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HOME FRONT PROPAGANDA
HOME INTELLIGENCE

Note : This paper was prepared at the request of the Home Planning Committee. Parts 1-5 provide an analysis of the subject matter of Mass Observation's report for the Advertising Service Guild, published under the title of “Change” No. 2. Part 6 analyses briefly the methods of Mass Observation.

1. Introduction . In the past, Home Intelligence has concerned itself more with the study of Home Morale and Public Opinion than with assessment of the effects of Home Front propaganda campaigns. There were two reasons for this:-

In the past eighteen months, however, a large amount of material about public reactions to Government propaganda has been received from the following sources:-

From this material, certain preliminary conclusions may be drawn. Since few specific studies on an adequate scale have yet been made, these conclusions must be regarded as extremely tentative. Some are in agreement with those reached in “Change”; others, however, differ considerably.

2. Differences between Commercial Advertising and Government Propaganda .

(a) In a community such as pre-war Britain, commerce was primarily concerned with catering for, or creating, individual needs or demands. The main purpose of commercial advertising was to persuade people to spend their available money on the products advertised. To do this, it was occasionally necessary to create new habits, e.g.: the daily use of eye-baths or the regular consumption of purgatives. As a rule, however, it was only necessary to persuade people to alter their purchasing habits - a relatively easy undertaking in a community with shops stocking many different lines of goods.

Government war-time propaganda, on the other hand, has been, very largely concerned with trying to make people alter their habits and behaviour so radically that profound changes in their lives are produced. It would therefore be surprising if peace-time methods of selling brands of goods proved successful, or for that matter, if any methods proved successful without a number of experimental failures, and a great deal of careful study and research.

(b) The commercial advertiser, unlike the Government advertiser, is not hampered by the necessity for avoiding excursions into fiction. An erroneous Government announcement will recoil on the heads of both the publicity agent (usually the Ministry of Information), and the Department concerned. As a result, caution rather than enterprise is the rule. Moreover, since Government departments as a whole have to draft their documents to cover all contingencies, simplification down to basic principles is a process foreign to them.

(c) Almost all advertisements are open to misinterpreation. Such misinterpretations, in the commercial world, are of trivial importance, and may even in themselves prove to be valuable publicity. With Government advertising, however, a single misinterpretation may be taken as a grave insult, and may indeed prejudice the whole of a campaign.

(d) Whereas in commercial advertising, the capture of a relatively small part of the potential market may bring profit and praise to all concerned, in Government advertising the target is the whole of the community, or the whole of a specific section of the community. For this reason, a result which would be a spectacular success in commerce is regarded as a failure for the Government, e.g: Mass Observation states that 49% of people interviewed said they had read the third Invasion leaflet. Assuming that these figures were representative of the country as a whole, it would mean that getting on for 20,000,000 people had read it. Since only 15,000,000 copies of the leaflet were issued, this result might be regarded as astoundingly good. But it was necessary that the instructions it contained should be known by all . The important figure from the Government point of view is, then, the 20,000,000 who had not read it.

(e) If the Government advertising machine works at certain disadvantages when compared with commercial advertisers, it has, however, several advantages which commerce lacks:-

i. It has three powerful media which have been relatively little used in commerce:-

Radio

Films

Public meetings.

ii. It has adequate funds for proposals which it can prove to be necessary or desirable.

iii. It has a monopoly - though this is a doubtful blessing. The fact that the Government has, for practical purposes, no competitors at home brings its advertising in some ways more into line with the “prestige advertising” of commercial monopolies.

3. The Nature of the Market

Some of the peculiarities of the British public have been described in a previous paper (Home Morale and Public Opinion - attached to Home Intelligence Weekly Report No. 52). Those of particular importance from the point of view of home propaganda are:-

a. The British people have a high degree of common-sense. Given the facts, they will listen to and accept explanations, when they will not accept exhortations. Where exhortations conflict with common-sense, they will always fail. Thus the recent gas-mask campaign failed to produce any increase in gas-mask carrying because:-

i. The public believed that the concentration of German planes in the attack on Russia reduced the danger of raids on this country, and therefore the likelihood of gas, to a low level. In this belief they were strengthened by the fact that our heavy raids on Germany produced no reprisals, whereas in the past this has been the rule.

ii. They were satisfied that if the danger of gas was imminent , the Government would order the carrying of gas-masks.

It would have been reasonable to urge people to get their masks inspected during the air raid. lull. It was unreasonable to urge them to carry them.

It is never necessary to talk down to the British people. It is, however, always necessary to talk briefly and clearly to them.

b. English people are basically lazy. They will not read more than they have to. And they prefer to take risks rather than precautions. At the outbreak of war, they were ordered to black-out their windows for their own and others' safety. They were satisfied this was necessary. They grumbled a great deal, but, urged on by a few prosecutions, they did it. No publicity was needed to produce this fundamental change in habits. Eighteen months later, they were urged, again for their own and others' safety, to wear something white in the black-out. This propaganda was a complete failure. Had compulsion, and a few prosecutions, been adopted, there would almost certainly have been complete success.

This combination of common-sense and laziness sets very strict limits on what can be achieved by propaganda in Britain. A 40s. fine does more to stop spitting than £20,000 worth of advertising does to stop indiscriminate coughing and sneezing. Once, however, it has been made illegal to cough and sneeze except into a handkerchief, propaganda has a valuable part to play in making the law and the reasons for it generally known. The attempt to use propaganda as an easy way of avoiding the task of legislation is a waste of energy, time, and money. The most recent example of trying propaganda as a substitute for legislation is the A.T.S. Campaign. For some months, Home Intelligence has reported the existence of a wide-spread public demand that the Government should use compulsion rather than persuasion. It is safe to predict that if compulsion is resorted to, it will be accepted, though with plenty of grumbling, and a modicum of subsequent adjustment to meet hard cases.

For the failure of propaganda to do the work of legislation, the propagandists are not to blame. Whether different propaganda methods would have failed less completely is another matter.

Examples of the relatively successful use of propaganda to explain new legislation are the advertisements and broadcasts of the Ministry of Food and Board of Trade.

On the subject of legislative compulsion, there are some important provisos. If it is to be successful:-

Attempts to issue unexplained orders to the public in the “Do this because I say so” spirit are certain to lead to trouble. It may be argued that the failure of a persuasive propaganda campaign is excellent evidence that the Government has not resorted to compulsion until absolutely necessary. This may have been true in the early days of the war, but it is almost certainly untrue now. Compulsory fire-watching, compulsory clothes rationing, and compulsory registration of women have been welcomed by the public.

4. The Nature of Home Front Propaganda .

Home front propaganda falls into three types:-

A. Appeals . These may be for volunteers, or for alteration of habits and behaviour.

(a) At this stage of the war, one may expect appeals for volunteers to fail. The enthusiasts will have joined long ago; while the remaining bulk of the public are satisfied that the Government has the power to take them if it really needs them. Compulsory fire-watching was accepted as a welcome sign that the Government “meant business”. Appeals for women war-workers are regarded as, at best, unnecessary.

There is one exception to this general rule. Appeals for volunteers to perform a single action , which does not alter their way of life - e.g: for blood donors - may still succeed.

Here it may be mentioned that every appeal will come up against a large number of rational or irrational “resistances” - e.g: lack of day nurseries for women workers, tales of immorality in the A.T.S. Many of these melt away like snow when compulsion is applied, while the really serious ones quickly become apparent, and then require legislative or administrative action.

(b) The success or failure of appeals for alterations of conduct depends on:-

i. The ease with which the alteration can be performed . If it is merely a question of altering the way in which something which has to be done, is done (e.g: cooking), propaganda stands a reasonable chance of being successful. The problem is basically similar to that of ordinary commercial advertising aimed at substituting one purchase for another. If, however, the alteration in behaviour is more radical, the resistance will be correspondingly greater. Here we may recognise two degrees of difficulty. The first is to make many or all people do what is already done by some (e.g.: Dig for Victory). The fact that the alteration is already accepted as reasonable social behaviour makes it much easier for the majority to follow the minority. The second degree is to make many or all people do what is not done by anyone (e.g: Wear something white in the black-out; wear a transparent celluloid mask when you have a cold). In this case, the resistance is tremendous. The full force of the herd instinct has to be overcome. Not only do these novel modes of behaviour render the person conspicuous, but as a rule, they also brand him as one who plays for safety. One can predict that, in such cases, anything short of a monster campaign extending over many months is bound to fail; and even the success of such a campaign cannot be guaranteed. In such cases, legislation, besides being far more economical, is the only reasonably certain method.

Mass Observation points out that Ministry of Food propaganda has been remarkably successful. This success has been helped by the simplicity of the task it has been called upon to perform. Yet up to May 1941, it had cost £565,000 on Press and Poster Campaigns out of a total of £1,734,400 spent on all Government Press and Poster Campaigns (apart from National Savings Committee expenditure). This gives some measure of the enormous volume of advertising required to produce even relatively simple results.

ii. The skill, volume and length of the campaign . The only departments which have conducted campaigns of adequate volume and length have been the National Savings Committee and the Ministry of Food. The evidence suggests that they have been successful. Faced with the necessity for conducting “appeal” campaigns of inadequate volume and length, the only chance for the Ministry of Information has been to exercise great skill, originality, and enterprise. Perhaps the most important of the factors which have prevented this has been the conservatism of other Government departments. Skill, originality, and enterprise are certain to earn adverse criticism e.g. Games' A.T.S. poster. But they are also certain to arouse interest, which few Government campaigns can be said to have done in the past.

iii. The presence or absence of contradictory action and publicity . It is obvious that a circular asking householders to promise to economise in fuel is hardly likely to be most effective when a powerful paper salvage campaign is in progress. It is equally peculiar to ask people not to travel at Bank Holidays and at the same time run extra trains for them.

iv. The coincidence of the campaign and the preparations for dealing with its results . If a campaign is successful - e.g:- the earlier salvage campaigns - and the appropriate authorities have failed to make preparations for dealing with results, the public becomes dispirited, and any subsequent campaigns become correspondingly more difficult.

It would appear that unless a boldly original approach can be made, it is quite useless to conduct short campaigns aimed at altering behaviour. Even with bold originality such campaigns may often fail. If it is essential that a certain line of conduct should be followed, then legislative or administrative action is necessary. If it is merely desirable , propaganda can only do the job if its scale is enormous, or possibly if it is handled with consummate skill. Half-measures are a waste of energy, time and money.

B. Exhortations . Exhortatory campaigns aim at producing alterations in states of mind, e.g: making the public more confident in final victory - the “Mightier Yet” campaign; making people more Empire minded - the “Empire Crusade”. There is little evidence that these campaigns have had any appreciable effect. The public was confident in final victory before the “Mightier Yet” campaign, and it is still extremely confused on the subject of Dominion status. For many months, public opinion on the subject of prosecution of the war has been ahead of, rather than behind, Government action. Where there is complacency, it is completely untouched by advertising campaigns. Thus, in spite of unanimous press warnings on the subject of invasion a few months ago, the public remained unconvinced. It is safe to say that exhortation can safely be left to:-

i. The propaganda of events, at first hand, and at second hand via the press and radio.

ii. The Prime Minister.

Exhortation is not only of very limited value. It may easily become a positive danger. To be asked to work harder by the Government when one is held up at one's work on account of lack of materials, due, one believes, (perhaps quite wrongly) to managerial or Government inefficiency, breeds cynicism about those in authority. The reasonable procedure on such occasions is to explain exactly why the materials are held up. If one treats British people as intelligent, they behave surprisingly intelligently.

C. Explanations . It is in the field of explanation, interpretation and instruction, in war-time citizenship that the most useful scope, as well as the greatest successes, of Government propaganda are found. It is complained that the instructions are over-complicated. All legislation is complicated. Wartime legislation is even more complicated than most. It is the duty of propaganda to make as clear as is possible to as many people as possible:-

i. The reasons why such legislation is necessary.

ii. As many of the details as it is essential for the public to know.

Since many of the details (for example, addresses) are hard to remember and are constantly changing, arrangements must be made for these details to be available to all who may need them for reference.

This class of propaganda may be subdivided as follows:-

i. Explanation of new or existing legislation. e.g: Clothes rationing, food point rationing, amount to be paid under new income tax legislation.

ii. Explanation of the reasons for new or existing legislation, e.g: the simple economics of income tax and inflation; the situation behind clothes rationing.

iii. Explanation of the results of the war situation, e.g: explanation of shortages, factory hold-ups, transport difficulties.

iv. Interpretation of the war-situation itself, e.g: war commentaries on the radio, and at public meetings; the radio “food forum”; booklets such as “Bomber Command”.

v. Instructions to the public for dealing with contingencies before they arise, or after they have arisen, e.g: education about gas; instruction about invasion; post-blitz instructions.

All propaganda media are needed for such explanation and instruction. The spoken word, at meetings or on the radio, and the film, are of the greatest value. The printed word, whether in booklet or poster, and the picture have also a special place in recording details which will not be committed to memory. As all good teachers know, repetition up to a point just before boredom is produced is the best method of fixing information in the memory. In the course of this repetition, every device for maintaining interest must be utilised.

5. The rational planning of Home Front propaganda .

The question of carrying out specific propaganda campaigns or explanations may arise in two main ways:-

A. Another Government Department may make requests.

B. Suggestions may arise within this Ministry, in particular from the Home Intelligence Reports.

Whenever propaganda is suggested, the following questions should be carefully considered:-

1. Is it essential that results should be obtained?

If the answer is “Yes”, it follows that:-

a. Legislative or administrative action, preceded and followed by adequate explanation, is the only reasonably certain and efficient method.

b. If, for any reason, legislative action is refused, the possibility, and indeed the likelihood, of the failure of propaganda must be clearly pointed out. It is essential that the reasons why legislative action cannot be taken should be available to the propagandists. Unless the public can be told these reasons, they will regard the campaign as unnecessary and stupid.

c. Unless the propaganda has a chance of being effective (and for this it must either be of enormous volume or of striking originality) it is a waste of public money to undertake it.

If the answer is “No”, then:-

a. On the principle of not badgering the public, there is a good case for dropping the campaign altogether.

b. If anything at all is to be achieved, a rational explanatory and instructional approach, showing why the proposals are desirable, is more likely to do good than appeals and exhortations.

2. When it has been decided that a piece of propaganda must be carried out, a decision as to whether explanation or a persuasive emotional appeal is the better method has to be made. It has already been pointed out that emotional appeals are steadily cutting less ice. Their only chances are extreme originality, or enormous value. At the same time, inadequate explanation is equally useless. In either case, it is necessary to know what are the factors which stand in the way of the government's requests to the public - the so-called resistances.

3. The discovery of these “resistances” is the task of Home Intelligence. They are of two kinds:-

Home Intelligence can carry out two types of investigations to discover these resistances:-

The time occupied by these investigations, from date of enquiry to completed report, should be under 3 weeks.

4. Before propaganda is undertaken, it is essential to make sure that administrative preparations for dealing with its results are complete.

5. The results of the Campaign can be assessed in two possible ways:-

6. A Note on Mass Observation's Methods .

The theory underlying Mass Observation is that people express their feelings more accurately in casual conversation than they do in formal interview, and that, by multiplying the number of observations of spontaneous conversation and behaviour, one obtains a valuable picture of mass thought and conduct.

At times, Mass Observation adopts an interviewing technique. On these occasions, its samples are usually small (thus in special work specifically undertaken for “Change” No. 2, 972 interviews were made - 324 each in London, Worcester, and a group of Kentish villages), and its sampling technique is considered by experts to be open to some doubt. Conclusions drawn from its interviewing results should therefore be regarded as suggestive only.

It must be admitted that the brilliant interpretation, often apparently intuitive, which is made of Mass Observation's material, is at times extremely valuable, and always most interesting.

It is, however, open to doubt as to whether some of its fundamental premises are correct. The trouble about spontaneous overheard conversation is that it is so seldom about the subjects which one wishes to study. One hears domestic and local gossip, intimate health details, weather prophecies, and an occasional superficial comment on the news, but rarely if ever an opinion on M.O.I. posters. Furthermore, in conversation, the speaker is not necessarily saying what he thinks or feels. He may be hiding his feelings, or even unconsciously acting to produce an effect on his listener. Even assuming that accurate and objective records of spontaneous conversations could be made, comparative analyses are likely to prove of limited value, since in every conversation the situation is different, and one is in fact comparing incomparables.

As soon as one extends the method and engages strangers in casual conversation, one is leaving the field of pure observation and entering that of experiment. Every remark the observer makes is a potential source of bias. It is not denied that the free interview will yield much valuable information. Indeed it is the basis of legal cross-examination and clinical medicine. But even in expert hands, its results can only be applied with reasonable certainty to the individual examined. To suppose that 100 casual strangers are necessarily typical of the community is equivalent to supposing that 100 witnesses in the law courts or 100 patients in the consulting-room are typical.

If steps are taken to ensure that the free interviewers are experts and that the interviewees are a truly typical sample of the public as a whole, then the method of free interview may yield valuable representative results. To ensure that one's sample is truly representative, many precautions are needed. Completely objective interviewers are rare. To ensure, therefore, that they ask completely objective questions, a carefully set questionnaire is necessary. One has then arrived at the method of Social Survey.

Besides conversations, Mass Observation observes Gas-mask carrying habits, and other facets of behaviour, such as the number of people who appear to look at certain posters. These results are interesting, but to draw inferences from them (e.g: to infer about morale from gas-mask carrying) is dangerous.