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Bridget Kendall hears from three people whose parents were targets of the 1950s Red Scare - with tales of persecution, hearsay evidence, FBI investigation and going underground.

As part of her series tracing the crucial turning-points of the early Cold War, Bridget Kendall explores the personal impact of the McCarthyite Red Scare in the America of the 1950s.

As she finds, the Cold War fear of 'Reds' was driven not just by the spectre of Stalin's Soviet Union but by the communist revolution to America's west, across the Pacific.

As angry voices asked 'Who Lost China?', people with strong associations with China became objects of suspicion - particularly if they were left-wing intellectuals. Investigation and long years of hearings followed.

All this had huge, lasting impact on these people - and on their children. And Bridget hears too from the daughter of a civil rights activist and communist, who went 'underground' for five years, when she was a young child, before the case against him finally fell away.

With Kathryn Jackson, David Lattimore, Sian Shaw.

Producer: Phil Tinline.

9 days left to listen

15 minutes

Last on

Tue 12 Jul 2016 13:45

Broadcast

  • Tue 12 Jul 2016 13:45

Foreign Bodies: Keeping the Wolf Out

Foreign Bodies: Keeping the Wolf Out

Philip Palmer's detective drama set in communist Hungary in 1963.

Podcast