174 175 - 2 -

SECRET
EXECUTIVE BOARD
Saturday, 9th August, 1941

Present:

D.G.

D.D.G.

P.S.

Sir Kenneth Clark

Mr. Bamford

Mr. Francis Williams

Mr. Gates

Mr. Victor Schuster

Mr. Ryan

Mr. Kirkpatrick

Colonel Heywood

General Tripp

Admiral Carpendale

Mr. McIver

Mr. Nash

Mr. Balfour (Secretary)

1. Minutes of the meeting on 8th August read and approved. D.G. said that the Minister had agreed not to send the telegram regarding training of photographers.

2. The Service Advisers reported on the day's news after which they, Mr. Nash and Mr. MacIver left the meeting.

3. FUNCTIONS OF DUTY ROOM

Agreed that minor points of guidance should continue to be dealt with at Duty Room. For this purpose, it was desirable that the Service Advisers should continue to be present at Duty Room or at any rate be represented there. Agreed that this matter be brought to their notice at the next meeting of the Board.

4. WORK OF DOMINION TROOPS

The Parliamentary Secretary referred to a letter from South Africa which reported the presence of considerable feeling about the supposed extent to which hard fighting was left to Dominion troops. Agreed that the remedy was to get equal publicity at the time of fighting for British troops. Empire Division to consider what publicity could be given to the figures of comparative British losses in the Mediterranean campaigns which had just been published.

5. ACCOMMODATION

Mr. Bamford reported that after further discussions with the Ministry of Works, a reasonable compromise seemed likely by which the Ministry would get within a comparatively short time additional accommodation on higher floors in the present buildings and also some accommodation in the School of Oriental Studies. Agreed that it would be better to wait for this than to take other less satisfactory accommodation which might be available immediately.

6. NEWS IN INVASION

Agreed that it would be desirable for the Divisions concerned (Home, Communications, News and Broadcasting) to meet and review the arrangements for the transmission of news to the public in the event of invasion. Mr. Parker to convene the meeting.

7. THE PRESS AND THE “V” CAMPAIGN

Mr. Francis Williams mentioned the publicity which the Press was still giving to the “V” Campaign, saying that it was likely to confuse the public as to the real character of the campaign. Agreed that it would be difficult to take the obvious remedy of asking the Press to disregard the campaign altogether. It was suggested therefore that the B.B.C. might watch for foreign broadcasts on other subjects which would be likely to interest the press, and issue scripts of these broadcasts to editors with a view to diverting their attention. Mr. Kirkpatrick, while agreeing that this might be done, pointed out that it would give a distorted view of our foreign broadcasts, 90% of which were in fact news bulletins and news talks. The real difficulty was that these bulletins and talks had no news value for the British Press. Agreed that for this very reason some distortion was inevitable, and that the best that could be done was to show that the “V” campaign did not exhaust our propaganda.