Listening to the World: BBC Monitoring and the Cold War

Nick Cull: “And I think anybody who followed the British media knew that there was this side to the BBC that it was listening to foreign broadcasts and drawing on that material in in, in time of in time of crisis. So it was one of those things that I assumed was there and but just also assumed that we couldn't have access to it today, that wasn't one of the things that was easily accessible, so I was delighted to be given an opportunity to, to use the material.”

Kate Lacy: “The minute you open the files you're transported into, into thinking, well, this is, this is proper, sort of archival material that takes you back to the moment. So just at that level, before you even read any of the content that's going on. So, it's great to get your hands, as a historian, it's great to get your hands on, on sort of documents that, that perhaps haven't been seen by anybody apart from the scanner. [laughter].”

Rosaleen Hughes: “What you get in the archive is the real-time running order of news bulletins. So, you know exactly what the Soviet people were told and not told and when they were told it.”

Tony Shaw: “I'm, I'm a, a person who works a lot on, on the history of propaganda and particularly with the Cold War and how the British Government tried to conduct its propaganda during the Cold War. The chief agency for anti-Communist propaganda that the Foreign Office, the British Government had during the Cold War was a little-known organisation called the Information Research Department, or IRD for short. And if one looks there's a strong relationship, if not partnership between the British, the BBC Monitoring Service during the Cold War and the Information Research Department, and if I was to look again at elements of the Monitoring Service output, I'd be trying to look at how one could explore that relationship in greater depth.”

Kate Lacy: “Extraordinary amount of stuff online about the Berlin Wall and yet still you don't get, because there aren't really many recordings of, of the radio of the time, you don't get the same sort of sense of detail because you've always got the historical sort of narrative on top of it. So, to get the raw material, I suppose, is what was so fascinating, exciting about this.”

Kevin McDermott: “But the, the BBC Monitoring Services really do give a sense of what the Czechs were trying to achieve in 1968; how to, how they were trying to democratise socialism. The BBC transcripts offer an insight into lesser-known figures, ministers, lesser-known Czech and Slovak politicians. The, these seemingly small items can tell us a lot I think about individuals about factions in the party and ultimately I think about how the Soviets were able to, to, to identify and create a kind of pro-Soviet wing in the party in the course of 1968. There were reports that in such and such a town, the workers are on a, a general strike and so many workers have been killed and there are, you know, the events from locally and as far as I know, these things, at least in English, are new. I don't know whether even the Czech transcripts of these radio and TV programmes exist in in the radio and TV archives in Prague, so, so these are maybe the only sources which are, which are reasonably readily available for historians, even, even historians, even Czech and Slovak, they may not be able to get their hands on these radio and TV programmes.”

Nick Cull: “Well, what I was fascinated by, I went into it because I'd heard from South African political people how important Russian broadcasting had been to them and East German broadcasting had been to them. So I wanted to see for myself what of that supportive broadcasting showed up in, in. the, in the archive. And I was interested to see whether the broadcasts brought out the interpretation you have today, that Soweto was one of the great turning points of South African history and modern history, and it turns out that yes, the broadcasts were incredibly supportive and yes, the broadcasts recognised that Soweto was a turning point. And they're talking about it as it's happening as being an immense, an immense watershed in South African history. The South African Government to read its coverage is flailing around looking for ways to minimise what's happening and to get out of it, to blame other people, to accentuate the good news and that was fascinating just to see the lengths that a state will go to to avoid what's obvious to the rest of the. Well, I think I was really struck by the quality of the of the Soviet material particularly and the quality of rhetoric, and it seemed to me that this was a story that allowed Eastern European broadcasters to be on the right side of history and they knew that they were the good guys, that they were supporting people in a struggle against tremendous injustice and this gave them a chance to really unbutton themselves in a good cause.”

Alban Webb: “Global stories are contained in the BBC Monitoring output and anybody around the world could look at that material and find something relevant to them. It is not British parochialism; it is a global product with global significance.”

Kate Lacy: “It's a gold mine for historians of all, of all shades, but I think, not least for you know, radio historians or people who are interested in, the way in which the media work as, as that sort of conduit between, you know, the, the policy makers, the decision makers and, and the listeners. To be fair, I've only just scratched the surface of it. It's very intriguing to think that I've just looked at some of the, particularly these, these German and the West German files just for a couple of weeks and I haven't even done an in-depth analysis of all the richness of the rhetoric and the language that's going on in there. But now that I do know about, now that I've had, I've dipped my toe in the water I think that it should be made available to historians. It's a hugely rich resource. So far, only halfway through the day, you know the, the, the amount of new stuff that's coming out and the insights that could be made if we were to look at it over a longer period of time, both in terms of being able to do the research, but also in terms of not taking just these sort of snapshot iconic moments, but actually looking at the, the criterion output of, of broadcasters over the years, I think it's an amazing archive and it and it needs to be in the public domain, it needs to be accessible at least to historians, and hopefully to a wider public who would be interested in this stuff.”

Kevin McDermott: “I think the main value of them is that they give a unique insight into the uncensored transcripts of Czechoslovak radio and TV programmes from 1968, which of course, as we all know, was a period of upheaval in Czechoslovakia. Indeed, one of the most important events of the Cold War, we might say. I was hoping to get some kind of inkling of popular opinion. That doesn’t mean to say it’s not there, after all, I saw a tiny fraction of, of the material, so I really do need to look at more of it.”

Nick Cull: “I think it has immense academic value. It's difficult to think of a similar resource with a global scope. I mean, I finished today thinking that this is one of the treasures of the world and a global resource that deserves global recognition. Any citizen of the world can find something relevant to them in this material. This is a history of the world, speaking to the world and a slice of the kind of a universal archive and it's an amazing, amazing resource and it's as versatile as the person who asks it questions and we don't know what questions other people might ask of it. It's all there and the richness of this material is extraordinary and that, you know, just going through the transcripts as my eye would, would jump from from the, the piece of material that was relevant to me right now and you would see right next to it would be something that was fascinating, that was completely unexpected that's like the little discovery they were talking about this as well. And you suddenly you can see how the could lead us and thousands and thousands of directions in the most wonderful way. It really is a treasure of immense, immense significance.”