For discussion at Policy Committee, Thursday 16th January 1941.
[HP]
SECRET
MEMORANDUM
by the Parliamentary Secretary upon his visit to Regional Offices.
January 12 1941.
I have now visited all the Regional Offices outside London with the exception of Northern Ireland and Cambridge. I hope to visit the latter Region within the next few days. I should wish in the first place to record my thanks to the Regional Officers and their Staffs for the unstinted assistance which they have given me. I am also indebted to the Regional Commissioners and to those Chairmen and Secretaries of Advisory and Local Information Committees whom I had the good fortune to meet. I was much helped in my enquiry by my Private Secretary, Mr. Alan Hodge, who was able to collect a large number of detailed points which we shall discuss with the Divisions concerned. The present memorandum deals only with major questions of policy and organisation.
Purpose of visit.
My intention in devoting the Recess to this enquiry was not merely to learn how the Regional Organisation worked in practice, but also to seek answers to three questions which had been troubling me for several months, namely:-
(1) Ought the Ministry to concern itself directly with public morale, and if so is our present machinery suited to the purpose?
(2) Are the Advisory and Local Information Committees a help or a hindrance?
(3) How serious or wide-spread is the controversy arising from the M.Ps' veto on speakers, and could some compromise solution be devised?
Before I suggest any answers to these three questions there are certain general observations which, as a result of my journey, I should wish to make.
General Observations.
(1) I was impressed by the ability and energy of our Regional Information Officers and their staffs. They are most of them men with intimate knowledge of the area in which they operate, and in almost every case their relations with the Regional Commissioner, the local authorities and the provincial press are highly satisfactory.
(2) It is important that the Regional nature of our organisation should be maintained and that a certain amount of autonomy should be allowed to our Officers. To impose a uniform pattern of policy or administration upon areas as different as Wales and Scotland would certainly be an error. The efficacy of the work depends largely upon a knowledge of local conditions and personalities and although the general directives on policy must emanate (and must emanate with greater precision) from London, the means by which these instructions are carried out locally should to a larger extent be left to the Officers concerned.
(3) The reputation of the Ministry, and therefore its authority, stand higher in the provinces than they do in London. The provincial Press have not to any large extent joined Fleet Street in its attacks upon the Ministry, and the local newspapers look upon our Officers as their helpers rather than as their oppressors. The meetings held under our auspices, the growing success of our films, and the fine work done by our officers in some of the heavily bombed areas have all contributed to strengthen our repute. I feel sure that our Regional Information Officers, if provided with clear directives from London, will carry out instructions with self-confidence, discretion and success.
Public Morale.
It is inevitable that the problem of public morale should be approached with a certain hesitancy. On the one hand the British public resent attempts to dragoon opinion and are sensitive to any suggestion that the state of their nerves is being examined by a Government Department. On the other hand the condition of public opinion is at the moment healthy and it may be wiser to postpone all
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- 3 -intensive campaigns until the time when defeatism becomes an actual menace. Although in my judgment any direct or general propaganda on the home front would be premature, it is important that we should apply constant remedies to those minor maladies which can at present be observed. Such local problems as Communism on Clydeside or nationalism in Wales can best be dealt with by the Regional Information Officers acting in close and constant consultation with the Commissioners and Local Authorities. Our main task at the Ministry is to combat by every means in our power the decline in public confidence caused by the denial of information. Much more can be done in London to improve the style of the official communiqués and the B.B.C. News bulletins. Our Films Division, which has already scored such notable successes, should be enlarged and given more money. And Regional Information Officers should be encouraged to arrange more meetings of an explanatory kind. Talks in the nature of Mr. Radcliffe's recent broadcast upon the Censorship should be repeated. And the system of “War Commentaries” introduced with such success in Scotland should be studied by other Regional Officers and adapted to the needs of their own localities.
My recommendations under this heading are therefore that direct propaganda on the home front is at the moment unnecessary and might be dangerous. But that every available method should be used to explain to the public the nature of our present triumphs and difficulties and to enhance their confidence in official information.
Local Information Committees
The Regional Advisory Committees or Councils need not trouble us. They are either inoperative or manageable. It is the Local Information Committees which face us with such constant embarrassment. I cannot but regret that these Committees were ever invented or that their numbers were ever allowed to reach such a high figure. In Scotland, where a wiser system was adopted, there are only five District Committees composed of authoritative, and therefore reasonable men and women. We are at present landed with some 394 Local Information Committees comprising some 8500 people. It is as if the Foreign Office in 1935 had found itself responsible for, but unable to control, all the local branches of the League of Nations Union. It is difficult to suggest any satisfactory solution of this problem.
All the Regional Information Officers whom I have consulted are agreed that it would today be dangerous to disband the Committees completely. Many influential people such as Mayors, Town Clerks, Trade Union Leaders and Editors of local newspapers have given voluntary time
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- 4 -to working on these Committees and would feel and voice resentment if they were summarily dismissed. Moreover the Labour representatives on the Committees would profit by their abolition to contend that the party truce had been broken and that they were now morally justified in organising meetings and conducting propaganda on their own.
One of the many causes which have created difficulties in the Committees is that their members have had no clear sense of their functions, and have never known whether these are advisory or executive. Many Committee Members imagined that they themselves had been chosen as persons of wisdom and eminence and would be provided with inside information which they could pass on to the public in a diluted form. They feel frustrated, and therefore angry, when they realise that this information is not provided. Others seem to suppose that they are appointed for the purpose of ventilating public complaints or criticising the efficiency of local or national authorities. Few of them possess any feeling of loyalty towards the Ministry and there are many members who believe that they can exert pressure upon us by threats of resignation or gain personal publicity by revelations to the Press. I am appalled by the general atmosphere of irresponsibility which exists.
It may well be that the sense of frustration which keeps the Committees in a constant state of fussy petulance will be diminished when they receive the “Guide Book” which the Regional Administration Division has new prepared for their correction and guidance. It may also be that the precise responsibilities now laid upon them in certain Regions in the event of intensive bombardment may arouse in them a sense of function and therefore of discipline. But even at the best we shall be left with many unemployable egoists who are convinced of their own importance and who are enraged by the fact that this conviction is not shared by the Ministry or the Regional Officers.
I can see no general principle which can be applied in this difficulty. It is a problem which each Regional Officer will have to solve by personal influence and personal experience. I can only suggest the following measures:
(1) That a passage should be inserted in the proposed Guide Book reminding members of Local Information Committees in more precise terms (a) that the Minister is responsible in Parliament for the words and actions of every member of every Committee and must therefore remind them of the duties of loyalty and discretion; (b) that he possesses powers either to amalgamate Committees or to suspend individual members.
/(2)
(2) That Regional Information Officers should quietly proceed to cut out the dead wood in the Committees and to create sub-Committees or Emergency Committees from among the more reasonable members, thereby allowing the full Committees to relapse gradually into ineffectiveness. Here again the course to be followed cannot be laid down from Headquarters but must depend on the knowledge and tact of the Regional Officer.
(3) That every attempt should be made to give members of Committees definitely prescribed functions of an executive nature. (Meetings, Films, Inspections of Loud Speaker Vans etc.)
(4) That once the Local Information Committees have been reorganised and disciplined to the satisfaction of the Regional Information Officers, the Ministry should seek to gain their loyalty by giving them more confidence.
The M.Ps.’ Veto
I was disquieted by the bad feeling which this controversy has generated in some (although not in all) Regions. It is more than an incident: it is a symptom of an increasing decline in Parliamentary prestige. Many Local Information Committees regard themselves as more “representative” of the people than their local Member of Parliament who was elected under different conditions, who has in many cases been proved demonstrably wrong in his estimate of world events, and who would in all certainty not be returned again. It is true to some extent that the Labour members of Local: Information Committees are exploiting this issue in order to discredit local Conservatives. But it is also true that the Area Organisers of the Conservative and Liberal parties regard the movement with anxiety and feel that what was intended as a gesture of Parliamentary or Party politeness has developed into a dangerous issue between the sitting member and the rights of free speech.
I attempted, in my discussion with those Chairmen and Secretaries of Local Information Committees whom I chanced to meet, to convince them that Members of Parliament had every right to be consulted before public money or the influence of the Ministry were expended upon providing speakers for their constituencies. My case was weakened by the fact that so many Members have placed themselves so demonstrably in the wrong. It is difficult to defend the action of a Member who refuses to allow his constituents to be addressed by Miss Margaret Bondfield, Lord Snell, Mr. Bernard Newman or Mr. Philip Noel Baker. It
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- 6 -may be contended that such extreme cases are not likely to recur and that most Members have by now seen the foolishness of their ways. I fear, however, that other and more reasonable vetoes will be exercised in future. Huddersfield, for instance, has asked for Mr. J.B. Priestley. The Liberal National member for that constituency contends that Huddersfield would not, without the intervention of the Ministry, be able to persuade Mr. Priestley to trouble with so small a meeting and that therefore we are using our influence and money to provide his Division with a speaker whose very presence is damaging to himself. I do not feel that this is an unreasonable attitude to adopt.
Two main solutions have been suggested for this problem. It should be noted incidentally that in Scotland the difficulty has already been surmounted by private representations and that it may well be possible to exclude Scotland, as also Northern Ireland, from the area of any compromise.
The first solution which has been suggested is to maintain the present system in theory but in practice to persuade Members not to exercise their veto. It may well be that many Members will now realise that the exercise of the veto does them more harm than good and that as many as 80% of Conservatives will privately agree to contract out of the arrangement. The advantage of this solution is that it would relieve us from the difficulty of modifying the original promise which was made to Members of Parliament. The disadvantage is that there would always remain a certain number of recalcitrant Members who would refuse to contract out, and that there would always remain a number of recalcitrant Local Committees who would insist upon provoking the issue afresh.
The second solution is to divide meetings into two categories. The first category would cover “large” or “public” meetings and the second category would cover “small” or “closed” meetings. Two panels of speakers would be drawn up for each of these two categories. For public meetings there would be a panel of national speakers, including all Members of Parliament and such speakers of national repute as would be likely to draw large audiences. For closed meetings there would be a panel of local or specialised speakers who would address institutions, factories, give war commentaries etc. The national panel would be passed first by the Ministry and thereafter by a Committee of the three Party Organisers. The names for the local panels would first be suggested by the Local Information Committees, then vetted and added to by the Regional Information Officer, and finally passed by the Area Organisers of the three parties. Anyone on the national panel could address closed meetings, but nobody who figured only on the local panel could address public meetings. The M.Ps.’
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- 7 -veto would thus he delegated, in the case of the local panel to the area organisers, and in the case of the national panel to the Party Organisers in London.
Such a scheme might possibly prove acceptable to Members of Parliament. The difficulty is, however, that the Ministry would find itself in a very false position, if, having obtained the consent of Members to this compromise, they found that local Committees refused to accept it on the ground that the principle of the veto, although modified, still remained.
In extreme cases the Ministry might be forced to take disciplinary action against such recalcitrant Committees. It will be for the Regional Information Officers, at their Conference on Friday, to tell us whether in their opinion the number of recalcitrants would be so large as to render such a compromise unworkable.
