RELATIONS WITH THE FOREIGN OFFICE AND EMBASSIES

VG

The Ministry, as the Department responsible for overseas publicity, was bound to develop a special relation with the Foreign Office. The history of that development throughout the period of the war is mainly a clarification of the measure of interest which the Foreign Office could properly take in our work and the establishment of the Ministry's independence of working for all practical purposes.

The Government's participation in overseas publicity was in an embryonic state at the beginning of the war. There were Press Attachés appointed by the Foreign Office in one or two European capitals but Paris was the only centre in which the Press Attaché had been established for any length of time. The planning of official overseas publicity did, however, begin in the early months of 1939 before the creation of the Ministry. It began in the Foreign Office itself where a nucleus staff of planners was gathered together. They did not, in fact, move over to the Ministry of Information until about three weeks after it had been formally created. The Ministry's overseas activities therefore began very much as a direct activity of the Foreign Office. Indeed, the first persons to be appointed to the head of the Ministry's overseas side were themselves ex-Ambassadors. I think that this was the main reason why the work in the early years tended to lack the vitality of the work of a fully responsible organisation.

In 1941 we began to concentrate upon the definition of our relationships. Sir John Anderson's speech that summer in the House of Commons Debate on the Ministry of Information's status and activities stated that it was for the Foreign Secretary to set the “target” for overseas publicity in any particular area: it was for the Minister of Information to implement the means of achieving it. I do not think this was in reality a very illuminating definition. The more that one studies the problems of one Government's official publicity in another country the clearer it appears that such publicity cannot be employed to serve precise political objectives: and that the target set for it resolves itself into the general projection of the country at one end and the handling and clarification of immediate issues as they arise at the other. What, in fact, we decided to do was to cut ourselves 8 - 7 -loose from a continuous and ill-defined relationship with the Foreign Office and to sit down and review each separate territory in which we were working, analysing the local situation in terms of propaganda intelligence, studying the means and facilities of working in the area and defining with as much precision as we could the various objectives which, having regard to the local situation and the relations between our two countries, could usefully be pursued by our own publicity agents.

This work was undertaken by a Committee of the Ministry set up under the title of the Overseas Planning Committee and composed, except for the secretariat, of a group of officials working on our overseas side or on production for overseas purposes. We avoided, by choice, the creation of a planning instrument which was composed of planners not themselves engaged in the conduct of the operations that were to result from the plans. This was, I think, a right choice. The Foreign Office were invited to assist, not merely in the provision of intelligence for the purposes of the local analysis but in defining the objectives which were to be pursued and, generally speaking, their regional representatives gave us willing and valuable help in this work. The papers which were brought into existence by the Ministry in this way were finally sent by the Director General to the Permanent Under Secretary at the Foreign Office with an enquiry to the effect that we would be glad to know whether there was anything in the papers on objectives and local analysis to which they objected from their point of view. In hardly any case did the Foreign Office raise anything except a few points of detail. The “Channels” papers we regarded as our own special concern and as needing no approval.

From this time on the Ministry was able to feel that it was conducting its operations in any particular country according to a settled plan for which production could be arranged well ahead without the spasmodic eruption of occasional suggestions or objections. We settled down to an undefined but, I think, understood working arrangement that, whereas we would never pursue in any foreign territory a line of propaganda to which the Foreign Office maintained objection on the ground that it was politically undesirable in the area, the positive selection of what lines we would pursue was made by ourselves and carried out without further reference to the Foreign Office 9 - 8 -except for the purposes of assistance in our work.

2. So much for the relationships at Headquarters. In the foreign territories themselves it was natural that the Ministry of Information's representatives should work as an integral branch of the Embassy or Legation, the arrangement being that our head officer and the loading members of his staff should enjoy local diplomatic rank. His normal title was Press Attaché and his local rank that of First Secretary, though occasionally he might hold the rank of Counsellor. In Washington the Ministry's head representative held the rank of Minister after 1942. It was the understanding that the Press Attaché was a member of the Ambassador's staff and was responsible to him locally both for all matters referring to the conduct and discipline of his office and in respect of any local propaganda operations that the Ambassador might regard as affecting the good relations of His Majesty's Government with the country which he was on mission to preserve. To some extent, therefore, the Press Department had to observe a double allegiance, locally to the Ambassador and remotely to the Ministry at Headquarters. It is my impression that in the early days this double relationship gave rise to a certain amount of trouble and that Ambassadors were prone to treat the doings of the Press Attaché as very much their exclusive concern. But as the Ministry developed a more powerful central organisation and the supply of material from Headquarters became the chief background of the Press Attaché’s work, the position tended to alter in favour of more direct control by the Ministry and Ambassadors, generally speaking, were content to leave the Government publicity machine to operate on its own with only occasional attention paid by themselves. This was not always an advantage, as in some countries we would have welcomed a more active interest in and championship of our affairs by the Ambassador in person.

3. Allied with this problem was the question of the ultimate responsibility for the appointment and general administration of the Ministry's staff overseas. They were, as I have said, attached to the Embassies and were members of the Ambassador's staff. Nevertheless, they were no more members of the Foreign Service than were Service Attachés in a similar position and the ultimate responsibility for their conduct lay with the Minister of Information, who would have to answer for their actions to the House of 10 - 9 -Commons. It was plain therefore that the appointees could be selected for us neither by the Ambassador nor by the Foreign Office. I do not think that this point could ever have been regarded as seriously in dispute but there were from time to time practical difficulties in realising it in cases where Ambassadors took a fancy to individuals whom they knew personally or had come across locally and pressed strongly upon us the desirability of our adopting their nominees. The difficulty in such cases lies not so much in rejecting the original proposal as in expecting that a Ministry nominee subsequently appointed would be received in the Embassy with cordiality or supported in his work. I do not recall that difficulties on this score ever reached serious proportions. Ambassadors seemed to have a curious knack of taking a strong fancy to the first person that they came across who had any pretentions to experience of publicity and they were apt to feel that unless this person was given the appointment nobody else would do. But if the matter was handled firmly and an unacceptable appointee rejected they seemed to take very quickly to the man whom the Ministry supplied in his place and to forget that they had ever wanted anyone else.

Transfers and removals of senior staff were capable of causing friction: since the Ministry was bound to take the view that all its staff, both at Headquarters and in the numerous overseas posts, were part of one service, the needs of which might require transfer or exchange from time to time, whereas an Ambassador felt himself concerned only with the promotion of publicity in his territory and was naturally reluctant to lose a good man in the interests of the general activity elsewhere. Again, removal of a Press Attaché on the grounds that he was incompetent or unsatisfactory was bound to produce a crisis if the Ambassador to whom he was attached did not want to part with him or did not agree with the Ministry's view as to his competence. The range of possible disagreement in this field was considerable since some Ambassadors, at any rate, were content to interest themselves principally in the Press Attaché’s contributions to their own personal publicity, whereas the Ministry, with no temptations to succumb to in this connection, was more concerned to appraise Press Attachés’ contributions to British publicity in general. A conflict of view occurred in Cairo at the beginning of 1944 when the Ministry decided that the then Press Attaché was not satisfactorily discharging the duties of his office 11 - 10 -and that his methods of supervising the expenditure of the post were not sufficiently strict. The Ministry's view was based on a report made by the Controller of Overseas Publicity who had recently visited the area and upon the conclusions which they drew from a report made by two Embassy officials who were appointed by the Ambassador to investigate the Controller's complaint. The Ambassador protested that his Press Attaché could not be removed without his consent and that admonition from himself would be quite sufficient penalty for the shortcomings that had been revealed. This view was adopted by the Foreign Office in correspondence with us, although they were more concerned to act as mediators than to force the issue. We felt, however, that it was impossible to accept any other principle than the principle that we could not be compelled to retain in a post a man whom we thought unfitted to fulfil the duties of that post and that no intervention by an Ambassador could force such a position upon us. We agreed, on the other hand, that in the case of appointments of Press Attachés or senior members of their staffs to overseas posts the Ambassador would have an absolute right to raise any reasonable objection and that in the face of such an objection we could not attempt to proceed with the appointment. It seemed to us only fair that an Ambassador should not be saddled against his will with a member of his staff who was to him personally objectionable. The matter was finally closed in the Ministry's favour by the Press Attaché being withdrawn and the appointment of a new man in his place who was suggested by the Ambassador and agreeable to the Ministry.

This principle is, I think, now established. When the question of withdrawing the Press Attaché from Madrid recently arose the Foreign Office, at our request, consulted the Charge d'Affaires, who disagreed with our view that an immediate change was called for. But the Foreign Office, in reporting his views to us, made it quite clear that they accepted the principle that if we persisted in our attitude the wishes of the Charge d'Affaires must give way to those of the Ministry. On the other side, when at the beginning of this year we wished to displace Beck from the Press Attaché post in Paris and appoint Tennant in his place, we never suggested to the Ambassador that we should appoint Tennant, to whom he was demurring, against his final objection, though I think that it must be admitted that we had to argue with the Ambassador very hard and very continuously to secure his agreement. In fact the appointment has proved a success.