PSYCHOLOGICAL OPERATIONS: Lecture given by Sir Leslie Glass to the National Defence College on 14 March 1973

Sir Leslie Charles Glass was an Army officer in the Psychological Warfare Division in South East Asia in the Second World War, Director-General of Information in Cyprus during the Emergency and later Chairman of the Counter Subversion Committee. In this lecture, given at the National Defence College in March 1973, he discusses the meaning of psychological operations, gives a brief history of these activities and his thoughts for the future at a time when the Information Research Department has been severely cut back, the Northern Ireland troubles are approaching their height, and the United Kingdom has joined the European Economic Area. The end of the Cold War is still not in sight and the Falkland Islands war is not foreseen. (Transcription note: Several spelling errors in the original text have been corrected here)

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Sir Leslie Charles Glass, © National Portrait Gallery, London

PSYCHOLOGICAL OPERATIONS: Lecture given by Sir Leslie Glass to the National Defence College on 14 March 1973 (to an audience cleared for Top Secret)

The greatest obstacle to useful and rational discussion of ‘Psychological Operations’ is the extreme difficulty of defining what this term means.

The official definition adopted at present throughout NATO and British Services is ‘planned psychological activities in peace and war directed towards the enemy, friendly and neutral audiences, in order to create attitudes and behaviours favourable to the achievement of political and military objectives’. This definition, sometimes also described as Strategic Psyops, seems to me to cover the whole possible British propaganda effort and to be so broad as to be almost meaningless, and anyway what activity cannot, from some angle, have a ‘psychological’ element? Mr Reddaway has talked to you just now on propaganda generally.

A more limited and erroneous misconception about ‘psychological operations’ often held by many is that this is synonymous with ‘psychological warfare’, and that ‘psychological warfare’ is initially synonymous with disavowable black propaganda.

The third concept of ‘psychological operations’ is coordinated British propaganda efforts linked to specific active military operations, combining all branches of British information work with a special ‘political warfare’ direction which has got planned objectives, eg destroying enemy morale, and which relies heavily on swift and selective use of accurate secret intelligence.

A fourth very much more limited but at least realistic definition of psychological operations is ‘tactical propaganda activities carried out by military information units in support of military operations in the field.’ This is at least something which can be practicably discussed and organised for.

Part of the confusion has, I think, arisen from the fact that there has not been sufficient differentiation between the different types of situation in which special propaganda in support of the military effort is called for. These cover a very wide range.

The first situation is, of course, total war. Many people’s ideas of the range and power of propaganda in psychological warfare date from rather vague memories of what we did in World War II. I will say a bit about this in a minute, but we are not now engaged in total war and there does not seem immediate likelihood of it. The British Parliament and people when fighting for their lives may be prepared to spend vast sums of money and agree to officially controlled information services both within and without Britain, and the use of all sorts of disreputable tricks, which a parliamentary democracy would not countenance in peace time.

Then you get a ‘cold war’ situation in which there are no open military hostilities but in which one ideological bloc is trying, through all means of propaganda, to subvert and destroy the morale of the other.

Then there is the undeclared local war with a variety of situations, such as the Vietnam war; the Korean war; the Suez operation; and the Malaysian/Indonesian confrontation.

Next one gets to situations much more relevant to the present series of talks in the NDC, eg support of the civil authority against armed threat to authority, ranging from subversion and terrorism to insurgency and guerrilla warfare. This category has in the past mainly covered our colonial territories, and included eg the British colonial governments’ battles against Chinese communists in Malaya, the Mau-mau in Kenya, the EOKA in Cyprus and the Popular Liberation Front in Aden.

In all these emergencies special propaganda machineries were built up in support of our political and military policy, but the plain facts of the case are that there are now very few British colonial territories left. Apart from Rhodesia (which having been independent for 45 years is only by a legal myth a colonial territory) and Hong Kong which is a special case, there are less than a million people in the world under British direct colonial rule, and in territories where HMG has direct responsibility for combatting insurgency. So we are down, in this particular situation, to relatively very small problems like the support of minor military forces in the insignificant island of Anguilla (population 6,000). Occasionally we have minor military operations to support, such as our operations in Dhofar, or we might have to continue to provide some special military information support for the military in Hong Kong and Gibraltar. There are a number of threatening situations in the Caribbean where Black Power and other subversion may overthrow governments, but these islands are either independent or Associated States for which we retain unsatisfactory responsibility for foreign affairs and defence, but for which we have very unsure grounds for intervening on grounds of internal security, and where HMG would be most unwilling to commit troops.

So the first thing I ask you to do as of today March 1973 is to stop thinking too much about past situations or considering elaborate preparations for emergencies in categories which no longer exist. I repeat, there is practically nowhere of any size outside the British Isles where HMG has direct responsibility for combatting insurgency.

What we are left with then is, first, the necessity to maintain a planning capacity to produce quickly a political warfare and psychological warfare machine in the case of total war (a responsibility we share with NATO generally). I am bound to say that as a completely unexpert civilian I cannot believe that another war would last long enough to make a long drawn-out propaganda campaign practicable, but still we should have some plans in hand.

Then we need a continuing but discreet machinery for dealing with the nucleus of cold war propaganda in a situation of détente.

We need to have a smaller capability for any future local ‘undeclared’ wars in the unlikely event that we might get involved.

Then we have to have a minimal machinery for dealing with possible emergencies in our few remaining little colonies.

Then we are left with helping independent foreign government who are broadly on our side to combat subversion and insurgency conducted by people likely to introduce governments which would be broadly against us.

Lastly, we are brought right back to our home territory, Northern Ireland and England, Scotland and Wales. I need hardly say that the difference between fighting the Nazis with the British people behind the Government in a war for survival, and combatting the IRA or native extremist or subversive elements in our own country is as different as chalk from cheese. The latter is a highly delicate matter of domestic politics, in which a serious false step might be fatal to the elected government, and in which it is essential to distinguish between ordinary militancy and bloody-mindedness, and real subversion by Communists, Fascists, Trotskyists or Anarchists. In all these matters, respect for the rights of the individual and the rule of law is something the government must itself observe and be seen to observe, if it is to expect the same of its own citizens.

Although I have urged you to forget the past, what we did in World War II has so much coloured thinking on ‘psychological warfare’ ever since that some description of the sort of things we did then, and might aim to do again if a conventional major war crops us, may be of interest.

In World War II, particularly in the European theatre, our propaganda had 3 main agencies. The first was the BBC itself which even in wartime retained its status as an independent machine bound to follow the news as truthfully as possible, and because it told the truth in bad times it continued to be believed in good times. Giving powerful help and advice to the BBC from the psychological warfare angle was a secret department which was also concerned with other forms of propaganda including leaflet-dropping – the Political Warfare Executive of which leading lights were Bruce Lockhart and Dick Crossman. The PWE dealt with what came to be known as ‘white propaganda’, that is to say, propaganda cleverly designed to damage enemy morale and help our own objectives, but basically truthful propaganda of which the origin was pretty obviously British and for which the British Government was prepared to accept responsibility. One of the major operations of the PWE was the preparation of Luftpost, the news sheet dropped on the Germans by the RAF.

There also grew up, under Sefton Delmer of the Daily Express, a psychological Special Operations department with secret headquarters at Woburn Abbey which conducted what came to be known as ‘black’ propaganda. This organisation specialised in propaganda which pretended to come from sources other than British, which the British Government could disavow as not their responsibility and in which no holds were barred. In the same sort of field, but separate, was the Deception organisation of the Armed Forces, of which the most famous operation was “The Man Who Never Was”, described pretty accurately in Duff Cooper’s novel of that name. [Ed. Duff Cooper did write a book, as fiction, on Operation Mincemeat, however, Glass is certainly referring here to Ewen Montagu’s factual account]. Deception was a fascinating activity which deserves a talk on its own. I remember Peter Fleming steaming about India making preparations for the arrival of an imaginary armoured division which of course did not exist.

Sefton Delmer’s outfit concentrated mainly on ‘black’ radio stations which pretended to speak from Europe itself and to be run by our enemies. The most famous of these were Soldatensender Calais which pretended to be a German Forces broadcasting station; and the Atlantiksender West (sic) which did the same for the German Navy and particularly aimed a subtle attack at the morale of U-boat crews. Later in the war Woburn Abbey also ran an Italian ‘black’ station called Radio Livorno against the Italian Navy, and Radio of the Italian Republic which aimed to split the Italians from the Germans; and even a station called Christ the King which ‘implied’ that it was unattributably supported by the Vatican against the whole philosophy of Nazism. And finally, a left wing ‘worker’ radio broadcasting in particular instructions to foreign workers in German factories on how to commit almost undetectable sabotage.

As for printed literature the Special Operations main outlet was Nachrichten für die Truppe. This was a troops newssheet dropped night after night by the million inside Germany and occupied territories. In the course of the war some 160 million copies were dropped. It did not pretend to be produced by the Germans but it was not officially British propaganda. It contained some false information and implied more, but it might perhaps come into the third category of propaganda which is not quite black or white and which might be termed ‘grey’. But there was also a steady output of really ‘black’ literature distributed by agents: leaflets, sabotage instructions, forged ration cards, forged currency etc etc.

The story of these black operations is told by Sefton Delmer in his book ‘Black Boomerang’. It is a fascinating story of ‘total war’ by propaganda and some of the operations, for example aimed at widows of German soldiers killed in action, leave a nasty taste. But there was no doubt that Sefton Delmer was a brilliant exponent of black propaganda, and the rules that he laid down I believe are of fundamental importance in preparing any propaganda to address to an enemy.

Some of his most important rules were these. Firstly the propagandist must affect to treat his audience (even though they are his enemies) as honest and patriotic people doing their best for what seems to have good motives. Only then will the audience be receptive to further suggestions that they are being let down by their leaders and exploited by a privileged caste or party. Secondly, propaganda must be written and/or delivered by nationals of the country addressed, and if possible written from scratch not translated from English originals. The propagandist must have real ‘empathy’ for his target audience. Sefton Delmer was born and educated in Germany and completely bi-lingual. It is essential to speak to foreign countries and troops in their own idiom. One slight mistake can make a leaflet ridiculous.

I myself was a Lt Col in the Psychological Warfare Division of SE Asia Command during the last war and 3 incidents have stuck in my memory. The first was when a leaflet prepared by my section aimed at turning Burmese national and historic pride against the Japanese, and based on the story of their ancient hero General Bandula, was returned by the RAF to our office with a complaint that the RAF could not understand what it was all about and some of their commanders hardly felt like risking their pilots’ lives to drop it. It was our fault for not explaining more carefully to the people who were risking their lives what it was about. When I wrote a minute to Air Marshal Sir Guy Garrod explaining the legend of General Bandula and the details of how the leaflets had taken 6 weeks to prepare and pass through the hands of 12 different Burmese in order to make quite sure that it would hit a genuine chord in a Burmese peasant’s heart, the Air Marshal replied at once that he was greatly interested to see what we were getting at and promised the full support of his pilots. Need for close liaison between leaflet producers and the RAF is also essential in the technical field. The size of leaflets, their weight and packaging, the techniques of dropping (ie the development of special container ‘bombs’ which blew up at low level to make sure a particular area was really covered by leaflets); all this required experts in actual dropping.

The second incident was when we were sent from London a team of highly qualified Fleet Street writers and photographers who had previously produced Picture Post, who tried to give help on our Burmese aerial newspaper Lay Nat tha (‘Spirit of the Air’) and improve its paper and layout and its illustrations. I fought a long but successful battle to keep the paper as cheap and nasty as most Burmese newsprint usually was, to keep the typeface rather bare and scruffy and, above all, to make sure that cartoons and illustration were done by Burmese artists and not London artists.

And I remember one incident from the other side. The Japanese propagandists dropped on our troops a well-produced leaflet on the classic theme of ‘worry about soldiers’ families at home’ and ‘home-sickness’. To a Japanese propagandist the wording must have seemed rather touching but because it was just wrong it actually made our troops laugh and cheered them up. The picture was of a cottage in the country and the wording went something like this – ‘The birds are singing, the spring flowers are coming up. Someone in the cottage is singing ‘Home Sweet Home’. Can it be the wife?’ One of our series of ‘homesick’ leaflets for Japanese troops merely showed a beautiful picture of the flower then in season in Japan drawn by a Japanese artist, with one line of some Japanese sentimental poem about that season in Japan.

I have gone at perhaps too great length into World War II propaganda because so many people who now talk about psychological warfare are somehow harking back to the massive and ingenious operations undertaken in a total war.

To a lot of people psychological operations or psychological warfare continues to imply black or at least grey propaganda, and it is somehow thought that in situations which are militarily unsuccessful a rabbit can be pulled out of a hat by secret propaganda operations. It was the same psychology based on the World War II mythology of resistance movements and partisans that led the USA into thinking they could find a cheap secret way of throwing out Castro and led to the Bay of Pigs.

The next situation I referred to in my opening remarks was the cold war situation – propaganda in peacetime. Many aspects of this have been covered by Norman Reddaway in the talk which he has just given. The term ‘cold war’ is now greatly disliked by many liberals and progressives in the western world and therefore a good deal of our propaganda in this connection has to be ‘unattributable’ at least and, on occasions, ‘disavowable’. This may explain why people think we are not doing much in this field. Closely connected with the overall ‘cold war’ operations is assistance in the propaganda field to relatively friendly independent governments to help them combat subversion engineered form the outside in order to bring to power governments hostile to us. Clearly this is a very delicate operation and the most we can do is to see that such governments are made discreetly and fully aware of the organisation and methods and personnel of outfits working against them. This is what we in fact try to do. There is a considerable amount of exchange of intelligence transmitted to appropriate services and the Information Research Department of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office produces regular printed material, not presented as official British material, but nevertheless factual and accurate, to a wide range of governments all over the world and to friendly contacts in administration, the academic world, and the mass media in many foreign countries. For example such papers might cover the personnel and methods of Communist Front organisations, the misuse of Friendship Societies, Russian and Chinese subversive activities in the Third World. This material is at least ‘unattributable’.

An indispensable and increasingly valuable source for British information departments dealing with hostile propaganda for overseas (which may in certain situations come from Asian, African and European sources as well as from the Communist bloc) is the daily report produced by the BBC world broadcast monitoring service at Caversham. IRD also study a wide range of foreign newspapers and periodicals. [SENTENCE REDACTED]

As for the local undeclared wars, these have varied in size and importance and in duration. In the Vietnam war the United States and the South Vietnamese government have felt obliged to deploy practically the whole range of ‘psychological operations’ which would be used in a major war. In the Suez operations our ‘psyops’ effort was rather hastily scuffled together in support of military operations, but the operations came to an end before major and effective machinery could be organised. Once again one of the lessons of the Suez operation is that it is not possible to do good propaganda without the wholehearted support of a number of nationals of the target country who have real empathy for the people they are addressing. I remember during the Suez operation seeing with melancholy a number of leaflets dropped by our planes on the Egyptians in which Egyptian soldiers were depicted as ugly and ridiculous rather than noble, handsome and misled. In the Suez operations much reliance was placed on the Sharq al Adna (Voice of the Arabs) radio station, an ostensibly commercial radio station based on Cyprus, largely paid for by British disavowable funds, but for whose output the British Government was not officially responsible. The Arab staff who were the backbone of this successful little station did not support or believe in the Anglo-French efforts to seize the Suez canal, and many of them had little quarrel with Nasser’s government and had relatives at risk in the UAR and other Arab countries. Their British director had great difficulty in getting them to go on the air at all with straight news bulletins and bomb warnings. When he was removed for his lack of success the whole Arab staff, who were very fond of him, went on strike and that was the end of Sharq al Adna.

A much more successful operation was in support of British and Malaysian forces in the Malaysian/Indonesian confrontation. Norman Reddaway was himself in charge of these operations based on Singapore itself. Here the essence of the organisation was having a senior ‘Political Information Officer’ working very closely with the military forces [REMAINDER OF SENTENCE REDACTED]. On the other hand he had access to and close cooperation with all the possible channels through which information could be put out. I believe that as a result of this particular operation it would not be too difficult to mount a similar one in a similar situation. In such situations political direction in the field would come from the senior Political Officer on the spot – Ambassador, High Commissioner, or Political Adviser to the C in C.

But where the British have been most involved since the war in big problems of propaganda has been in the category of support of the civil authority against armed threat in our colonial territories, eg counter insurgency in Malaya, Kenya, Cyprus and Aden. In all these cases the political direction came from the Governor. Under Field Marshal Sir Gerald Templer an elaborate and pretty successful ‘psyops’ machinery was assembled in Malaya under a civilian director, Alec Peterson, and with civilian information services, police and military working in close cooperation. The successes here were largely based on the fact that in speaking to Malays there were plenty of Malays who were convinced supporters of the government against the Chinese communists, and there were also a reasonable number of Chinese in the same category. It was soon realised in the Malay emergency that the official government information services, although essential and effective, were primarily engaged in open projection of government actions and policies, while the Services Public Relations officers were primarily concerned with straight projection, orthodox public relations and collection of material for the Home Front, to raise morale and help recruiting. There was therefore need for a separate propaganda effort to counter hostile propaganda and destroy enemy morale. This psychological section, staffed by Chinese, studied captured documents and all intelligence available, and then prepared leaflets or addresses for loud hailers, which would damage the Chinese guerrillas’ morale, lead them into traps, or persuade them to surrender. In Malaya this was a fairly clear cut enemy in more or less identifiable areas.

I myself held the post of Director General of Information under Field Marshal Sir John Harding during the EOKA troubles in Cyprus, and I believe then we got the machinery about right. I had general supervision over all the government Information Services including broadcasting and the printed word, many aspects of army public relations, and I and my senior officers had access to secret intelligence, and I myself was in the small close inner circle of the Governor’s advisers and knew all the angles of our policy and what we were aiming to do. I was also Chairman of a small Information Committee which contained representatives of all Information Services, Police, Military and Intelligence.

The sort of machinery assembled could again be assembled quite quickly; our biggest trouble was that we simply did not have enough Cypriots convincedly on our side willing to risk their lives and those of their families against terrorism.

My considered opinion at the end of it all was the most important and successful information activity carried out by us in Cyprus was the time spent in briefing various correspondents from all over the world so that a fair picture of what we were doing and trying to do was reflected in the world press and radio.

We had some success in white propaganda, that is through straight radio broadcasting and leaflets, but when it came to what most soldiers were looking for, which was successful black propaganda, I can only confess failure. Cyprus was a small island in which everybody knew what everybody was doing. It was impossible to assemble the sort of team of thoroughly reliable Cypriots working to give essentially false information, and unless absolute secrecy was possible the lives of any Cypriots involved and the lives of their families were at very great risk indeed. We managed a few operations using the Cypriot wives of British officials, and I will give you one example. As you know Akel, the Communist Party of Cyprus has a very big following. We managed after weeks of careful work to reproduce exactly an Akel leaflet correct in paper, typescript, language etc, attacking the British, praising Communism, but containing one new sentence “Comrades must remember that General Grivas is a fascist responsible for the execution of many of our comrades in Greece and he and his followers should be given no help.” I do not know what success this leaflet had but I mention it as an example of the sort of judo that black propaganda has to use.

This reminds me of an extremely effective operation in India during World War II. In collaboration with the Government of India Counter Propaganda Department I got a young Burmese revolutionary communist who had escaped from occupied Burma to write a short booklet on his experience under the Japanese. The English was poor, the book was printed by the most extreme anti-British press and publishers, it attacked the British and the British premise, but it was virulent against the Japanese. Certain Army quarters so much disliked some of the anti-British parts of the book that they recommended that it should be banned. I and my colleague from the Government of India kept our mouths shut and raised no objection to the banning. This in itself sent up the circulation of the book by many thousands and this little book was generally regarded after the war as one of the most successful bits of anti-Japanese propaganda ever done in India.

I have said already I think that one of the most important tasks in a situation of this sort is to help the British and foreign world press on the right lines. Perhaps I can give you one small example of news management. I was summoned urgently by the Deputy Governor of Cyprus one morning and told that a bomb had been found under the Field Marshal’s bed which meant that the EOKA had penetrated very closely the guarded perimeter of the Governor’s compound. The bomb had been carried into the garden where in the nick of time it exploded harmlessly. The authorities’ first instinct was to hush up this rather humiliating incident, but when I ascertained that at least 20 different people knew about it and that the explosion must have been widely heard, I advised Sir John Harding that the only thing to do was to go into the attack, call an immediate conference of all the press (there must have been 60 or 70 foreign correspondents in Cyprus at the time), tell them exactly what happened, and put a brave face on it. He did it marvellously, with the result that most world headlines started off with saying “Governor says he never slept better” with a smaller headline “Bomb under bed”.

When the Commandant of the National Defence College asked me to talk on psychological operations he mentioned jamming as one subject he would like me to touch on. We had first hand experience of this in Cyprus, where one of our problems was that the pro-Greek Cypriots of Cyprus were daily inflamed by programmes on Enosis from Athens. Sir John Harding ordered jamming and the operation was carried out. Our experience was that this was a highly technical and expensive operation, that a costly jammer could blot out hostile broadcasts from overseas in urban areas but that it was never wholly effective and there were always areas, particularly rural areas, where the broadcasts could be heard. A lot of jamming still goes on in the world. The Soviet Union has attempted to jam all western broadcasts since 1949 (except in the thaw period form 1963-8); the Bulgarians have never stopped; China has been jamming since 1967, and UAR since 1970. So they must think all the expense and trouble worthwhile. But western countries have not considered it worth doing in recent years. Unless of course hostile broadcasts are very subtle and dangerous it is perhaps no great harm to let people listen to them in any case. There is a considerable amount of technical expertise on the topic of jamming on confidential record and I am sure that if the Commandant wanted, some expert could give a short talk at another time.

A more recent example of the use of propaganda in support of military operations is, of course, Aden from 1963-7. I must first emphasise that the nearer any colony is to independence and the more power the local indigenous leaders have under the constitution the more difficult it is from the British to control the local propaganda. In Cyprus I was working for a Governor and Commander in Chief who had total command. In Aden the Governor had a number of indigenous political leaders and in the Federation covering the hinterland he had to deal with the local Arab Federal Government. It was only towards the end that direct rule was introduced. Again the key to our propaganda operations was the seconding to the Colonial Governor of an expert from the FCO. He was attached to the Governor as Information Adviser and he had to use his influence in directing and coordinating Aden radio and television and the Government Information Services, including handling of foreign press from the background. As things got worse his influence more and more dominated the various channels. He had not only direct contact with the Governor but with the military Commander in Chief and access to all intelligence. Under the direction of the Governor, and with the Commander in Chief’s agreement, this was transmitted also through him to the Army Public Relations staff.

What possible military psyops problems have we got left outside NATO? As far as colonial territory is concerned I suppose we might have the problem of British Honduras in the case of invasion by Guatemala; or we might be involved in a Black Power uprising in Antigua. We also have some small bodies of troops in Hong Kong and Gibraltar which might need some psyops support. We have some troops still in Singapore, which is independent. And, as I have said, there are possibilities of being involved in a minor way in virtually independent territories such as Dhofar.

We learned a bit from the fiasco of Anguilla. Here was a little island hardly worth bothering about, but the lesson was that if we did bother and put in troops we must accompany them by some machinery for reaching the local population and combatting subversive propaganda and that orthodox Services Public Relations were not enough. And we have learned from Dhofar that small military ‘tactical psyops’ units can effectively help combat troops, eg by persuading the enemy troops to desert or surrender.

The machinery now worked out in Whitehall to meet such possible situations is as follows:

a) There is a small psyops staff in the Ministry of Defence (which eg prepares contingency plans for new areas where British troops might have to intervene), supported by a Psyops Training Section in Old Sarum;

b) A working group of the Ancillary Measures Sub Committee of the Cabinet Defence & Overseas Policy Committee, and containing FCO, Intelligence and MOD representatives, meets (under the Chairmanship of the Under Secretary supervising all FCO Information Departments) every year to review the state of preparations, and ad hoc to meet special situations;

c) Information Research Department of the FCO have appointed a Liaison Officer to deal day to day with the MOD Psyops Sections;

d) Although this subject is under review by the Chiefs of Staff, it seems likely that the Services’ psyops capacity will be a small one, ie:

1. Some staff officers in NATO to consider the separate problems of that area;

2. Some staff officers in the MOD (where incidentally 12 contingency plans involving Tactical Psyops have been prepared);

3. Psyops Training Staff at the Joint Warfare Executive at Old Sarum, to train a cadre of services personnel available to be directed to ‘psyops’ work;

4. 2 Army Information Teams for tactical psyops in the field (one is at present in Hong Kong and another in Dhofar) equipped with mobile printing presses, public address equipment etc;

5. One skeleton reserve AI team to be kept at Old Sarum to meet sudden emergencies;

6. Special funds available for Community Relations or Consolidation Psyops, aimed to further goodwill of local population towards British troops on their soil, eg through medical help, well digging, bridge building, sports meetings etc.

e) The FCO have agreed in emergencies to second at once an Information Officer from the FCO to be attached to the Senior Political Officer (Governor or what-have-you) in any territory where psyops may be necessary, to act as Mr Reddaway, myself and others acted, as a general coordinator and background director of all our propaganda effort in the area. The FCO Information Adviser, apart from providing the channel for political guidance for information policy and coordinating local effort, is of course able to use all the resources of the British Information Services from the UK, and should also play a major part in providing accurate information for the world mass media.

[START OF SENTENCE REDACTED] I think this machinery will meet the case satisfactorily for the very minor areas for which we now have any responsibility. One thing is however essential and that is that the Army Information teams should have on their establishment vacancies for the immediate recruitment, at reasonable rates of pay, of local indigenous drivers, interpreters, writers and perhaps artists. The Army Information teams are at present equipped with a printing capacity, and some HM Ships have printing and broadcasting capacities which could be used for local psyops if they are in close support as in Anguilla. I am glad to hear that a small mobile broadcasting team (with a small transmitter in one truck and a little studio in another), will be ready for service use by 1974.

So we come to the very serious military and political problem on our doorstep, Northern Ireland.

If Northern Ireland had been a colonial territory under a Governor with wide powers, a high ranking Information Adviser with overseas experience and with all the branches of information work, including psyops, under him, would have been the answer; but Northern Ireland is still basically a domestic issue in which, for example, the FCO have no direct responsibility. The Whitehall Department responsible in the past for Northern Ireland was the Home Office and the new Northern Ireland Office since Direct Rule has been hived off from this under separate Ministerial direction. The information set-up in N Ireland therefore consists of the N Ireland Office Director of Information (previously the senior Home Office Information Officer) who is responsible to Mr Whitelaw for day to day open avowable projection of the N Ireland Office policies and actions both in Belfast and London. In parallel, a great deal of day to day dealing with the press is, of course, done by the Army Public Relations Department. Seconded to the NIO in Belfast is a FCO Information Officer whose main task is to serve the foreign press, and to see that the FCO information machine in London and abroad is used to put over British policies in Ireland in the best possible light to overseas audiences.

[SECTION RETAINED UNDER SECTION 3(4) OF THE PUBLIC RECORDS ACT 1958]

But even though HMG have a pretty clear enemy in the IRA the fact that the struggle takes place on domestic territory is undoubtedly inhibiting to our propaganda effort. Neither of the major political parties would willingly see the Government’s internal information effort geared up to a powerful intrusive machine of censorship and control. I believe that in fact all the major departments of Whitehall need information departments more geared to modern crises than the traditional Public Relations Departments of a previous generation. In my opinion they need at least a small operational research unit to provide quick information and statistics, and they need also much closer contact with television so that they are aware in advance of possible ‘knocking’ programmes. But the whole question of the influence of television and of individuals in positions of importance within domestic television is a subject of its own, quite outside the scope of this talk. I would only add that, however much we may disagree with what we see on the box, not every long-haired commentator is an extremist. And, as I have said, the possibility of setting up an overall military and information machine in peace time is not a practicable proposition in a parliamentary democracy. The domestic mass media rightly direct close and critical attention to government publicity; and there would rightly be a major political row if there were any suspicion that the government were even contemplating using secret psyops inside the British Isles.

To sum up then the term ‘Psychological Operations’ is variously interpreted in a least 4 different ways:

i) The whole of British propaganda in respect of political and military objectives (sometimes vaguely called ‘strategic propaganda’);

ii) Secret disavowable propaganda.

iii) Coordinated British propaganda linked to specific active British military operations.

iv) Tactical propaganda carried out by military information units in the field.

The third and fourth of these possible definitions seem to me to be the most practicable ones; but in fact it is easier to consider this subject in terms of the situations demanding propaganda.

The first is total war with a clearly defined enemy. We have no elaborate plans for this but in the MOD and FCO we have an embryo from which a new psyops executive could be rapidly set up.

The next situation is cold war. IRD of the FCO, now much reduced in size, carries out discreet unavowable propaganda based on the truth.

Then there is undeclared and/or limited local wars. The MOD and the FCO have now got sufficient experience to lay on some machinery for these situations, but it is not worth keeping a large machine in readiness, even though in case of sudden emergency the setting up of a new machine often leads to early mistakes.

Since the end of World War II British psyops have been used most frequently in support of the civil authority against armed threat in our colonies. Since we have disposed of nearly all our colonies this situation is only likely to arise in a very small scale and for these MOD have prepared field information units.

In all these situations the need for high level political direction is essential. In the planning stages, close liaison between IRD of the FCO and the Psyops Section of the MOD, aided by a Working Group of the Cabinet Sub Committee on Ancillary Measures, ensures that this will be available; and when an actual emergency arises the provision of a FCO political information officer provides a channel for political direction in the field. Any aspect of propaganda which implies a commitment by HMG to any particular policy, or even any particular attitude, needs political clearance. A plain appeal to surrender by a tactical unit would not need political clearance. An appeal backed by any promises that HMG would act in a particular way would.

In domestic situations the use of propaganda is strictly limited by political considerations and if done at all would be under very close Ministerial direction. The N Ireland situation, which involves a pretty clear fighting enemy, the IRA Provisionals, is nearer to the Malayan situation than to domestic upheaval in this country, but even so the NIO, with the traditions of its parent office, the Home Office, is extremely sensitive to any methods of propaganda which might excite domestic political criticism.

I hope all this has not confused you too much. All I can say is that a good deal of thought is currently going on in Whitehall on this subject, and that the past has shown that in emergencies a reasonably pragmatic arrangement is usually worked out without precise definitions or detailed pre-planning.

And I must repeat my earlier warning. ‘Psyops’ is a support weapon at best. But it is an effective support weapon only in the hands of experts. Wrongly used it may backfire.

And never rely on it to pull a rabbit out of the hat in the event of military and/or political failure.

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Source: TNA FCO 168/5128. Transcribed by www.psywar.org, 24 January 2020.

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