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Propaganda was under much
closer government control in the Second World War than in the
First World War, when there was a variety of "agencies which -
constantly merging and splitting - discharged the various functions
related to morale, news, censorship and propaganda". [Footnote
1] Not until 1918 was a Ministry of Information created, under
newspaper owner Lord Beaverbrook, to try and instil some order
into the chaos, but its chief function appeared to be little more
than as a circulator of propaganda to neutral countries, and it
was disbanded very soon after the war ended.
In 1935, after recognising the
success of Goebbels' propaganda machine, the MoI was resurrected,
but planners were unable to profit from the precedents set in
the First World War as records were unable to be found, and one
official had to resort to the Encyclopaedia Britannica in order
to obtain a definition of 'propaganda'. [Footnote 2] In the Second
World War, the MoI was aiming for an entirely different audience
to that of the First, when posters were largely used for recruitment
to the armed services, and so such examples were not necessarily
helpful anyway. Such posters tended to appeal to values of fair
play, good sportsmanship, and a sense of shame in avoidance of
duty, rather than to inspire devotion to ideals. Such posters
were criticised as being rather drab in colour, short on humour
and sex appeal, and with a tendency towards wordiness and over-full
explanations. [Footnote 3]
MoI planners were already in full-time
government jobs, [Footnote 4] and were therefore unable to devote
their full attention to the MoI. [Footnote 5] They included R.W.
Leeper, from the News Department of the Foreign Office, who had
been very influential in setting up the British Council as a forum
for 'cultural propaganda'. [Footnote 6] The Ministry was disadvantaged
as it underwent severe organisational changes, frequent shifts
of senior personnel, and a steady erosion of its powers [Footnote
7] in its efforts to imitate existing Whitehall departments of
state, although these had evolved pragmatically over time. Civil
servants outnumbered public relations and advertising experts,
producing an amateurish climate which sprung from the desire by
the government to be seen not to be using German methods of propaganda,
[Footnote 8] although some saw this as an advantage, producing
propagandists with "fresh, open minds". [Footnote 9]
As a consequence, when war broke
out the MoI still had no clear cut objectives; Lord MacMillan,
Minister of Information at the time, claimed that:
Not many people feel the
urgency and importance of this fourth armament and recognise
the severe and practical preparation which its effective use
involve. [Footnote 10]
Even Reith, with a media background
as director-general of the BBC, when appointed Minister in January,
1940 admitted that he did not know what the purpose of the job
was. [Footnote 11] This was possibly because
ample lip service was paid
to the importance of propaganda in wartime but behind the
scenes... the spirit of scepticism is vocal ... hence also
the omission to define its functions or to endow it with a
recognised authority in its own field. [Footnote 12]
As the war progressed, the government
appeared to realise the importance of advertising the war, and
it became possible for advertising experts "to obtain exemption
from military service on the grounds of work of national importance".
[Footnote 13]
It was not until June 1941, when
Churchill instructed all public relations officers to work as
a team under the MoI, [Footnote 14] that the object of the Ministry
was defined as:
not only the planning of
general government information policy, but also the provision
of common services for the public relations activities of
other departments, who remained directly in control of their
own information policy. [Footnote 15]
For instance, if the Ministry
of Food wished to dissuade people from using certain foods, they
would be required to finance the campaign, but if there was a
general campaign against wastage it would be financed by the MoI.
[Footnote 16] 'Government posters', therefore, cannot be regarded
as though they were a singular unit, and conclusions drawn may
not be applicable in all cases.
Sir John Reith replaced Lord
MacMillan as Minister of Information on 5 January 1940, but was
replaced by Duff Cooper on 12 May. It was not until 20 July 1941,
when Brendan Bracken became Minister of Information, that the
department began to achieve any real recognition.
Bracken possessed everything
his predecessors had lacked: excellent press relations, a
very close friendship with the Prime Minister, bustling confidence
in tackling the Ministry's adversaries, and a scorn for the
exhortation of the British public. [Footnote 17]
Further details about the MoI
have already been sufficiently discussed by McLaine. [Footnote
18]
M-O claimed that the government
needed to control its channels of information, and develop a better
listening-in system. In this first month of the war the Home Publicity
section put "out propaganda on a basis of guess-work about effects,
symbols, slogans, mass-reaction", having no means for measuring
or studying morale. [Footnote 19]
During the inter-war years, social
sciences grew in popularity, with psycho-analysis becoming popular
throughout society. The government had an awareness of the need
to study the psychology of the masses in order to target their
propaganda, although it would not countenance its use in decisions
about poster designs [Footnote 20] and the "British Psychological
Foundation was roundly rebuffed, although it provided the Ministry
with a register of willing, largely Freudian-trained workers".
[Footnote 21] Generally information collected by the government
was inaccurate; traditionally 'public opinion' had been deduced
by studying the content of newspapers, and gauging how popular
the opinions expressed in them were by the number of readers of
each paper. However, it is very unlikely that many readers read
every article, nor agreed with all the opinions expressed in the
paper they were reading. During the 1930s two new organisations,
which ostensibly made use of more systematic techniques to discover
'popular' opinion, were set up; these organisations were the Gallup
poll, and M-O. [Footnote 22]
Although the government
used the Gallup poll [Footnote 23] to provide statistics
about various issues, we are more concerned with M-O
as it made specific studies of government posters.
M-O was founded in 1937, by Tom Harrisson, an anthropologist;
Charles Madge, a poet (also an 'inactive Communist');
and Humphrey Jennings, a documentary film maker. [Footnote
24] The aims of M-O were to "supply accurate observations
of everyday life and real ... public moods, an anthropology
and a mass documentation" [Footnote 25] about the
'masses' whom, it was felt, should have interested
the media and politicians more. Some information was
gained from a panel of part-time observers, which
provided "subjective private opinion". [Footnote 26]
It was felt that "too much attention has been paid
in recent years to the method of direct questioning",
[Footnote 27] and emphasis was laid upon "seen behaviour
or overheard conversation". [Footnote 28] During the
war, to survive, methods had to be adapted to produce
more immediate results, such as a survey about gas
mask posters, when visible results, such as an increased
number of people wearing gas masks were taken to indicate
success. [Footnote 29] (See Figures 7 and 8)
Although M-O was used by the
government, as it could investigate a wide range of events at
short notice, it was regarded as suspect as it was thought to
be 'on the left', [Footnote 30] whilst Mary Adams claimed that
reliance "on guess-work and partial surveys, or on information
lodged by interested bodies can be misleading and dangerous".
[Footnote 31] She argued that there was a need for a continuous
flow of regulated information on public thinking in order to formulate
publicity measures and test their effectiveness. [Footnote 32]
In 1940 it was determined that there was a need to "decide what
we want people to do and believe, then to find out what they are
thinking and doing now. This calls for the most up to date market
research". [Footnote 33] In consequence, the government set up
a Home Intelligence Division of its own to investigate public
morale.
The Home Intelligence Division
had two distinct functions. The Home Intelligence Unit prepared
reports on the morale of the home population, initially daily,
later weekly, to be used not only by the MoI in planning its publicity,
but also by any other departments. In June 1941, panels of correspondents
were recruited to make reports on the state of public opinion
in various regions, with action taken upon grievances that were
revealed. The Wartime Social Survey was designed to produce regular
quantitative results, [Footnote 34] to supplement the qualitative
data provided by the Home Intelligence Unit, to make daily reports
of facts likely to affect morale, and weekly reports into changes
in public opinion and habits. Relevant information was to be sent
to other government departments, [Footnote 35] although when asked
for their reaction to a test study, [Footnote 36] only the Ministry
of Food and Board of Trade had felt that they could make any use
of the kind of information that was to be collected, with other
ministries claiming that they had no need for the kind of results
that would be produced. [Footnote 37]
The development of such an organisation
was important as it meant the government had realised that it
could not take public feeling and reactions to the war for granted,
that it needed to ask the people, not the MPs. Orwell claimed
that "the government has done extraordinarily little to preserve
morale; it has merely drawn on existing measures of goodwill",
[Footnote 38] but this missed the point that the very fact that
the MoI had come to realise that such goodwill existed, and that
people were ready to accept restrictions "so long as they were
seen as useful to the war effort and equitable in application".
[Footnote 39] Calder, however, claims that the government was
not particularly concerned about their relationship with the ordinary
people as:
Having found out what people
thought and how they behaved, the rulers of the country could
manipulate them more efficiently, while simultaneously conforming
themselves to the lowest common denominator of public opinion.
[Footnote 40]
Bracken felt that the MoI should
be dissolved as soon as the war ended, but others felt that there
were lessons to learnt from the First World War, when the MoI
had disbanded so quickly: "What we learned in the last war, and
which our enemies made the most of, we have pooh-poohed and bungled."
[Footnote 41] They felt that it still had much to do, including
the re-education of Germany, the presentation of Britain's case
abroad, and the advancement of propaganda techniques through the
study of other methods, in order to keep democracy alive. [Footnote
42]
Having explored the organisation
that was behind the posters, we now will look at the first posters
that it produced, and see if there was anything to be learnt from
commercial techniques which had advanced considerably during the
1920s and 1930s
Footnotes:
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If you wish to cite from this page, please use
the following citation:
Lewis, R.M., 'Chapter 3: The Administrative
Context, the Ministry of Information and Social Surveys', Undergraduate
Thesis: The planning, design and reception of British home front
propaganda posters of the Second World War', <http://www.ww2poster.co.uk/research_project/ugrad/administrativecontext.htm>,
written April 1997, accessed Enter Date Here
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'Poster', 'Propaganda' - What
do they mean?
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The First Posters
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