Towards a Central Office of Information: Continuity and Change in British Government Information Policy, 1939–51

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When the second world war began, the British government established a Ministry of Information (MOI) to disseminate propaganda and sustain morale. Creating a central publicity organization in Whitehall which would be active in the domestic sphere was a new departure in public policy. Given the nature of the war anticipated, it was assumed that a policy-making organization of this nature was necessary and that it would play an important role in advancing the British cause.1 However, both the novelty of the MOI and its perceived incompetence turned contemporaries against it. Its blunders were legendary. In September 1939 the Ministry announced the Queen's return to London from a visit with her daughters in Scotland, then decided that this was a security risk and confiscated all newspapers reporting the information, only to release the story again several hours later. When Buckingham Palace was bombed during the Blitz, the Ministry suppressed the news lest morale suffer, only to be reprimanded by Winston Churchill, who was furious that such a great propaganda opportunity was being lost. The Ministry quickly became the object of political satire; humorist Norman Riley's 999 And All That, published in 1940, derived its title from the unfortunate fact that the bureau employed such a large number of people. Evelyn Waugh parodied it in his 1942 novel, Put Out More Flags, in which the Ministry was said to be staging films on otter-hunting in order 'to impress neutral countries with the pastoral beauty of English life'. A central feature of Tommy Handley's popular wartime radio programme It's That Man Again (ITMA) was a thinly disguised MOI called the Ministry of Aggravation. Even its own staff found it difficult to find anything positive to say about an information bureau which refused to divulge to the British press contents of the propaganda leaflets it was dropping over Germany lest this information prove of benefit to the enemy.2 The verdict of historians has essentially echoed this animosity. The MOI has