SECRET
EXECUTIVE BOARD.
Friday 13th June, 1941

Board of Trade: Report on Rationing of Clothing Campaign

Covering note by Lord Davidson circulated for information

I attach, as an appendix to this note, just as I received it, a Report by Mr. Vaughan on the events leading up to the announcement by the President of the Board of Trade of the rationing of clothing.

For long I have felt that the due recognition by the Government of the status and authority of this Ministry for Government Advertising and Press Publicity was almost as important as supremacy on the News side of the Ministry. The principle involved is the same. The Ministry of Information is responsible for Government publicity and it is, therefore, essential that we should be informed long before any Government Department has formulated a plan of campaign to publicise a particular policy. In the case of the Board of Trade the necessity for the preservation of secrecy has been pleaded. This argument does not hold water for an instant. Leaving out of account the fact that I am a Privy Councillor, senior Civil Servants during the last war were permitted to share secrets of infinitely greater importance than the rationing of clothing, and there was no leakage. In this case there was no need to consult anyone other than Mr. Vaughan and myself, and if this had been done a great many headaches would have been avoided in the Board of Trade as well as in the Ministry of Information. A confidential warning on Friday night that an important announcement was going to be issued to the Press on Saturday, followed by a Conference at 12.20 on Saturday morning, a carefully prepared statement by the Board of Trade for publication in the Sunday Press (with comments, and interpretation given verbally by the President at the conference) would have set the ball rolling far better than Press advertisements. The latter were not so effective, and cost many thousands on pounds in cash for the tax-payer. On Monday there should have been a follow-up in the Press announcing that every holder of a ration book would receive on Tuesday or Wednesday morning a document setting out the facts and containing every bit of information which it was in the power of the Government to give to the public. The document would have been delivered by the G.P.O in the 120 -2-usual way.

But it is not the alternative methods which I wish to stress, but the clear necessity that the Ministry of Information should be in on the ground floor on all campaigns contemplated by Government Department. It is true that the Ministry has been empowered by a Co-ordination Committee of the various Government Departments to negotiate with N.P.A. on the amount and allocation, etc. of Government advertising space, and I hope that negotiations will start early next week. It is a complicated question, but at least the present system, under which Government Departments are in the market in competition with each other for the same space, will be avoided.

(Sgd) DAVIDSON

12th June, 1941.