I have been enthralled by Dominic Sandbrook’s three part history series on the Cold War, recently aired on BBC2. This, I thought, was the television highlight of the year – a fascinating mix up of the culture and politics of the mid-late twentieth century. The final instalment, about the 1980s, particularly spoke to me. My angsty teenage years were in the mid 1980s, and with a backdrop of some of the best music of the time, there were some horribly familiar scenes. I had spent some of that era laid awake at night, worrying about the balloon going up. Partly responsible for this worry was the film ‘Threads’. It was set and filmed in my home city, one of my school’s teaching staff was an extra in it. We were shown it at school when we were aged around 15 (a couple of years after the film’s initial showing), and it frightened the life out of me. There was Woolworth’s – my Saturday destination of choice – being blasted to smithereens. Then a post-apocalypse Peak District, no longer suitable for Sunday picnics. But, I thought that it was just me that took it so to my heart. I don’t remember discussing the film with my schoolfriends – we just laughed (a little too hysterically, thinking about it) at the woman wetting herself. Then, I left school, the danger of nuclear annihilation seemed to pass and it all got filed away in the back of my brain somewhere.
Sandbrook’s programme took that file out of its drawer. It made me remember the angst, and then realise that it was not just me. That other people were scared of nuclear war too was the whole reason that ‘Threads’ got written and filmed. Oh, I realised that other people were concerned – CND marchers for example – but I just thought that they were people who liked a cause. That if it wasn’t bombs it would be something else that they were waving placards on the telly about. So British. As there was no hysteria in the streets, I had not woken up to the common fear. I now see that I was living through one of the most frightening periods in our history, but because I was a teenager I was stuck inside a self important bubble.
I have carried a belief that I had not lived through any history. I’ve had an inkling that my childhood housing – high rise flats and a suburban council estate – might turn out to be of cultural relevance one day. But having grandparents who physically fought a war, and parents who witnessed the social change of the sixties first hand, the 1980s seemed to be a historical void as far as I could see. There was the Falklands War – but I didn’t know anyone involved. There was the miners’ strike and Orgreave – but again it didn’t directly affect me. I wanted to write and I wanted to write about history. So I learned about the 1930s and 1940s and set many of my stories back there. We are told to write about what we know. I made myself find out about a period that I had only experienced via other people. I believed that I didn’t know a historical period through living it myself.
The final ‘Cold War’ installment gave me a historical kick up the backside. Of course I have lived through history. I have lived through humanity teetering on the brink. I felt that fear, it affected my youth. It is time now to go back and explore it. That novel that I fancied starting next year is beginning to take root. This time I won’t go back to steam trains and air raids, I will be thinking CND badges pinned to denim jackets.
For my view of history through the medium of older films, see my blog at http://historyusherette.blogspot.co.uk/
Sarah Miller Walters 