376 377 - 2 - 378 - 3 -

POLICY COMMITTEE
Thursday, December 5th, 1940.

Present :

Minister

D.G.

Secretary

Parliamentary Secretary

Sir Maurice Peterson

Lord Davidson

Sir Kenneth Clark

Mr. Bamford

Mr. Fraser

Mr. Macadam

Mr. Peake

Mr. Wellington

Mr. Radcliffe

Mr. Gates

Mr. Ogilvie

Sir Stephen Tallents

Mr. Valentine Williams

Mr. Waddell (Secretary)

The minutes of the meeting on November 26th were taken as read and approved.

1. POLICY WITH REGARD TO MEETINGS.

Mr. Macadam explained that at the present time he felt in some difficulty because although the demand for meetings had decreased there were still certain parts of the country where we should be strongly criticised if we did not hold meetings.

[HP/288/9]

The Minister said that we should in present circumstances do what we could to discourage rather than encourage big gatherings of people and where we found a demand in certain parts of the country for meetings we should be willing to meet it by making the necessary arrangements, but should do nothing to stimulate it. It was agreed that R.I.Os must realise that they were being relied upon to give sound advice as to whether the demand was sufficient to justify the holding of meetings and that during the winter months, at any rate, we should avoid holding large meetings.

2. BANNING OF PERIODICALS FOR EXPORT.

Mr. Gates referred to the discussion which had taken place at the meeting on November 14th when the D.D.G. had been asked to confer with the Foreign Office and the Home Office about the doubtful legality of the ban which we at present imposed on the export of certain periodicals under Regulation 11. The outcome of the discussion with the Foreign Office and the Home Office had been to establish:-

(i) That the Home Office had never put into operation the powers of the Secretary of State under Regulation 2 (d) (which referred to publication of matter intended to foment opposition to the prosecution of the war) - though a proposal was under consideration to add “or to disrupt the unity of the national effort”.

(ii) Neither Department had thought of using Regulation 39 (b) (which refers to publication in this country of matter likely to prejudice our relations with other countries).

(iii) Both Departments would like the present system to continue although they had to admit that its legality was doubtful.

[HP/336]

It appeared that the Ministry was in a vulnerable position and was bearing a certain amount of odium which might more properly be directed to the Home Office and the Foreign Office. Earlier in the year we had accepted the responsibility of banning certain papers by this doubtful procedure and the Foreign Office and Home Office could now legitimately ask why we should reverse our view. It was appreciated that we had been influenced by the wishes of France in banning subversive material for export and that we had been put into a position which was illogical.

The difficulties of this position were again discussed with particular reference to a suggestion that the Ministry should prevent the export of a book by Mr. Charles Duff which amounted to incitement to invasion of Portugal by the Allies. It was agreed that while it must be admitted that the export of this and other books would be undesirable, the Ministry could not continue to exercise powers whose legality was doubtful. With a view to strengthening our case in another approach to the Foreign Office and Home Office we should first take the advice of the Treasury Solicitor. Either they should exercise their powers or the powers of the Ministry of Information should be strengthened.

[FP/R116/1]

3. The Minister asked on whose initiative the broadcasts by Sir Robert Vansittart in the B.B.C. Overseas Service had been given and whether the approval of the Foreign Office had been obtained. Sir Stephen Tallents explained that following upon a talk given early in September Sir Robert had suggested that he should give six more talks. Rough outlines or scripts of the talks were submitted to the B.B.C. and although certain parts of the texts were not very favourably viewed by some of the B.B.C. staff, arrangements were made on the assumption that the offending passages would be cut out. It was understood that Sir Robert had the permission of the Foreign Office to broadcast although the texts had not been seen by anyone in the Foreign Office.

[B/54]

It was understood that on instructions from the D.G. Sir Robert would not be allowed to give the talk intended for the early hours of the following morning. The Minister said he doubted whether we could stop the talk and asked to see copies of the script for this and the other talks.