Abstract
The series of decisions by the Cabinet in January of 1948 described in Chapter 1 finalized the new anti-Communist direction of Britain’s foreign policy. Among the decisions made by the Cabinet was the authorization of an anti-Communist propaganda campaign which was to be supported by a small section of the Foreign Office named the Information Research Department (IRD). The IRD did not stay small for long, and by the early 1950s it had become the key actor in the organization, planning, and coordination of Britain’s propaganda efforts, the middle level of Britain’s propaganda policy.
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Notes
On the IRD and MI6 see Stephen Dorrill, MI6: Inside the Covert World of Her Majesty’s Secret Intelligence Service (New York: Free Press, 2000), pp. 70–80. The mistaken belief that the IRD was a re-creation of the PWE is widespread; see for example Taylor, British Propaganda in the Twentieth Century, p. 237.
On the operational side of the IRD, see James Vaughan, “Cloak Without Dagger,” Cold War History, vol. 4, no. 3 (April 2004) pp. 56–84; Aldrich, The Hidden Hand, and Dorril, MI6; on the IRD’s relationship with foreign governments and organizations, see Defty, British, American, and Anti-Communist Propaganda; on the IRD and the British left, see Wilford, The CIA, The British Left and the Cold War, pp. 48–77.
Frances Donaldson, The British Council: The First Fifty Years (London: Jonathan Cape, 1984) pp. 1–2.
Aldrich, The Hidden Hand pp. 160–80; Dorril, MI6, pp. 165–299; and Bennett Kovrig, Of Walls And Bridges: The United States and Eastern Europe (New York University Press, 1991), pp. 41–5.
Beatrice Heuser, “Covert Action in UK and US Concepts of Containment,” in Richard Aldrich (ed.), British Strategy and the Cold War 1945–51 (London: Routledge, 1992), pp. 64–80.
Christopher Hitchens, Why Orwell Matters (New York: Basic Books, 2002), p. 161.
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© 2009 Lowell H. Schwartz
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Schwartz, L.H. (2009). The Initial Years of the Information Research Department: The Organization and Strategy of Britain’s Political Warfare Effort. In: Political Warfare against the Kremlin. Global Conflict and Security since 1945. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230236936_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230236936_3
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