Britain's Secret Propaganda War [Hardcover]

Paul Lashmar (Author), James Oliver (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 1, 1999

This book, the first of its kind, covers an important chapter in the history of the cold war.

Editorial Reviews

From Kirkus Reviews

A formerly top-secret story of British efforts, supported by the CIA, to oppose totalitarianism during WWII and the creeping tide of communism afterwards. British journalist Lashmar wrote a 1978 article about the little-known ``Information Research Department'' (IRD), a seemingly innocuous unit of the British Foreign Office that was also the subject of co-author Olivers masters thesis. Joining forces to investigate the IRDs shadowy history, the authors begin with the brilliantly successful British propaganda campaign that spread Allied-favorable information and disinformation by radio transmitters, airborne leaflets, newspapers, and other media throughout Axis-occupied Europe and Asia. The IRD transformed the 1939 defeat and near-disaster at Dunkirk into perception of a ``victory'' and Britain's ``finest hour.'' It worked with resistance forces, playing a role in the 1942 assassination of SS hangman Reinhard Heydrich and in the 1943 Warsaw uprising. It aided the Malaysian and Burmese struggle against Japan. The IRD had a hefty assist from its American cousins, the authors find, claiming that the CIA funded anticommunist British politicians and trade unionists who helped to defeat leftist activists at home and abroad. British IRD agents helped to overthrow Sukarno's regime in Indonesia, an area rich in oil, rubber, and tin, that was threatened by a communist party reputed to have more than ten million members. As a result, the pro-Western Suharto came to power in 1966, and some 700,000 suspected communists were killed. The Marshall Plan, backed by a British and CIA partnership, countered relentless Soviet propaganda during the Cold War and met crises in Greece, Cyprus, Kenya, Chile, the Middle East, and Hungary. The IRD did such a good job feeding material to the media, say Lashmar and Oliver, that its often hard to tell who were journalists and who were propagandistsmany were both. Wars are not entirely won on battlefields, this fascinating account reminds us as it unearths the intrigues that often lurk beneath the surface narratives of history. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About the Author

Paul Lashmar is a freelance journalist and producer. He was an award winning investigative reporter for the Observer from 1978-89 and from 1989-92 he worked for Granada TV's current affairs series World in Action. In 1986 he was awarded Reporter of the Year' in the

Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Sutton Pub Ltd (February 1, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0750916680
• ISBN-13: 978-0750916684
• Product Dimensions: 10.2 x 7.2 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,448,011 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Bits and pieces of information barely coming out, November 17, 2002

By 

Bruce P. Barten (Saint Paul, Minnesota, U.S.A.) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Britain's Secret Propaganda War (Hardcover)

There is enough information here for a book, but the authors seem to be obsessed by all the information which has not been officially released. The most they can say about some things is, "One was a plan to inject nerve gas into the Egyptian leader's office. The scheme was allegedly approved by Eden before he suspended it in preference for military intervention." (pp. 70-71). As a reader who finds secrets enticing, I found their comments on the more exciting topics, which this book is not supposed to be about, entirely in character. Sometimes I found the terminology a bit confusing: "The RAF flew operations to drop propaganda leaflets on the Egyptian population. The problem was that the `leaflet bombs' were designed to explode at 1,000 ft, using an altitude fuse, and scatter paper over a wide area. However, because of barometric differences in Egypt, the bombs exploded at just 6 ft causing death or injury to any Egyptian in the vicinity - a real own goal." (p. 71). If this book is to be a guide for government activities in Arab parts of the world, the story of a British director of a station broadcasting Arabic propaganda is a lesson that should impress some people:

Then, as D-Day for Operation Musketeer arrived, he was told to change the name of the station to The Voice of Britain. Grasping exactly what was about to happen, the director of the station went on air and warned the Egyptian audience that it would shortly be hearing lies and might experience bombing. It was not to believe the lies and must endure the bombs; these acts were not those of Englishmen who knew Arabia and cared for Arab people. He was promptly arrested by the British military for his trouble. The director was brought back to England and removed from any public platform. (p. 73).

There was also an Arab News Agency, "secretly funded by the British government," (p. 72) which had been "the short-lived and now defunct Balkan News Agency." (p. 72). It had been evacuated to Egypt when the Germans invaded the Balkans. It provided an Arabic language teletype service, charging "very little for its service and frequently gave it away without charge." (p. 73). When England was ready for its pre-emptive strike, "Tom Little and his Cairo team were not in favor of Anthony Eden's military intervention and thought that the British cabinet was misreading Nasser. This stance must have been pretty clear to the Egyptians as Little managed to retain a friendship with Nasser throughout these difficult times." (p. 73). This book is supposed to be about the activities of people like Sefton Delmer, who was added to the Cairo staff "as the Suez crisis worsened in the summer of 1956, the British cabinet's plan for toppling Nasser called for several months of psychological warfare to be followed by military intervention if this did not work." (p. 70). "Delmer and Stevenson's propaganda objective was to equate Nasser with Hitler, which was Eden's view." (p. 70).

Chapter One is called "Indonesia: Prelude to Slaughter." The simple explanation of everything has always been: "As a result of Sukarno's overthrow some 500,000 Indonesians - suspected Communists - were killed." (p. 1). In late 1965, "Britain sent a Foreign Office propaganda specialist with 100,000 pounds `to do anything I could to get rid of Sukarno.'" (p. 1). "By 1959, Britain's investments in Indonesia were in the region of 300 million pounds." (p. 2) The Indonesian Communist Party, "which by 1965 had a membership of over 10 million - the largest Communist Party in the non-Communist world" (p. 3) was supporting Ahmed Sukarno, who had been declared Indonesia's first president in 1945. "And in 1955, Sukarno held the Bandung Conference of the Non-Aligned Movement, increasing suspicion in both Britain and the USA. . . . On May 18, 1958, the Indonesians shot down one of those B-26s and captured the pilot, an American named Allen Pope." (p. 3). If you didn't know anything about "those B-26s," you might be unaware that CIA planes were carrying out bombing missions to aid insurgents, something that the British and Americans now do openly over parts of Iraq, since the last failure of everybody to rebel against a leading enemy, in Iraq. In Indonesia, the biggest support for regime change was in the army. According to BBC correspondent Roland Challis, "So it's not particularly surprising . . . you would get army people saying, look, this old fool is past his time. You know, he's going gaga, he's in bed with 700 wives. And of course, one would get rid of him." (p. 5). At the start of the coup, "Six key army generals were killed," (p. 6) but Soeharto had been at a military hospital visiting his son and set about eliminating those Communists who would be the main obstacle to military rule. Sukarno "attempted to preserve his power and to prevent an all-out bloodbath," (p. 8) but the slaughter seemed to favor British and American interests. Roland Challis noticed how propaganda "was managing to transfer the whole idea of Communism on to the Chinese minority in Indonesia. It turned into an ethnic thing." (p. 8). In 1990, American investigative journalists revealed that the CIA supplied "as many as 5,000 names of suspected senior members of the PKI . . . In effect it was a hit-list which helped the army in its bloody task of physically eradicating the PKI: US Embassy officials followed the progress by checking off names as reports arrived of individual murders and arrests." (p. 9). This book is mainly about the people who were supposed to make it seem like a good idea at the time.