The Information Research Department of the British Foreign Office and the Korean War, 1950–53

Abstract

Material relating to the work after the second world war of the British Foreign Office's anti-communist propaganda section, the Information Research Department (IRD), has been trickling out into the public domain for two decades now. The picture currently presented in academic circles is one of a small and secretive outfit whose influence during its 30-year existence between 1948 and 1977 was out of all proportion to the knowledge of it.1 To what extent this estimation is coloured by the general tendency to overstate the effects of propaganda activities, especially those of a covert nature, is unclear; certainly, the fact that the IRD's files generally remain closed to researchers, despite the recent so-called Waldegrave initiative, does not help matters.2 Speculation aside, there is little doubt that throughout its life the IRD's tentacles spread increasingly far and wide. The postwar Attlee administration wasted little time in reacting to the establishment of the Cominform, Moscow's own international propaganda agency, in 1947. The cabinet's creation in January 1948 of 'a small section in the Foreign Office to collect information about Communist policy, tactics and propaganda and to provide material for our anti-Communist publicity through our Missions and information services abroad',3 signalled Britain's full entry into the impending battle