Editor’s Note: The following essay has been adapted from Britain’s Secret Propaganda War by Paul Lashmar and James Oliver, published in 1999. The book is the first comprehensive account of the Foreign Office’s Information Research Department (IRD), a secretive unit closely linked to MI6 that waged covert propaganda campaigns against Eastern Bloc Communism for nearly three decades. Drawing on exclusive interviews and private archives, Lashmar and Oliver reveal IRD’s influence on British politics, the media, and international affairs, shedding light on the morality and reach of state-sponsored propaganda.
In late 1972, Alistair (later Lord) McAlpine was recruited as treasurer for a discreet and high-powered pro-Europe lobby organization called the European League for Economic Cooperation (ELEC). It was only very much later that he discovered the reason for his appointment. “A secret Foreign Office unit, closely linked to MI6, was set up to combat left-wing opposition to Britain remaining in Europe,” he said in his autobiography. This unit had been funding invitation-only meetings between senior media figures and pro-European politicians, diplomats and businessmen. These were regular, expensive and well-attended breakfasts at the plush Connaught Hotel.
This secret unit was, of course, IRD. Twenty-five years on, McAlpine was asked whether he thought it appropriate to have had civil servants involved in the European Economic Community (EEC) campaign. He said, “Certainly not, particularly that sort of civil servant. It was a highly politicized campaign, there is no doubting it. I’m quite clear—if it is political, civil servants had no business to be involved in it.”
The crunch had come, said McAlpine, when William (later Lord) Armstrong, then head of the Civil Service, found out about the unit and “its dubious activities”, which he considered “scandalous”. He went to Prime Minister Ted Heath and demanded that the funds were withdrawn. As a result, ELEC took over running the breakfast meetings and fundraiser extraordinaire McAlpine was brought in.
British and American intelligence services, it now appears, had a history of supporting Britain’s entry into the EEC as a bulwark against the Eastern bloc. The CIA was used to preserve the British government’s anti-federalist policies and encouraged Britain to enter Europe as part of “the special relationship” to promote American interests within Europe. The CIA funded the European Movement, the most prominent extra-governmental group seeking to influence public opinion for a European community. Between 1949 and 1953, it was subsidized by the CIA to the tune of £330,000, channeled through the American Committee on United Europe (ACUE). Today, this would be worth more than 6 million. ACUE’s board can now be seen to have been the alumni of the CIA, and the president of honour was the CIA director, Allen Dulles. CIA money continued to be paid into the coffers of the related European Youth Campaign until 1959.
In June 1970, Ted Heath’s Conservative government had been elected with a pro-European manifesto. However, although the chances of securing entry through negotiations with The Six looked increasingly promising, the situation at home, in terms of securing the consent of the Houses of Parliament and the British public, appeared to be less so. In the country at large, opinion polls were strongly against membership in the period 1970. This appeared to have been, to a large degree, the result of disillusionment with Europe following the last rejection by De Gaulle.
Nevertheless, disillusionment and opposition were not limited to the voting public, who had, after all, just elected a government for whom British entry was a principle policy. In reality, although the cabinet was packed with pro-Europeans, Heath presided over a party that was deeply ambivalent about the EEC. In February 1971, the whips calculated that 194 Conservative MPs were in favour, but 71 were doubtful and 62 against. In the party as a whole, the situation was even worse, with both pros and antis feeling the constituency parties to be hostile. In the Labour Party, anti-European sentiment was growing and, although an influential faction of the party was stridently pro-European, the bi-partisan, pro-European consensus was obviously crumbling.
During the campaign, Heath promised that membership would only occur “with the full-hearted consent of Parliament and people”. Heath now faced the danger that, even were he to be able to overcome the primary obstacle of negotiating entry with The Six, he might find that Parliament, under constituency and public pressure, might reject the terms and block the British membership that he had so passionately fought for. Heath told the No. 10 Press Secretary, Sir Donald Maitland, to convene a meeting of senior information officers in Whitehall to find out what could be done.
According to IRD sources, “Maitland told the meeting that ‘the Prime Minister is very keen to have an effective job done on what his policy is for Europe’ and how mistaken people like Crossman and Shore and Walker Smith were in saying that it was not in the interests of our country to go into it”. And the only people who were judged to be capable of doing something about this were IRD, so the whole thing was given to IRD to, as it were, advertise Ted Heath’s policies for Europe. IRD was to supply “the main guts of the operation” to ensure support for entry.
The civil servant chosen to run the covert pro-Europe campaign was Norman Reddaway, then Under-Secretary of State at the Foreign Office for “Cultural Diplomacy”, with a brief covering IRD and other Foreign Office information services. With his usual gusto, Reddaway set up a special IRD unit to propagandize in favour of British entry and counter those who opposed it. According to Reddaway, the unit, “was extremely useful because although there was not much to say about Soviet Imperialism and the gulags, the researchers were extremely good at researching the facts about going into Europe”. Its main writer was Foreign Office staffer H.H. “Tommy” Tucker, “a brilliant writer and shaper.” The unit was drawn mainly from staff on IRD’s West European desk and included IRD stalwart Josephine O’Connor-Howe.
The advent of détente and a more peaceful coexistence with the Soviet Union removed, to some extent, the apparent raison d’être of IRD. The European unit allowed IRD to move into broader areas, but using tried and tested methods. According to insiders, the unit worked closely with a number of pro-European politicians, to rebut the anti-European campaign in the media. IRD wrote and brokered articles through Tufton Beamish MP. These were placed in the press. “There was no shortage of MPs who were pleased to see something published under their name in The Times and elsewhere,” said one former insider. IRD launched a massive operation, relentlessly issuing briefings, articles and letters to the press and influential pro-Europeans. By all accounts the material diligently avoided the difficult questions of federalism and whether Brussels bureaucrats would be able to impose laws on the British people.
Placing pro-European material and close contact with the negotiators in Brussels enabled the unit to ensure wider dissemination through radio and television. The team also developed a technique that pre-dated New Labour’s much touted rebuttal unit. If an anti-Europe article appeared in the media, IRD would place a detailed counter within hours, complete with the by-line of a prominent and consenting politician. One unit insider said:
“You might get a letter from Crossman in The Times saying that this [British entry to the EEC] was a load of rubbish. By about lunchtime you’d have a little brief on the weaker parts of Crossman’s argument and that would go across to the broker and the broker would have half a dozen MPs who would like a seven out of ten chance of seeing their names in the paper. And so by that evening you would get something based on the brief going off to The Times. Well that gives you immediately half a million copies going worldwide.”
Material in the press convinced the broadcasters that they, too, should be covering the story. As the insider said, “If you went to the BBC and said, ‘Look, for God’s sake, make the case for Europe.’ They’d say, ‘Get stuffed. We don’t do that sort of thing.’ On the other hand, if it has appeared in the papers then one can fairly ask whether the BBC are reflecting this for their audience.”
Reddaway and IRD also became discreetly involved in the non-government pro-European campaigning. Ernest Wistrich, a former RAF Polish section officer and failed Labour parliamentary candidate, had been appointed director of the British European Movement in 1969. According to him, he was approached by Geoffrey Rippon MP, then Chancellor for the Duchy of Lancaster and responsible for negotiating Britain’s terms of entry into the EEC. Rippon asked Wistrich to run an overt pro-Europe campaign as the government could not be seen to be campaigning during the negotiations. By this time the European Movement’s budget of £550,000 per year was mainly donated by big business and prominent individuals like Sir Michael Sobell.
Starting in November 1970, the meetings of the European Movement’s campaign group were held in its offices in Chandos House, Victoria, and were also attended by a representative of the Foreign Office. The presence of this civil servant was deemed sensitive enough to have it omitted from the minutes and deleted by means of an erratum slip when it was once included by mistake. Wistrich confirmed Reddaway’s central role. “Norman Reddaway was… head of the European unit in the Foreign Office. He had a particular European Desk I think at this stage.”
Overseeing the various groups was a governmental coordinating committee, usually chaired by Tony Royle, now Lord Fanshawe of Richmond, who was then parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs. These brought together a number of participants from all of the different groups, including IRD, to exchange ideas and ensure coordination.
A highly effective part of the campaign was organized by the ex-Director of Publicity for the Conservative Party, Geoffrey Tucker. Tucker took charge of Conservative Party advertising in 1959 and wrote the famous slogan “Life’s better with the Conservatives. Don’t let Labour ruin it!” It was considered a major aid in helping the Tory Party to come back to power in spite of the fact that the fiasco of Suez was still fresh in the public’s mind. Tucker left the position following the Conservative’s electoral victory in 1970, to return to independent public relations, but, as a convinced European, he suggested to Heath that a series of informal meetings should be organized to find ways of ensuring support for entry:
At the end of ’70 after we had won the election I went to Ted and sat down with him and said “The next big thing is Europe. I’m a pro-European, I’ve been converted to being a pro-European as against believing in the Empire’. But the public was apathetic. And I said to Ted ‘Unless you can move public opinion, it will be very difficult for the pro-Europeans inside the Labour Party, let alone the pro-Europeans inside the Conservative Party to vote for Europe in the House of Commons, if you can negotiate the right terms, that we should go into Europe’. So Ted turned to me and said, ‘Well Geoffrey, get on with it then.’ It’s a very curious thing that people do not believe that, in fact, it is enough for a politician to say to somebody, ‘Well get on with it!’ So I set off to do it.”
These meetings were to be between “insiders” from the government and Civil Service (including the negotiators) and “outsiders” (such as media figures and opposition leaders). The frequent breakfasts were held in a private room at the Connaught Hotel. At a time when the cross-party consensus was breaking down, pro-Europeans from all parties were represented. Those from the Labour Party included Roy Jenkins, Roy Hattersley and the Deputy Secretary of the Party, Gwyn Morgan, who was then working for the European Commission. Also present was Michael Ivens, director of the right-wing organization Aims of Industry. They were usually also attended by Reddaway and Wistrich. Despite apparent differences and political antagonisms over different issues, the group was united by the overarching political aim to get Britain into Europe. Geoffrey Tucker said, “I realized if we were going to get the vote in the House of Commons in favour of Europe, against the background of apathy and resistance, then we had to do something about the people out there and show them [the MPs] that the country was behind them.”
The meetings usually involved twenty to thirty people, many of them newspaper reporters, including Marjorie Proops of the Daily Mirror. By bringing in figures such as Nigel Ryan (from News at Ten), Ian Trethowen (managing director for BBC Radio) and Marshall Stewart (from the BBC Radio 4 Today programme) the media breakfasts were able to suggest pro-European programming for television and radio. Tucker allowed the media guests access to the EEC negotiators. “Into the breakfasts came the people from Brussels. So the people who went to the breakfasts from the media got a briefing on what was actually going on day by day. So we were making news,” he said. As a result of the breakfasts News at Ten started a series of five-minute specials on the EEC with a strong factual tone television time that as advertising would have cost something like £1.25m in one month. Nigel Ryan said, “I certainly met Tucker many times in the period as he was Heath’s media man. I cannot specifically remember these media breakfasts in this distance of time but the ITN special items may have come out of them. These items would have been made with the usual editorial independence that ITN so fiercely guarded.” Marshall Stewart recalled attending a number of the meetings, which he said he found useful to gather information “at a time when there was a paucity of facts about the EEC”. Tucker even claimed that, after pressure from the campaigners, the broadcaster Jack de Manio was removed from his job as a presenter of BBC Radio’s Today programme because he was “too anti-European”. However, Marshall Stewart denied the claim, describing it as “bizarre”.
According to McAlpine, IRD secretly financed the breakfasts. Very few of the participants appear to have been aware of the involvement of IRD or its funds in the lobbying operation, although some of the campaigners had their suspicions. Ivens said that he suspected that it might have been funded by IRD. “Tucker once told me that Ted [Heath] objected to the cost of the breakfasts,” he said. Tucker said he thought that they had been funded by the European Movement. Ernest Wistrich said that he was unsure where the money came from.
Following withdrawal of government support, “the flame was kept alive”, according to Tucker, by Geoffrey Rippon and ELEC. Rippon had taken over the nearly moribund ELEC like a giant cuckoo’, said McAlpine. “Geoffrey Rippon told me: always choose a near defunct organization where the members have nearly all left as the vehicle for your covert operations.” Rippon had brought into ELEC many prominent European and British politicians, and businessmen including Valery Giscard d’Estaing, Douglas Hurd, Roy Jenkins and Lord Carrington. When Lord Armstrong had prevailed on Heath to cut IRD’s secret subsidies, ELEC appointed McAlpine to find funds to keep the pro-Europe media campaign going. “One matter I really do know about is how to organize a good breakfast. A choice of kippers, sausages, kidneys, scrambled eggs, bacon and tomatoes was laid on,” said McAlpine. The breakfasts were to continue after the 1975 referendum.
Heath’s government was very sensitive about the media breakfasts. The most detailed account of the European Campaign is Uwe Kitzinger’s book Diplomacy and Persuasion, which included a chapter on the meetings. Kitzinger, an academic and pro-Europe movement activist from the late 1950s, was called twice to the Foreign Office by a senior Whitehall mandarin who told him that it wanted the whole chapter on them to be suppressed. Kitzinger was threatened with repercussions if he did not. The official claimed that he was concerned about the potential embarrassment for Labour MPs who had attended. Actually it seemed that it was really concerned about the role of civil servants who were taking a very decided line on an issue on which they should have retained neutrality. Kitzinger ignored the threats and the chapter was published.
The effect of these overt and covert propaganda operations on public opinion quickly became apparent. Between late 1967 and early 1971, public support for entry had slipped from 65 per cent to 22 per cent. By July 1971, support was up to 28 per cent, and by August the Financial Times put it at 34 per cent for and 51 per cent against. Perhaps more significantly, as opposition in the country waned and support grew, the opposition in Parliament crumbled; wavering MPs were brought into line under a barrage of propaganda and arm-twisting. In October 1971, Parliament voted by 356 to 244 to accept the conditions of entry. Some 69 Labour MPs voted against the whip. In January 1973, Britain joined the Common Market.
There is no further evidence of IRD involvement in the EEC campaign or the 1975 Referendum after Armstrong’s order to desist. However, Conservative MP Sir Richard Body, who was joint chairman of the council of the “Keep Britain Out” campaign, has said that Western intelligence services took a profound interest in the 1975 Referendum:
At the very beginning of the campaign two CIA agents came to see me in the House of Commons. They were Anglophiles and they were very upset at the way their agency was going to interfere in the referendum campaign. They said a new head of station was going to be appointed who was not a normal CIA man, he was very well known in the federalist movement and they (CIA) were going to intervene in different ways, and they produced a substantial number of documents to verify what they were saying.
I read these documents through and they seemed very hot stuff showing as they did that the CIA had been financing the European Movement since its inception. I showed them to one or two others and they agreed. However no newspapers would publish these documents, nor were they willing to interview the two CIA men. In the end I was reduced to Time Out, which then had a very small circulation.
The Time Out story was published as “Uncle Sam goes to Market”. The documents told the basic story of how the CIA had covertly subsidized the early European Movement. The head of the station appointed to “intervene” in the referendum campaign was Cord Meyer Jr, who had been one of the leading figures in the United World Federalists before joining the CIA. He was one of the CIA’s most famous officials, with friends in high places. His first wife was a friend of Jacqueline Kennedy and her sister was married to Ben Bradlee, the editor of the Washington Post. There is no hard evidence that Meyer was sent primarily to make sure that the British stayed in Europe, but his tenure as head of station from 1975 to 1976 was not much longer than the run of the campaign. Body said, “US Policy after the war had been in favour of the British joining the EEC. I think the Trojan House argument appealed especially to Kennedy and Kissinger and the Americans thought that by having the Britons in Europe would be more sympathetic to the Atlanticist point of view.”
Body also got intimation of other intelligence agency activity during the campaign: “I was having dinner with a long-time friend, a man I trusted totally, and who had intelligence connections. During the course of the meal he warned me that my phone was being tapped. He told me that MI5 was tapping the phones of anyone connected with former Labour MP Ann Kerr.”
Ann Kerr had been the hard left-wing MP for Rochester, but had lost her seat in 1970. She was married to the prominent left winger Russell Kerr and was on the “No to EEC” Campaign that Body sat on, but she attended only one committee meeting. “Ann Kerr was reputedly a Communist as was her husband who was an Australian. You have to remember at this time MI5 was obsessed by Communism. They thought that Ann Kerr was a fellow traveller and that the Soviets were supporting the No vote to leave Europe weak so that the Soviets could walk into Germany and France. Therefore I was contaminated by having contact with her. My contact put it to me that I or any of my committee must expect to have our phones tapped.” Body has said that it is hard now to imagine the paranoia of that time. “I think some of MI5 got wound up that the No vote was against the national interest. They were by no means alone. People in high places got very wound up over the issue. It was very difficult for the No campaigners to get their point of view over on the media. The BBC were the worst offenders.” Ann Kerr and her husband are now both dead.
Body has said that he is not aware of any Soviet money funding the No campaign. “The Soviet Union subsidized The Morning Star by purchasing many thousands of copies. The newspaper was anti-EEC so it was reasonable for MI5 to assume that Moscow supported the No campaign. We had no Communists on the committee and I do not believe that Moscow or the Communist Party gave any money or help to the No campaign.” His view is reinforced by Sean Stewart, in 1975 working for Labour cabinet member Peter Shore: “I thought the Civil Service was intensely disloyal. Peter Shore was my minister: most of my colleagues thought he was a ‘fellow traveller’; and Benn was regarded as a Communist. You would not believe it, would you? In the whole of Whitehall, at the middle level, there was fear all over the place, and the ‘antis’ [i.e. those anti-EEC membership] were being labelled as Communists and ‘fellow travellers’.”
In the 1975 referendum the British people voted to stay in the EEC. The impact of membership continues to be controversial. Ted Heath has frequently been accused since of not informing the British public of the full ramifications of joining Europe, especially over the loss of British sovereignty. For IRD the covert operations in favour of Britain’s membership were considered highly effective and became feathers in the department’s cap. Reddaway has described it as one of the department’s most successful campaigns. Heath too thought it successful and asked whether similar IRD techniques could be applied to Ulster.
