‘A cuckoo in the diplomatic service nest’: freedom of information and the ‘English Desk’ of the Information Research Department (IRD)

Access to material that was once classified is self-evidently fundamental to intelligence historians. How that material enters the public domain, and the way it is presented, inevitably shapes our understanding of the past. States obviously – and for good reason – do not want to declassify material that will put them at security risk or give advantage to adversaries; those declassifying material must balance the public interest carefully. This research note offers new insight into the process by shining a light on the internal workings of the UK Freedom of Information (FOI) Act as officials deliberated whether to declassify files relating to highly sensitive domestic Cold War propaganda operations. More than that, the original files themselves show keen awareness of how to present these activities to prevent sensationalism, exaggeration, and conspiracy theories – within government, and, if leaked, more widely. As such, the research note offers a rare holistic account of once top-secret activity including, how it was presented at the time and how it was released over half a century later.

This research note has two aims. First, it highlights the importance of FOI legislation in getting this material released. The FOI Act (2000), which came into force in January 2005, is an invaluable research tool,¹ giving applicants a general ‘right of access to information held by public authorities,’ including central government departments. Legally, public bodies are required to reply to applicants whether they hold the information requested or not and, in certain cases, communicate that information to the applicant in a timely manner specified under the Act − 20 working days (Section 10), though more complicated requests may require several extensions.² Information can, of course, be withheld by departments under the numerous exemptions set out by the Act, ranging from personal information and commercial interests to the UK’s diplomatic and security interests. Sections 23 and 24 will be most familiar to readers of this journal, respectively exempting information ‘supplied by, or relating to, bodies dealing with security matters’ and information prejudicial to national security.³ Nonetheless, as this research note demonstrates, it is possible to obtain material related to intelligence and security via FOI. Indeed, as one of the authors of this research note has previously argued, while the authorities are in control of how the Act is applied, FOI offers ‘researchers the opportunity to prod the dark and mysterious recesses of unreleased material; to question the existing declassification agenda and challenge the decisions that have resulted in its non-disclosure. In some cases, this may result in the release of further useful material; at the very least, the FOI request itself will likely, although not always, result in an acknowledgement of the existence of material’.⁴ That holds true now, even if concerns have been raised that the correct balance is not currently being struck between confidentiality and openness.⁵

It is rare to see the use of the Act from the perspective of both applicant and government officials, as revealed in this research note. Those applying for information do not see internal correspondence related to decisions on release, only the final decision of a department listing reasons for, or against, disclosure. But the release of file material to the UK National Archives (TNA) offers the ability to study the use, and impact, of FOI in the release of government records in a narrow example, the release of records on the English Desk of the Foreign (or Foreign and Commonwealth) Office’s covert propaganda organisation, the Information Research Department (IRD).⁶ In July 2023, the department released new files on IRD, including FCO 168/8269, ‘English desk, International Section: release of papers’, 2011–2012. The file contained the departmental, and wider government, response to an FOI request for information on IRD’s domestic activities and the work of the Committee on Communism (Home), a secret official committee set up in 1951 to counter Communist propaganda in Britain and co-ordinate activity.⁷

Perhaps more significantly, the file reveals the controversy around the release of government files on Cold War domestic anti-communist activity six decades after this work had first begun. Officials acknowledged in 2011 that it was ripe for conspiracy.⁸ Fears that releasing records on domestic anti-Communist activity could fuel conspiracies have some validity considering the contemporary online conspiracies regarding the activities of the British Army’s specialist disinformation unit, 77^th Brigade, during the COVID-19 pandemic.⁹ In April 2020, it was acknowledged that the brigade was ‘helping … quash rumours’ and counter pandemic-related disinformation.¹⁰ Then Defence Secretary Ben Wallace also revealed that the brigade had been assessing UK disinformation trends in January 2023, fuelling further online misinformation and conspiracy.¹¹ The Counter Disinformation Unit (CDU) of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, formed in 2019 to understand disinformation trends and counter them,¹² has attracted similar discussion, as have other government organisations working in this area.¹³ Lack of information on such activity may have contributed to the effects of domestic propaganda being overhyped. Moreover, as Sir Colin Crowe’s 1976 review of IRD makes clear, it is impossible to measure impact. ‘It is not feasible to follow individual items to try and assess their impact’, Crowe explained, adding, in a horticultural metaphor, ‘Occasionally you can spot a piece which rang a bell, but otherwise it is like fertilizer. You cannot really tell how much it as affected a particular crop as opposed, say, to the weather’.¹⁴

This research note’s second aim, therefore, is to provide the most detailed account to date of the IRD’s English Desk. The first details on IRD’s domestic work were published by Paul Lashmar and James Oliver in 1998, using private papers and oral testimony¹⁵ to show the department’s involvement in the trade union movement.¹⁶ Both went on to claim that the IRD had effectively ‘tried to change the political face of Britain’.¹⁷ The absence of information on IRD’s domestic turn in records that were first released in the late 1990s perhaps inflated the mystique and influence of this shadowy Foreign Office organisation, a criticism that has been laid at other scholars studying propaganda and its influence.¹⁸ While IRD files reveal, for instance, that British Labour Party politicians received covert briefings, Hugh Wilford has already warned of the risks of ascribing the anti-Communist outlooks of social democratic groups in the early Cold War to western propaganda.¹⁹ This research note shows that IRD officials then, as in 2011, viewed domestic propaganda as controversial. Perhaps acknowledgement of IRD’s modest activity and officials’ own concerns at the nature of the department’s home activity could have dampened some of the mystique.

First created in 1948, IRD proved adept at exploiting contacts across British society and overseas to conduct unattributable anti-Communist propaganda, growing into the largest department of the Foreign Office and moving far beyond its original remit.²⁰ By 1951, the Labour government had become increasingly concerned about domestic Communist activities, specifically within unions, schools and universities,²¹ and established the Official Committee on Communism (Home) to run in parallel to the existing Official Committee on Communism (Overseas).²² Chaired by Cabinet Secretary Norman Brook, the AC(H) shared and coordinated intelligence, recommended counteraction and coordinated ‘any such action which may be approved by Ministers’.²³ It promptly ‘decided that a small section should be established as a focus for the collation of available information and its dissemination in appropriate form’.²⁴ This became the Home Desk,²⁵ initially comprised of two principals seconded from the Home Civil Service, assisted by three IRD officers. By 1954, it was the English Desk and its staff numbered four – all from IRD.²⁶

Sixty-one years after its creation, in October 2010, a request was made for access to the then closed records of the AC(H). The Cabinet Office declined to release these files, citing Section 23 (‘Information supplied by, or relating to, bodies dealing with security matters’). Under the Act, applicants are allowed to appeal against initial departmental FOI decisions; a follow-up request was submitted, questioning the application of Section 23 in this case. In December 2010, a review of the papers, signed off by the Cabinet Office’s Sue Gray, stood by the initial decision not to release the records, once again citing Section 23. This led to an appeal to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO). As the ultimate arbiter of FOI, the ICO can force public bodies to release information if the legislation has not been applied correctly. It was not until October 2011 – almost a year after the initial FOI – that the Cabinet Office finally agreed to release the early records of the committee, pressured to do so by the ICO, and not until the following Spring, 2012, that access to the files was granted.²⁷ In all, from the initial request to release, the process took 19 months – a period significantly longer than the allotted timeframe of 20 working days specified by FOI. This was the result of the need to redact the names of former IRD staff, consult other departments and refer them to the National Security Liaison Group (NSLG), a group that provides advice on FOI releases where issues of national security are raised.²⁸ The first batch of records on the Committee on Communism (Home) reached the public archives in October 2012.²⁹

As the newly released government papers reveal, it had long been Cabinet Office policy to avoid acknowledgement of domestic anti-Communist propaganda. When the release of IRD’s domestic papers had been first considered in 1996, possibly under the Waldegrave or Open Government Initiative,³⁰ the matter had reached then Cabinet Secretary, Sir Robin Butler, who ruled, in January 1997, that ‘he would not be happy at this stage about releasing papers which would disclose the English Desk’s existence’ though happy to release papers ‘when these do not reveal the existence of the Unit’.³¹ By 2000, there was an agreement in principle to release, yet the timing of the release was subject to ongoing sensitivities raised by the Saville, or Bloody Sunday, Inquiry,³² which had been set up in 1998 and was at the time collecting evidence. Likely concerned about the impact of propaganda following events in 1972, Security and Intelligence Co-ordinator Sir David Omand halted any release of IRD’s domestic activities.³³ Interestingly, the reference to IRD’s domestic activity was just one of several redactions from the 2009 authorised history of the Security Service (MI5), The Defence of the Realm.³⁴ But, paradoxically, the Cabinet Office had undermined this policy of non-avowal by releasing the terms of reference for the Committee on Communism (Home) in May 2010, implying that wider anti-communist activities did take place and prompting the FOI to the Cabinet Office.³⁵

FOI was key to the release of the records on anti-communist activity. The earlier Waldegrave Initiative had been a more collegial affair; historians would, as Peter (now Lord) Hennessy recalls, ‘let Whitehall departments know which files we would like to see among the documents deemed too sensitive to declassify after the normal 30 years’.³⁶ Departments could therefore deny the existence of records. FOI legally bound them to comply.³⁷ Having initially rejected access citing Section 23, the released records suggest that the ICO found grounds for the appeal. From the experience of numerous requests, Section 23 has been used liberally by departments to close off FOI, and users of the legislation are required to go through a period of shadow boxing with the government to obtain the release of all, or some, of the requested material. In this case, it seems as if the ICO did not agree with the Cabinet Office’s application of Section 23, and officials themselves could not justify application of this exemption to the whole of the English desk’s files. Ciaran Martin, then Constitution Director in the Cabinet Office, believed ‘the exemption of the whole class of relevant information under FOIA s23 was unsustainable in this case’. Given that it fell to him to defend the Cabinet Office in front of the ICO, Martin felt ‘the application of s23 en bloc was too broad … to defend, and that some of the information might now be reviewed for release’.³⁸ The lesson is that, when using FOI, researchers should not be put off by initial rejection and the use of exemptions by departments, and should be tenacious in escalating cases to the ICO which may lead to the release of new file material. Although departments may apply a blanket Section 23 ruling, it is unlikely that everything in a file would be subject to the national security exemptions, therefore offering FOI applicants the ability to challenge initial decisions and push for the release of records.

Having had the ICO go against them, Cabinet Office officials came around to the release of files on IRD’s domestic activity; one official now noted that the release would support the then Liberal-Conservative coalition government’s transparency agenda, even if it shed light on a ‘disreputable episode’ which could ‘fuel conspiracy theories’. The release of files on domestic anti-communist propaganda would be ‘routine and low profile’.³⁹ It is amazing to see the number of people engaged in deciding on release. In August 2011, it was finally agreed by Ollie Robbins, Deputy National Security Advisor (Intelligence, Security and Resilience), that the files could be released, with the final list of individuals consulted including the Cabinet Secretary, Downing Street Press Office, the Minister for the Cabinet Office Francis Maude, and past officials involved in the process to hold back release of the files, including Butler and Omand.⁴⁰ Triggered by FOI, TNA now holds 13 volumes of Committee on Communism (Home) minutes and memoranda,⁴¹ released between October 2012 and June 2013. These are now joined by more files on the activities of IRD’s English Desk, released between January 2019 and January 2020, in IRD files (FCO 168), used here in this note.⁴²

So why the secrecy? From its creation in 1951, the English Desk aimed to ‘expose Communist activities in the United Kingdom’.⁴³ It did so by, as one-time head of the IRD, John Peck, put it, ‘passing information to the right people in the right way at the right time’. Although modest in size and ambition, it was a highly sensitive outfit for much of its existence, especially during the breakdown in domestic political consensus during the 1970s. It was, as Peck admitted, a matter of ‘the highest secrecy and its activities would be deniable’. Records were scarce owing to ‘the extreme secrecy and delicacy of the matter’.⁴⁴ At one point, and foreshadowing Cabinet Office discussions half a century later, the only document setting out what the Section did was deliberately ‘pitched in a minor key’, presumably to reduce the risk of criticism and sensationalism.⁴⁵

Using IRD, a Foreign Office department, to target domestic audiences inevitably proved controversial, even at the time. That said, it was not without precedent: the Home Office had already consulted the IRD about granting entry permits to foreigners connected with front organisations, and the Labour Party had sought IRD advice on the precise allegiances of various front organisations.⁴⁶ The IRD also distributed a considerable amount of material covering overseas events to likeminded politicians, journalists, and others in the UK.⁴⁷ The official justification of IRD responsibility derived from a combination of ‘administrative convenience [and] operational necessity’.⁴⁸ In the former, IRD was already doing similar work; MI5 was ‘an advisory rather than executive organisation’; it was not ‘strictly a defence matter’ and so could not be housed within the Ministry of Defence; the Labour and Education ministries were too narrow; and ‘The Home Office was not appropriate’, because the Communist Party of Great Britain operated as a legal political party. IRD was also the ideal home for operational reasons as, the Cabinet Secretary later explained, ‘Communist front organisations could only be properly assessed and countered in the context of the world-wide operation of which they formed part’.⁴⁹ This was a transnational threat.

IRD involvement did not solve the delicate problem of authority. The English Desk could not report to the Foreign Office alone, yet none of the home departments wanted responsibility for constitutional reasons. In a classic Whitehall compromise, designed to ‘blur the edges between the global and the national aspects of the Communist campaign and HMG’s counter action’,⁵⁰ the Desk and wider Section in which it sat adopted a complex reporting structure. Its activity was overseen by a monthly meeting, chaired by the head of the IRD and including representatives from the Department of Employment and Productivity, Home Office, Cabinet Office and from MI5. This group, which became known as the Home Regional Committee, reported up to AC(H), hence why the Section’s activities fell under the 2010 FOI request.⁵¹ Officials hoped that ‘if IRD’s activities in this field ever became known and were publicly challenged, it was on this ground that the Government could hope to have least difficulty or embarrassment in defending them’.⁵²

Throughout the 1950s and 1960s the English Desk’s functions remained unchanged and rarely challenged. The team of four ‘assembl[ed] information from published sources and pass[ed] it in various forms to selected contacts for use feely but unattributably’. They remained in close contact with MI5 and drew on classified information as appropriate, and only when it could be corroborated by open material so as not to compromise the original source.⁵³ Perhaps even more controversially, from the late 1950s, it worked with Industrial Research and Information Services Limited (IRIS), a small organisation set up to counter communism in the industry. The English Desk developed a particularly close relationship with its general manager, Andrew McKeown, to whom they passed information.⁵⁴ In 1957 and 1958, IRIS published two pamphlets covertly drafted by the English Desk, one on communist front organisations and the other a history of the British Communist Party. IRIS also published a monthly newsletter which ‘frequently carried items leaked by Information Research Department, often on the initiative of the Security Service’.⁵⁵

By the early 1960s,⁵⁶ the English Desk had ‘improved their already close liaison with the Labour Party’. This now included ‘regular exchange of particularly sensitive information with the Opposition Chief Whip’. It had successfully exposed new British fronts, including the London Peace Campaign and the Youth Peace Campaign (both exposed in the Sunday Telegraph), as tools of Moscow and was working to ‘expose convincingly the Communist control of the British Youth Festival Committee’. In 1962, its ‘principal task’ was to maximise publicity of a High Court judgement condemning the former Communist leadership of the Electrical Trades Union of widescale ballot rigging.⁵⁷ The Desk produced a monthly summary called British Communist Activities, ‘wholly compiled from published sources’. It sent 159 copies to carefully selected recipients in the private and public sectors. In addition, the Desk produced factual briefs, as and when required, on various Communist activities and organisations.⁵⁸

George Brown, the Labour Foreign Secretary, was impressed. He told Prime Minister Harold Wilson in early 1968 that ‘By discreet dissemination of such papers to trusted contacts … and to selected journalists, the English Section has done much to expose the activities of Communist front organisations in Britain’.⁵⁹ Wilson was less convinced and worried about IRD's involvement in domestic party politics.⁶⁰ He was particularly ‘uneasy’ about the English Desk’s relationship with IRIS,⁶¹ going back, as Cabinet Secretary Burke Trend assumed, to ‘what he regards as an unfortunate intervention’ by IRIS ‘in the General Election of (I think) 1964’.⁶² Brown insisted that the IRD had avoided ‘any kind of intervention in domestic politics expect in so far as Communists and Trotskyists are a part of the domestic scene’. Trend added that it operated ‘on a very modest scale’, just four officials responsible for assembling information and passing it on ‘freely and unattributably’ to contacts.⁶³ Wilson seemed appeased but warned that Barbara Castle, his new Minister of Labour, would be unimpressed. John Peck promptly suggested the best means of revealing – and spinning – the Section for her.⁶⁴

By the end of the decade, the English Desk, part of the IRD’s wider English and International Organisations Section,⁶⁵ expanded its remit. Communist front organisations posed less of a threat than in the early 1950s, but officials believed the Desk and wider Section could play a role against more diffuse subversive actors such as Trotskyists, syndicalists and neo-Fascists – all of whom had international connections.⁶⁶ This broadened further in 1969 when the AC(H) was replaced by the Official Committee on Subversion at Home, a similar committee but with wider terms of reference. The English Desk’s remit now included ‘all domestic subversive activities’, including Black Power, terrorism, and Irish extremism.⁶⁷

The work remained sensitive. In the run-up to the 1970 general election, Trend warned that the ‘IRD’s English Desk and the related section in the Security Service [should] keep their noses scrupulously clean in Party political terms’.⁶⁸ Trend’s warnings were timely; the following year, questions were raised about ‘large sums of money’ being used by the Secret Vote to support Britain’s entry into the EEC, opening up the possibility that IRD’s work could become politically embarrassing.⁶⁹ By 1971, amid large-scale cuts to IRD and its restructuring into an ‘all-purpose instrument for discreet information work’,⁷⁰ the English and International Organisations was renamed the International Movements Section (partly for security reasons, partly to reflect the wider remit),⁷¹ and the English Desk’s four members ‘were established in the Diplomatic Service on the open vote’.⁷² Neither warnings nor reforms quelled sensitivities; as bipartisanship broke down and industrial subversion became a major political flashpoint, the Desk became more controversial still. In January 1974, just weeks before another general election, it began to produce a ‘weekly digest of overt statements of a subversive nature’, circulated to a ‘very limited distribution’ list. Although he insisted it did not ‘trespass into Party politics’, the Cabinet Secretary, John Hunt, assumed that ‘IRD would immediately suspend its production if a Labour Government were returned to power’.⁷³ The head of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Thomas Brimelow, agreed. If Wilson were to win the election (which he did) and found out about the digest its purpose might ‘possibly be misunderstood’. He suggested not telling Wilson about it at all, adding ‘the digest could of course readily be started again, as if from scratch, if a new government so wished’.⁷⁴ Once again, officials were concerned that misrepresentation of the desk’s domestic activities would cause significant headaches.

To make matters worse, the International Movements Section now lacked political control. The Cabinet Committee on Subversion at Home was dissolved at the start of 1974, leaving no interdepartmental authority for the IRD’s domestic role for the first time in its history. The IRD complained that without appropriate liaison with other departments, HMG was missing opportunities for ‘counter-action’.⁷⁵ Conversely, John Hunt worried about lack of control leading to the misuse of IRD products. He took exception to one paper that, in his words, went ‘a long way to cast doubt upon the wisdom of the Government’s policy towards Chile’. In this less bipartisan era, it risked amounting to domestic political interference.⁷⁶ Defending the IRD, Brimelow hit upon an almost existential problem for propaganda in periods without political consensus:

Successive governments have accepted that [IRD’s] whole raison d’etre is that in the subversive field the facts speak for themselves; and this has consistently been [the English Desk’s] interpretation of the original directive of 1951 to provide a focus for the dissemination of information about Communist activities on the home front.

It now dawned on officials that ‘even factual, overt material has a political context’. It was not enough to provide facts and hope that responsible politicians would use them apolitically. In fact, such an approach was becoming naïve. Brimelow accepted that ‘the renewal of a “licence to operate” must await political developments’.⁷⁷

The Desk plodded on throughout the politically charged, double election, year of 1974.⁷⁸ Its work still involved ‘research, based primarily on open sources, on the influence of extremists of both the right and the left in British public life, and the occasional discreet use of such research in non-attributable publicity or otherwise, in support of government objectives’.⁷⁹ Its ad hoc domestic contacts continued to receive ‘exclusive non-attributable briefing[s] or background material’. They included IRIS; the Institute for the Study of Conflict; MPs, including Edward Short, the deputy Labour Party leader and leader of the House of Commons; and key outlets in the media such as Woodrow Wyatt, the former Labour MP who now had a column in the Sunday Mirror. The Desk deliberately avoided contact with domestic journalists during the election period.⁸⁰ Likewise, it had suspended British Communist Activities during the elections, but then reissued it under the ‘somewhat less controversial title of “Communist Affairs”’, and with a smaller distribution list, from 1975.⁸¹

Sir John Hunt remained concerned. He acknowledged that the Desk had ‘handled their activities with great discretion and skill’, causing no embarrassment to successive governments; however, ‘circumstances have changed somewhat since 1951’, not least in so far as ‘the external threat – which provided the main justification for this activity being under the FCO – is less apparent or is at any rate less accepted’.⁸² The question of political control of the IRD’s domestic activities continued to be a headache; the FCO’s PUS, Lord Greenhill and the recently retired Chief of SIS, Sir John Rennie, both believed the activities should be transferred to MI5.⁸³ Hunt subsequently met Michael Hanley, MI5’s Director General, a few days later.⁸⁴ The lack of action on MI5’s part suggests Hanley himself may have been uneasy about absorbing domestic propaganda; Hanley, as MI5’s history implies, was willing to push back on Ministers’ efforts to widen his service’s participation in investigating industrial unrest.⁸⁵ Incorporating IRD’s domestic activity may also have clashed with the terms of the Maxwell Fyfe Directive, MI5’s charter of sorts, limiting work to that essential for the ‘Defence of the Realm as a whole’.⁸⁶ Indeed, as Hanley’s deputy, John Jones, later wrote:

In the field of counter subversion generally I see the Security Service as the provider of objective and factual information and comment to official departments and agencies about the security status of individuals and groups … We should be very chary of becoming involved in schemes to use our information publicly or through non official bodies. If we are consulted about such proposals our first concern must be to protect our sources and to preserve our non-partisan status in political matters.⁸⁷

As Jones warned, it was MI5’s ‘long term interests’ to adhere to these principles.⁸⁸

Labour’s flagship Social Contact policy complicated matters further. Ted Heath had called, and lost, a general election on the issue of ‘Who governs Britain?’ following a nationwide mineworkers strike. Harold Wilson then sought a compromise with the unions in which the government would deliver social welfare benefits in exchange for voluntary wage restraint. Hunt knew that the deal required close cooperation with the trade union movement and feared that ‘Dissemination of material from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office designed to discredit extremists in the unions, however well-intentioned and timed and however overt the source of the material, could, if IRD’s part in its dissemination became public, be embarrassing to the Government’.⁸⁹ Interestingly, Hunt’s fears about the impact of (involuntary) public knowledge of the Desk mirrored the fears of his Cabinet Office colleagues four decades later: it could lead to sensationalism and conspiracism.

The delicate Social Contract, playing out amid economic and political uncertainty, was the final straw for the Section. Hunt recommended that, apart from Communist Affairs, ‘the bulk of its dissemination activity should be put into suspense, at least for the time being’. The Desk would still have to answer ad hoc inquiries from contacts, to abruptly stop doing so would look suspicious, but it should ‘discreetly, and over a period, seek to prune such contacts to a hardcore of the most discreet, tried and influential, and they would wherever possible stress the international aspects of answers’.⁹⁰ Wilson agreed, and from 1975 the Desk became ostensibly a small research and collation body.⁹¹ By 1976, dissemination was limited to sharing summaries of Communist activity reported in the British press four to five times a year, and material on the IRA sent to FCO Information Officers.⁹² The IRD was hugely disappointed.

Labour Foreign Secretary David Owen closed the IRD in 1977.⁹³ Some of its more discreet functions continued under new names,⁹⁴ and, the wider International Section, as it was now called, survived the cut. It continued to study domestic subversion, and, in July 1978, an official asked its head, John Tyrer, ‘what action is now being taken on the basis of such studies?’ Tyrer responded glumly that the section was not ‘inactive’ but it was now ‘constrained’, especially by the terms laid down by Hunt in 1975. There had been talk at the revived Cabinet Committee on Subversion at Home in January 1977 of a ‘formal reactivation of our home subversion machinery’, but ‘this was not approved’ with the setting up of any future domestic machinery kept under long-term review.⁹⁵ And there the archival trail goes cold.

The declassified files offer one final word of warning for those uncovering the past. Amid the clamour for committee and department records typified by the use of FOI, historians should bear in mind a scribbled note by Norman Reddaway, a veteran of the world of propaganda. It is worth quoting at length:

Committees with carefully cleared little ploys give an illusion of action but often accomplish little but the odd conjuring trick. The prodigiously effective ploys in the past have come from people who understand the game, and keep to its rule, being given license to operate and left to get on with it. This is the key for significant future action.⁹⁶

Documents

Information research department: release of papers, 26 October 1999. FCO 168/8269

When we last corresponded about papers related to Information Research Department’s Home or English Desk, you will recall that Sir Robin Butler was not happy about releasing papers which disclosed the Desk’s existence, but had no difficulty in releasing some of its papers when they did not reveal the existence of the unit (your letter HO97/44 of 24 January 1997 refers). IRD papers dealing with Communist penetration at home, other than those related to activities of international Communist front organisations, have until now been withheld.

Sir Robin suggested however that the question might be looked at again when the papers of the Official Committee on Communism (Home) come up for review. This point has been reached. It is also an appropriate moment to revise guidance on the review of the IRD archive, which will cease to be carried out by a dedicated unit at the end of this year.

Two papers related to the formation of the English Desk indicate the two main areas which need to be considered as the basis for further reviewing. No papers in the corresponding IRD archive of the period set out the position as explicitly as the Cabinet Office documentation. The first, CAB 134/737 AC (H) 51 2nd Meeting, records the meeting of the Committee on 22 June 1951. Item 2 states:

‘…. it was generally agreed that there was a case for establishing machinery which would serve as a focus for all intelligence about the activities of the Communists in this country, not only among the works but among the other groups of the population as well’. The record goes on to note that, since the Foreign Office already had an organisation serving the same ends for overseas information, the best use of this expertise could be made by adding to it a Home Desk ‘to act as the focus for the collation and dissemination of intelligence about Communist activities on the home front’.

The Committee went on to agree that their decision would be implemented by the secondment to Information Research Department of two officers from Home Departments, in the event a full-time member of staff from the Ministry of Education and an advisor from the Ministry of Labour. However, after this first foray, the Desk was staffed continuously by IRD officers, its eventual head serving on it all his working life.

Both Cabinet Office papers and the working papers of the Desk clearly indicate that an accepted part of the intention was to make contact with the educational establishment and the trade unions, and to provide them with material enabling them to combat Communist influence. English Desk established relations with the Trade Union Congress and the political parties. Those with the the Labour Party were particularly close; for example, members of the Desk regularly attended Labour Party conferences and on occasion encouraged the Party to take measures such as proscribing certain friendship societies. It was less successful on the academic side.

While IRD as a department had no mandate to operate in the United Kingdom, English Desk thus pursued a separate existence, working directly through the Head of IRD to a Committee chaired by the Secretary of the Cabinet. The position is summarised in Burke Trend’s Minute of 26 July 1969, a copy of which I enclose.

The second Home Committee paper, CAB 134/739, AC (H) 3 of 15 March 1954, concerns the Desk’s internal working practices; there are earlier examples, but this one shows well the extent to which information was collected, and the breadth of subjects in which the Desk took an interest. Over the years English Desk built up a considerable body of information, from both overt and intelligence sources. I suspect the revelation that the Foreign Office kept cards on the political affiliations of people in the United Kingdom might arouse a certain amount of media interest. These papers, like the working papers of all the IRD geographical desks, were not official records, and have not been preserved, and I recommend that any papers giving a breakdown of the day to day activity of the Desk, including the records of its Home Regional meetings, should be retained. But provided that the existence of the Desk could be avowed, a more extensive range of its output might be released. I have identified the following areas:

Regular editorial output

The Desk produced a regular publication which closely mirrored those of the department’s other geographical sections, based on the principle that the first priority in the battle against Communism was the need to know what the Communists were doing. ‘British Communist Activities’ was a non-polemical monthly review, mainly from Communist press sources and without comment, which was sent to a restricted number of Ministers and others for their information. It was never circulated in large numbers, although attempts were made to ensure that the right people at home saw copies. The IRD archive contains sporadic examples, while Cabinet Office volumes boast complete sets, all with neat covering minutes showing the Foreign Office as the sources. Up to present, none of this material has been released, and the title of the publication has been expunged from the production lists of IRD’s editorial section which have so far been released – a labour intensive task.

Information about the affiliation of organisations in the United Kingdom

Even before the formation of the English Desk, IRD had identified a need to collect material on Communist activities in Britain both in order to present an internationally complete picture and to answer specific queries, often from foreign embassies. Two examples: the Dutch asked about Robert Maxwell’s Pergamon Press and its Russian enterprises; English Desk assembled the answer. In response to requests from the Turks and Americans, it produced an unclassified paper on the Communist Party of Great Britain.

The Desk became the focal point for fielding queries from all Foreign Office departments and overseas Posts on organisations of widely differing character, leading it down a great many divergent paths, from town twinning to vetting lecturers and dealing with British organisations interested in Communism. A large proportion of the entered papers emanating from the Desk is concerned with this aspect of its work. Many are to be found in the records of other Foreign Office departments, and not [sic] a few have been released; they are often unclassified and do not betray their origin. Some are sensitive on personal grounds, for instance comment on members of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND). Reviewers would need careful guidance on how papers of this nature grouped in the IRD archive are to be handled.

General subjects: When a later mandate empowered IRD to track a broader range of subversion, English Desk acted as co-ordinator for background papers on subjects such as student protest and Black Power, which were used to brief Posts and selected contacts rather than influence events at home. The Desk produced background information on Northern Ireland for the same purpose. It will be some time before any of these come up for review, but I have in mind two specific subjects which appear in early English Desk papers. Both were later handled mainly by the appropriate geographical desk. They are:

Communist indoctrination of foreign students in the United Kingdom, a corollary to fears of Communist penetration of the colonies. This involved initially the appointment of a student advisor, who functioned independently but was nominally attached to English Desk. The post did not survive in its original form, interest in later years shifting in a natural progression to overseas students in Communist countries.

Briefing of British delegations to Communist countries, and alerting UK authorities to the arrival of Communist delegations (not always from front organisations).

To summarise, I would welcome your advice on whether the existence of English Desk could be admitted in order to release a broader spectrum of its product, but not to divulge the full extent of its sometimes meddlesome interests, or the way it went about its work …

CAB 134/737: the official committee on communism and the foreign office information research department. FCO 168/8269

The Official Committee on Communism (Home), whose primary brief was to focus on Communist activities in the United Kingdom and advise on how to combat them, was established in June 1951. Composed of representatives from the Foreign Office, the Treasury, the Home Office, the Ministries of Defence and Labour and the Security Service, it was chaired by the Secretary of the Cabinet. The Foreign Office already possessed an organisation, Information Research Department (IRD), which served the same ends overseas. Despite reservations, it was therefore decided that the best use of its expertise could be made by adding a ‘Home Desk’ to IRD.

Initially the Home Desk had two home civil servants on its staff, from the Ministry of Labour and the Ministry of Education; neither survived for more than the first few years; thereafter it had a permanent Head who spent his whole career in IRD. Reporting directly to the Secretary of the Cabinet, the Home Desk developed into a self-standing entity within IRD, and briefly survived the demise of its parent organisation in 1977. It remained throughout a cuckoo in the diplomatic service nest.

IRD’s core function was the combatting of Soviet propaganda and Communist influence worldwide. The department comprised a series of geographical research desks which collected information on Communist activities overseas, and an editorial component which produced background papers for unattributable distribution, principally by Posts abroad. A small proportion of its output was circulated to selected confidential contacts in the United Kingdom. It also had a wide range of influential media contacts to whom it provided briefing. It was funded by the secret vote, and neither its existence nor its purpose was publicly avowed; it had no mandate to operate in the United Kingdom.

By default, the Home Desk nevertheless assumed responsibility for the collection, preparation and dissemination of material on internal Communist activities in the United Kingdom, partly because IRD was geared to producing research papers of its nature and partly the result of its legitimate interest in international Communist ‘front’ organisations The Home Desk was, for example, consulted by the Home Office on all visa applications for entry into the United Kingdom from officials of these organisations. All IRD sections relied heavily on published material, and the Home Desk was consequently also tasked to monitor press reports of Communist activities in Great Britain, in particular covering the provincial media. The regular round-ups of press articles which it produced form a substantial part of the Cabinet Office papers in this series.

While much of the Home Desk’s output was composed of factual reporting or theoretical papers on Communist tactics, the records of the Home Committee cover in detail more sensitive areas of IRD activity. The outstanding example in these documents is the means by which IRD co-operated in exposing and overturning the results of British Communist manipulation of trade union elections, in particular those of the Electrical Trades Union (ETU). The papers of the Home Committee provide explicit detail of how IRD contacts were used to channel material [REDACTED] which inspired television programmes and press reporting by wellknown presenters such as Woodrow Wyatt and John Freeman. The Home Desk also maintained close relations with moderate organisations opposed to Communist activities in the United Kingdom. Activities of this nature have not so far been officially admitted, although they are alluded to in Christopher Andrew’s history of MI5.

In the 1970s the focus of IRD broadened to cover a wider field of subversion. The Home Desk’s interests widened in parallel. It covered such diverse subjects as student protest and Black Power. Much of its more important later work concerned Northern Ireland.

[REDACTED] It became the Whitehall repository of information about British organisations from the extreme right to the extreme left and was frequently called on for advice on organisations such as the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. The extent and range of its research capability in this field was unrivalled.

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Notes on contributors

Rory Cormac

Rory Cormac is Professor of International Relations specialising in the study of covert action. Rory has written six books, most recently, How to Stage A Coup and Ten Other Lessons from the World of Secret Statecraft (Atlantic, 2022). He is currently writing a history of IRD special operations and black propaganda, forthcoming with Oxford University Press.

Dan Lomas

Dan Lomas is Assistant Professor, International Relations, University of Nottingham. He is the author of Intelligence, Security and the Attlee Governments, 1945 – 1951, published by Manchester University Press (2016). He is currently writing a history of UK security vetting for Bloomsbury and co-authored a study of reviews of the British intelligence community in the Twentieth Century.

Notes

1 Murphy and Lomas, “Return to Neverland?” 273–287; See also Burnett, “Post-modern archival research,” 185–188; Dobson, “The last forum of accountability?” 312–329; Hazell, Worthy and Glover, The Impact of the Freedom of Information Act on Central Government in the UK.

2 Freedom of Information Act 2000 <https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2000/36/contents> [accessed 21 August 2023.

3 Ibid.

4 Murphy and Lomas, “Return to Neverland?” 287.

5 Batty, “Lord Clark calls for freedom of information review after data breaches”.

6 There is some confusion about the name of the desk with officials ocassionally using English and Home, Desk and Section interchangeably. To be clear, it was the English Desk (which was one of three desks in the IRD’s English and International Organisations Section, the other two desks being the International Organisation Desk, dealing with front organisations, and the Non-Communist Organisations and Students Desk, dealing with ‘the “good‘ organisations which receive a certain amount of discreet support.’). See FCO 168/8219, William Strang, ‘A Report on the Unavowable Information Services of Her Majesty’s Government Overseas’, July 1963.

7 Details can be found in Lomas, “Labour Ministers, intelligence and domestic anti-Communism,” 128–132; Maguire, “Counter-Subversion in Early Cold War Britain,” 637–666; Cormac, “The Information Research Department, Unattributable Propaganda, and Northern Ireland,” 1074–1104.

8 FCO 168/8269, Roger Smethurst to Oliver Robbins, 11 August 2011.

9 Aaronovitch, “No limit to this web of conspiracy theories”.

10 Allison, “77 Brigade is countering Covid misinformation”.

11 Hansard, House of Commons Debates, Vol. 727, Col. 17, 30 January 2023.

12 ‘Fact sheet on the CDU and RRU’.

13 For example, read The Ministry of Truth: The secretive government units spying on your speech’.

14 FCO 84/52, “Information Research Department,” 22.

15 In 1996, IRD official Norman Reddaway wrote about IRD’s efforts to counter Communist influence in the trade unions. Writing to Christopher Mayhew, Reddaway wrote that in the mid-1950s IRD moved to exploitation of information: ‘Information about communist malpractices, damage to British industry by the Fire Brigades and Electrical Trade Unions and consistent disloyalty was exploited in a variety of ways, leading to Foulkes and Haxell being replaced in late 1960 after a Face to Face BBC interview by John Freeman. Frank Chapple and his successors have kept our lights on ever since’ (Mayhew papers, Liddell Hart Centre, KCL: Mayhew 9/1/1, ‘The Information Research Department (1948–1977)).

16 Lashmar and Oliver, Britain’s Secret Propaganda War, 1948–1977, 105–115.

17 Ibid., 108.

18 Point made by Defty, Britain, America and Anti-Communist Propaganda, 1945–53, 5.

19 See Wilford, The CIA, the British Left and the Cold War, 2–3. This was in response to Saunders, Who Paid the Piper?

20 On the origins, read Lomas, ‘Labour Ministers, intelligence and domestic anti-Communism, 1945–1951’, 128–132.

21 Lomas, Intelligence, Security and the Attlee Governments, 212.

22 On the committee, read Cormac, ‘The Pinprick Approach’, 5–28.

23 FCO 168/2804, MI5, ‘The “Home Desk” of the IRD’, 24 April 1968.

24 FCO 168/2804, Trend to Wilson, 26 July 1968.

25 FCO 168/2804, MI5, ‘The “Home Desk” of the IRD’, 24 April 1968.

26 FCO 168/5396, IRD ‘DRAFT: Information Research Department: The Machinery for Directing Activity Relating to the United Kingdom’, April 1974.

27 This appears to be confirmed by one FCO official, who wrote:

‘The driver for the release of all Cabinet Official Committee on Communism (Home) (AC(H)) records is a response to a FOI request from Mr Daniel Lomas of Salford University. Following a complaint to the Information Commissioner Mr Lomas agreed that his request can be handled outside the remit of FOI as his interest in the papers is confined to the period 1951–52. The Deputy National Security Advisor (Oliver Robbins) agreed the release …

Further to this … Alan has learned from FOI colleagues they have been dealing with two other FOI requests relating to AC(H) material –

• • In a reply dated 24 October 2011 to Christian Schlaepfer, Pembroke College Cambridge we have said all the relevant CAB files are being reviewed with the intention of releasing them to TNA bit that this will take some time to complete. CO asked if he is happy they proceed with the case outside the remit of FOI and he is happy we do.

• • In a reply dated 30 November 2011 to Dr Matthew Grant, Teesside University we have cited section 22.

• In a reply dated 24 October 2011 to Christian Schlaepfer, Pembroke College Cambridge we have said all the relevant CAB files are being reviewed with the intention of releasing them to TNA bit that this will take some time to complete. CO asked if he is happy they proceed with the case outside the remit of FOI and he is happy we do.

• In a reply dated 30 November 2011 to Dr Matthew Grant, Teesside University we have cited section 22.

FCO 168/8269, Martin Tucker to Alan Glennie, 12 February 2012.

28 The NSLG ‘provides advice on FOI requests where there is a concern that information in scope of the request will engage exemptions related to national security, and to ensure that these requests are handled appropriately under the Freedom of Information Act 2000’. NSLG includes representatives from the Cabinet Office, FCO/FCDO, Home Office, Ministry of Defence, National Police Chiefs Council and security and intelligence organisations (‘Cabinet Office and Freedom of Information’).

29 CAB 134/737, Official Committee on Communism (Home): meetings 1–5, papers 1–15 (1951); meetings 1–4, papers 1–21 (1952).

30 On Waldegrave, read Aldrich, ‘Did Waldegrave Work?’, 111–26. Information on the release of IRD’s archive is found in Defty, Britain, America and Anti-Communist Propaganda, 3.

31 FCO 168/8269, Bryan to Stirling, 26 October 1999.

32 Report of the Bloody Sunday Inquiry < https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/report-of-the-bloody-sunday-inquiry>

33 FCO 168/8269, note to Martin Tucker, undated. This is likely because of claims that the security forces used propaganda to discredit IRA claims about the incident. On IRD in Northern Ireland, read Cormac, ‘The Information Research Department, Unattributable Propaganda’, 1074–1104.

34 Ibid., note by MB, 3 August 2011. In the forward to the history, Christopher Andrew wrote: ‘Clearance of the volume has, unsurprisingly, ben a protracted process. There is an inevitable tension between the needs of national security and the wishes of historians … The most difficult part of the clearance process has concerned the requirements of other government departments’ (Andrew, The Defence of the Realm, p. xxi). There are hints to a more active counter-subversive approach in Andrew, 658–59.

35 See CAB 21/4371, Official Committee on Communism (Home): composition and terms of reference, 1951–1960.

36 Hennessy, “The Less Secret State”.

37 It was noted that one of the main reasons for release was the ‘advent of the FOIA’ (FCO 168/8269, Glennie to Tucker, 6 October 2011).

38 FCO 168/8269, Michard Marsh to Lucy Adams, 7 September 2011.

39 FCO 168/8269, Roger Smethurst to Oliver Robbins, 11 August 2011. For reference to the transparency agenda, read ‘Letter to Government departments on opening up data’, 31 May 2010.

40 Ibid.

41 These are TNA files CAB 134/737–740, CAB 134/1194, CAB 134/1342–1349 covering the period from 1951 to 1969.

42 These files can be found in the FCO 168 series. FCO 168, ‘Foreign Office and Foreign and Commonwealth Office: Information Research Department; Registered Files (O, RJ and V Prefix)’.

43 FCO 168/2804, Trend to Wilson, 26 July 1968.

44 FCO 168/2804, Peck, “Memorandum,” 22 March 1968.

45 FCO 168/2804, Peck to Greenhill, ‘English Desk’, 25 April 1968.

46 Many of which it formally proscribed in March 1953. FCO 168/5396, IRD ‘DRAFT: Information Research Department: The Machinery for Directing Activity Relating to the United Kingdom’, April 1974.

47 FCO 48/52, ‘Information Research Department’, pp. 5–6.

48 FCO 168/2804, Peck, “Memorandum,” 22 March 1968.

49 FCO 168/2804, Trend to Wilson, 26 July 1968.

50 FCO 168/2804, Peck, “Memorandum,” 22 March 1968.

51 FCO 168/2804, Trend to Wilson, 26 July 1968, FCO 168/2804; Peck, ‘Memorandum’, 22 March 1968.

52 FCO 168/2804, Trend to Wilson, 26 July 1968.

53 FCO 168/2804, Trend to Wilson, 26 July 1968.

54 FCO 168/2804, “Draft submission by Sir Burke Trend to the Prime Minister,” nd 1968.

55 FCO 168/2804, IRD, ‘Speaking Notes – IRIS LIMITED’’, March 1968.

56 In summer 1963, the head of the English and International Organisations Section was Mr JC Edmonds. Beneath him, the head of the English Desk was Miss Williams, assisted by Mr Tyrer (who later became head) and formerly by Mr Egg. See See FCO 168/8221, William Strang, ‘A Report on the Unavowable Information Services of Her Majesty’s Government Overseas, Appendix VIII’, July 1963.

57 FCO 168/574, Anon. ‘Report for Sir Humphrey Trevelyan: The Work of the International Organisations and English Sections, IRD’, n.d., 1962.

58 FCO 168/2804, Brown to Wilson, 6 March 1968.

59 FCO 168/2804, Brown to Wilson, 6 March 1968.

60 FCO 168/2804, Trend to Greenhill, 16 October 1967.

61 FCO 168/2804, Greenhill to Rodgers, ‘IRD and IRIS’, 1 March 1968.

62 FCO 168/5375, Trend to Greenhill, 25 November 1969. For reference to IRIS, read Dorril and Ramsay, Smear!, 27–28, 34–5.

63 FCO 168/2804, Trend to Wilson, 26 July 1968.

64 FCO 168/2804, Peck to Greenhill, 9 April 1968. Whether Castle ever received a briefing or not is unclear. Castle’s diaries do reveal her impressions of MI5’s assessments on subversion in industry, which, as Wilson had suggested, she was far from impressed with. Having received one such briefing on the leadership of the Amalgamated Union of Engineering and Foundry Workers (AEF) in May 1968, Castle said it was ‘All very James Bond’. The following year, she commented on another report: ‘The more I read these reports the less confidence I have in our intelligence. To begin with the material is always mightily thin and most of it would be obvious anyway to an informed politician … Altogether I really wonder what we pay these people for. I bet I could find out more myself in a few weeks, if I were given the job, than they do in a lifetime’ (Castle, The Castle Diaries, 436, 624).

65 FCO 168/2804, Peck to Greenhill, “English Desk,” 25 April 1968.

66 FCO 168/2804, Trend to Wilson, 26 Jul 1968.

67 FCO 168/5396, IRD ‘DRAFT: Information Research Department: The Machinery for Directing Activity Relating to the United Kingdom’, April 1974. IRD’s assessments of the Black Power movement in the UK were shared with Home Office officials and recipients of the department’s British Communist Activities (FCO 95/792, J.E. Tyrer to MacLaren, 1 May 1970). Coverage of the issue at least goes back as far as 1969. In July 1970, IRD judged Black Power was ‘more of a potential than an immediate threat’ with negligible support and divisions in leadership. The majority of immigrants saw the movement as an ‘embarrassment’ (FCO 95/792, ‘The Black Power Movement in Britain’, July 1970). For context, read Lomas, ‘“Crocodiles in the Corridors”’, 162–3.

68 FCO 168/5375, Trend to Greenhill, 25 November 1969.

69 IRD’s work was, in fact, small scale. The department had become involved when entry to the EEC was regarded as non-partisan. In July 1971, IRD’s K.R. Crook warned the campaign was ‘no longer non-partisan, and various Members of the Opposition know what this Department has been doing’ (FCO 79/240, Crook to Reddaway, 26 July 1971). IRD’s campaign on the EEC was ‘mainly designed to impress upon foreigners the virtues of their future partner, Britain’. Nevertheless, the Foreign Office’s Norman Reddaway warned, ‘We need to beware of giving anti-marketeers cause to complain about the FCO unduly intruding on the home front’ (FCO 79/240, Reddaway to Logan, 17 March 1971).

70 FCO 79/240, Information Research Department: Restructuring, 29 March 1971.

71 FCO 168/5396, Brimelow to Hunt, 14 November 1974.

72 FCO 168/5396, Barker, ‘IRD’, 28 November 1974.

73 FCO 168/5385, Hunt to Brimelow, 14 February 1974. This may have been due to Labour’s ongoing sensitivities of domestic propaganda, despite the earlier Attlee government having played a key role in starting IRD’s domestic turn. On Labour’s paranoia, read Bennett, The Zinoviev Letter; Lomas, “Party Politics and Intelligence,” 410–430.

74 FCO 168/5375, Brimelow to Hunt, 18 February 1974.

75 FCO 168/5396, Barker, “Sir J Hunt’s Meeting on IRD,” 18 June 1974.

76 FCO 168/5396, Hunt to Brimelow, “IRD Activities Directed at the Home Base,” 24 June 1974.

77 FCO 168/5396, Brimelow to Hunt, 3 July 1974.

78 For context, read Turner, “Governors, governance, and governed,” 34–5.

79 FCO 168/5396, Barker, “IRD,” 28 November 1974.

80 FCO 168/5396, Brimelow to Hunt, 3 July 1974. A later review of the IRD commented, ‘IRD distributes its material to key people in the UK who it is hoped can use it. Many do very effectively. The selection of the people is a very delicate process. When a person has got on the list it is not easy to withdraw the material from him but if he misuses it it could be embarrassing. There is a natural tendency to concentrate on members of the Establishment and, inevitably, after 25 years some are getting a bit long in the tooth and rather ineffective. We need to get stuff to the younger ones, MPs for example, who could use it, and the more radical the better’ (FCO 84/52, ‘Information Research Department’, 40–1).

81 FCO 168/5396, Reddaway to Brimelow, “IRD,” 2 April 1974.

82 FCO 168/5396, Draft Hunt to PM, attached to Hunt to Brimelow, 27 November 1974.

83 CAB 301/488, Hunt to Moss, 17 September 1974.

84 CAB 301/488, Hunt to Waddell, 26 September 1974.

85 Andrew, The Defence of the Realm, 597. Ian Beesley implies that there had been earlier pressure to widen MI5’s remit to operate ‘against people aiming for the subversion of the social order’ (Ian Beesley, The Official History of the Cabinet Secretaries, 285).

86 A copy of this can be found in CAB 301/488. On the Directive, read Lustgarten and Leigh, In from the Cold, pp.375–8. MI5’s reluctance to become involved in domestic propaganda is implied by Reddaway. In 1996, recalling IRD’s early domestic work, we recalled that Conservative FO Minister Douglas Dodds-Parker ‘convened a four man committee under Cabinet Secretary Norman Brook, consisting of Pat Dean, myself and a reluctant Roger Hollis. After half an hour Hollis was instructed by Brook to look out for newsworthy information’ (KCL: Mayhew 9/1/1, ‘The Information Research Department (1948–1977)).

87 Andrew, The Defence of the Realm, 658.

88 Ibid., 659.

89 FCO 168/5396, Draft Hunt to PM, attached to Hunt to Brimelow, 27 November 1974.

90 FCO 168/5396, This line was toned down after IRD objections from Hunt’s original desire to phase these contacts out altogether. Draft Hunt to PM, attached to Hunt to Brimelow, 27 November 1974.

91 FCO 168/5396, Barker, “IRD Domestic Activities,” 24 October 1974.

92 FCO 84/52, “Information Research Department,” 19–20.

93 For details, read Gwinnett, “The Demise of the Information Research Department in 1977,” 134–172.

94 See Cormac, ‘British “Black” Productions’, 13.

95 FCO 168/5396, Tyrer to Allan, 6 July 1978.

96 FCO 168/5396, Reddaway, 20 May 1974.