Attlee, Bevin, and Political Warfare: Labour's Secret Anti-Communist Campaign in Europe, 1948–51

Abstract

ABSTRACTClement Attlee's Labour Government oversaw the emergence of a vigorous anti-Communist discourse and the establishment of an anti-Soviet Western alliance in the early Cold War. In January 1948, the Prime Minister authorised the Information Research Department to launch a political warfare offensive designed to combat the spread of Communism in Europe. Two years later, against the wishes of his Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin, Attlee set up a high-level interdepartmental committee to oversee the subversion of the Soviet Union's position in Eastern Europe. These developments forced Whitehall to re-fight the bureaucratic battles of the Second World War over who actually controlled covert warfare. Bevin, like his predecessor Anthony Eden, fought unsuccessfully to maintain exclusive ownership of national security strategy in this area. Attlee ended his monopoly by making a rare but significant intervention in his Foreign Secretary's domain in the search for a new central machine to fight the Cold War.