Fascinating post here at Counting Cats in Zanzibar concerning BBC efforts to re-write history and in particular the Royal Navy’s valiant efforts against German u-boats in the North Atlantic during ww2.
“This is a genuine question – in that I do not know the answer (and would like to know). I only know “The Cruel Sea” from the film (about the Royal Navy against the German “U Boats” in the North Atlantic during World War II) so I do not know what the book (or whatever) was like.
I ask because the BBC radio production (which I heard an episode of on Sunday) of “The Cruel Sea” was full of socialist propaganda – and some of it was very odd.
For example, I can understand (just about) someone who has just seen an oil tanker ship blown up by a German submarine, rage against people who waste fuel by “speeding to their golf club”. It would not be my first thought whilst watching men die – but people are different, perhaps someone else would blame people who speed to golf clubs (rather than the Germans).”
However, a lot of the rest of the production was harder to accept. For example the Captain of the new Royal Navy ship lines up the crew and tells them that they have been unemployed for years because of the greed and selfishness of other people. Whatever the faults of 1930s Britain – it was not exactly famous for “greed” and “selfishness”, it was a rather austere place. Then he tells the crew that now everyone (on the ship) will work together for the common good and….. (a speech that might have come out of the mouth of a Nazi SS commander rather than a Royal Navy Captain – who would have been more likely to say “carry on men” and not wasted any more time).
Do please read the full post. It’s quite stunning to read how the BBC distorts and inserts its socialist agenda into events like those discussed. My thanks to the B-BBC reader for bringing this to my attention.
Further evidence from Sevenoaks.
“Woodlands Manor is a member of the Barrelfield Golf Network. The competition programme is made up of a comprehensive mix of club, open and inter-club matches throughout the year.Woodlands Manor is an established Golf Club – first opened in 1925 – closed during the war years in the ‘Dig for Victory’ campaign, Woodlands reopened in 1968. We have a well matured parkland course located in a picturesque valley on the North Downs between Otford and West Kingsdown in an area of outstanding natural beauty that offers a tranquil setting for golf. Woodlands is a very popular golf club and the excellent drainage of the chalky North Downs makes it an ideal summer or winter course where we play on main greens throughout the year. Our facilities include a 10 acre practice area, putting and chipping greens and practice bunker.
Next week the Dam busters !
Who will fly over to Europe to drop spinning drums of cash and labour MEP’s to stabilise the Euro then rain leaflets down on London extolling the virtues of diversity /immigration and Kenny for mayor , then Barnes Wallace will be explaining how the flooding in the Rhine valley is actually caused by global warming !
Remember to check out the B-BBC’s Battle of pearl harbour by Monty pythons as it’s more historically accurate then anything else they do nowadays!
As performed by the Batley Townswomen’s Guild…
Err now’t wrong with Batley Folk lad. Apart from the packys on Mount Pleasent,Warick Road,Dark Lane, Soothill, Clutton st, Lady Anne Road, Healey Lane and Batley Carr.
You might joke about the Dam Busters but Stephen Fry has written a script for a remake of the film.
No doubt Gibson will be made a rampant homosexual racist and the real hero of the film will be a black lesbian nazi who saves the day.
I think the BBC has form on this. Didn’t pounce recently post some stunning comments on how the BBC demonized the Royal Navy for abandoning sailors from a German ship sunk during battle?
Yes the scharnhorst according to the B-BBC it was full of peace protesters and actually wanted to stop the evil empires ships from corrupting the socialist utopia in Russian !
Or in the real world a bloody big ship covered in guns that picked a fight with our lot and lost and I have little problem with the RN not hanging around so U-boats can get shots and kill our men as well !
The main BBC form on the Royal Navy is of course the Belgrano sinking. Evil PM orders RN to sink innocent ship, on the advice of top RN admiral, RN complies with this disgraceful order.
I wonder if the B-BBC think that ‘heavily armed warship’ actually means in Argentine ‘pinata full of sweets’?
The captain of the Belgrano admitted years ago their sinking was legit as they could have been ordered to turn around at any minute.
Martin
You know that, we all know that – and we all know that the order given from London was entirely legitimate, because the Belgrano posed a real threat.
But will the BBC ever accept this truth ? Will any BBC presenter ever slap down the lie ?
The truth about the sinking of the Belgrano has been known for years but the BBC will stick to their chosen narrative. For the truth try http://notasheepmaybeagoat.blogspot.com/2007/06/general-confusion.html or http://notasheepmaybeagoat.blogspot.com/2008/02/music.html or indeed http://notasheepmaybeagoat.blogspot.com/2012/02/forget-facts-bbc-have-narrative-to-tell.html the last from just a few weeks ago.
All of which proves yet again that all this stuff about diversity and embracing other cultures at the BBC is a massive fraud.
Sure they’ll bend over backwards to hire a black, lesbian polar bear, but when it comes to the important stuff, like understanding why people believe what they belive, they’re totally becalmed.
They’re so deep in the bubble they simply don’t see anything odd in World War II sailors who sound exactly like mejia studies graduates in a Camden squat.
To be fair, in the original book there were a couple of references to class differences and the conflict between fighting for democracy on a ship where the Captain has almost as much power as Henry VIII. (Don’t have a copy at hand to quote exactly).
Still to build a series on what were at most a couple of lines is like telling the story of Little Red Riding Hood from the POV of her dressmaker.
“the conflict between fighting for democracy on a ship where the Captain has almost as much power as Henry VIII.”
I don’t think this even got a mention. In fact, I can’t recall the word “democracy” appearing in the whole book. Rather any “social” comment was de haut en bas (you know, rather like David Gregory’s comments to us pleb-commenters). For instance, the bullying first No 1 on the Compass Rose was damned faintly for having been a car salesman only weeks before joining up and, worse, having a macabre and vocal attachment to “snorkers” (sausages to you and me) at meal times.
But, as I commented a day or two ago when this came to light, you think the BBC’s bias can’t get any worse and then along comes an even more reprehensible piece of whining and irredeemably corrupt leftery.
THe Cruel Sea is one of my favourite books and films (I have it on DVD). The book is really about how a group of people from all backgrounds come together as a team and a family. Anyone who has served in the forces (that lets out 99.999% of beeboids) knows how accurate the book and film are about how people just get along.
The BBC just set out to destroy everything these days and stamp their drug obsessed homosexual flag waving left wing pro Muslim bollocks on everything.
Good point, Umbongo. Of course there’s a good reason the word “democracy” does not appear in the whole book because there is no “democracy” on a naval vessel.
Perhaps some personal experiences will help this strand?
Having wrestled with the subject of historical accuracy for a R4 play some years ago (“Julie and The Prince” about Queen Victoria’s father Prince Edward and his longtime mistress Madame de St Laurent) I made decisions about what I was and was not prepared to do to “further the plot”. With only an hour to tell the story, I changed the timeline to move the narrative along but I felt it was not ethical to change the views of the protagonists. In researching this project I found most “historical” films and plays are simply modern people with modern sensibilities in historical costume. In short, modern drama in fancy dress.
Recently I’ve been studying a number of WW2 movies made during and immediately after the war. The most illuminating part of this exercise has been exploring the attitudes of people of that era. How noble they were. How selfless. How different. By RE-defining them, by giving them contemporary outlooks, how we diminish them. Most of all, this process is intellectually corrupt.
These ideas are not mine but those of the late Charles Friend, my friend and tutor at the London Film School in the late 60s, but more importantly the man who directed the original movie The Cruel Sea. He was a gentleman and someone who tried to portray honest heroism on the big screen. I think his film is a true representation of the original novel. (He also directed Scott of the Antarctic).
Two issues arise: the responsibility towards (a) the author of the original work and (b) historical fact
If the BBC wished to spin their own yarn they should have started with a look at The Cruel Sea Retold – The Truth Behind Monsarrat’s Epic Convoy Drama by Bernard Edwards, a factual retelling of Convoy OG71 which attempted to sail from Liverpool to Gibraltar in August 1941. But, as we know, lefty agenda playwrights regard facts as an inconvenient encumbrance.
However The Cruel Sea itself is a work of fiction and Nicholas Monsarrat’s work needs to be protected from these scavengers of radical crap.
Countless historic events are viewed through the prism of fiction. A best-selling book or blockbuster film can skew the facts of an event for a general audience forever.
But agenda storytelling can be useful. For example many British post war WW2 movies (1945-60) were an attempt to understand what had just happened to Britain by the very people who took part in the conflict. They are heroic retellings (often inaccurate) of the experiences of their generation. But that makes them a fascinating study. (Compare Reach For The Sky, Bridge on the River Kwai or The Dambusters with history and see what you find). So when we look at the BBC drama output of recent years we will see even more clearly than some of us see now, the agenda of a new band of writers. The rewriting of scenes in The Cruel Sea as mentioned in Paul Marks wonderful article (linker above) is a stunning glimpse into the soul of the BBC drama department.
Superb post, Louis – thanks
Interestingly, the book “Bridge on the river Kwai” by Pierre Boulle, from which the film was derived, was very much more anti British.
The Colonel (played by Alec Guiness in the film) was a caricature upper-class Englishman, and drawn extremely unsympathetically (unlike the film portrayal which was of a misguided but basically decent man).
This character was based on a real life British soldier who was actually a hero, and his family were deeply hurt and angry about how he was portrayed in both the book and the film.
LR
Excellent comment.
Having been fed a diet of such films when I was a boy, I think the feeling created in me was of pride in my fellow Brits and, as my father would have said, “good natured” contempt for our ex-enemies (whereas the BBC prefers to create exactly the opposite feeling except that its contempt for their fellow Brits – especially those of an older generation – is not at all good natured).
Even as boys we suspected that the heroics might have not been as straightforward and universal as portrayed. For instance the Attenborough character in “in Which We Serve” gave an idea of what I’m sure happened on more than one occasion (and what we feared might happen to us). Also, in our more reflective moments, we considered that the Germans might not have been so unidimensionally evil. However, among my friends, the Japanese were given no such psychological quarter!
Very enlightening, Louis. Thanks.
I’m reminded a bit of the HBO series, “Band of Brothers”. The actual vets who were portrayed in the film liked how it was all presented in general, but were appalled by all the swearing. That was definitely modernized by people who couldn’t imagine that soldiers wouldn’t swear so much.
I am sure that the BBC would rather we did not know that Hitler’s NAZI party were a left wing socialist party who argued against the excesses of the “millionaire classes” and urged the people to do what is best for society as a whole.
ROBERT BROWN; Thank you Geyza, i was stripped of ‘comment privileges’ on CIF in the Guardian for stating this fact on too many occasions to it’s brainwashed readership, along with slatings of Monbiot,Toynbee,Ashley et al. They do not like the truth. Comment is free, my arse. And above the site, you have their trustafarian saying, ‘the facts are sacred’.
No, the SWP is an extreme left wing socialist party, the Nazis and the BNP are extreme right wing socialists.
The Socialist Workers Party (SWP) and the National Socialist Workers German Party (Nazi Party) are branches off the same ideological tree.
The claim that they are absolute opposites (rather than closely related rivals) is a fiction.
Certainly, there`s plenty scope for rewrites as outlined above.
Maybe Douglas Bader psuhing Helen Keller round to Nye Bevans house to discuss the setting up of the NHS…and Bader would , of course, get his metal on metal hip fully refunded by the NHS, but only after “Jezza Paxo” Paxman has bawled out Churchill…
Clemmie Attlees gender reassignment….thanks to public pressure from the real heroes of the NHS..Burgess, MacLean, Philby etc..
Na they’d have Bader left to die because of “Tory cuts”
Maturecheese
The Navy and later the Royal Navy is what made this country a major power in the world. The hardships endured through the centuries by Royal Navy seamen are to be applauded and we should be very thankful. How many beeboids would have dared to do the Murmansk run or the North Atlantic or the Med in WW2 time and time again? I think it is a crying shame that the navy has been reduced to a fraction of what it once was and as an Island trading Nation I fail to understand why. The BBC should be thoroughly ashamed of itself for not showing due respect but I am not surprised considering the disgusting organ of socialist filth it has become.
I will calm done now but disrespecting the Navy or any of our armed forces come to that, is beyond the pale as far as I am concerned. Changing history( even fiction) to suit a current agenda is doing just that.
( I also have ‘The Cruel Sea’ book and dvd and I rank it up there with ‘Das Boot’ which, yes you guessed I have the book and dvds)
Staying on the theme of the Navy in WW2, I recomend HMS Ulysses by Alistair Maclean.
The British war films of the 1950’s were written to be as down to earth and unglamorous as possible. The approach of the British film industry compared to that of Hollywood was very marked.
But the BBC don’t care for those sorts of films, they want to create a different view, you see this now with the obsession the BBC have about bomber command and the bombing of German cities. The BBC seems to have totally forgotten the destruction the Germans inflicted not just on western Europe but the Soviet Union in particular.
There seems to be this sort of wet liberal view taking over that the bombing of Germany was wrong, yet the BBC don’t understand that until the invasion of France it was the only way the western forces could really take some of the pressure off the Soviets, not to mention the political propaganda from flattening Germany.
I have nor will I ever have one tiny drop of sympathy for any German bombed in WW2, they were scum and if you ever watch any of the interviews in particular with the surviving SS soldiers the wankers still have an arrogance about them.
My view is we didn’t bomb or flatten enough of Germany, we were never going to win the war by bombing Germany flat but it made the bastards pay, not that it did any good because they’re taking over Europe again, this time by the back door.
But as we know the BBC quite like the Nazi’s, after all they did wipe out 6 million Jews which in the eyes of the BBC was a good start.
Well said, Martin. It wasn’t fully known by the Allies at the time, but the RAF’s bombing of Hamburg/Cologne was so devastating that Nazi high command believed that if the air raids continued with such ferocity their war effort would collapse, & even the supposedly high morale of the German people would crack. Recent military scholarship suggests that Germany’s failure to defeat Russia swiftly in 1941 doomed them to a war of attrition they could never win. Nazi arrogance after easy victories in their backyard, began to crumble in the alien vastness of Russia. So RAF bombing was crucial to reminding the Germans at home what happens to those who sow the wind, & reap the whirlwind. It was also crucial to British morale. If the fawning collaboration with our current enemies shown by today’s beeboids had been around in 1940, Lord Haw Haw could have broadcast from a deckchair in Mark Thompson’s back garden. Smirking traitors. The real enemy within.
And let’s not forget that left wing Nazi aggression didn’t start in 1939.
The bombing of Guernica in 1937, for instance.
Hmm, if only the last half of your comment was as good as your first Martin. Talk about making a good point in the worst possible way.
Call me a hun lover if you like, but I find most Germans I meet very likeable.
I think there’s a huge difference between impressions of people as individuals, and collectively, as nationalities. Perhaps one of the reasons that Germans are so likeable now (which I agree with, BTW) is that they were taken down a peg or two between 1939 and 45.
I find the Japanese particularly civilised and agreeable and I’m happy to accept them on these terms, but I’m also aware of what they were capable of 70 years ago.
One very black mark against Germany is it’s lack of support in Gulf War I and it’s virtual alliance (with France) with Saddam Hussein in GWII.
One thing that has really redeemed Japan as a nation is it’s commitment of troops to Iraq after the US/British liberation.
A saying goes The Past Is Another Country .
This certianly applies to modern ,freedom loving democratic Germany from anything that went before .