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The Ministry of Information was one of the most remarkable government creations of the Second World War. It was given a global remit to spread information, essentially propaganda, to allies and neutrals around the world, with major centres in Buenos Aires, Cairo, and Delhi. It produced tens of thousands of publications to be distributed worldwide. Domestically, it censored newspapers and the BBC, released thousands of photographs, produced hundreds of posters and leaflets and about 1,800 ‘official’ films, as well as sponsoring feature films and major art exhibitions. Based at the brutalist-looking University of London Senate House in the heart of Bloomsbury (which later became a model for George Orwell’s Ministry of Truth), it had offices all over the UK, including Liverpool, Glasgow, Manchester, and Belfast. By 1944, it had a staff of more than 7,000.
But this vast organisation began the war very badly. There was much confusion over who should control exactly what the public could be allowed to hear or read about the war effort. On the evening of 11 September 1939, in an attempt to censor news getting out about the British Army being deployed in France, the MOI called in the police to stop the distribution of newspapers by seizing entire print-runs of papers from warehouses and stopping trains heading out of the capital. Later that night, the news was cleared for release and, in a complete reversal, a limited number of newspapers were allowed to be distributed the next morning. There were howls of outrage and accusations of incompetence hurled at the Ministry by the press. Within weeks, the MOI had become a byword for confusion and muddle.
Turning a corner
It took some time for the proper and efficient systems to evolve, but there was continuing tension between the newspaper editors who wanted full access to the news, the military services who wanted to restrict the outflow of information as much as possible, and the MOI censors in the middle. Likewise, the BBC, which fiercely guarded the independence of its news coverage, frequently fell out with the men from the Ministry. The Minister in early 1940, ironically none other than Sir John Reith, who had founded the BBC in the 1920s, suggested taking over the BBC in its entirety as the simplest way to clear up the confused flow of news to radio listeners. So much for Reith’s belief in editorial integrity.
One crisis followed another. For instance, how much detail should be revealed about the bomb damage caused during the Blitz without undermining morale or providing vital information about the effectiveness of the bombing campaign to the enemy? How many eye-witness accounts of the bombing should be allowed when some were very harrowing? When Rudolph Hess landed by plane in Scotland, a full-scale row unfolded. Initially, the desire was to keep quiet about the event and limit speculation. But then the German media announced a series of different explanations for his weird flight. What followed has been called the ‘Battle of Bloomsbury’, as different government departments tried to control the flow of information about Hess’s mysterious appearance. But this only encouraged rumour and bizarre conspiracy theories. In all these disputes, the MOI was centre-stage in the public eye.
The usual criticism of the MoI in the early phase of the war is that it was staffed by upper-class fuddy-duddies who did not understand how the mass of working people felt. Hence the infamous poster that cheerfully proclaimed, ‘Your Courage, Your Cheerfulness, Your Resolution Will Bring Us Victory’. However, Information at War does not share this criticism. Instead, the authors follow the trail of memoranda after memoranda that were sent around Whitehall and review after review that was set up to assess and reassess the role of the MOI. Frequently, the Ministry was accused of being run by a bunch of amateurs. However, more and more professionals were brought in from advertising, publishing, and film-making. It was when these individuals were allowed to run their own affairs that the situation finally began to improve.
Within weeks, the Ministry had become a byword for confusion and muddle.
When Brendan Bracken, Churchill’s confidante and founder editor of the Financial News (later the Financial Times), became Minister in July 1941, the situation turned a corner. He was the fourth Minister in two years but at last he brought stability to the Ministry and remained in the post until the end of the war.
Coming from the world of news publishing, Bracken took a less confrontational and more conciliatory attitude towards the press. He encouraged a policy that shifted from exhortation of the public. Instead of campaigns announcing ‘You must do this… You must not do that…’, they began to encourage trust in people’s good sense. Comedy was used increasingly to get through to people who were enduring the strains of daily life in wartime conditions. This began to make contact with the public, when long pamphlets and preachy posters had failed.
The power of film
Information at War has chapters on all the major activities that fell under the remit of the Ministry. These include ‘News Management’, ‘Post and Telegraph Censorship’, assessments of morale in the Home Intelligence Unit, ‘Publications for Home and Abroad’, ‘Photographs’, ‘Exhibitions’, and so on. They all tell a similar story of early failures and later improvements.
The chapter on the Films Division epitomises this. About 70% of adult Britons went to the cinema, with about 20 million cinema admissions every week – and this number grew as the war progressed. So it was an immensely significant form of media that could reach out to a large proportion of the working population. Initially, control of the Films Division was under Sir Joseph Ball, who had led the Conservative Party research department and was a close ally of Neville Chamberlain. He regarded the documentary film-makers of the day as left-wing radicals who should not be encouraged. Next came Kenneth Clark, the young director of the National Gallery, who was appointed because he knew about ‘pictures’. But it was only when Jack Beddington was appointed head of the Division that real progress was made. He had been director of publicity at Shell, where he had displayed the ability to combine quality of content with mass popular appeal. His appointment is a classic case of the gentlemen amateurs being replaced by public-relations professionals. One of his first successes was London Can Take It!, an emotional short film showing how Londoners were bearing up under the Blitz. The film was well received in Britain and an even bigger success in the United States, where it helped create sympathy for the British cause.
Information at War takes a very top-down approach, concerned with the administration of the MOI, including its endless internal arguments and personal rivalries, rather than with the impact of its output. The ‘Film’ chapter has a lot about the costs of MOI films, how they were distributed, especially in rural areas where mobile cinema vans put up screens in village halls and libraries, and how many were dubbed or subtitled into 17 different languages.
However, there is no analysis of any of the films themselves. These included drama-documentaries using real people playing their own roles instead of actors performing these parts. Examples range from Target for To-night (1941) , in which Harry Watt followed all the stages of carrying out a bombing raid on Germany to show that the RAF was hitting back at the enemy (it won an Academy Award in the year after its release) to Fires Were Started (1943), in which Humphrey Jennings follows a single day and night with a London fire-crew during the Blitz, making heroes out of the firemen and the teams who support them. The MOI also assisted in the making of feature films, either by raising initial cash or helping to release ‘stars’ from military duties. Many of these feature films beautifully capture the spirit of Britons at war. For instance, the brilliantly funny and moving Millions Like Us (Sidney Gilliat and Frank Launder, 1943) shows the war from the point of view of a group of ‘mobile’ young women who are sent to work in a war factory. The MOI also stepped in to help finance Henry V (Laurence Olivier, 1944), which it saw as a morale booster after the Normandy landings, invoking the spirit of an earlier English invasion of France. The point is that very few people who saw these films had any idea that the MOI had played a role in creating them. They were not in any way seen as ‘propaganda’.
The book ends with an interesting summary of the aftermath of the Ministry and the cultural memory of the Second World War, right down to the huge impact of the slogan ‘Keep Calm and Carry On’, rediscovered and popularised in the year 2000.
Information at War is not a book for the general reader. But for anyone who wants to drill down into government thinking and the internal workings of this extraordinary ministry, it is a must.
REVIEW BY TAYLOR DOWNING
Information at War: a communication history of the Ministry of Information 1939-1946
Simon Eliot and Henry Irving (eds)
Oxford University Press, hbk, 736pp (£50)
ISBN 978-0192844736
