Preliminary Programme

Fear as a collective emotion has come to define many histories of the ‘first Cold War’ era, 1945-1962. It encompasses the experience of whole nations subject to the global climate of Cold War hostilities, including Britain. Fear as a lived-in collective experience, is found in the speeches of politicians, propaganda, protest campaigns, scientific communications, military strategy, civil defence schemes, and popular culture.

Newly collected oral history interviews present an opportunity to hear directly from the ‘ordinary’ voices of civilians living through the early Cold War period. Their voices provide a perspective ‘from below’ on broader global and political histories of this period which continue to presume that the 1950s was an age of ‘fear’. This paper addresses the problems inherent in employing narrative histories to study emotions: where historic emotion might be untold, transitory, defined subjectively, re-remembered across a lifetime and reconstructed via inter-subjectivity.

I will discuss listening strategies that assist in comprehending the untold and fluctuating expressions of experience in the interview narrative. I will use examples from my interviews to discuss these problems. This will include respondent behaviour in the interview, their use of language and using emotion within the interview as a comparator or benchmark for interpretation. In doing so I expand on Rebecca Clifford’s statement: ‘oral history may not offer a direct window onto past emotions, but it exposes the contrast between remembered past feelings and present reinterpretations’.

The paper will also address how an awareness of the contemporary relevance of historic experiences on the part of respondents impacts the direction of the interview narrative. At present fear and ‘terror’ remain paramount in our international collective emotional discourse. Events in British politics, Russia, the Ukraine and the Middle East resonate with interview respondents and this is frequently drawn on as a reference point for emotional interpretation – both in judging the past and ‘remembering for the future’.

Returning to the historiography of the 1950s Cold War, the paper will conclude with a discussion of the difficulties involved in bringing elusive, untold emotions histories to bear on popular narratives in history. Listening carefully and accounting for the variety of emotional experiences in 1950s Britain allows for a broader, deeper understanding of how collective experience intervened in individual lives. Considering the individual’s engagement with contemporary events sets in motion another realm of interpretation in which possible ‘futures’ direct present narratives of emotion. (Show less)

Over the last year I have been conducting a series of group interviews with two women who worked for the fire service during the Second World War. They did not serve together during the war, but worked in the same fire station for many years before retiring around 1980 and they remain close friends, speaking daily and living in neighbouring buildings. They have told me that they do not discuss the war together or reminisce, but despite this they have done all of their public war remembrance together, attending reunions, commemorative ceremonies and anniversary events. They have also contributed to public memory: one wrote an account for the BBC Peoples War archive and the other for the Westminster at War website, and both have been interviewed by historians and journalists. So although they do not share personal memories of the war, they have both shared and shaped a public memory together.

During our interviews there are a few stories which have been regularly repeated. These are well rehearsed and across the interviews the same words, tone and rhythm are used in their telling. The women know each others stories, and they will recite sections and remember the appropriate moments to laugh. In contrast to these polished narratives, when I ask questions they frequently remind me that ‘it was a long time ago’, and their ‘memory is not what it was’. This has encouraged me to experiment with different remembering tools and props, and I will continue to do so in our future interviews. It also highlights issues around stories and silences, and how far we are able – or indeed need – to explain them. In this paper I will discuss why these stories might have been remembered and others forgotten, and how these women’s memories intersect with the public representations of the period that they have helped to create. But I will also reflect upon the limits of interpretation.

The aspect of the interviews which is relevant to my PhD research is the women’s memory of the Second World War, but the interviews inevitably cover their pre and postwar lives and I am gradually developing life histories. Both women are practiced interview givers, and presumably have expectations of the type of information that I hope to receive based on their previous experiences. The women’s current concerns and preoccupations also continually surface, especially around ageing and the passage of time. These factors amongst many others produce a complex three way intersubjective relationship – containing within it a long-standing friendship, and a recent but developing association – and this will be another key theme of the paper. I will focus in particular on the way in which it shapes the construction of ‘truth’ in the stories told. (Show less)

Sending young conscripts from all social backgrounds to the mines was once called “the greatest British social experiment”. From January 1944 to 1948, 48 000 Bevin Boys, half of them drawn by ballot, did not join the Forces but the ranks of miners. However the part played by Bevin Boys in the war effort has long been neglected, and they were even until recent years assimilated to conscientious objectors.

The paper will explore the gaps and silences in former Bevin Boys’ narratives. I will focus on how the battle for the Bevin Boys’ recognition has impacted narratives in memoirs and shaped interview encounters. Indeed although the Bevin Boys’ history has been revisited over the past fifteen years, these works intended mainly to restore their place in the national memory of these “Forgotten conscripts”, as they have become known. The paper will show that as for Bevin Boys’ memoirs, a genre that has flourished in recent years, all 22 that exist to this day are of much interest but tend to present frozen accounts, with the same recurring topos about Bevin Boys’ experiences, bearing more than a passing resemblance with the form of the picaresque narrative. They have shaped a classic Bevin Boy narrative which revolves around the ballotees’ frustration at being robbed of their war and time to shine in uniforms in a direct response to the public representation of conscientious objectors.

The paper will thus discuss one of the challenges of oral history interviews with former Bevin Boys: to unveil the experiences of “other” Bevin Boys which do not fit as easily in the classic narrative (volunteers, optants, ex-servicemen and conscientious objectors) as well as rarely mentioned topics (strategies of avoidance of the Forces, absenteeism, but also the choice of some Bevin Boys to remain in the coalfields after they were demobilised, etc.).

The research is based on two dozens interviews with former Bevin Boys done in 2013 and 2015. I will also mention oral history interviews done in the fifteen last years (Imperial War Museum, Big Pit National Coal Museum, National Mining Museum of Scotland, Scottish Oral History Centre) and the 22 existing memoirs written by Bevin Boys. (Show less)

This paper will highlight the significance of selfhood in women’s memories of their lives during the Second World War. Whilst there are parallels between public and private memories of war, individual narratives can exist independently of wider discourse. Individual testimonies reveal the significance of personal decisions, motivations and desires but also indicate where women felt their place was in the wider national war effort. Women’s position in the war effort has been recounted in a variety of ways and was subject to contradictory obligations, the home and family, and war work for the state. A consistent narrative supported the idea of a communal war effort and collective identity, referred to as the ‘people’s war’ but also there is a need to problematize this concept by acknowledging that some women felt subordinate and not ‘equal’ citizens. As such their gender potentially restricted their opportunities and this has affected their memories of the war. Thus in accordance with Anna Green, individuals have the capacity to reflect upon their own pasts. This research will draw upon the wartime experiences of women who were living and working in two locations in the south of England during the Second World War, Portsmouth and the Isle of Wight. Themes relevant to discourse of Britain and the home front will be explored including: negotiated gender identities, wartime citizenship and duty. (Show less)