Jun 292011
 

 With thanks to Mark Chapman.

Civil and public servants across the UK and from within Aberdeen & Inverness Revenue & Customs Branch, will be joining teachers, head teachers and university lecturers striking against attacks on pensions, jobs and services on 30th June.

The government wants to make public servants work at least:-

  • 8 years longer,
  • pay double or triple more per month
  • not get any benefit from that whatsoever to receive a reduced pension
  • accept real term pay cuts of 10% which is not only affecting the standard of living of public servants, but is already reducing the worth of their future pension entitlement

They say  ‘we are all in this together’ but the bankers are still getting their multi-million pound bonuses for failed banks owned by the taxpayer and the majority of the cabinet are millionaires.

In PCS Aberdeen & Inverness Revenue & Customs Branch we will be striking on 30 June.  There will be picket lines at all branch offices, but in Aberdeen as well as having a picket line, PCS representatives and members will also be joining together for a union breakfast followed by a cross unions meeting in the Aberdeen Trades Union Council Social Club at Adelphi at 12pm.

With inflation at over 5% in the last 2 years, the current pay freeze on Civil Servants pay actually represents a real terms pay cut of at least 10%. Probably more when you take account of rising costs. We have also had an increase in National Insurance contributions and VAT. Aberdeen PCS members’ standards of living have already been severely attacked and eroded and we are not prepared to accept any further cuts when they are totally unnecessary, especially when it is clear that the increased pensions contributions we are being asked to pay are going to pay off the deficit; these increased contributions are not being invested for the benefit of the employees.

There is £120 Billion of unpaid, evaded or avoided Tax to be collected and the UK, the 6th largest economy in the world, holds £850 billion in banking assets from the bailout of the banks – this is more than the national debt.

Mark Chapman, Branch Chair of Aberdeen & Inverness Revenue & Customs Branch of PCS Union said:

“The government admits that money cut from pensions will go straight to the Treasury to help pay off the deficit in what is nothing more than a tax on working in the civil and public sector. The very modest pay and pensions of public servants did not cause the recession, so they should not be blamed, punished or demonised for it.

“Unless ministers abandon their ideological plans to hollow out and attack the public sector in the way they propose, they will face industrial action on a mass scale on 30 June and beyond.”

An AO (Admin Officer), 38 yrs of age added:

“I’ve worked out that I will pay an extra £48.75 per month, have to work 7 years longer than I expected and will lose approximately £19,000 from my pension too.

“I cannot afford this. I already struggle to make it to pay day at the end of the month and this all because this government wants me and people like me to pay for a crisis caused by failed banks and the irresponsible non-investment decisions of those who run those banks.

“This is not equality of sacrifice, is not fair and is criminally unjust. This is on top of an expected pay freeze which is already making life harder for me and is already hitting the future worth of my pension”

There will be picket lines outside most major HMRC buildings and other Civil Service buildings, and services to the public will be disrupted.

Striking Aberdeen PCS Union members will join teachers, other striking workers and representatives from other Unions at various meetings and rallies up and down the country, showing support and solidarity for this action.

PCS, the Public and Commercial Services Union is the largest Civil Service Union. It has over 290,000 members in over 200 departments and agencies throughout the UK. It also represents workers in parts of government transferred to the private sector. PCS Union is the UK’s sixth largest union and is affiliated to the TUC.  For further info See: http://www.pcs.org.uk/

 

Jun 242011
 

In this third and final part of Bob Cooney’s amazing biography, written by his nephew – Aberdeen City Councillor Neil Cooney we learn that Bob having come home from fighting Fascism in Spain, returns to continental Europe to fight Fascism again as a gunner in the Second World War. We learn of his experiences in the war, changing attitudes towards Communism and his career as a folksinger.

On his return from Spain, his mother wept at the sight of him.

He was so thin and emaciated. For more than a year after his return he still bore sores in his arms and legs.
He had served his apprenticeship as an amateur soldier. Now the professionals conscripted him.

Conscription to W.W.2

In September 1939, the Second World War began. Bob was there as a gunner from the beginning to the end. He was sickened by the poverty he encountered in conquered europe. His eyes filled as he told of young German mothers giving their bodies for an egg to feed their bairns.

We are all losers in war. Bob was to campaign vigorously within the peace movement, but he was never a pacifist. There are times when we have to stand up and fight for a just cause.

1945 brought victory and the heady triumph for Labour in the election. Churchill with his cold-war rhetoric was dumped by the pro-Beveridge stance of Atlee. Socialism was at the front of the agenda. Gunner Cooney was deprived of his chance to help in the shaping of it by party HQ. That chance never came again although he flew the flag in the safe Labour seat of North Aberdeen in 1950 and picked up a creditable 1,300 votes.

By now he had championed a new group of friends, the squatters.

Housing was a key issue in the 1945-50 era. There had been an already acute housing shortage by 1939; wartime bombing had aggravated that problem by 1945. Nye Bevan was given the Housing portfolio as well as the Health one. Although he brilliantly negotiated a minefield of problems to set up the National Health Service, he failed to reach his housing target of 200,000 new units per year.

Shortages of men and materials made the task very difficult. The Tory jibe was that Labour had only “half a Nye” on the problem.

The Communist tag was no longer an asset after the outbreak of the Korean War

The houses that did get built, including the very popular prefabs, were constructed to a good standard, but there simply were not enough of them for all the newlyweds and their post-war baby boom.  Ever-lengthening waiting lists rendered the future bleak for thousands of Aberdeen families.

A short-term practical answer lay in organising squats in empty properties such as the old camps at the Torry Battery and Tillydrone. Bob was once again organising.

He was now a family man himself, with a wife, Nan, and twin girls, Pat and Pam. He had to be earning; he joined the building trade and was soon involved in unionising the men. These activities eventually got him blacklisted from his beloved Aberdeen.  There were no vacancies when Bob came to call. He was elbowed out of the dignity of work.

It was a particularly difficult time for him. The Communist tag was no longer an asset after the outbreak of the Korean War.

Under American influence, Commies were everywhere depicted as enemies, fifth columnists undermining the democratic process. Even the comic books had replaced the square-headed Nazi enemy with the square-headed Commie enemy. Stalin’s death in 1953 was accompanied by a torrent of horror stories about purges and gulags.

Bob’s messianic message was no longer marketable.

Folk Celebrity

He spent twenty years in exile in Birmingham where he found work as an industrial crane operator. He lodged with Dave and Betty Campbell and their close-knit family. The Campbells were old comrades from Aberdeen days. He was adopted into their family and he shared their love of folk music.

Second generation Ian and Lorna became leading lights in the folk scene.  Ian’s sons, the third generation, went on to take the pop scene by storm by founding UB40, just as the third generation of the Socialist Lennox family of Aberdeen produced the great Annie Lennox of Eurhythmics and, later, solo fame. Music had been a popular Socialist activity in the Hungry Thirties.

The definitive Spanish Anthem, however, was written by Bob himself for the 27th anniversary reunion of the International Brigade

Then ambitious shows were presented. The rehearsals kept the young unemployed busy. Little Alfie Howie, an unemployed comb-maker, recalled dozens of rehearsals for a star turn choral enactment of the Volga Boatmen. On the night, the rope was long, the line descending in order of size and the song was over and the curtains closed before Alfie had even reached the narrow little stage.

Bob even wrote a complete musical for Unity Theatre, but it was never performed: Fascists and Spain got in the way.

Bob himself became a minor folk celebrity, performing traditional Northeast tunes such as the “Wee Toon Clerk” and “McGinty’s Meal And Ale”. He was also frequently requested to perform his own compositions such as “Foul Friday” and “Torry Belle” or Chartist or Wobbly songs of American labour or the Spanish anthems such as Alex McDade’s “Song of Jarama” sung to the tune of Red River Valley:

There’s a valley in Spain called Jarama
It’s a place that we all know so well
It is there that we gave of our manhood
And most of our brave comrades fell.

Alex himself died for the cause at Brunete in July 1938.

The definitive Spanish Anthem, however, was written by Bob himself for the 27th anniversary reunion of the International Brigade. He called it “Hasta La Vista, Madrid”.  It is a prose poem that he would deliver with gusto. He reckoned, with good reason, that it was the best thing he ever wrote.

Our century had to be cleansed
So we went to Spain
Where the defeat of Hitler started……

No freedom fight is ever lost
While folk can learn
Each human mind’s an outpost
And the frontiers of freedom expand

Conquering minds and hearts
Prelude to the conquest of cities and states
Till the world will be wholly free
Then Folk will strive for higher freedoms still.

Bob even appeared on vinyl as a singer with the “Singing Campbells”. He also worked with Hamish Henderson in the epic folk collection.

When he retired back home to Aberdeen in 1973 at the age of 65, he was “adopted” by the Aberdeen Folk Club. They honoured him by publishing in 1983 a selection of his songs and poems, “When of Heroes we sing”.

That little booklet sums up his philosophy of life and the causes he so fervently supported. He was now 75 and his health was rapidly failing. His active mind kept him awake; insomnia wore him down.

He spent his last months in Kingseat Hospital, still humming his tunes and composing poems in his head.

He died in August 1984 aged 78.

He gave so much and seemed to get so little in return, yet he was happy in comradeship and lived a full life. Bob could be very shy in company until he got to know you, and then he could be quite gregarious. He could tell you jokes you had heard many times before, but he added his own little bits to milk the story for a few more hilarious minutes.

He wanted a world full of laughter; he challenged a life full of injustice. He won his fair share of battles and never shirked a challenge. The cause was always more important than personal comfort. It was a life of sacrifice in a huge effort to improve conditions for his fellow men. He didn’t always win but he did inspire others to take up the cause.

He had a rich life worth celebrating, and it duly was celebrated in the Lemon Tree with a folk night featuring Dick Gaughan. The Trades Council also organised a celebration of the International Brigadiers in November 1989. His name lives on in the Housing Association development at Berryden: not bad for a squatter and a born rebel.

Footnote:

Aberdeen Voice wishes to thank Cllr Neil Cooney once again for permission to publish this inspiring story of a fellow Aberdonian to whom we owe an infinitely greater measure of gratitude.

 

Jun 182011
 

In a time before widespread international travel, Bob Cooney would journey across continents to realise the depths of his beliefs. He would find himself at the sharp end of unfolding events that would prove to be of considerable historical significance. In the second part of the trilogy written by Bob’s nephew – Aberdeen City Councillor Neil Cooney – we learn how Bob would selflessly bring his talents and convictions to bear to oppose fascism, both at home and in Spain, and with increasing vigour, passion and heroism – to say nothing of intense mortal danger.

Bob missed most of the 1931 crisis because his life had entered a new phase. In 1930, he packed in his job as a pawnbroker’s clerk in order to devote himself full time to politics.

It was a brave decision, his new job carried no wages but it did give him an opportunity for further education.

He spent thirteen months during 1931-32 in Russia, studying by day in the Lenin Institute, working by night in a rubber factory.

There he picked up an industrial throat infection and spent some time in a sanatorium. It left him with huskiness in his voice that became part of his oratory. Times were tough in Russia but good in comparative terms with the destitution of the Tsarist era.

Bob found a thirst for knowledge that was infectious throughout Russian society. Even grannies were going back to classes to learn the skills to make their country prosperous. There was even time for a glorious holiday down the Volga. It charged up his batteries for the tasks ahead. He was not short of work when he returned in 1932.

There was a lot of heavy campaigning to do, to mobilise the unemployed and to organise the hunger marches. He travelled from Aberdeen to Glasgow and Edinburgh speaking at open-air meetings to campaign against unemployment, to rally public opinion against the iniquitous Means Test, which robbed the poorest of their Dole as well as their dignity.

Fascists in Aberdeen

Out of the turmoil of the Depression came the strange phenomenon of the British Union of Fascists. Oswald Mosely, its creator, had served in both the Tory and Labour camps before forming his Blackshirts. He was copying the style of Mussolini and was both influenced and funded by Hitler. His area Gauleiter for the North was William Chambers Hunter, a minor laird by inheritance.

He had started off life as plain Willie Jopp but now he had pretensions of power. Aberdeen was targeted as his power base and he recruited and hired thugs from afar afield as London to help him take over the city.

Bob and the others decided to stop him.

There were pitched battles, arrests, fines and imprisonment, but they succeeded. Fascism was not allowed to take root in Aberdeen. Those who deny the free speech of others did not deserve free speech themselves.

Aberdeen has a tradition of fairness. No trumped up laird was going to destroy it. Bob emerged out of these pitched battles as a working class hero. He displayed his undoubted courage as well as his often under-rated organisational skills. It wasn’t enough to stand up to the Fascists, you had to out-think them and outnumber them and run them out of town.

The first Fascist rally organised for the Music Hall, to be addressed by Raven Thomson, Mosely’s Deputy, had to be cancelled half an hour before it was due to start.

The Fascists eyed the Market stance as a key venue. It had become a working class stronghold. The key battle was to take place there.

Chambers Hunter pencilled in the evening of Sunday 16 July 1937 for his big rally. The workers would be caught out on a Sunday in the height of the holiday season. He miscalculated. The grapevine was finely tuned; and Bob addressed a crowd of 2,000 at the Links at 11a.m. They vowed to gather at the Castlegate in the evening. The Fascists duly arrived with their armour-plated van and their police escort, their amplifiers and their heavies.

Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy gave immense aid to the Spanish Fascists

As Chambers Hunter clambered to the roof of the van, the workers surged forward, cut the cables and chased the Fascists for their lives. The Castlegate was cleared by 8 p.m. Bob was one of many arrested, and served four days for his efforts.

A young Ian Campbell, later of folk music fame, remembers sitting on his father’s shoulders watching Bob being carried shoulder high on his release from prison. He also remembers how the crowd went silent as Bob addressed them. It was Bob’s last speech in Aberdeen for a long time because within hours he was on his way to Spain.

In Spain in 1936, the army revolt triggered the Nationalist Right-wing attack on the democratically elected Republican government. Despite the terms of its Covenant, the League of Nations opted for a policy of  “Non-Intervention”. Eden and Chamberlain were quick to agree, even though such a policy guaranteed a Franco victory.

It provided a precedent for our later inaction in Austria in the spring of 1938 and Czechoslovakia both in the autumn of 1938 and in the spring of 1939. Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy gave immense aid to the Spanish Fascists. Stalin’s Russia gave much more limited aid to the Republicans. International Brigades of volunteers were also formed to aid the Republic.

The Go-Ahead for Spain

‘And if we live to be a hundred
We’ll have this to be glad about
We went to Spain!
Became the great yesterday
We are part of the great tomorrow
HASTA LA VISTAMADRID!’

– Bob Cooney

 

Bob had pleaded for months to go to Spain but the Communist Party kept stalling him, saying he was too valuable at home in the struggle against the Blackshirts.

In the spring of 1937, he set off from Aberdeen but was again stopped by party HQ. It wasn’t until the Castlegate victory that he eventually got the go-ahead from Harry Pollitt, the party’s General Secretary. Bob had argued that he felt hypocritical rallying support for the Spanish people and urging young men and women to go off to Spain to help the cause, and yet do nothing himself. Thoughts of Spain filled every moment of every day – the desire to fight for Spain burned within him. He later reflected that participation in Spain justified his existence on this earth. Spain was the front line again Fascism. It was his duty as a fighter to be there.

Bob was 28 when he left for Spain, getting there via a tortuous route; a tourist ticket to Paris, followed by a bus to Perpignan and then a long trek across the Pyrenees to Barcelona and beyond. He got five weeks basic training at Tarragona, a small town close to the modern resort of Salou.

There he was given his ill-fitting khaki uniform, strong boots, a Soviet rifle and a food bowl. He was appointed Commissar (motivator) of the training group. He was offered officer’s training but refused. He had promised Harry Pollitt that he was there to fight, not to pick up stripes.
Bob eventually was promoted to the position of Commissar of the XV (British) Brigade. The Brigades were integrated with local Spaniards. Bob, to lead them, had to learn their language. They soon caught on to his wry sense of humour.

His first action was at Belchite, south of the Ebro. He always said he was afraid to be afraid. He told his men never to show fear, they weren’t conscripts, they were comrades and they would look after each other. He had to prevent their bravery descending into bravado. There were some who vowed never to hide from the Fascists and to fight in open country. This would have been suicidal and such romantic notions had to be curbed.

Bob served in two major campaigns. The first was at Teruel, between Valencia and Madrid. The Brigade was drafted in to hold the line there in January 1938. Paul Robeson, the great singer, dropped in to greet them there: Robeson was heavily involved in fund-raising for the Spanish cause. The XV Brigade held their line for seven weeks before Franco’s forces complete with massive aerial power and a huge artillery bombardment forced them back.

Conditions were hard, supply lines were tenuous and the food supply was awful. Half a slice of bread a day was a common ration. His next great battle was along the Ebro from July to October 1938.

On a return sortie to Belchite, organising a controlled retreat through enemy lines, he was captured along with Jim Harkins of Clydebank. Another group on the retreat distracted their captors and Bob and Jim fled for cover. Sadly, Jim later died at the Ebro.

Just over 2,400 joined the Brigades from Britain, 526 were killed, and almost 1,000 were wounded. Of the 476 Scots who took part, 19 came from Aberdeen. The Spanish Civil War claimed the lives of five Aberdonians, Tom Davidson died at Gandesa in April 1937 and the other four at the Ebro. Archie Dewar died in March 1938, Ken Morrice in July 1938, Charles MacLeod in August 1938 and finally Ernie Sim in the last great battle in September 1938.

The final parade of the Brigade was through Barcelona on October 29th. They were addressed by the charismatic Dolores Ibarruri who had been elected Communist MP for the northern mining region of the Asturias: she was affectionately known as La Pasionara. She told them:

“you can go proudly. You are legend. We shall not forget you”.

It had taken the combined cream of the professional forces of Germany, Italy and Spain almost three years to beat them. They had every right to be proud. Barcelona fell to Franco late in January 1939, Madrid falling two months later.

Dont miss the third and final part of Neil Cooney’s account of his Uncle Bob Cooney’s amazing story – when we learn that  Bob Cooney has barely time to reflect on the events relating to the Spanish Civil War before joining the fight against Hitler and the Nazis.

Hollywood And The Bomb – Part 3

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Feb 252011
 
Hollywood And The Bomb – or Trivialising a Nuclear Holocaust 1945-1990 – Part 3.

Voice’s Dave Watt lifts the lid on the somewhat shady influences at work at the highest levels of post-war US government when McCarthyism and ‘Commie plot’ paranoia was rife. Not even Hollywood’s cinematic art was safe, it seems.

This final section of the series concentrates mainly on Hollywood and the Bomb in the 1970s and 80s with occasional trips across the Atlantic to compare their treatment of the subject with British filmmakers.

The 1970s : An decade of détente, Strategic Arms Limitation Talks, humiliating end of Vietnam War for the US and the controversial deployment of short and medium range nukes amongst a largely unwilling European population but with the usual connivance of their governments.

The last instance of using nuclear war as a theme in the 1960s was curiously in the film Planet of The Apes (1968) where the human civilization is revealed to have been destroyed by a nuclear war thereby leaving the planet to the apes.

After this there was a largish gap in the 1970s until: Twilight’s Last Gleaming in 1977 starring Burt Lancaster and Richard Widmark. It tells the story of Lawrence Dell, a renegade USAAF general, who escapes from a military prison and takes over an ICBM silo near Montana, threatening to launch the missiles at the USSR and start World War III unless the President reveals the real reasons why America fought for so long in Vietnam. Control of The ICBM silo is duly recovered by the hero and some special forces sub-heroes although the audience are left in no doubt about the big business interests profiting from the US’s extended involvement in Vietnam.

The 1980s

With the appearance of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher on the scene in 1979/81 international relations took a turn for the worse with much sabre rattling, tub thumping and bear baiting of the mid-1950s variety (and the generation of an unpleasant ‘if you’re not 100% for us you’re against us’ mentality). Thatcher began this with Exercise Square Leg in 1980 despite huge protests by CND and other progressive organisations against it.

However, the campaigners against these chest beating exercises in fatuous optimism refined their strategies and Exercise Hard Rock in 1981 was cancelled by a massive CND campaign with 20 out of 54 county councils refusing to take part and many major cities declaring themselves Nuclear Free Zones.

It plays the devastation with a rather light hand – a bit like most US disaster movies with some photogenic survivors slightly mud and bloodstained

The next film with a nuclear theme was:  The Day After (1983) which portrayed a fictional nuclear war between NATO forces and the Warsaw Pact that rapidly escalates into a full scale exchange between the United States and the Soviet Union, focusing on the residents of Kansas and Missouri, as well as several family farms situated next to nearby nuclear missile silos.

It plays the devastation with a rather light hand – a bit like most US disaster movies with some photogenic survivors slightly mud and bloodstained in general although Jason Robards does develop an unpleasantly realistic radiation sickness near the end.

It was very lightweight (like most Hollywood offerings) – in fact, probably the  most horrendous shots of a nuclear attack in a Hollywood offering is in Terminator 2(1991) where a children’s play area is shown during a nuclear blast. However in ‘The Day After’ this is pretty sanitised and one gets the impression that help will soon arrive and everything will be back to normal.

Slightly more thought provoking was the film Special Bulletin.which was an American made-for-TV movie first broadcast in 1983 The film has no opening credits Instead, the program begins with a promo for a typical daytime morning lineup: previews of various shows, and a catchy network jingle, “RBS: We’re Moving Up!” Suddenly, an ominous “Special Bulletin” slide appears on the screen, with an announcer saying “We interrupt this program to bring you a Special Bulletin from RBS News.” It shows how a local TV crew, covering a dockworkers’ strike, become caught in the middle of a firefight between the Coast Guard and some people on board a tugboat sitting at a dock in Charleston, South Carolina.

This extraordinary TV movie — shot on video, to make it resemble a news broadcast — shows us how network news might cover a group of terrorists holding a city hostage with a nuclear bomb and in doing so creates extraordinary tension while also getting in subtle and pointed digs at the media.

The government tries to fool the insurgent group and storm the tugboat. The attempt fails disastrously and there is a nuclear detonation.

Interestingly, when this was shown, despite a disclaimer on air there was a certain amount of panic in the  Charleston area

The final shots are of a female reporter and her cameraman trapped on a nearby old aircraft carrier with huge fires blazing in the background and, clearly stunned and dazed, she is terrified of imminent radiation sickness. The cameraman then replays the detonation in harbour which contains nothing but a raging firestorm. At this, the TV anchor breaks down on air crying out and weeping.

There is a break and the next shots are from three days later where the news, with the typical banality of TV news, has gone on to cover all the other events around the world (strikes in Poland, a World Bank announcement) which have continued to occur despite the destruction of Charleston.

Interestingly, when this was shown, despite a disclaimer on air there was a certain amount of panic in the  Charleston area when the film was originally shown on TV.

Back in the UK, the next film up was Threads (1984) – a BBC television play set in the city of Sheffield depicting the effects of a nuclear war and its aftermath on the United Kingdom. The premise of Threads was to hypothesise the effects of a nuclear war on the United Kingdom after an exchange between the Soviet Union and the United States escalates to include the UK.

The primary plot centres on two families: the Kemps and the Becketts — as an international crisis erupts and escalates. As NATO and the UK prepare for war, the members of each family deal with their own personal crises. Meanwhile, a secondary plot centered upon Clive Sutton, the Chief Executive of the City of Sheffield serves to illustrate for the viewer the UK Government’s then-current continuity of government arrangements. The balance of the film details the fate of each family as the characters face the medical, economic, social, and environmental consequences of a nuclear war.

Both the plot and the atmosphere of the play are extremely bleak with the UK ending up as a declining medieval society in the throes of a nuclear winter.

Despite the apparent extreme bleakness Threads was actually based on the results for the previously mentioned (and almost unbelievably optimistic) Exercise Square Leg instigated by the Tories in the 1980 in which the Soviets obligingly decide to nuke bizarre out-of-the-way places like Eastbourne but not Central London. In addition, whereas a Soviet attack on the UK could engender up to 1000 megatons, Square Leg was based on an attack involving 239 megatons.

There’s an equally childish disposition towards happy endings despite the mega-deaths on display

Despite this the mortality figures were estimated at 29 million (53% of the population); serious injuries at 7 million (12%); short-term survivors at 19 million (35%) so even at Thatcher’s mindlessly optimistic best we’d all have had it.

The last film on the list is also a British film and is that unusual combination a rather harrowing cartoon.

When the Wind Blows 1986 depicts a nuclear attack on the UK by the Soviet Union from the viewpoint of a retired couple, Jim and Hilda Bloggs. [Voices by John Mills & Peggy Ashcroft]  The Bloggs live in rural Sussex and are confused regarding the nature and seriousness of their situation which is sometimes used to generate gentle comedy as well as darker elements. As the film progresses their situation becomes steadily more hopeless as they suffer from the effects of radiation sickness. The film ends on an extremely moving note, with both Jim and Hilda dying as they pray.

CONCLUSION – Hollywood : There was a period of more thoughtful filmmaking in the 60s and 70s but as usual it’s been lots of glitz, glorious technicolour, wonderful special effects, very little in the way of plot lines with rather childish bipolar worldviews of the US as basically good and Johnny Foreigner regarded as rather murderous and irrational demons. There’s an equally childish disposition towards happy endings despite the mega-deaths on display.

British films of the period tended to be rather more thoughtful, socially realistic and less given to mindless flag wagging – in general, somewhere in between the more cerebral European mainland films produced on the same subject and the rather shallow US films made during this period.

Feb 182011
 
Hollywood And The Bomb – or Trivialising a Nuclear Holocaust 1945-1990 – Part 2.

Voice’s Dave Watt lifts the lid on the somewhat shady influences at work at the highest levels of post-war US government when McCarthyism and ‘Commie plot’ paranoia was rife. Not even Hollywood’s cinematic art was safe, it seems.

This section concentrates mainly on Hollywood and the Bomb in the 1950s and 60s with occasional trips across the Atlantic to compare their treatment of the subject with British filmmakers.

Equally upbeat as per the Cheerful Charlie Reader’s Digest was the film Duck and Cover – a civil defence film/public guidance film which first shown publicly in January 1952.
Made with the help of schoolchildren from New York City who were, needless to say, shown ducking under desks and covering their eyes, it was shown in schools as the cornerstone of the government’s “duck and cover” public awareness campaign.

The movie stated that nuclear war could happen at any time without warning and U.S. citizens should keep this constantly in mind and be ever ready (presumably by carrying a school desk around with them).
This was followed up by another public guidance film called  The House in the Middle [1954] which was a short documentary film produced by the Federal Civil Defence Administration, which attempted to show that a clean, freshly painted house is more likely to survive a nuclear attack than its poorly maintained counterpart. As it turned out, however, this film was actually sponsored by the US National Paint, Varnish and Lacquer Association so I’d take its nuclear protection advice with a large pinch of salt.

Meanwhile, across the Atlantic in 1950, the first British Nuclear protestor appeared in the film Seven Days to Noon (beating the first Aldermaston March by a clear eight years).  Starring Barry Jones and Andrew Morell it showed a British scientist, John Willingdon, running away from a research centre with an atomic bomb which he has in a suitcase. He threatens to blow up the centre of London if the Government don’t agree to stop any further nuclear testing. Special agents from Scotland Yard try to stop him with help from his assistant and her fiancé. In a dramatic finish the scientist is accidentally shot a few minutes before the bomb goes off, the hero marries the heroine and everyone lives happily ever after. Nowadays it seems quite a thought provoking item for the time although in the original film blurb Willingdon the scientist was obligingly referred to as a madman.

Back to the US in 1951 there was a sci- fi film called Five which was a  post-apocalyptic US film. The title refers to the number of survivors of an atomic war that wiped out the rest of the human race. Fortunately for the survivors they all lived in the US, spoke English and were within walking distance of each other – just how lucky is that? This was, however, something of a benchmark as it was the first ever film to depict the aftermath of such a catastrophe.

Next film produced by Hollywood with a nuclear war theme was Invasion USA (1952) – basically a pro-military pro-government propaganda film which starts off with a group of anti-government, anti-war people in a bar in Washington decrying  the early military-industrial complex of those days.

However, the film goes on to show that while these misguided peaceniks are chewing the fat the evil robotic Soviets are plotting to attack the US with A-Bombs. The A-bombs duly arrive on American air force bases causing mayhem and after a series of horrifying disasters and the usual heroic resistance the few surviving peaceniks are predictably shown to conclude that their government and military were right after all.

their response to any military face confrontation with the Soviets would be a first strike nuclear attack

And I hope they were all thoroughly ashamed of themselves, too. The Soviets in this film were rather confusingly dressed similarly to Nazi SS men – Mind you it probably wouldn’t be too confusing to modern American audiences over 30% of who think the Soviet Union & Germany were on the same side in World War Two anyway.

There was a gap in Hollywood films involving actual nuclear war over the next few years but quite a few pro-military but specifically pro USAAF films. (Just keep remembering here those horrible, pro-commie, fellow traveller, pinkos in the US Navy have been defeated and the United States Army Air Force is the way to go.)

First of these was: James Stewart in Strategic Air Command [1955] , Stewart plays a USAAF Reserve officer recalled reluctantly to active duty to fly bombers for the Strategic Air Command. The film details the duties and responsibilities of being an Air Force strategic bomber pilot, and the strains such service places on family life. Happily, Stewart overcomes all these and goes on to enjoy his new military career defending the USA from the godless Commie threat.

Similarly in Bombers B52 [1957] Karl Malden plays a US air force sergeant who is tempted by a better-paying civilian job. After much moral deliberation Malden decides that he’s of more value in the service and goes on to enjoy his continuing military career defending the USA from the godless Commie threat.

The lack of films depicting a nuclear exchange is particularly significant during this time as the US military was irrevocably committed to the first use of nuclear weapons under the 1951 New Look Strategy -the concept being that the considerably more powerful Soviet forces represented such a world wide threat to US hegemony that their response to any military face confrontation with the Soviets would be a first strike nuclear attack.

In fact, the next film on the subject was produced well after McCarthy’s decline and is the bleakly realistic 1959 film On The Beach which is set in 1964 in the months following World War III. The conflict has devastated the northern hemisphere, polluting the atmosphere with nuclear fallout and killing all human life there while global air currents are slowly carrying the fallout to the southern hemisphere. The only part of the planet still habitable is the far south of the globe, specifically Australia but as the film ends it becomes apparent than everyone is either dying about to die.

Predictably the U.S. Department of Defence refused to cooperate in the production of this little item, refusing access to their nuclear-powered submarines and the film production crew was forced to use a non-nuclear Royal Navy submarine, the HMS Andrew.

The US contrived to lose seven nukes in the years after the WW2 which means that they’re lying around somewhere rusting quietly away.

Despite the loan of the HMS Andrew this did not indicate an anti nuclear stance by the British Government and, in fact, the then Foreign Secretary and future Tory Prime Minister Sir Alec Douglas Hume stated in June 1961 that in their commitment to NATO and the US that “The British people are prepared to be blown to atomic dust if necessary” which must have been news to most of the population.

Following the the international concern over the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 and the groundbreaking film of’ On The Beach’ and there appeared a reaction to this within the US establishment which contradicted the previously held view characterised by the Rand Corporation’s Herman Kahn ‘On Thermonuclear War’ (1960) which postulated the idea yet again of a ‘winnable nuclear war’.

This public outcry engendered by the Cuban Missile Crisis caused Kahn’s to amend his following books ‘Thinking About The Unthinkable (1962) and On Escalation (1965) backpedalled a bit and produced such delights as his Escalation Ladder (seehttp://www.texaschapbookpress.com/magellanslog41/escalation.htm) which ranges from Ostensible Crisis and Political, Economic & Diplomatic Gestures for 44 stages up to Unmodified Counterforce Attack or Spasm and Insensate War – which apparently means firing off everything nuclear you’ve got in the general direction of the enemy. According to Mr Kahn, 24 of these 44 stages involve a ‘nuclear exchange’.

Next film up was A Gathering of Eagles [1963] a movie about the Cold War and the pressures of Air Force command. Rock Hudson plays a USAAF Colonel, Jim Caldwell, who despite his misgivings is promoted to be a Strategic Air Command B-52 wing commander –. Needless to say Hudson predictably overcomes all the tribulations and pressures of command and like Karl Malden and Jimmy Stewart goes on to enjoy his new military career defending the USA from the godless Commie threat.

This film was heavily supported by the USAAF and SAC commander Curtis Lemay in particular as it showed SAC in the most promising light imaginable as intelligently led, competent and relentlessly efficient whereas they had been receiving a fair bit of flak for several major nuclear accidents. The US contrived to lose seven nukes in the years after the WW2 which means that they’re lying around somewhere rusting quietly away.

the last poignant scene is of nuclear blasts all over the globe as Vera Lynn sings ‘We’ll Meet Again’.

Curtis LeMay may be a name familiar to some of you as a rather deranged US superhawk very keen on using B52s in Vietnam and was extremely miffed when LBJ stopped him dropping a nuke in front of the threatened US marine base at Khe Sanh in 1967. His alter ego, General Turgidson, was played by George C Scott in the next film which is:

Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb which is a 1964 American/British black comedy film directed by Stanley Kubrick, starring Peter Sellers and George C. Scott, and featuring Sterling Hayden, Keenan Wynn and Slim Pickens..

The story concerns an unhinged US Air Force general Jack D Ripper who orders a first strike nuclear attack on the Soviet Union, and follows the President of the United States, his advisors, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and an RAF officer as they try to recall the bombers to prevent a nuclear apocalypse, as well as the crew of one B-52 as they attempt to deliver their payload. The situation is made more critical by the Soviet Union having created a Doomsday Machine which will fire off a huge cloud of radioactive dust which will envelop the earth if a nuke hits the Soviet Union. The bomber eventually hits a tertiary target within the Soviet Union and the last poignant scene is of nuclear blasts all over the globe as Vera Lynn sings ‘We’ll Meet Again’.

A similar theme appears in Fail-Safe (1964) Sidney Lumet’s original 1964 film  employs a stylized and heightened dramatic structure in its nerve-crushing moral tale. When an off-course commercial airplane triggers the Pentagon’s complex “fail-safe” maneuver, leaving an arsenal of nuclear-bomb-carrying jet fighters at the ready, a mechanical error puts the entire world in danger of destruction.

Walter Matthau gives an uncharacteristic turn as an unpleasantly cold and contemptuous political scientist Prof. Groteschele, apparently based on  Herman Kahn. Henry Fonda plays the American president who manages with the Soviet Premiere to navigate the complex and urgent political trauma and prevent total destruction. As one of the American bombers makes it through to drop an A-bomb on Moscow the only concession the US President can offer to prevent all out war is to drop a similar bomb on New York.

This duly happens (thus incidentally invoking Mr Kahn’s Stage 29 of his Escalation Ladder ‘Exemplary Attack on Population’) and the countdown to the bomb hitting New York involves a series of movie stills taken in the streets of the city.

Back across the Atlantic, The War Game was a 1965 television film on nuclear war. Written, directed, and produced by Peter Watkins for the BBC’s The Wednesday Play strand, its graphic depiction of the impact of a Soviet nuclear attack on Britain caused dismay within the BBC and in government.

It was scheduled for transmission on 6th of August 1966 but the effect of the film was judged by the BBC to be “too horrifying for the medium of broadcasting” and it was not actually transmitted for 19 years and eventually appeared on the BBC in 1985, Presumably, following this timescale they’ll get around to broadcasting the appeal for Gaza in 2038.

Back in Hollywood the forces of good were still battling for God & Profit but a lot of public questioning was going on about US involvement in Laos and Vietnam and the next film revealed a certain ambivalence in US society.

In The Bedford Incident (1965) Richard Widmark plays the stern and unforgiving skipper of an American destroyer on peacetime patrol in North Atlantic waters as an element of the NATO fleet. He develops an obsessive determination to hunt down a Soviet submarine and as the danger in his compulsive chase develops a fatal incident occurs with the US destroyer firing off its missile and the Soviet submarine retaliating with its nuclear weaponry and both are utterly destroyed.

Part 3  (The 1970s onwards) -next week.