British Anti Communist Propaganda Cooperation With

In the Cold War battle for hearts and minds Britain was the first country to formulate a coordinated global response to communist propaganda. In January 1948, the British government launched a new propaganda policy designed to 'oppose the inroads of communism' by taking the offensive against it.' A small section in the Foreign Office, the innocuously titled Information Research Department (IRD), was established to collate information on communist policy, tactics and propaganda, and coordinate the discreet dissemination of counter-propaganda to opinion formers at home and abroad.

This is a study of the British state's generation, suppression and manipulation of news to further foreign policy goals during the early Cold War. Bribing editors, blackballing "e;unreliable"e; journalists, creating instant media experts through provision of carefully edited "e;inside information"e;, and exploiting the global media system to plant propaganda--disguised as news--around the world: these were all methods used by the British to try to convince the international public of Soviet deceit and criminality and thus gain support for anti-Soviet policies at home and abroad. Britain's shaky international position heightened the importance of propaganda. The Soviets and Americans were investing heavily in propaganda to win the "e;hearts and minds"e; of the world and substitute for increasingly unthinkable nuclear war. The British exploited and enhanced their media power and propaganda expertise to keep up with the superpowers and preserve their own global influence at a time when British economic, political and military power was sharply declining. This activity directly influenced domestic media relations, as officials used British media to launder foreign-bound propaganda and to create the desired images of British "e;public opinion"e; for foreign audiences. By the early 1950s censorship waned but covert propaganda had become addictive. The endless tension of the Cold War normalized what had previously been abnormal state involvement in the media, and led it to use similar tools against Egyptian nationalists, Irish republicans and British leftists. Much more recently, official manipulation of news about Iraq indicates that a behind-the-scenes examination of state propaganda's earlier days is highly relevant. John Jenks draws heavily on recently declassified archival material for this book, especially files of the Foreign Office's anti-Communist Information Research Department (IRD) propaganda agency, and the papers of key media organisations, journalists, politicians and officials. Readers will therefore gain a greater understanding of the depth of the state's power with the media at a time when concerns about propaganda and media manipulation are once again at the fore.

Using recently declassified sources, this book provides the first detailed analysis of British and American propaganda targeting the countries of the Middle East during the years of increasing international tension and regional instability immediately following the end of the Second World War. Considering British and American propaganda within the framework of the Cold War crusade against Communism and the Soviet Union, and the developing confrontations between Arab nationalism and the West, the book investigates the central questions of Anglo-American partnership and rivalry in the period when primary responsibility for 'policing' the Middle East passed from one to the other.

In Defending Democracy in Cold War Finland, Marek Fields offers an account on the various informational and cultural strategies Britain and the United States used during the early Cold War decades in order to increase their influence in Finland.

Britain's Secret Propaganda War is the first book to be written about The Foreign Office's Information Research Department (IRD) -- an important chapter in the history of the Cold War. The narrative is driven by actual accounts of IRD covert operations and includes a number of "exclusives." The IRD was set up under the Labour Government in 1948 and clandestinely financed from the Secret Intelligence Service budget. A large organisation with close links to MI6 -- with whom it shared many personnel -- it waged a vigorous covert propaganda campaign against Eastern Bloc Communism for nearly thirty years using journalists, politicians, academics and trade unionists -none of whom were "unwitting." Such famous names as George Orwell, Denis Healey, Stephen Spender, Bertrand Russell and Guy Burgess helped or backed the work of IRD.

A critical examination of the labour government and trades Union Congress in the immediate postwar period, this book argues that the Cold War was not just a traditional conflict between states but also an attempt to contain the growth of radical working-class movements at home and abroad. These radical movements, stimulated by the Second World War and its aftermath, seemed to policymakers within the Labour Party and the TUC to threaten British interests. The author contends that the Labour government never seriously considered following a socialist foreign policy, but instead sought to shape political developments throughout the world in ways most conductive to maintaining Britain's traditional economic and imperial interests. The government was able to follow established policies abroad and increasingly at home at least in part because British trade union leaders supported its attempts to prevent radicals and communists from coming to power in trade union movements inside Britain and throughout the world. In so doing, the trade union movement significantly extended its links with the state, in particular by cooperating with it in the sphere of foreign and colonial labour policy.

Former British political leader Christopher Mayhew gives a fascinating account of the attraction of communism during his early years at Oxford. But after a visit to the Soviet Union, he became strongly anti-communist. The book's major importance begins in the early Cold War years and shows how Britain was the first to rebut Soviet propaganda and promote Western social democracy.