Peace and Power in Cold War Britain: Media, Movements and Democracy, c. 1945–68 by Christopher R. Hill (review)

In 1957, soon after the accident at the Windscale nuclear reactor, and amidst a government attempt to downplay the incident, the news program Under Fire on the newly created ITV television channel did something the established BBC would never have. They milked a Cumbrian cow on air, and held a Geiger counter near the milk pail. The visual spectacle of the ticking counter exposed the deception of government experts, and allowed the public to participate in the exposure. This incident, recounted in Peace and Power in Cold War Britain, encapsulates one of the central theses of the book: that the advent of the new television and newspaper age in Britain created space and opportunity for new types of radical anti-nuclear and anti-war movements to engage in new ways and more broadly with the public.

Peace and Power in Cold War Britain is part of a growing historical literature that is now examining peace and other social movements in Britain in the Cold War years, and particularly their use of spectacle and their relationship with the media. Christopher Hill’s book takes more from and builds more on media and cultural studies in comparison to these others, and effectively brings together a sophisticated understanding of the developing media landscapes in the ’50s and ’60s with the dynamics of the anti-nuclear movements of the period. The book makes two sets of arguments. First, it argues that radical social movements had a significant impact on fashioning political participation and expression during this period, particularly through their effective use of the new opportunities offered by the changing media landscape. Second, it argues that these movements were themselves shaped by the media, and fashioned their activism and engagement as a response to and in conversation with its developing approaches, interests, and forms.

Hill begins with the argument that opportunities for new types of engagement by radical social movements emerged with the rise of advertising revenue within the newspaper industry, and the formation of a new television channel, ITV, in 1954, which through its style and approach made television more accessible to the public. By the mid-1950s the increasing availability of information on nuclear issues also allowed peace movements to grow in the form of single-issue anti-nuclear movements fashioned around the dissemination of this information. By the time Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament was formed in February 1958, the author explains, the state’s monopoly of information on nuclear matters had been broken, and the stage was set for this new interconnection between media and peace movements.

This interconnection is explored through a series of case studies, the first of which is the advent of television dramas, documentaries, and satire with an anti-nuclear message in the late ’50s and ’60s. Dramas such as J. B. Priestley’s Doomsday for Dyson, broadcast by Granada Television in February 1958, were innovative vehicles through which radical intellectuals were able to take their anti-nuclear message to a broader audience. Secondly, the author examines how peace marches (for example Aldermaston, 1958) were portrayed in the press and on television, and how they were consequently normalized in public life. A third study focuses on clashes within the Labour Party on nuclear disarmament, and argues that the right wing of the Party triumphed through not only more skillful campaigning but also better exploitation of affinities with broadcasters and the press. This triumph was manifested through the reversal in 1961 of the previous year’s adopted conference resolutions in support of unilateral disarmament. Lastly the author examines how the radical demonstration tactics adopted by the Direct Action Committee, the Committee of 100 and Spies for Peace were manufactured to maximize news coverage. The author focuses on demonstrations outside a military base near Swaffham (Norfolk) in 1958 and 1959 by the Direct Action Committee, demonstrations by the Committee of 100 (particularly outside the...