‘Red scare’ of the 1950s

SENATOR Joseph McCarthy lent his name to the so-called ‘witch-hunts’ that were carried out against suspected Soviet sympathisers living in America.

The senator for Wisconsin fuelled the ‘Red Scare’ in 1950 by claiming he had a list of 205 Communists manipulating government policy. More than 2,000 government employees were sacked with little proof and Hollywood writers, directors and actors were blacklisted.

In 1954, he outraged President Eisenhower when he investigated Communist influence in the army.

He lost his public standing after military hearings were broadcast on TV. Lawyer Joseph Welch famously asked him: ‘Have you no sense of decency, sir?’ Three years after the hearings he died of liver failure.