Information Research Department
Encyclopedia
The Information Research Department, founded in 1948 by Christopher Mayhew MP
, was a department of the British Foreign Office
set up to counter Russian
propaganda and infiltration, particularly amongst the western labour movement
.
Russia was fully aware of its existence as Guy Burgess
had been posted to IRD for a period of two months in 1948 before being sacked by Mayhew for being "dirty, drunk and idle."
, in 1947, Mayhew, at the time a junior minister, had proposed a "propaganda counter-offensive" and Attlee
summoned him to Chequers
to discuss it further. Mayhew ran the department with Sir Ivone Kirkpatrick
until 1950.
The original offices were in Carlton House Terrace
, before moving to Riverwalk House, Millbank
, London.
, later a diplomat. John Rennie
, who subsequently served as head of MI6
, was head of the department between 1953 and 1958. The last head of the IRD was Ray Whitney
, later a Conservative
member of parliament and junior minister.
IRD was staffed with many emigres, from Iron Curtain
countries. IRD officials were ordered not to tell even other FO staff where they worked. IRD flourished in the 1950s. The staff of the Soviet section alone rose from 20 to more than 60. Embassies had resident IRD men under cover who planted material on local journalists - and opinion formers. Other staffers included Robert Conquest
and his assistant Celia Kirwan, who was given Orwell's list
.
. However, it was also set out to "be of use to" British media and opinion formers. As well as supplying material to the BBC World Service
, secret lists were compiled of approved journalists and trade unionists to whom material was offered, if not always accepted.
British introductions to IRD were made discreetly. Journalists were told as little as possible about the Department. Material was sent to their homes under plain cover as correspondence marked "personal" carried no departmental identification or reference. They were told documents were "prepared" in the FCO primarily for members of the diplomatic service, but that it was allowed to give them on a personal basis to a few people outside the service who might find them of interest. As such, they were not statements of official policy and should not be attributed to HMG, nor should the titles themselves be quoted in discussion or in print. The papers should not be shown to anyone else and they were to be destroyed when no longer needed.
As part of its remit "to collect and summarize reliable information about Soviet and communist misdoings, to disseminate it to friendly journalists, politicians, and trade unionists, and to support, financially and otherwise, anticommunist publications", it subsidized the publication of books by Background Books, including three by Bertrand Russell
: Why Communism Must Fail, What Is Freedom?, and What Is Democracy? Russell was fully aware of the funding for his books, while others, such as the philosopher Bryan Magee
, who contributed The Democratic Revolution, were outraged when they found out.
Other publications were written by IRD staffers such as the scholar and author Robert Conquest
.
Likewise, the IRD funded the Burmese, Chinese, and Arabic editions of George Orwell
's Animal Farm
.
Possibly its most notorious "project" was the joint operation with the CIA to set up Encounter
magazine, edited by Stephen Spender
from 1953 to 1966. Spender resigned after it emerged that the Congress for Cultural Freedom, which published the magazine, was being covertly funded by the CIA.
, an early anti-Stalinist.
On May 2, 1949, Celia Kirwan, a close friend of Orwell's who worked for the IRD, received a list compiled by Orwell
containing thirty-eight names of journalists and writers who, in his opinion, "are crypto-communists, fellow-travellers or inclined that way and should not be trusted as propagandists."
The list, divided into three columns headed "Name" "Job" and "Remarks" included Charlie Chaplin
; J. B. Priestley
; the actor Michael Redgrave
; the historian E. H. Carr; the editor of the New Statesman
, Kingsley Martin
; the New York Timess Moscow correspondent Walter Duranty
; the former Trotskyist writer Isaac Deutscher
; Labour MP Tom Driberg and the novelist Naomi Mitchison
, as well as other lesser-known writers and journalists.
On the list was the name of Peter Smollett, who Orwell claimed "...gives strong impression of being some kind of Russian agent. Very slimy person." Smollett had been the head of the Soviet section in the British Ministry of Information, while in fact being a Soviet agent who had been recruited by Kim Philby
.
, David Owen
, in 1977.
Christopher Mayhew
Christopher Paget Mayhew, Baron Mayhew was a British politician who was a Labour Member of Parliament from 1945 to 1950 and from 1951 to 1974, when he left the Labour Party to become a Liberal...
, was a department of the British Foreign Office
Foreign and Commonwealth Office
The Foreign and Commonwealth Office, commonly called the Foreign Office or the FCO is a British government department responsible for promoting the interests of the United Kingdom overseas, created in 1968 by merging the Foreign Office and the Commonwealth Office.The head of the FCO is the...
set up to counter Russian
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
propaganda and infiltration, particularly amongst the western labour movement
Labour movement
The term labour movement or labor movement is a broad term for the development of a collective organization of working people, to campaign in their own interest for better treatment from their employers and governments, in particular through the implementation of specific laws governing labour...
.
Russia was fully aware of its existence as Guy Burgess
Guy Burgess
Guy Francis De Moncy Burgess was a British-born intelligence officer and double agent, who worked for the Soviet Union. He was part of the Cambridge Five spy ring that betrayed Western secrets to the Soviets before and during the Cold War...
had been posted to IRD for a period of two months in 1948 before being sacked by Mayhew for being "dirty, drunk and idle."
Origins
In a confidential paper to the foreign secretary, Ernest BevinErnest Bevin
Ernest Bevin was a British trade union leader and Labour politician. He served as general secretary of the powerful Transport and General Workers' Union from 1922 to 1945, as Minister of Labour in the war-time coalition government, and as Foreign Secretary in the post-war Labour Government.-Early...
, in 1947, Mayhew, at the time a junior minister, had proposed a "propaganda counter-offensive" and Attlee
Clement Attlee
Clement Richard Attlee, 1st Earl Attlee, KG, OM, CH, PC, FRS was a British Labour politician who served as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1945 to 1951, and as the Leader of the Labour Party from 1935 to 1955...
summoned him to Chequers
Chequers
Chequers, or Chequers Court, is a country house near Ellesborough, to the south of Aylesbury in Buckinghamshire, England, at the foot of the Chiltern Hills...
to discuss it further. Mayhew ran the department with Sir Ivone Kirkpatrick
Ivone Kirkpatrick
His Excellency Sir Ivone Augustine Kirkpatrick GCB, GCMG was a British diplomat who served most notably as the British High Commissioner in Germany after the war, and as the Permanent Under-Secretary at the Foreign Office -Summary:Kirkpatrick left school to join the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers...
until 1950.
The original offices were in Carlton House Terrace
Carlton House Terrace
Carlton House Terrace refers to a street in the St. James's district of the City of Westminster in London, England, and in particular to two terraces of white stucco-faced houses on the south side of the street overlooking St. James's Park. These terraces were built in 1827–32 to overall designs by...
, before moving to Riverwalk House, Millbank
Millbank
Millbank is an area of central London in the City of Westminster. Millbank is located by the River Thames, east of Pimlico and south of Westminster...
, London.
Staff
The first head of IRD was Ralph MurrayRalph Murray
Sir Francis Ralph Hay Murray KCMG, CB , was a British journalist, radio broadcaster and diplomat.-Background and education:...
, later a diplomat. John Rennie
John Rennie (spymaster)
Sir John Ogilvy Rennie, KCMG , was the 6th 'C' of the Secret Intelligence Service from 1968 to 1973.-Career:...
, who subsequently served as head of MI6
Secret Intelligence Service
The Secret Intelligence Service is responsible for supplying the British Government with foreign intelligence. Alongside the internal Security Service , the Government Communications Headquarters and the Defence Intelligence , it operates under the formal direction of the Joint Intelligence...
, was head of the department between 1953 and 1958. The last head of the IRD was Ray Whitney
Ray Whitney (UK politician)
Sir Raymond William Whitney, known as Ray Whitney, OBE, is a retired Conservative Party politician in the United Kingdom....
, later a Conservative
Conservative Party (UK)
The Conservative Party, formally the Conservative and Unionist Party, is a centre-right political party in the United Kingdom that adheres to the philosophies of conservatism and British unionism. It is the largest political party in the UK, and is currently the largest single party in the House...
member of parliament and junior minister.
IRD was staffed with many emigres, from Iron Curtain
Iron Curtain
The concept of the Iron Curtain symbolized the ideological fighting and physical boundary dividing Europe into two separate areas from the end of World War II in 1945 until the end of the Cold War in 1989...
countries. IRD officials were ordered not to tell even other FO staff where they worked. IRD flourished in the 1950s. The staff of the Soviet section alone rose from 20 to more than 60. Embassies had resident IRD men under cover who planted material on local journalists - and opinion formers. Other staffers included Robert Conquest
Robert Conquest
George Robert Ackworth Conquest CMG is a British historian who became a well-known writer and researcher on the Soviet Union with the publication in 1968 of The Great Terror, an account of Stalin's purges of the 1930s...
and his assistant Celia Kirwan, who was given Orwell's list
Orwell's list
Orwell's list, prepared in 1949 by the English author George Orwell, shortly before he died, comprises names of notable writers and other individuals he considered to be unsuitable as possible writers for the Information Research Department's anti-communist propaganda activities.-Background:The...
.
Propaganda
IRD's main targets were in the Third WorldThird World
The term Third World arose during the Cold War to define countries that remained non-aligned with either capitalism and NATO , or communism and the Soviet Union...
. However, it was also set out to "be of use to" British media and opinion formers. As well as supplying material to the BBC World Service
BBC World Service
The BBC World Service is the world's largest international broadcaster, broadcasting in 27 languages to many parts of the world via analogue and digital shortwave, internet streaming and podcasting, satellite, FM and MW relays...
, secret lists were compiled of approved journalists and trade unionists to whom material was offered, if not always accepted.
British introductions to IRD were made discreetly. Journalists were told as little as possible about the Department. Material was sent to their homes under plain cover as correspondence marked "personal" carried no departmental identification or reference. They were told documents were "prepared" in the FCO primarily for members of the diplomatic service, but that it was allowed to give them on a personal basis to a few people outside the service who might find them of interest. As such, they were not statements of official policy and should not be attributed to HMG, nor should the titles themselves be quoted in discussion or in print. The papers should not be shown to anyone else and they were to be destroyed when no longer needed.
As part of its remit "to collect and summarize reliable information about Soviet and communist misdoings, to disseminate it to friendly journalists, politicians, and trade unionists, and to support, financially and otherwise, anticommunist publications", it subsidized the publication of books by Background Books, including three by Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, OM, FRS was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, and social critic. At various points in his life he considered himself a liberal, a socialist, and a pacifist, but he also admitted that he had never been any of these things...
: Why Communism Must Fail, What Is Freedom?, and What Is Democracy? Russell was fully aware of the funding for his books, while others, such as the philosopher Bryan Magee
Bryan Magee
Bryan Edgar Magee is a noted British broadcasting personality, politician, poet, and author, best known as a popularizer of philosophy.-Early life:...
, who contributed The Democratic Revolution, were outraged when they found out.
Other publications were written by IRD staffers such as the scholar and author Robert Conquest
Robert Conquest
George Robert Ackworth Conquest CMG is a British historian who became a well-known writer and researcher on the Soviet Union with the publication in 1968 of The Great Terror, an account of Stalin's purges of the 1930s...
.
Likewise, the IRD funded the Burmese, Chinese, and Arabic editions of George Orwell
George Orwell
Eric Arthur Blair , better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English author and journalist...
's Animal Farm
Animal Farm
Animal Farm is an allegorical novella by George Orwell published in England on 17 August 1945. According to Orwell, the book reflects events leading up to and during the Stalin era before World War II...
.
Possibly its most notorious "project" was the joint operation with the CIA to set up Encounter
Encounter (magazine)
Encounter was a literary magazine, founded in 1953 by poet Stephen Spender and early neoconservative author Irving Kristol. The magazine ceased publication in 1991...
magazine, edited by Stephen Spender
Stephen Spender
Sir Stephen Harold Spender CBE was an English poet, novelist and essayist who concentrated on themes of social injustice and the class struggle in his work...
from 1953 to 1966. Spender resigned after it emerged that the Congress for Cultural Freedom, which published the magazine, was being covertly funded by the CIA.
Controversy
The ethical objection raised by IRD's critics was that the public did not know the source of the information and could therefore not make allowances for the possible bias. It differed thus from straightforward propaganda from the British point of view.Orwell's list
Among the many lists of journalists and trade unionists, etc., kept by the department, one that came to light to much polemic more than fifty years after it was compiled was a list drawn up by novelist George OrwellGeorge Orwell
Eric Arthur Blair , better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English author and journalist...
, an early anti-Stalinist.
On May 2, 1949, Celia Kirwan, a close friend of Orwell's who worked for the IRD, received a list compiled by Orwell
Orwell's list
Orwell's list, prepared in 1949 by the English author George Orwell, shortly before he died, comprises names of notable writers and other individuals he considered to be unsuitable as possible writers for the Information Research Department's anti-communist propaganda activities.-Background:The...
containing thirty-eight names of journalists and writers who, in his opinion, "are crypto-communists, fellow-travellers or inclined that way and should not be trusted as propagandists."
The list, divided into three columns headed "Name" "Job" and "Remarks" included Charlie Chaplin
Charlie Chaplin
Sir Charles Spencer "Charlie" Chaplin, KBE was an English comic actor, film director and composer best known for his work during the silent film era. He became the most famous film star in the world before the end of World War I...
; J. B. Priestley
J. B. Priestley
John Boynton Priestley, OM , known as J. B. Priestley, was an English novelist, playwright and broadcaster. He published 26 novels, notably The Good Companions , as well as numerous dramas such as An Inspector Calls...
; the actor Michael Redgrave
Michael Redgrave
Sir Michael Scudamore Redgrave, CBE was an English stage and film actor, director, manager and author.-Youth and education:...
; the historian E. H. Carr; the editor of the New Statesman
New Statesman
New Statesman is a British centre-left political and cultural magazine published weekly in London. Founded in 1913, and connected with leading members of the Fabian Society, the magazine reached a circulation peak in the late 1960s....
, Kingsley Martin
Kingsley Martin
Basil Kingsley Martin was a British journalist who edited the left-leaning political magazine the New Statesman from 1930 to 1960....
; the New York Timess Moscow correspondent Walter Duranty
Walter Duranty
Walter Duranty was a Liverpool-born British journalist who served as the Moscow bureau chief of the New York Times from 1922 through 1936. Duranty won a Pulitzer Prize in 1932 for a set of stories written in 1931 on the Soviet Union...
; the former Trotskyist writer Isaac Deutscher
Isaac Deutscher
Isaac Deutscher was a Polish-born Jewish Marxist writer, journalist and political activist who moved to the United Kingdom at the outbreak of World War II. He is best known as a biographer of Leon Trotsky and Joseph Stalin and as a commentator on Soviet affairs...
; Labour MP Tom Driberg and the novelist Naomi Mitchison
Naomi Mitchison
Naomi May Margaret Mitchison, CBE was a Scottish novelist and poet. She was appointed CBE in 1981; she was also entitled to call herself Lady Mitchison, CBE since 5 October 1964 .- Childhood and family background :Naomi Margaret Haldane was...
, as well as other lesser-known writers and journalists.
On the list was the name of Peter Smollett, who Orwell claimed "...gives strong impression of being some kind of Russian agent. Very slimy person." Smollett had been the head of the Soviet section in the British Ministry of Information, while in fact being a Soviet agent who had been recruited by Kim Philby
Kim Philby
Harold Adrian Russell "Kim" Philby was a high-ranking member of British intelligence who worked as a spy for and later defected to the Soviet Union...
.
Closure
The department was closed down by then Foreign SecretarySecretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs
The Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, commonly referred to as the Foreign Secretary, is a senior member of Her Majesty's Government heading the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and regarded as one of the Great Offices of State...
, David Owen
David Owen
David Anthony Llewellyn Owen, Baron Owen CH PC FRCP is a British politician.Owen served as British Foreign Secretary from 1977 to 1979, the youngest person in over forty years to hold the post; he co-authored the failed Vance-Owen and Owen-Stoltenberg peace plans offered during the Bosnian War...
, in 1977.
External links
- Ups and downs of a maverick, book review from The SpectatorThe SpectatorThe Spectator is a weekly British magazine first published on 6 July 1828. It is currently owned by David and Frederick Barclay, who also owns The Daily Telegraph. Its principal subject areas are politics and culture...
- The Orwell Files, an essay by Andrew N. Rubin, excerpted from Alif: The Journal of Comparative Poetics