scholarly journals Intelligence, Ignorance, and Diplomacy in the Cold War: The UK Reaction to the Sverdlovsk Anthrax Outbreak

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian Balmer
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
The Uk ◽  
1970 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 61-86
Author(s):  
Marika Sherwood

This article outlines the formation, ideology and activities of the West African National Secretariat (WANS), established in London in 1945-6 by Nkrumah and this colleagues, from both the English and French West African colonies. Their aim was unity, as the only hope of real independence was through unity of all ethnic groups and all social classes, not just the ‘intelligentsia’. Outlined are WANS’ activities, its work with other political groups/activists in the UK and France, and reports in Gold Coast and Nigerian newspapers, which were kept fully informed. Labelled a communist, Nkrumah was under surveillance by MI5 in the UK and on his return home in 1947. Was this the beginning of the Cold War in West Africa? La Quête au Royaume-Uni pour l’Union Africaine, 1945-48  Résumé Cet article présente la formation, l’idéologie et les activités du West African National Secretariat [Secrétariat National de l'Afrique de l'Ouest] (WANS), établi à Londres entre les années 1945 et 1946 par Nkrumah et ses collègues issus des colonies anglophones et francophones en Afrique de l’Ouest dont le but était l’union, le seul espoir pour l’Independence réelle étant réalisable à travers l’union de tous les groupes ethniques et de toutes les classes sociales, et non pas seulement « l’intelligentsia ». Sont présentés dans cet article les activités de WANS, ses opérations avec d’autres groupes/militants politiques au Royaume-Uni et en France, ainsi que les rapports dans les journaux au Gold Coast et au Nigeria qui étaient bien informés. Qualifié de communiste, Nkrumah était sous la surveillance de MI5 au Royaume-Uni et à son retour au pays en 1947. Ce fait marque-t-il le début de la Guerre Froide en Afrique de l’Ouest?


2018 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 140-156 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barbie Zelizer

This article considers the lifeline of the Anglo-American imaginary in news. It tracks its evolution, consolidation during the Cold War era and centrality in the UK/US coverage of Brexit and Trump in 2016-2017. It argues that not only has the imaginary prevailed but it continues to shape contemporary coverage to the detriment of public understanding of current events.


Author(s):  
Uta A. Balbier

This chapter explores the Billy Graham revival campaigns in Washington, London, New York, and Berlin in the 1950s as expressions of a transnational religious revival that took place simultaneously in the USA, Germany, and the UK. During this short-lived revival, discourses around Christianity, anti-Communism, democracy, and the Free World blended, produced new forms of civil religious identities, and seemed to briefly challenge secularization processes. The chapter explores the mindset of political and religious leaders who supported the Billy Graham Crusades as well as the staging of events as important performances in the transnational culture of the Cold War. It argues that despite obvious differences in the religious landscapes on both sides of the Atlantic regarding church attendance and the role of religion in political discourse, there still existed significant similarities. These can only be explained when taking transnational phenomena such as Cold War culture or secularization processes into consideration.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew W Neal

Abstract This article examines the parliamentarisation of security through four decades of committee activity in the UK and Australia. Security governance has expanded since the Cold War from defence and secret intelligence to an array of problematisations that could arise in almost any policy area. This has driven parliamentary activity, with the effect that a much wider range of committees have done substantive work on security issues. The UK and Australia display similar levels of security parliamentarisation but of a different character due to differences in executive/legislative relations, party discipline, parliamentary rules and geopolitical circumstance.


2016 ◽  
Vol 53 (1) ◽  
pp. 89-108 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathryn Olmsted

This article examines the espionage and propaganda networks established by former professional spies and other anticommunist activists in the interwar period in the United States of America and the United Kingdom. In both countries, conservatives responded to the growing power of labor in politics by creating and funding private groups to coordinate spying operations on union activists and political radicals. These British and US spies drew upon the resources of the government while evading democratic controls. The anti-labor groups also spread anti-radical propaganda, but the counter-subversive texts in the UK tended to highlight the economic threats posed by radicalism, while those in the USA appealed to more visceral fears. The leaders of these anti-labur networks established a transnational alliance with their fellow anticommunists across the Atlantic decades before the beginning of the Cold War.


2018 ◽  
Vol 45 (3) ◽  
pp. 411-430
Author(s):  
Paul Lashmar

Until the end of the Cold War the UK intelligence services were not officially acknowledged, and their personnel were banned from entering the public sphere. From 1989 the UK government began to put the intelligence services on a legal footing and to release the identity of the heads of the intelligence agencies. Since then, public engagement by the intelligence agencies has gathered pace. What this article hypothesises is that there is now, in the UK, an effective intelligence lobby of former insiders who engage in the public sphere – using on the record briefings – to counter criticism of the intelligence community and to promote a narrative and vision of what UK intelligence should do, how it is supported and how oversight is conducted. Content analysis and framing models of non-broadcast coverage of intelligence debates, focusing on the 36 months after the Snowden revelations, confirm an active and rolling lobby of current and former intelligence officials. The paper concludes that the extent of the lobby’s interventions in the public sphere is a matter for debate and possible concern.


2015 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 122
Author(s):  
Ruike Xu

There have been many “end of affair” comments on the Anglo-American special relationship (AASR) in the post-Cold War era. Notwithstanding this, the AASR has managed to persist without losing its vitality up to the present. This article seeks to explain the persistence of the AASR from the perspective of collective identity. It argues that a strong Anglo-American collective identity has been an indispensable positive contributor to the persistence of the AASR after the end of the Cold War. The strong Anglo-American collective identity facilitates Anglo-American common threat perceptions, solidifies embedded trust between the UK and the USA, and prescribes norms of appropriate behaviour for these two countries.


Author(s):  
John W. P. Phillips

This chapter links the essential parasitism of cold war systems to some general trends of 20th century telecommunications (economically motivated service-oriented multi-media). Certain (existential) fictions of the second half of the century explore and instantiate the peculiar logic of the parasite. The chapter draws out the implications of an ethics grounded in the attempt to deal with this logic and questions where such attempts, and the desires that drive them, might lead. These ethical concerns are connected via technological analysis to the 1956 plan for a radio link (known as Backbone) running north and south through the UK, avoiding large towns and meant to provide a safe route for communications vital to the prosecution of a war. The conjunction of existentialist fiction with the cold war technology ties together a triad of puzzles of the era: communication, existence and the problem of other minds. But the problems have since shifted—the rational subject now comes into being belatedly as an interrupter, a parasite, displacing or replacing the previous parasite. The parasitical arrangement does not follow the formal order of subject and object but occurs intersubjectively, producing its subjects in the process and figuring a fundamental alteration in social relations.


2016 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 174-196 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew D Pressey

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to review Advertising in a Free Society – a defence of the advertising industry – by Ralph Harris and Arthur Seldon, and to evaluate its status as a justifiable forgotten classic of the marketing literature. Design/Methodology/Approach – Advertising in a Free Society is placed in historical context (the Cold War), summarised and reviewed. Findings – During the 1950s, as the UK experienced a period of affluence and growing consumerism, the advertising industry was again subject to the criticisms that had been levelled at it by influential scholars in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Against this context, Advertising in a Free Society deserves to be remembered as one of the earliest defences of advertising and remains highly relevant. Harris and Seldon were leading figures in the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), joining shortly after its inception, which became an influential group both in the UK and abroad, influencing policy on free markets. Originality/Value – Although Advertising in a Free Society attracted few citations (going out of print between its publication in 1959 and 2014 when it was republished by the IEA), and largely forgotten by marketing scholars, it provides a significant source for marketing historians interested in advertising criticism, the growth of the British advertising industry and the role of advertising in democratic societies. A reanalysis of the text situated in its historical context – the height of the Cold War – reveals that the text can be viewed as an artefact of the conflict, deploying the rhetoric of the period in defending the advertising industry and highlighting the positive role that advertising could make in free societies.


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