Persuading the People

4 Persuading the people ANY OFFICIAL and semi-official words and images were devoted to sustaining civilian morale during the Second MWorld War. The attempt to explain the state of mind of the British people in this period might begin, therefore, with a consideration of the nature of these words and images, the thinking that lay behind them and what effect, if any, they had on the targeted audience. As discussed in Chapter 1, the importance of modern mass communications to the state of public morale in time of war was recognized by the Government of the day in 1935 in its initia- tive to create, at least in ‘shadow’ form, a Ministry of Information, charged with the task of maintaining morale. And we saw how, when war came, the duly established Ministry entirely failed to fulfil its brief, instead incurring public ridicule and earning for itself the unflattering sobriquet of ‘Ministry of Disinformation’.1 Over the course of the war, however, the Government learned from expe- rience. The simplistic notions about communications and popular morale with which it began the war, symbolized by the closure of cinemas and Chamberlain’s contemplated shutting down of the BBC, were gradually replaced by a more sophisticated understanding of the nature of the relationship between what people were told and how they felt and behaved. The Head of the Home Intelligence Division at the Ministry of Information, Stephen Taylor, believed that the factors determining morale could be divided into the ‘material’ and the ‘mental’. The material factors were: food, warmth, work, leisure, rest and sleep, a secure base, and safety and secu- rity for dependants. The mental factors were: belief that victory was possible, belief in equality of sacrifices, belief in the integrity and efficiency of the leadership, and belief that the war was neces- sary and just.2 It is the efforts the Government and its allies in the media made to promote the ‘mental factors’ that form the subject of this chapter. Robert Mackay - 9781526137425 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 09/28/2021 08:28:04PM via free access chap4.p65 141 16/09/02, 09:25 142 EXPLANATIONS Controlling the news At the Ministry of Information the brief to sustain the morale of the people was translated into a three-fold policy: firstly, the re- placement of free availability of news and information with a re- gime in which these would be controlled and managed; secondly, to provide reassurance of the certainty of victory and of official con- cern for the people’s needs; thirdly, to stimulate patriotic commit- ment to the war and the war effort. This policy in turn led to the delineation of four main activities: the censoring of the supply and transmission of news and information; the setting of guidelines for the output content of the BBC and the film industry; the monitor- ing of civilian morale; the production and commissioning of propaganda. Since what people heard and saw – and how they felt and behaved in response – is the main consideration here, the focus of this chapter will be on the last of these, the propaganda products of the Government and its proxies in the form of speeches, posters, advertisements, pamphlets, films and broadcasts. But first, some consideration, further to that given in Chapter 2, needs to be given to the news of the war as it reached the public via newspapers, radio bulletins and newsreels. It will be recalled that during the Phoney War the hapless news editors of the newspapers, the BBC and the newsreel companies were obliged to depend entirely on the official sources for their raw material on the war and that the resulting meagreness and sketchi- ness of what they were then able to transmit was a cause of public frustration and resentment. When the war finally started to catch fire, literally, in April 1940, the public demand for full and accurate coverage of what was happening on the fronts – in Norway, in the Low Countries and in France – was naturally much greater than for the ‘non-fronts’ of the Phoney War. However the demand re- mained unsatisfied. The pattern was set by the confused and mis- leading reporting of Anglo-French efforts to counter the German occupation of Norway. Mention of difficulties and setbacks was withheld and an impression thereby created that the campaign was going well – an impression furthered by some unjustifiably opti- mistic statements by the War Minister, Sir Samuel Hoare and the First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill. The subsequent decision to withdraw from Norway, leaving the Germans in Robert Mackay - 9781526137425 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 09/28/2021 08:28:04PM via free access chap4.p65 142 16/09/02, 09:25 PERSUADING THE PEOPLE 143 possession, took the public by surprise, therefore. And in relation to morale, the whole affair was damaging. After being so misled over Norway, people were naturally even more sceptical about what they were being told by the media when the action moved closer to Britain in May. In a Mass-Observation survey on the news, 56 per cent stated that they were tired of the BBC because it kept repeat- ing the same news and distrustful of it because it seemed no longer an independent voice. And although newspapers were considered the best source of information (the BBC the second best), 84 per cent of men and 89 per cent of women were critical of the press’s reliability.3 This situation was no fault of the media people, for their information sources had hardly improved. The Service de- partments were as parsimonious with the facts as before and what they did release was misleadingly sanguine about the way the war was going. On the other hand, even allowing for the restrictions on what they might show, the newsreel companies – apparently in their anxiety to win official approval – were putting together material in a way that fell far below the standards of objective reporting. Gaumont-British’s coverage of the Dunkirk operation, for example, was like a parody of blinkered, partisan triumphalism. The images of British withdrawal were unavoidable, of course, but the blaring patriotic music, accompanied by the sound of exploding shells, implied that breast beating was not in order. On the contrary, Dunkirk was an occasion for celebration, as the commentary made clear: ‘A miracle of fighting genius … most brilliant withdrawal in military history … the navy has earned our undying gratitude, the army is undefeated, its spirit unbroken … shots taken entirely at random all show laughing faces … this is the epic of Dunkirk.’4 Mass-Observation found much public criticism of this sort of reporting. Small wonder that this was a time when rumours were rife, one of which had it that at Dunkirk officers had fought to be evacuated before their men.5 Few would now deny that Dunkirk was a humiliating reverse for British arms and a disaster that brought Britain face to face with outright defeat in the war. The subsequent capitulation of France objectively made this a probability. And yet, this was not what the people were being told. Gaumont-British was not unique in its upbeat presentation of what was happening. Nowhere in official pronouncements or in the output of the media was there any Robert Mackay - 9781526137425 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 09/28/2021 08:28:04PM via free access chap4.p65 143 16/09/02, 09:25 144 EXPLANATIONS acknowledgement of the true seriousness of Britain’s position – of the parlous weakness of its armed forces and the vast power at the enemy’s command. For the reality was that the truth was too alarm- ing to be told. If the Government began the war with the intention of releasing to the public only such information about the war as could be presented in a positive light, its resolve was only rein- forced by the turn of events from May 1940. For at least twelve months after Dunkirk the people were shielded from the full story of what was happening, even on the home front. The explanation is straightforward enough: in its wisdom the Government decided that the people could not take the whole unvarnished truth.6 For all that Churchill in his Commons speeches and his broadcasts to the nation warned against assigning to the ‘deliverance’ of Dunkirk ‘the attributes of a victory’ and gravely asked the nation to prepare itself for the bigger test to come, an impression was given that the odds on a British triumph were at least even. Britain, he said, had on its own soil ‘incomparably more powerful military forces’ than ever before ‘in this or the last war’; and he declared himself confi- dent that ‘we shall prove ourselves once again able to defend our island home, to ride out the storm of war’. And on the prospect of bombing: ‘I do not at all underrate the severity of the ordeal which lies before us, but I believe our countrymen will show themselves capable of standing up to it.’ The news media took their cue from Churchill. The Evening Standard was ready, after the fall of France, to print a Low cartoon showing a lone British soldier standing on the cliffs of Dover, shaking a fist at the menace across the Channel, with the caption: ‘Very well, alone’; but if it knew of the huge dis- parity in British and German strength, it did not disclose it. Nor did the BBC offer more cautious appraisal; its thirty-four million lis- teners would have noticed little difference in its interpretation of events from that of Gaumont-British.

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