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Britain's Secret Propaganda War - Hardcover

 
9780750916684: Britain's Secret Propaganda War
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The Foreign Office's Information Research Department (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. Parliament, had it known of the true purpose of IRD's existence, may well have rejected an anti-Communist propaganda offensive, but it was simply not informed. Because IRD was funded through the Secret Vote (by which Parliament votes funds for MI5 and MI6 without scrutiny) it was completely unable to exercise any scrutiny over IRD operations.

Using a vast array of techniques to influence world and domestic opinion IRD's activities mirrored and complemented similar CIA covert propaganda operations. Its operations extended across the world and took in newspapers, magazines, news agencies, book publishing, academia and radio stations. IRD also influenced the BBC's and Reuters' output of news stories. Using the "old boy network," IRD placed its people in many parts of the British media and academic world. On the home front IRD was deeply involved in British politics, notably through the dissemination of material by contacts in the Labour Party and the TUC where it sought to bolster anti-Communists against those identified as Communists and, in effect those less enthusiastic for the Cold War, the Atlantic Alliance and nuclear deterrence. Internationally it conducted operations in the Middle and Far East and in the Commonwealth together with specific campaigns in Greece, Malaya, against Nasser during the Suez Crisis and Suharto in Indonesia.

Britain's Secret Propaganda War is the first book to be written about IRD and represents 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" that will help with publicity for the book. Paul Lashmar and James Oliver (the authors) have a significant private archive of IRD material and files collected by researchers over twenty years. They have interviewed a substantial number of those who took part, some of whom have since died.

The authors also reveal some of the journalists who moved effortlessly between MI6, IRD and national newspapers, like Chevins of the Daily Telegraph. They have also uncovered evidence of IRD's hidden hand in domestic British politics, overthrowing left-wing governments and assisting Britain's entry into the Common Market. In their conclusion the authors discuss the impact of IRD, both domestically and internationally, and raise significant questions about the morality of covert propaganda in a democracy.

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About the Author:
Paul Lashmar is a freelance journalist and producer. He was an award winning investigative reporter for the Observer from 1978-89 and from 1989-92 he worked for Granada TV's current affairs series World in Action. In 1986 he was awarded Reporter of the Year' in the
From Kirkus Reviews:
A formerly top-secret story of British efforts, supported by the CIA, to oppose totalitarianism during WWII and the creeping tide of communism afterwards. British journalist Lashmar wrote a 1978 article about the little-known ``Information Research Department'' (IRD), a seemingly innocuous unit of the British Foreign Office that was also the subject of co-author Olivers masters thesis. Joining forces to investigate the IRDs shadowy history, the authors begin with the brilliantly successful British propaganda campaign that spread Allied-favorable information and disinformation by radio transmitters, airborne leaflets, newspapers, and other media throughout Axis-occupied Europe and Asia. The IRD transformed the 1939 defeat and near-disaster at Dunkirk into perception of a ``victory'' and Britain's ``finest hour.'' It worked with resistance forces, playing a role in the 1942 assassination of SS hangman Reinhard Heydrich and in the 1943 Warsaw uprising. It aided the Malaysian and Burmese struggle against Japan. The IRD had a hefty assist from its American cousins, the authors find, claiming that the CIA funded anticommunist British politicians and trade unionists who helped to defeat leftist activists at home and abroad. British IRD agents helped to overthrow Sukarno's regime in Indonesia, an area rich in oil, rubber, and tin, that was threatened by a communist party reputed to have more than ten million members. As a result, the pro-Western Suharto came to power in 1966, and some 700,000 suspected communists were killed. The Marshall Plan, backed by a British and CIA partnership, countered relentless Soviet propaganda during the Cold War and met crises in Greece, Cyprus, Kenya, Chile, the Middle East, and Hungary. The IRD did such a good job feeding material to the media, say Lashmar and Oliver, that its often hard to tell who were journalists and who were propagandistsmany were both. Wars are not entirely won on battlefields, this fascinating account reminds us as it unearths the intrigues that often lurk beneath the surface narratives of history. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

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  • PublisherSutton Pub Ltd
  • Publication date1999
  • ISBN 10 0750916680
  • ISBN 13 9780750916684
  • BindingHardcover
  • Number of pages223
  • Rating

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