COLD WAR: Red Dawn BBC Two, 9:00PM Tue, 12 Nov 2013


A series of programmes about the Cold war is an enticing prospect and is a subject long overdue for thoughtful analysis. If this programme is anything like the rest of the series that moment has not arrived yet.
It is not in itself a bad programme, just monotone and one dimensional. It offers up a very traditional perspective on the events of the late 1940’s, you will find the same narrative in any school textbook. It was surely a mistake to rest the whole programme on the voice of one man, the narrator Dominic Sandbrook. No other voices, aside from clips from the archive, are heard and he appears to speak in sentences all concluding in exclamation marks, his voice rising and falling like some pantomime villain to make each point. One feels that if watching this programme with a child they would ask, “Why is he talking funny?”

There are however some priceless moments in the programme, not least archive footage of ‘The Red Dean,’ Hewlett Johnson, receiving the Stalin Peace Prize. From this distance in time it is difficult to know whether the Dean was wicked or vying for the stupidest man on the planet award. Still in the light of Stalin’s crimes, well documented by the early 1950’s, Johnson’s grovelling acceptance of the award is truly stomach churning.

 The programme greatly distorts history by presenting Labour’s post war transformation of British society solely through the prism of  cold war anti communism. Sweeping statements are made about Britain and the attitudes of ‘the British people,’ though little evidence is provided. When ordinary British people do appear they are invariably called Alfred Snoddy, who we witness receiving the keys to his new home. No attempt is made to investigate attitudes toward the Soviet Union among the working classes; the narrative is presented over their heads.

Liberal and sometimes lazy use is made of Orwell, in a trend that seems now to be de rigueur for documentaries about the period, though it is good to see the programme, i.e. Sandbrook, avoid the mistake of presenting Orwell purely as a conventional cold war warrior, i.e. hostile to socialism.  

What would really be new and provide genuinely fresh insight into the cold war period and what thus far has been missing, is the experience of ordinary citizens living behind ‘the iron curtain.’ Not Party apparatchiks or dissidents but ordinary people seeking to live a normal life. How did they view ‘the West?’ How did they feel about the Party and the ideology of communism? How did it feel to engage with Pioneer activities, or attend May Day events? This narrative needs to be engaged with soon, while those who lived through the era still have fresh memories.

The story of the division of Europe is much more nuanced than the conventional narrative as provided by Sandbrook allows. Perhaps we will get this more complex picture later in the series. I live in hope. 



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