2

The Home Front

With the dissolution of the MOI at the end of March 1946, the government’s new communications infrastructure set about defining ‘the picture of Britain which it should be the aim to put over’.¹ The resulting paper by the Ministerial Committee on Overseas Information Services on the ‘Projection of Britain Overseas’² identified publicity themes that were intended to guide the activities of overseas departments. It also offers a revealing snapshot of what might be considered, in modern terms, the public diplomacy agenda of the day. ‘Britain as a Political and Social Democracy’ emphasized freedoms of speech and political choice, a comprehensive system of social services and industrial welfare and the ‘greatest experiment in a planned economy in a free society that the world has ever known’. ‘Britain as a World Power’ placed the country at the centre of a worldwide association of peoples through which British systems of social and political democracy should be spread abroad. ‘Britain and World Trade’ espoused the idea of expansionist and multilateral policy-making to develop the world’s economic resources, because ‘the rest of the world cannot be prosperous unless we are prosperous’. Lastly, the theme of ‘British Commonwealth and Empire’ advertised a non-exploitational vision of community as both liberal and dynamic.³ It was on this last point that the Ministerial Committee brought about the end of Empire – in publicity terms, at least – well before the wind of change swept through Harold Macmillan’s government over a decade later. The post-war momentum of independence movements, the pejorative connotations associated with empire-building and growing international criticism of unethical systems of governance, especially from Russia and America, made this a particularly sensitive issue for the British government, so recently the liberators of Europe. Accordingly, in May 1947, three months before the independence and partition of India, ministers agreed that the word ‘Empire’ should be dropped in favour of ‘British Commonwealth’.⁴

Although tasked with constructing and co-ordinating the grand narratives of the government’s overseas publicity, resulting in an inevitable turf war with the Foreign Office (FO), the Overseas Information Services committees, official and ministerial, were at arm’s length from the day-to-day business of the BBC’s External Services. Where the two did come together, as with the allocation of wavelengths and broadcast infrastructure, it was generally in terms of technical or logistical problems that required an interdepartmental perspective. Rather, it was with the overseas government departments and the FO in particular – those working at the coalface of foreign policy analysis and implementation – that the BBC necessarily established a pattern of close liaison. The move away from wartime practices and the construction of a constitutional divide between officials and broadcasters meant that as institutional practices changed during this period of transition, much depended on key individuals to negotiate and interpret the road ahead. Leading the way in this respect and fundamental to establishing the early post-war tone of relations were Ian Jacob and Ivone Kirkpatrick. This duo not only patrolled the boundary between the two institutions in this formative phase, but effectively defined where that boundary lay and in doing so, left a deep imprint on how the relationship was to be negotiated in coming years.

Figure 2 Ian Jacob, Controller, BBC European Services, July 1946

Military Assistant Secretary to the War Cabinet 1939–45, Jacob was appointed Controller European Services in 1946. Promoted the following year to take charge of all overseas broadcasting, he briefly returned to government service in 1952, at the request of Churchill, as Chief Staff Officer at the Ministry of Defence and deputy military secretary to the Cabinet, before returning to the BBC as its Director-General, 1952–60.

On 21 March 1946, the BBC’s Board of Governors authorized the Director-General to secure the services of Major-General Edward Ian Jacob as Controller of the European Services; his appointment was confirmed two weeks later.⁵ In doing so, the Board assigned one of the most diplomatically sensitive jobs in the BBC to a man who, during the war, had played a vital role right at the centre of government. Since 1939 he had been Military Assistant Secretary to the War Cabinet and in this capacity had been at the very nexus of international policy development and the prosecution of the war. He had a close working relationship with Churchill, accompanying the Prime Minister to Allied summits and getting to know, at close quarters, American and Russian representatives, including Presidents Roosevelt, Truman and Marshal Stalin.⁶ According to Churchill’s wartime Private Secretary, John Colville, Jacob was a ‘man of tireless industry . . . far above the average in both intelligence and commonsense’.⁷ He also had an up-to-date appreciation of Britain’s post-war European interests, not least from his position on the Labour government’s ministerial European Control Committee from July 1945, which was tasked with handling ‘the day-to-day problems arising in connection with the control or administration of ex-enemy territories in Europe’.⁸ In addition to being specifically assigned the duty of keeping Clement Attlee informed of the Committee’s work, he was also appointed Secretary to the Defence Committee.⁹ Moreover, in the period between accepting the job at the BBC and leaving government service, Jacob was the military representative of the unsuccessful mission led by Lord Stansgate to negotiate a new treaty with the Egyptian Government.¹⁰ He, therefore, had a breadth of experience and field of knowledge well suited to his job as Controller of European programmes and then as Director of all overseas services. He was in the inner circle of the military, diplomatic, political and intelligence spheres of British government by the end of the war and these were associations and links that were to provide him with a subtle appreciation of international developments and governmental attitudes.

Kirkpatrick, on the other hand, was a government official and diplomat who moved to the BBC before returning to the FO. With a keen interest in the uses of propaganda, from his service in the First World War, he became Foreign Adviser to the BBC in February 1941 under the auspices of the MOI. After the creation of the PWE in October, he took on the role of Controller of European Services (as the PWE manager in the BBC) with a seat on the BBC’s Control Board.¹¹ The dual nature of his role – as the senior link with the government’s machinery of propaganda and as the executive overseeing broadcasts to the continent – was at first both confusing and controversial. It nevertheless reflected the operational and strategic importance of the European Services during the war and as the initial inconsistencies were worked out and the arrangement became accepted, there was an increasing appreciation of the additional benefits that this new Controller’s links with Whitehall could effect. As Briggs has pointed out, ‘With Kirkpatrick in Bush House, the BBC was sure of something more than mere protection.’¹² Kirkpatrick understood the importance of broadcasting overseas and its value and potential as an aid to government objectives. This philosophy and the means by which the European Services and the government produced and directed broadcast output worked well at a time when everything was directed to the war effort and there was a synergy of aims. Yet, as has been shown, after the war and as a member of the GIS Committee, Kirkpatrick was clear in his mind that in peacetime ‘the Government would be fully entitled to bring pressure to bear on the BBC in order that the [overseas] service should accord with the aims of Government policy’.¹³

In March 1944, Kirkpatrick returned to the PWE as Deputy Director-General (Political)¹⁴ and then, six months later, to the FO, working on the Allied Control Commission for Germany. After a period as British political adviser to General Eisenhower, he was subsequently appointed Assistant Under-Secretary responsible for organizing the FO’s information work, and superintending its Information Departments, which included responsibility for liaising with the BBC.¹⁵ It was Kirkpatrick who put Jacob’s name forward for the job of Controller of European Services: handing on the baton, as it were.¹⁶ Today, the appointment of a military administrator with no experience of broadcasting to take charge of the BBC’s output to the continent and then all overseas services might appear highly suspect, if not incredible. However, by the particular circumstances of the day it was less controversial than at first might appear. The precedent set by Kirkpatrick and followed by Jacob reflected the strategic significance of European transmissions, and overseas broadcasting more generally, as well as the dual responsibilities of a national broadcaster during war and in its immediate aftermath. The ‘chains of iron’ which bound broadcasting to government had yet to be formally severed by the time Jacob joined the Corporation. It also reflects a recurrent theme as the amphibian nature of post-war public service saw a number of senior government officials join the upper echelons of the BBC in the ensuing years.

Jacob was regarded by Haley as ‘the ideal man’ to manage overseas broadcasting.¹⁷ He understood the development of policy and the practices of government while his appreciation of international developments was a great advantage to Haley whose main preoccupation was domestic broadcasting. He was plugged-in on both sides of the institutional divide, but this being the case where did he draw the line between the two? At the beginning of his tenure at Bush House, Sir Ian Jacob established rules governing his staff’s relationship with the government’s overseas departments.¹⁸ While Service Directors should project British ‘activities and the British way of life’, they should not be swayed by ‘day to day fluctuations in political policy’.¹⁹ Neither should they bend to pressure not to broadcast material uncomfortable for the government. For Jacob there were three reasons to ‘cause the rejection of a news item’: if it jeopardized military security; if serious damage to British foreign policy would result (and any such rejection should be made on his authority); if the report was ‘both mischievous and unsubstantiated’.²⁰ The first and last of these appear relatively clear-cut but the second exception, the most opaque but also the most important, is open to a far greater degree of interpretation and questioned assumptions about what it meant to broadcast in the ‘national interest’. Philosophically, Jacob saw the Corporation as representative of the society it served:

One often hears the phrase: “The BBC says . . .” But the BBC has no entity in the sense of having views and opinions of its own. It seeks to hold a mirror to British opinion, and to reflect what the ordinary man and woman in Britain feels. British public opinion finds its expression in the Press, in speeches and writings, in books and periodicals. By quoting this material, and by bringing a great variety of people to the microphone, the BBC tries to show to its listeners the different currents of thought, the full and democratic flow of ideas, and the diverse opinions, that go to make up the voice of the British people.²¹

In this analysis, the BBC was a morally neutral organization that performed the function of a national weathervane, signalling the prevailing trends of culture and thought in society along with the dissemination of impartial news – a zeitgeist broadcaster transmitting messages of British identity around the world. But how did Jacob determine the principles he thought should be used to govern the editorial policy and output of the European, and then External, Services?

Ideally, the ‘spread of truth and the full ventilation of facts are highly desirable in themselves’, Jacob announced in his July 1946 directive for the European Services.²² However, the continued turbulence experienced in post-war Europe, amplified by the worsening relations between the Soviet Union and her wartime allies, forged a belief that Britain must nevertheless continue ‘to struggle against calumny and insidious propaganda of a different way of thinking. Our part in counteracting this is not by refuting it, but by seizing and retaining the initiative.’²³ Passive objectivity alone would not be enough and the BBC would once again have to take on a proactive role in confronting those forces which threatened the stability of Europe and beyond. Jacob was clear that this did not mean the BBC conducting a campaign of political warfare, but his sense of purpose must be put in the context of having just lived and worked through the Second World War and it is perhaps not surprising that ‘alignment’ with the government’s foreign policy was, for him, a necessary element of the ‘national interest’:

When, as now, the British people are engaged in a struggle to maintain their existence and way of life in the face of a campaign of propaganda and subversive activity, openly designed to overthrow them, we must not in any way shrink from giving full expression to the British view, and to assist by all means in our power the national effort. Only in this way shall we be framing our programmes in the national interest.²⁴

It was in the actual making and content of the programmes that government involvement was to be avoided and where the editorial independence of the BBC had to be maintained.

Jacob and Kirkpatrick were instrumental characters that mobilized considerable authority within the BBC and FO, but institutional liaison required more than just leadership. Orchestrating effective and efficient linkages in this period of overseas broadcasting repatriation was both an organic process, inheriting wartime customs, and one designed to eliminate undue external influence. William Haley emphasized this asymmetry as a virtue when he noted in his paper on the ‘Principles and Purpose of the BBC’s External Services’ that the ‘methods of liaison to reach the understanding adumbrated by the Lord President vary from service to service. It is – to my mind rightly – not formalised throughout the Corporation.’²⁵ By the time of the new Charter, the result was a conglomerate of interactions that collectively formed the relationship between the External Services and government.

On issues of outstanding importance, the Director-General would be consulted; otherwise matters of policy would be handled between Kirkpatrick and the two overseas Controllers, Jacob and John Beresford Clark (who was in charge of all broadcasting outside of Europe until Jacob was made Director of Overseas Services, supervising both divisions). Meanwhile, regionally grouped language services maintained their own channels of communication. The Latin-American Services were in touch with the Head of the Latin-American Department in the FO and took it upon themselves to be proactive in consulting the Board of Trade, the Ministry of Civil Aviation and the Admiralty on related matters of guidance.²⁶ The Director of Eastern Services (DES) attended weekly meetings at the Eastern (Political) Department of the Foreign Office in addition to going to monthly meetings of the Middle East Information Department (MEID) in the same Ministry.²⁷ By March 1947, the Far Eastern Services had likewise arranged to attend the FO’s Far Eastern Information Department Weekly Directive Meeting along with the British Council.²⁸ There were also regular meetings with the Colonial Office about Palestine and telephone contact with the Foreign Office over Persia and Egypt.²⁹

Supplementing guidance by phone on day-to-day questions, the Board of Trade established regular conferences at its Overseas Information Division, where between 12 and 14 BBC representatives would mix with Information Officers of the Foreign Office and representatives of the COI to discuss economic and industrial subjects.³⁰ In a similar, but reversed, manner, the India Office briefed the DES as a channel to all BBC departments, while in the European Services there were ‘individual contacts between the various service directors and their regional opposite numbers in the Foreign Office’.³¹ It was within this network of institutional and personal interfaces that the material nature of the relationship was revealed and the line between government influence and the Corporation’s independence drawn in detail.

Managing the change from wartime to peacetime relations did not, however, always run smoothly. As Haley acknowledged in the autumn of 1946, there ‘have been occasions when it has been necessary for the BBC to take a firm line to distinguish “information” or “guidance” from “directives” ’.³² Neither did the emerging machinery of liaison always engender better relations. Commenting on the MEID, the BBC’s DES, Donald Stephenson, described its staff as ‘an uninspiring collection of dug-outs and second grade women’, while he thought the Chairman of the Middle East Publicity Committee ‘not only knows nothing about publicity but knows still less about the Middle East’.³³ What particularly concerned Stephenson, however, was the ‘failure on the part of the FO to distinguish between control of Foreign Office publicity (i.e., absorption of the old MOI) and control of external publicity media – the BBC, the Press etc.’ He felt there was a deliberate willingness to exploit what he called ‘extra-constitutional practices’, ‘if ever weakness on the part of the BBC or of a newspaper provides opportunity’.³⁴ Haley agreed, noting that ‘We must take a firm line against any nonsense’ and that ‘the position must remain that we are not prepared to accept their directives or to operate outside the terms of the White Paper.’³⁵

Nevertheless, it would seem that some parts of Whitehall were slower at adapting to these post-war working conditions than the BBC would have liked. In his own region, Stephenson was concerned that the continuing wartime impulse to interfere in the BBC’s output was ‘harmful to the more lasting interests of this country, since much of the energy which we might devote to constructive broadcast planning is dissipated in countering ill-conceived and positively dangerous representation from the FO’.³⁶ An example of this was the problem of ‘inspired’ news items originating from the FO. In the spring of 1947, a bulletin on the BBC’s Arabic Service had reported the content of a letter to the Egyptian Gazette from ‘An English Friend of Egypt’ – a typical ‘anonymous harangue’ as Stephenson characterized it. The Near East News Editor, Mackenzie, was concerned that there was no definite policy to deal with such items and set about trying to define one based ‘on a proper understanding . . . of the relations between the Foreign Office and the BBC’.³⁷

Mackenzie believed that ‘the duty of the BBC is to follow in its broadcasts the general policy of HMG, but it is allowed the widest freedom in the selection, editing and presentation of day-to-day broadcast material’.³⁸ Stephenson concurred, adding that on issues where ‘the Foreign Office want us to implement or support some point of policy, either by our own origination of broadcast material or by carrying the material originated at other sources, this must always be a matter of mutual agreement’. However in order to maintain ‘a proper atmosphere of cooperation and assistance’, Stephenson continued,

where the FO particularly press us, in circumstances of urgency, to carry an item of the kind on which your memo is based; and when we are satisfied that the item is at least quite harmless, however, ineffective we may consider it to be; then in such cases I think we are usually well advised to accede to such a request.³⁹

This, he argued, would then ‘strengthen our arm in those other and more frequent cases where we feel that a request item is so inept or indeed harmful that we rightly refuse to have anything to do with it’.⁴⁰ Three months after the new Charter came into effect, this example from the Eastern Services points towards a heavily qualified concept of independence that relied on a system of trades between broadcasters and their counterparts in Whitehall to establish an editorial line that could, if required, be defended. It also reflected a lack of clarity about how relations on the broadcast Home Front should be conducted now that the emergency of war was over.

The new Charter and the debates leading up to it had mapped out a static set of intentions within which the purpose of broadcasting overseas had been declared. It also laid out the duties levied on the Corporation as the price paid for its independence from direct government control, albeit under Grant-in-Aid funding. These were, however, constitutional arrangements that required practical interpretation. The relationship between the government’s overseas departments, in particular the Foreign Office, and the Corporation’s External Services was fundamental to this as was their experience of each other under war conditions. Key personnel interpreted the relationship in the light of their own understanding of the aims and objectives of overseas broadcasting, which set the tone for the departments under their control. The architecture of liaison, asymmetric, permissive and often ad hoc, likewise reflected the sense of uncertainty and change experienced by the External Services as they made the transition from war to peacetime activities. This was as much a psychological shift, especially in the case of broadcasts to Europe, as it was a constitutional one for both the BBC and Whitehall. And it was not yet complete when the British government and the BBC were faced with a new strategic challenge which would define, perhaps more than the Charter ever could, the practical relationship between the two and what it meant to broadcast in the ‘national interest’ in the decades to come.