The Transcription Centre in the Sixties: Navigating in Narrow Seas

The Transciption Centre played a part in the diffusion, discussion, and even the creation of African and Caribbean Literatures during a crucial period in their development. It was set up in London in February 1962 and functioned there throughout the rest of the decade. It was funded by the Paris-based Congress for Cultural Freedom, and its official brief was to record interviews with African or Caribbean writers, artists, and intellectuals, in London or elsewhere. Recordings or transcipts of these interviews were to be made available to radio stations in Africa, the Caribbean, or anywhere else where interest in them was expressed (some went to Germany, Denmark, India, Singapore, and other countries). In practice, however, its activities under its director, Dennis Duerden, proved to be much wider than this; branching out into the making of television films, radio plays, and music recordings, or the sponsorship of art exhibitions, concerts, stage productions, and wide-ranging discussions of many contemporary topics. It became something of an informal club for all blacks artists visiting London and a power house for many of their activities.

What exactly was this Congress for Cultural Freedom, and did all these activities conform with its original intentions in setting up the Centre? To answer these questions it is necessary both to read the Centre's archives, now held at the Harry Ransome Humanities Research Center in Austin, and Frances Stonor Saunders's recent book The Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters, published by the Grove Press, New York, and Granta in England, in 2000. Saunders has shown how a group Ivy League intellectuals moved from wartime military employment in Psychological Warfare all the way to civilian employment in the cultural Cold War, in the space of just five years. The first phase was their move from wartime psychological warfare to the postwar campaign of de-Nazification, unfortunately marred at the outset by a huge burden of hypocrisy. Not only did the Allies feel that they would need the support of a good many ex-Nazi officials in running Germany, but there were other special factors.It has emerged recently that the CIA knowingly took on a number of war criminals because of their knowledge of the Soviet Union, the very land in which thy had practiced their crimes. The Americans were also keen to harness German expertise in rocket warfare, and this meant overlooking the obvious charges that could be brought against those who had rained rockets indiscriminately upon British civilians during the last year of the war. More complicated was the struggle for the services of German musicians who had faithfully, even enthusiastically, served the Nazis. Conspicuous among these were the conductors Wilhelm Fuertwangler and his acolyte Herbert von Karajan. The singer Elizabeth Schwarzkopf was also deeply compromised. With the Cold War entering into full swing in the late forties, it was felt essential in Washington that all past affiliations should be forgotten in the tug-of- war to secure their services for the West. Thus, bright young men like Michael Josselson (born in Estonia and fluent in several languages) and Melvin Lasky, who only recently had been engaged in the struggle against Fascism and its substantial remnants in Germany, were swiftly redeployed against Moscow's new cultural offensive, centered on the Soviet House of Culture in the Unter den Linden in East Berlin. So quickly was anti-Fascism, a rallying cry for resistance to the Western dictators since the early thirties, replaced by anti-Comunism in the chancelleries of the West. For a while these officers could still undertake this task in formal positions: Josselson as Cultural Affairs Officer in the US Military Government and Lasky as Editor of the monthly Der Monat. But by early 1950, when China too had joined the swelling Communist fold, it was felt that the cultural Cold War must be waged by other, less obvious means. A...