War movements from the perspective of media history, focusing in particular on the relationship between radicalism and the rise of television. In doing so, it addresses two questions, both of which seem to recur with each major breakthrough in communications technology: what do advances in communications media mean for democratic participation in politics and how do distinctive types of media condition the very nature of that participation itself? In answering these, the book views the ban the bomb and anti-Vietnam War movements in relation to communication power and media discourse. It highlights how these movements intersected with parts of public life that were being transformed by television themselves, shaping struggles for social change among activists and public intellectuals on the streets, in the Labour Party and in the law courts. The significance of this relationship between media and movements was complex and wide-ranging. Christopher R. Hill demonstrates that it contributed to the enrichment of democracy in Cold War Britain, with radicals serving to innovate and pioneer creative forms of political expression from both in and outside of media organisations. However, the movements increasingly succumbed to news coverage and values that revolved around human interest and violence, feeding into the revolutionary spectacle of 1968 and the turn towards identity politics. Cover Half-title Title Copyright Contents List of Illustrations Acknowledgements Introduction 1. Middle Class Radicalism and the Media Middle class radicalism Class and commercial media ‘Mass’ media Class-based communication and state power The New Left and popular radicalism Radicalism and visual politics 2. Single Issue Movements and Information The Communist peace movement and the media The third way The nuclear issue and the media The media and movement mobilization Nuclear information and state legitimacy 3. Public Intellectuals The CND Executive Committee Public meetings and current affairs Educational broadcasting and television drama New dramatists Satire A failure of art Documentary The War Game 4. The Street as a Medium Regimes of representation CND and DAC Generational conflict The march and news coverage Young marchers and the media 5. Labour and Political Communications Unilateralism and political communications Policymaking: party and public relations Intra-party and parliamentary democracy Trade unions and political communications Frank Cousins Scarborough: Gaitskell versus Cousins After Scarborough: controlling the machine CDS: the counter- revolution The Socialist Campaign for Multilateral Disarmament 6. Law and Order DAC and Thor missile bases The first demonstrations and news coverage The second demonstrations and news coverage Law courts and prisons Nonviolent direct action and the movement C100 and nonviolence C100 demonstrations The turn towards violence Spies for Peace 7. Denouement: 1968 Vietnam, the media and the movement Students as intellectuals ‘Foreigners’ and revolution Reflections Notes Select Bibliography Index