A red under every bed?: Anti‐communist propaganda and Britain's response to colonial insurgency

Abstract

The activities of the Information Research Department (IRD), the British Foreign Office's anti‐communist propaganda section, are examined with regard to events in Malaya, Kenya and Cyprus in the 1950s. The article also investigates how cold war considerations affected the British governments’ and its colonial officials’ responses to colonial unrest and places the IRD's work within a wider institutional framework.