204-564: The Information Research Department ( IRD ) was a secret Cold War propaganda department of the British Foreign Office , created to publish anti-communist propaganda, including black propaganda , provide support and information to anti-communist politicians, academics, and writers, and to use weaponised information, but also disinformation and " fake news ", to attack not only its original targets but also certain socialists and anti-colonial movements. Soon after its creation,
408-547: A barrister at the Inner Temple and was called to the bar in March 1906. He worked for a time at his father's law firm Druces and Attlee but did not enjoy the work, and had no particular ambition to succeed in the legal profession. He also played football for non-League club Fleet . Attlee's father died in 1908, leaving an estate valued for probate at £75,394 (equivalent to £9,943,044 in 2023 ). In 1906, Attlee became
612-623: A "snitch" and theorising that Orwell's suspicion of numerous African, homosexual, and Jewish people within his list signified bigotry, and others minimising the significance the list. Academic Norman MacKenzie , who knew Orwell personally and considered him a friend, lived long enough to discover that Orwell had reported him to the British secret service on suspicion of being a secret Communist. MacKenzie responded to learning that Orwell had reported him, and credited Orwell's actions to his degrading mental state caused by tuberculosis . Alexander Cockburn
816-476: A "very anti-white...U.S Negro". On the other hand, Christopher Hitchens wrote in 1996 that the list only names people already publicly known as left-leaning. Citing Kirwan's account of the event, Hitchens noted that Orwell "was only giving [Kirwan] the names of various people who were already very well known to anybody who studied Communism. It wasn't as if he was revealing the names of spies." Hitchens further noted, "Nothing that Orwell discussed with his old flame
1020-804: A German rebuilding effort set forth by western European countries in 1948, the US, Britain and France spearheaded the establishment of the Federal Republic of Germany from the three Western zones of occupation in April 1949. The Soviet Union proclaimed its zone of occupation in Germany the German Democratic Republic that October. Media in the Eastern Bloc was an organ of the state , completely reliant on and subservient to
1224-473: A civil action against Attlee and the other Labour members of the committee (although not against the Conservative members who had also supported this). The court found against Attlee and his fellow councillors and they were ordered to pay £300 damages. The decision was later reversed on appeal, but the financial problems caused by the episode almost forced Attlee out of politics. In 1927, he was appointed
1428-426: A civilised community, although it may be composed of self-reliant individuals, there will be some persons who will be unable at some period of their lives to look after themselves, and the question of what is to happen to them may be solved in three ways – they may be neglected, they may be cared for by the organised community as of right, or they may be left to the goodwill of individuals in the community. [...] Charity
1632-567: A drastic and entire reshuffling of these populations there is no possible solution to the problem of minorities in Europe except toleration. However, the new Czechoslovakian state did not provide equal rights to the Slovaks and Sudeten Germans, with the historian Arnold J. Toynbee already having noted that "for the Germans, Magyars and Poles, who account between them for more than one quarter of
1836-644: A few of his allies formed a National Government with the Conservatives and Liberals , leading them to be expelled from Labour. MacDonald offered Attlee a job in the National Government, but he turned down the offer and opted to stay loyal to the main Labour party. After Ramsay MacDonald formed the National Government, Labour was deeply divided. Attlee had long been close to MacDonald and now felt betrayed—as did most Labour politicians. During
2040-591: A general term, in his essay "You and the Atomic Bomb", published 19 October 1945 in the British newspaper Tribune . Contemplating a world living in the shadow of the threat of nuclear warfare , Orwell looked at James Burnham 's predictions of a polarized world, writing: Looking at the world as a whole, the drift for many decades has been not towards anarchy but towards the reimposition of slavery... James Burnham's theory has been much discussed, but few people have yet considered its ideological implications—that is,
2244-506: A generous stipend by their father and embraced the university lifestyle—rowing, reading and socializing". He was later described by a tutor as "level-headed, industrious, dependable man with no brilliance of style ... but with excellent sound judgement". At university he had little interest in politics or economics, later describing his views at this time as "good old fashioned imperialist conservative". He graduated Bachelor of Arts in 1904 with second-class honours . Attlee then trained as
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#17327660861982448-425: A halt in the armaments race ... We do not think that our answer to Herr Hitler should be just rearmament. We are in an age of rearmaments, but we on this side cannot accept that position". Attlee played little part in the events that would lead up to the abdication of Edward VIII , for despite Baldwin's threat to step down if Edward attempted to remain on the throne after marrying Wallis Simpson , Labour
2652-520: A joint operation with the CIA , Encounter magazine was established. Published in the United Kingdom , it was a largely Anglo-American intellectual and cultural journal, originally associated with the anti-Stalinist left , intended to counter the idea of cold war neutralism. The magazine was rarely critical of American foreign policy, but beyond this editors had considerable publishing freedom. It
2856-596: A lifelong dislike of Morrison. At the 1922 general election , Attlee became the Member of Parliament (MP) for the constituency of Limehouse in Stepney . At the time, he admired Ramsay MacDonald and helped him get elected as Labour Party leader at the 1922 leadership election . He served as MacDonald's Parliamentary Private Secretary for the brief 1922 parliament. His first taste of ministerial office came in 1924, when he served as Under-Secretary of State for War in
3060-522: A major propaganda effort began in 1949 was Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty , dedicated to bringing about the peaceful demise of the communist system in the Eastern Bloc. Radio Free Europe attempted to achieve these goals by serving as a surrogate home radio station, an alternative to the controlled and party-dominated domestic press in the Soviet Bloc. Radio Free Europe was a product of some of
3264-515: A majority. I am convinced it would be fatal for the Labour Party." He also wrote that there was no point in "watering down Labour's socialist creed in order to attract new adherents who cannot accept the full socialist faith. On the contrary, I believe that it is only a clear and bold policy that will attract this support". In the late 1930s, Attlee sponsored a Jewish mother and her two children, enabling them to leave Germany in 1939 and move to
3468-502: A man of character. Despite his mishandling of the Red Letter episode, I had not appreciated his defects until he took office a second time. I then realised his reluctance to take positive action and noted with dismay his increasing vanity and snobbery, while his habit of telling me, a junior Minister, the poor opinion he had of all his Cabinet colleagues made an unpleasant impression. I had not, however, expected that he would perpetrate
3672-446: A member of the multi-party Simon Commission , a royal commission set up to examine the possibility of granting self-rule to India . Due to the time he needed to devote to the commission, and contrary to a promise MacDonald made to Attlee to induce him to serve on the commission, he was not initially offered a ministerial post in the second Labour government , which entered office after the 1929 general election . Attlee's service on
3876-535: A narrow victory at the 1950 general election , he sent British troops to fight alongside South Korea in the Korean War . Despite his social reforms and economic programme food, housing and resource shortages persisted throughout his premiership, alongside recurrent currency crises and dependence on US aid. His party was narrowly defeated by the Conservatives in the 1951 general election , despite winning
4080-642: A neutral Germany to prevent West Germany's incorporation into NATO, but his attempts were cut short after he was executed several months later during a Soviet power struggle. The events led to the establishment of the Bundeswehr , the West German military, in 1955. In 1949, CCP Chairman Mao Zedong 's People's Liberation Army defeated Chiang Kai-shek 's United States-backed Kuomintang (KMT) Nationalist Government in China. The KMT-controlled territory
4284-622: A new war". On 6 September 1946, James F. Byrnes delivered a speech in Germany repudiating the Morgenthau Plan (a proposal to partition and de-industrialize post-war Germany) and warning the Soviets that the US intended to maintain a military presence in Europe indefinitely. As Byrnes stated a month later, "The nub of our program was to win the German people ... it was a battle between us and Russia over minds ..." In December,
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#17327660861984488-486: A new world. A world of law, the abolition of national armaments with a world force and a world economic system. I shall be told that that is quite impossible". Shortly after those comments, Adolf Hitler proclaimed that German rearmament offered no threat to world peace. Attlee responded the next day noting that Hitler's speech, although containing unfavourable references to the Soviet Union , created "A chance to call
4692-710: A plan envisioning an economically self-sufficient Germany, including a detailed accounting of the industrial plants, goods and infrastructure already taken by the Soviets. In June 1947, in accordance with the Truman Doctrine , the United States enacted the Marshall Plan , a pledge of economic assistance for all European countries willing to participate, including the Soviet Union. Under the plan, which President Harry S. Truman signed on 3 April 1948,
4896-570: A rift between him and his older brother Tom, who, as a conscientious objector , spent much of the war in prison. After a period spent fighting in Gallipoli, Attlee collapsed after falling ill with dysentery and was put on a ship bound for England to recover. When he woke up he wanted to get back to action as soon as possible, and asked to be let off the ship in Malta, where he stayed in hospital in order to recover. His hospitalisation coincided with
5100-409: A ruthless despotism... The events of these last few days constitute one of the greatest diplomatic defeats that this country and France have ever sustained. There can be no doubt that it is a tremendous victory for Herr Hitler. Without firing a shot, by the mere display of military force, he has achieved a dominating position in Europe which Germany failed to win after four years of war. He has overturned
5304-629: A secret 1950 document, the National Security Council proposed reinforcing pro-Western alliance systems and quadrupling spending on defense. Truman, under the influence of advisor Paul Nitze , saw containment as implying complete rollback of Soviet influence in all its forms. United States officials moved to expand this version of containment into Asia , Africa , and Latin America , in order to counter revolutionary nationalist movements, often led by communist parties financed by
5508-636: A series of War Cabinet debates over whether or not to negotiate peace terms with Hitler following the Fall of France in May 1940; both supported Churchill and gave him the majority he needed in the War Cabinet to continue Britain's resistance. Only Attlee and Churchill remained in the War Cabinet from the formation of the Government of National Unity in May 1940 through to the election in May 1945. Attlee
5712-734: A small ad hoc committee to circulate IRD propaganda material to anti-communist journalists and Italian Socialist Party and Christian Democracy politicians. Following the abortive Indonesian Communist coup attempt of 1965 and the subsequent mass killings , the IRD's South East Asia Monitoring Unit in Singapore assisted the Indonesian Army 's destruction of the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) by circulating anti-PKI propaganda through several radio channels including
5916-480: A source of intelligence. During the late 1970s and 1980s, the KGB perfected its use of espionage to sway and distort diplomacy. Active measures were "clandestine operations designed to further Soviet foreign policy goals," consisting of disinformation, forgeries, leaks to foreign media, and the channeling of aid to militant groups. Retired KGB Major General Oleg Kalugin , former head of Foreign Counter Intelligence for
6120-435: A state of war. We have been unable to go in for care-free rejoicing. We have felt that we are in the midst of a tragedy... [and] humiliation. This has not been a victory for reason and humanity. It has been a victory for brute force. At every stage of the proceedings there have been time limits laid down... [the] terms laid down as ultimata. We have seen to-day a gallant, civilised and democratic people betrayed and handed over to
6324-555: A time. In 1979, the toppling of pro-US governments in Iran and Nicaragua and a Soviet invasion of Afghanistan again raised fears of war. In the 1980s, the US provided support for anti-communist forces in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, and the leadership of the USSR changed with the rise of Mikhail Gorbachev , who expanded political freedoms in his country and the Eastern Bloc. This led to
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6528-539: A two-storey villa with a large garden and tennis court, staffed by three servants and a gardener. His father, a political Liberal , had inherited family interests in milling and brewing, and became a senior partner in the law firm of Druces, also serving a term as president of the Law Society of England and Wales . In 1898 he purchased a 200-acre (81 ha) estate, Comarques in Thorpe-le-Soken , Essex. At
6732-542: A unified and neutral Germany was undesirable, with Walter Bedell Smith telling General Eisenhower "in spite of our announced position, we really do not want nor intend to accept German unification on any terms that the Russians might agree to, even though they seem to meet most of our requirements." Shortly thereafter, Stalin instituted the Berlin Blockade (June 1948 – May 1949), one of the first major crises of
6936-557: A volunteer at Haileybury House, a charitable club for working-class boys in Stepney in the East End of London run by his old school, and from 1907 to 1909 he served as the club's manager. Until then, his political views had been more conservative. However, after his shock at the poverty and deprivation he saw while working with the slum children, he came to the view that private charity would never be sufficient to alleviate poverty and that only direct action and income redistribution by
7140-607: A wide range of propaganda publications both fiction and non-fiction, in the form of books, magazines, pamphlets, newspaper articles, radio broadcasts, and cartoons. Books which the IRD believed could be used for British propaganda purposes were translated into dozens of languages and then distributed using British embassies. Most IRD material targeted the Soviet Union, but much IRD work also attacked socialist and anti-colonial revolutionaries in Cyprus , Malaya (now Malaysia) , Singapore, Ireland , Korea , Egypt , and Indonesia . In Britain,
7344-577: A world order before our loyalty to our own country. We say we want to see put on the statute book something which will make our people citizens of the world before they are citizens of this country". During a debate on defence in Commons a year later, Attlee said "We are told (in the White Paper) that there is danger against which we have to guard ourselves. We do not think you can do it by national defence. We think you can only do it by moving forward to
7548-594: Is bound to another, right or wrong, by some overwhelming necessity—is contrary to the spirit of the League of Nations, is contrary to the Covenant, is contrary to Locarno is contrary to the obligations which this country has undertaken, and is contrary to the professed policy of this Government". At the Labour Party conference at Edinburgh in October Attlee reiterated that "There can be no question of our supporting
7752-401: Is only possible without loss of dignity between equals. A right established by law, such as that to an old age pension, is less galling than an allowance made by a rich man to a poor one, dependent on his view of the recipient's character, and terminable at his caprice. In 1921, George Lansbury , the Labour mayor of the neighbouring borough of Poplar , and future Labour Party leader, launched
7956-437: The 1935 election , which saw the party stage a partial comeback from its disastrous 1931 performance, winning 38 per cent of the vote, the highest share Labour had won up to that point, and gaining over one hundred seats. Attlee stood in the subsequent leadership election , held soon afterward, where he was opposed by Herbert Morrison , who had just re-entered parliament in the recent election, and Arthur Greenwood : Morrison
8160-648: The Amalgamated Engineering Union . This issue was raised in the cabinet and further discussed with Secretary of State for Employment Barbara Castle . A plan for detrimental leaks to the media was placed in the IRD files, and the head of the IRD prepared a briefing paper. Information about how this was effected has not been released under the thirty-year rule under a section of the Public Records Act permitting national security exemptions. In 2022 declassified documents showed that
8364-812: The BBC Overseas Service . The new department was finally established as the Information Research Department. Mayhew ran the department with Sir Ivone Kirkpatrick until 1950. The original offices were in Carlton House Terrace , before moving to Riverwalk House, Millbank , London. The IRD was once one of the largest and well-funded organisations of the UK Foreign Office , with an estimated 400-600 employees at its height. The IRD founded under Clement Attlee's post-WWII Labour Party government (1945-1951)
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8568-513: The Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic ". A week later, on 13 March, Stalin responded vigorously to the speech, saying Churchill could be compared to Adolf Hitler insofar as he advocated the racial superiority of English-speaking nations so that they could satisfy their hunger for world domination, and that such a declaration was "a call for war on the USSR." The Soviet leader also dismissed
8772-602: The Battle of Sari Bair , which saw a large number of his comrades killed. Upon returning to action, he was informed that his company had been chosen to hold the final lines during the evacuation of Suvla . As such, he was the penultimate man to be evacuated from Suvla Bay , the last being General Stanley Maude . The Gallipoli Campaign had been engineered by the First Lord of the Admiralty , Winston Churchill . Although it
8976-801: The Berlin Wall to prevent the citizens of East Berlin from fleeing to West Berlin , at the time part of United States-allied West Germany . Major crises of this phase included the Berlin Blockade of 1948–1949, the Chinese Communist Revolution of 1945–1949, the Korean War of 1950–1953, the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 and the Suez Crisis of that same year, the Berlin Crisis of 1961 ,
9180-650: The British Broadcasting Corporation , Radio Malaysia , Radio Australia , and the Voice of America , and through newspapers like The Straits Times . The same anti-PKI message was repeated by an anti-Sukarno radio station called Radio Free Indonesia and the IRD's own newsletter. Recurrent themes emphasised by the IRD included the alleged brutality of PKI members in murdering the Indonesian generals and their families, Chinese intervention in
9384-646: The British Labour Government to lead anti-communist progressivism internationally, stating: It is for us, as Europeans and as a Social Democratic Government, and not the Americans, to give the lead in spiritual, moral and political sphere to all the democratic elements in Western Europe which are anti-Communist and, at the same time, genuinely progressive and reformist, believing in freedom, planning and social justice—what one might call
9588-758: The Cuban Missile Crisis began after deployments of U.S. missiles in Europe and Soviet missiles in Cuba; it is widely considered the closest the Cold War came to escalating into full-scale nuclear war . Another major proxy conflict was the Vietnam War of 1955 to 1975; the Soviets solidified their domination of Eastern Europe with operations such as the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. Both powers used economic aid in an attempt to win
9792-719: The Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, and the Vietnam War of 1964–1975. Both superpowers competed for influence in Latin America and the Middle East , and the decolonising states of Africa , Asia , and Oceania . Following the Cuban Missile Crisis, this phase of the Cold War saw the Sino-Soviet split . Between China and the Soviet Union's complicated relations within the Communist sphere, leading to
9996-847: The Eastern Bloc . Cominform faced an embarrassing setback the following June, when the Tito–Stalin split obliged its members to expel Yugoslavia, which remained communist but adopted a non-aligned position and began accepting financial aid from the US. Besides Berlin, the status of the city of Trieste was at issue. Until the break between Tito and Stalin, the Western powers and the Eastern bloc faced each other uncompromisingly. In addition to capitalism and communism, Italians and Slovenes, monarchists and republicans as well as war winners and losers often faced each other irreconcilably. The neutral buffer state Free Territory of Trieste , founded in 1947 with
10200-461: The FCO primarily for members of the diplomatic service, but that it was allowed to give them on a personal basis to a few people outside the service who might find them of interest. As such, they were not statements of official policy and should not be attributed to HMG , nor should the titles themselves be quoted in discussion or in print. The papers should not be shown to anyone else and they were to be destroyed when no longer needed. Animal Farm
10404-401: The Independent Labour Party , gave up his legal career, and began lecturing at the London School of Economics ; with his work briefly interrupted by service as an officer in the First World War . In 1919, he became mayor of Stepney and in 1922 was elected as the Member for Limehouse . Attlee served in the first Labour minority government led by Ramsay MacDonald in 1924, and then joined
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#173276608619810608-408: The KGB and involved in its intelligence operations, adhered to Moscow's line, although dissent began to appear after 1956. Other critiques of the consensus policy came from anti-Vietnam War activists , the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament , and the anti-nuclear movement . In early 1947, France, Britain and the United States unsuccessfully attempted to reach an agreement with the Soviet Union for
10812-400: The Kingdom of Greece in its civil war against Communist-led insurgents. In the same month, Stalin conducted the rigged 1947 Polish legislative election which constituted an open breach of the Yalta Agreement . The US government responded to this announcement by adopting a policy of containment , with the goal of stopping the spread of communism . Truman delivered a speech calling for
11016-422: The Labour Party . Later in the summer, Bevin rejected another proposal by Ivone Kirkpatrick to set up an anti-communist propaganda unit. In 1947, Christopher Mayhew lobbied for the proposals, linking anti-communism with the concept of "Third Force", which was meant to be a progressive camp between the Soviet Union and the United States . This framing, together with anti-British Soviet propaganda attacks during
11220-412: The Leader of the Opposition . On the verge of resigning from Parliament, he was persuaded to stay by Stafford Cripps, a wealthy socialist, who agreed to make a donation to party funds to pay him an additional salary until Lansbury could take over again. During 1932–33 Attlee flirted with, and then drew back from radicalism – influenced by Stafford Cripps, who was then on the radical wing of the party. He
11424-560: The London School of Economics . Attlee returned to local politics in the immediate post-war period, becoming mayor of the Metropolitan Borough of Stepney , one of London's most deprived inner-city boroughs, in 1919. During his time as mayor, the council undertook action to tackle slum landlords who charged high rents but refused to spend money on keeping their property in habitable condition. The council served and enforced legal orders on homeowners to repair their property. It also appointed health visitors and sanitary inspectors, reducing
11628-470: The Minority Report as he was very active in Fabian Society circles, in which he would go round visiting many political societies—Liberal, Conservative and socialist—to explain and popularise the ideas, as well as recruiting lecturers deemed suitable to work on the campaign. In 1911, he was employed by the Government as an "official explainer"—touring the country to explain Chancellor of the Exchequer David Lloyd George 's National Insurance Act . He spent
11832-412: The Poplar Rates Rebellion ; a campaign of disobedience seeking to equalise the poor relief burden across all the London boroughs. Attlee, who was a personal friend of Lansbury, strongly supported this. However, Herbert Morrison , the Labour mayor of nearby Hackney , and one of the main figures in the London Labour Party , strongly denounced Lansbury and the rebellion. During this period, Attlee developed
12036-447: The Sino-Soviet border conflict , while France, a Western Bloc state, began to demand greater autonomy of action. The Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia occurred to suppress the Prague Spring of 1968, while the United States experienced internal turmoil from the civil rights movement and opposition to United States involvement in the Vietnam War . In the 1960s–1970s, an international peace movement took root among citizens around
12240-491: The Soviet boycott of the Allied Control Council and its incapacitation, an event marking the beginning of the full-blown Cold War and the end of its prelude, as well as ending any hopes at the time for a single German government and leading to formation in 1949 of the Federal Republic of Germany and German Democratic Republic . The twin policies of the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan led to billions in economic and military aid for Western Europe, Greece, and Turkey. With
12444-446: The Space Race . The US and USSR were both part of the Allies of World War II , the military coalition which had defeated Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan in 1945. After the war, the USSR installed satellite governments in the territories of Eastern and Central Europe it had occupied, and promoted the spread of communism to North Korea in 1948 and created an alliance with the People's Republic of China in 1949. The US declared
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#173276608619812648-443: The Truman Doctrine of " containment " in 1947, launched the Marshall Plan in 1948 to assist Western Europe's economic recovery, and founded the NATO military alliance in 1949 (which was matched by the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact in 1955). Germany's split occupation zones solidified into East and West Germany in 1949. The first major proxy war of the period was the Korean War from 1950 to 1953, which ended in stalemate. In 1962,
12852-438: The Turkish Straits crisis and Black Sea border disputes were also a major factor in increasing tensions. In September, the Soviet side produced the Novikov telegram, sent by the Soviet ambassador to the US but commissioned and "co-authored" by Vyacheslav Molotov ; it portrayed the US as being in the grip of monopoly capitalists who were building up military capability "to prepare the conditions for winning world supremacy in
13056-415: The United Nations Security Council Resolution 82 and 83 backed the defense of South Korea, although the Soviets were then boycotting meetings in protest of the fact that Taiwan (Republic of China), not the People's Republic of China , held a permanent seat on the council. A UN force of sixteen countries faced North Korea, although 40 percent of troops were South Korean, and about 50 percent were from
13260-423: The partition of India (1947), the independence of Burma and Ceylon , and the dissolution of the British mandates of Palestine and Transjordan . Attlee and Bevin encouraged the United States to take a vigorous role in the Cold War . He supported the Marshall Plan to rebuild Western Europe with American money and, in 1949, promoted the NATO military alliance against the Soviet bloc . After leading Labour to
13464-466: The "farce" of the Non-Intervention Committee organised by the British and French governments. In the House of Commons, Attlee stated, "I cannot understand the delusion that if Franco wins with Italian and German aid, he will immediately become independent. I think it is a ridiculous proposition." Dalton, the Labour Party's spokesman on foreign policy, also thought that Franco would ally with Germany and Italy. However, Franco's subsequent behaviour proved it
13668-430: The 'Third Force'. To achieve these goals, the memorandum called for the establishment of a Foreign Office department "to collect information" about Communism and to "provide material for our anti-Communist publicity through our Missions and Information Services abroad". The department would collaborate with ministers, British delegates, the Labour Party, trade union representatives, the Central Office of Information , and
13872-455: The 30th Company of the same battalion; however, he did not deploy to France with it in December 1917, as he was transferred back to the South Lancashire Regiment on 28 November. After fully recovering from his injuries, he was sent to France in June 1918 to serve on the Western Front for the final months of the war. After being discharged from the Army in January 1919, he returned to Stepney , and returned to his old job lecturing part-time at
14076-455: The British government was so strong that he had become a de facto advisor to British propagandists, urging them to create a popular series of anti-communist left-wing literature to rival the success of the Left Book Club . In return for his services to British propaganda, the IRD assisted Koestler by purchasing thousands of copies of his book Darkness at Noon and distributing them throughout Germany. The IRD created, sponsored, and distributed
14280-491: The British military by planting fake news stories in the British press. Some of the fabricated stories the IRD created included accusations that Irish republicans were killing dogs by setting them on fire and falsely accusing members of EOKA , also anti-communist, of raping schoolgirls. Although the existence of the IRD was successfully kept hidden from the British public until the 1970s, the Soviet Union had always been aware of its existence, for Guy Burgess had been posted to
14484-429: The British point of view. This was countered by saying that the information was given to those who were already sympathetic to democracy and the West, and who had arrived at these positions independently. Some writers who worked for the IRD have since been found to have used IRD material and presented it to the academic community as though it were their own work. Robert Conquest's book The Great Terror: Stalin's Purge of
14688-548: The Cabinet as Lord Privy Seal on 12 May. Attlee and Churchill quickly agreed that the War Cabinet would consist of three Conservatives (initially Churchill, Chamberlain and Lord Halifax ) and two Labour members (initially himself and Arthur Greenwood ) and that Labour should have slightly more than one third of the posts in the coalition government. Attlee and Greenwood played a vital role in supporting Churchill during
14892-478: The Cabinet during MacDonald's second minority (1929–1931). After retaining his seat in Labour's landslide defeat of 1931 , he became the party's Deputy Leader . Elected Leader of the Labour Party in 1935, and at first advocating pacificism and opposing re-armament , he became a critic of Neville Chamberlain 's policy of appeasement in the lead-up to the Second World War . Attlee took Labour into
15096-525: The Chancellor of the Exchequer, Neville Chamberlain , introduced a Budget which increased the amount spent on the armed forces. Attlee made a radio broadcast in opposition to it, saying: [The budget] was the natural expression of the character of the present Government. There was hardly any increase allowed for the services which went to build up the life of the people, education and health. Everything
15300-463: The Cold War was in its essence a war of ideas. The United States, acting through the CIA, funded a long list of projects to counter the communist appeal among intellectuals in Europe and the developing world. The CIA also covertly sponsored a domestic propaganda campaign called Crusade for Freedom . The rearmament of West Germany was achieved in the early 1950s. Its main promoter was Konrad Adenauer ,
15504-465: The Cold War, preventing Western food, materials and supplies from arriving in the West Germany's exclave of West Berlin . The United States (primarily), Britain, France, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and several other countries began the massive "Berlin airlift", supplying West Berlin with food and other provisions despite Soviet threats. The Soviets mounted a public relations campaign against
15708-495: The Commission equipped him with a thorough exposure to India and many of its political leaders. By 1933 he argued that British rule was alien to India and was unable to make the social and economic reforms necessary for India's progress. He became the British leader most sympathetic to Indian independence (as a dominion), preparing him for his role in deciding on independence in 1947. In May 1930, Labour MP Oswald Mosley left
15912-586: The Communist attempt to overthrow the government, and the PKI subverting Indonesian on behalf of foreign powers. The IRD's propaganda efforts were aided by the United States, Australian and Malaysian governments which had an interest in supporting the Army's anti-communist mass murder and opposing President Sukarno . The IRD's information efforts helped corroborate the Indonesia Army's propaganda efforts against
16116-777: The Communist governments militarily. The fall of the Iron Curtain after the Pan-European Picnic and the Revolutions of 1989 , which represented a peaceful revolutionary wave with the exception of the Romanian revolution and the Afghan Civil War (1989–1992) , overthrew almost all of the Marxist–Leninist regimes of the Eastern Bloc. The Communist Party of the Soviet Union itself lost control in
16320-538: The Department that Never Was", became the first public acknowledgement of the IRD's existence. Since 1946, many senior officials of both the Foreign Office and the Labour Party had proposed the creation of an anti-communist propaganda organ. Christopher Warner raised a formal proposal in April 1946, but Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs Ernest Bevin was reluctant to upset the pro-Soviet members of
16524-405: The Government in its rearmament policy". However, with the rising threat from Nazi Germany , and the ineffectiveness of the League of Nations, this policy eventually lost credibility. By 1937, Labour had jettisoned its pacifist position and came to support rearmament and oppose Neville Chamberlain's policy of appeasement . However Attlee and the Labour Party strongly opposed conscription when it
16728-464: The IRD attacked the U.S. Black Power movement with covert disinformation in the 1960s. Civil rights leader Stokeley Carmichael , who had fled to Africa, was targeted; he was claimed to be a foreigner in Africa who was contemptuous of Africans, rather than a Communist stooge. The IRD created a fake west African organisation called The Black Power – Africa's Heritage Group , which criticised Carmichael as an "unbidden prophet from America" who had abandoned
16932-517: The IRD broke away from focusing solely on Soviet matters and began to publish pro-colonial propaganda intended to suppress pro-independence revolutions in Asia, Africa, Ireland, and the Middle East. The IRD was heavily involved in the publishing of books, newspapers, leaflets and journals, and even created publishing houses to act as propaganda fronts, such as Ampersand Limited. Operating for 29 years,
17136-527: The IRD diminished after Allende was elected president in 1970 , but increased again after the 1973 coup . The material was passed "to the Chilean Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Government information organisations" and the dictatorship's "military intelligence" services. The IRD helped Pinochet's government to develop a counter-insurgency strategy in order to stabilise it against domestic opposition. The counter insurgency techniques provided to Chile by
17340-535: The IRD for a period of two months in 1948. Burgess was later sacked by the IRD's founder Christopher Mayhew , who accused him of being "dirty, drunk and idle". The IRD closed its operations in 1977 after its existence was discovered by British journalists after an investigation into a heavy amount of anti-Soviet propaganda being published by academics belonging to St Antony's College, Oxford . An exposé by David Leigh published in The Guardian , entitled "Death of
17544-749: The IRD is known as the longest-running covert government propaganda department in British history, the largest branch of the Foreign Office, and the first major anglophone propaganda offensive against the USSR since the end of World War II . By the 1970s, the IRD was performing military intelligence tasks for the British Military in Northern Ireland during The Troubles . The IRD promoted works by many presumably anti-communist authors including George Orwell , Arthur Koestler , Bertrand Russell , and Robert Conquest . Internationally,
17748-676: The IRD took part in many historic events, including Britain's entry into the European Economic Community , the Korean War , the Suez Crisis , the Malayan Emergency , The Troubles, the Mau Mau Uprising , Cyprus Emergency , and the Sino-Indian War . Other IRD activities included forging letters and posters, conducting smear attacks against British trade unionists, and attacking opponents of
17952-483: The IRD were developed by Britain during its colonial interventions in Southeast Asia. The Chilean authorities were told not to reveal that the information came from the British government. The ethical objection raised by IRD's critics was that the public did not know the source of the information and could therefore not make allowances for the possible bias. It differed thus from straightforward propaganda from
18156-400: The KGB (1973–1979), described active measures as "the heart and soul of Soviet intelligence ." During the Sino-Soviet split , "spy wars" also occurred between the USSR and PRC. In September 1947, the Soviets created Cominform to impose orthodoxy within the international communist movement and tighten political control over Soviet satellites through coordination of communist parties in
18360-591: The Leader Arthur Henderson , lost their seats. Attlee, however, narrowly retained his Limehouse seat, with his majority being slashed from 7,288 to just 551. He was one of only three Labour MPs who had experience of government to retain their seats, along with George Lansbury and Stafford Cripps . Accordingly, Lansbury was elected Leader unopposed, with Attlee as his deputy. Most of the remaining Labour MPs after 1931 were elderly trade-union officials who could not contribute much to debates; Lansbury
18564-491: The Marshall Plan, seeing it as an effort by the US to impose its influence on Europe. In response, the Soviet Union established Comecon (Council for Mutual Economic Assistance) to foster economic cooperation among communist states. The United States and its Western European allies sought to strengthen their bonds and used the policy of containment against Soviet influence; they accomplished this most notably through
18768-720: The NHS, continuation of the " Special Relationship " with the US, and involvement in NATO. Attlee was born on 3 January 1883 in Putney , Surrey (now part of London), into an upper middle-class family, the seventh of eight children. His father was Henry Attlee, a solicitor, and his mother was Ellen Bravery Watson, daughter of Thomas Simons Watson, secretary for the Art Union of London . His parents were "committed Anglicans" who read prayers and psalms each morning at breakfast. Attlee grew up in
18972-787: The National Organisation of Cypriot Fighters ( EOKA ), had raped schoolgirls. These propaganda stories were manufactured as a part of 'Operation TEA-PARTY', a black propaganda operation in which IRD agents created pamphlets accusing EOKA guerrillas of forcing schoolgirls to have sex with them, and alleging that the youngest of these schoolgirls was 12 years old. Among other fabricated stories, IRD agents attempted to convince American journalists that EOKA had links to Communism in an attempt to gain American support, citing "secret documents" and "classified intelligence reports" which said journalists were never allowed to view. The department
19176-647: The Opposition on three occasions: from 1935 to 1940, briefly in 1945 and from 1951 to 1955. He remains the longest serving Labour leader. Attlee was born into an upper-middle-class family, the son of a wealthy London solicitor. After attending Haileybury College and the University of Oxford , he practised as a barrister . The volunteer work he carried out in London's East End exposed him to poverty, and his political views shifted leftwards thereafter. He joined
19380-751: The PKI. In addition, the Harold Wilson Labour Government and its Australian counterpart gave the Indonesian Army leadership an assurance that British and Commonwealth forces would not step up the Indonesia-Malaysia Confrontation . In 1969 Home Secretary James Callaghan requested actions that would hinder the careers of two "politically motivated" trade unionists , Jack Jones of the Transport and General Workers Union and Hugh Scanlon of
19584-514: The Russian Civil War further complicated relations, and although the Soviet Union later allied with Western powers to defeat Nazi Germany , this cooperation was strained by mutual suspicions. In the immediate aftermath of World War II, disagreements about the future of Europe, particularly Eastern Europe , became central. The Soviet Union's establishment of communist regimes in the countries it had liberated from Nazi control—enforced by
19788-481: The Soviet Union and its communist party , which had an influence across the Second World and was also tied to a network of authoritarian states. The Soviet Union had a command economy and installed similarly communist regimes its in satellites. United States involvement in regime change during the Cold War included support for anti-communist and right-wing dictatorships , governments, and uprisings across
19992-467: The Soviet Union was used to monitor dissent from official Soviet politics and morals. Although to an extent disinformation had always existed, the term itself was invented, and the strategy formalized by a black propaganda department of the Soviet KGB. Based on the amount of top-secret Cold War archival information that has been released, historian Raymond L. Garthoff concludes there probably
20196-572: The Soviet Union, which at the time was undergoing the Era of Stagnation . This phase saw the new Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev introducing the liberalizing reforms of glasnost ("openness") and perestroika ("reorganization") and ending Soviet involvement in Afghanistan in 1989. Pressures for national sovereignty grew stronger in Eastern Europe, and Gorbachev refused to further support
20400-558: The Soviet Union. A number of self-proclaimed Marxist–Leninist governments were formed in the second half of the 1970s in developing countries , including Angola , Mozambique , Ethiopia , Cambodia , Afghanistan , and Nicaragua . Détente collapsed at the end of the decade with the beginning of the Soviet–Afghan War in 1979. Beginning in the 1980s, this phase was another period of elevated tension. The Reagan Doctrine led to increased diplomatic, military, and economic pressures on
20604-643: The Soviets accumulated after broken promises by Stalin and Molotov concerning Europe and Iran. Following the World War II Anglo-Soviet invasion of Iran , the country was occupied by the Red Army in the far north and the British in the south. Iran was used by the United States and British to supply the Soviet Union, and the Allies agreed to withdraw from Iran within six months after the cessation of hostilities. However, when this deadline came,
20808-535: The Soviets agreed to withdraw from Iran after persistent US pressure, an early success of containment policy. By 1947, US president Harry S. Truman was outraged by the perceived resistance of the Soviet Union to American demands in Iran, Turkey, and Greece, as well as Soviet rejection of the Baruch Plan on nuclear weapons. In February 1947, the British government announced that it could no longer afford to finance
21012-559: The Soviets had permitted to retain democratic structures. The public brutality of the coup shocked Western powers more than any event up to that point, set in motion a brief scare that war would occur, and swept away the last vestiges of opposition to the Marshall Plan in the United States Congress. In an immediate aftermath of the crisis, the London Six-Power Conference was held, resulting in
21216-545: The Soviets remained in Iran under the guise of the Azerbaijan People's Government and Kurdish Republic of Mahabad . Shortly thereafter, on 5 March, former British prime minister Winston Churchill delivered his famous " Iron Curtain " speech in Fulton, Missouri . The speech called for an Anglo-American alliance against the Soviets, whom he accused of establishing an "iron curtain" dividing Europe from " Stettin in
21420-537: The Thirties "drew heavily from IRD files", and multiple volumes of Soviet history which Conquest edited had also contained IRD material. The IRD became the subject of heavy controversy in the UK after it was revealed that George Orwell had given the department a list of 38 people he suspected of being secret Communists or " fellow travellers ". The existence of Orwell's List, also known as Foreign Office File "FO/111/189",
21624-520: The Truman Doctrine marked the beginning of a US bipartisan defense and foreign policy consensus between Republicans and Democrats focused on containment and deterrence that weakened during and after the Vietnam War , but ultimately persisted thereafter. Moderate and conservative parties in Europe, as well as social democrats, gave virtually unconditional support to the Western alliance, while European and American Communists , financed by
21828-443: The U.S. Black Power cause, with no place in Africa, who was "weaving a bloody trail of chaos in the name of Pan-Africanism", controlled by Kwame Nkrumah , the independence leader and former president of Ghana deposed by a coup in 1966. In 1969 Reuters agreed to open a reporting service in the Middle East as part of an IRD plan to influence the international media. To protect the reputation of Reuters, which might have been damaged if
22032-642: The UK. On arriving in Britain, Attlee invited one of the children into his home in Stanmore , north-west London, where he stayed for several months. Attlee remained as Leader of the Opposition when the Second World War broke out in September 1939. The ensuing disastrous Norwegian campaign would result in a motion of no confidence in Neville Chamberlain . Although Chamberlain survived this,
22236-567: The US assistance, the Greek military won its civil war . Under the leadership of Alcide De Gasperi the Italian Christian Democrats defeated the powerful Communist – Socialist alliance in the elections of 1948 . All major powers engaged in espionage, using a great variety of spies, double agents , moles , and new technologies such as the tapping of telephone cables. The Soviet KGB ("Committee for State Security"),
22440-581: The US government gave to Western European countries over $ 13 billion (equivalent to $ 189 billion in 2016) to rebuild the economy of Europe . Later, the program led to the creation of the OECD . The plan's aim was to rebuild the democratic and economic systems of Europe and to counter perceived threats to the European balance of power , such as communist parties seizing control through revolutions or elections. The plan also stated that European prosperity
22644-588: The US was trying to buy a pro-US re-alignment of Europe. Stalin therefore prevented Eastern Bloc nations from receiving Marshall Plan aid. The Soviet Union's alternative to the Marshall Plan, which was purported to involve Soviet subsidies and trade with central and eastern Europe, became known as the Molotov Plan (later institutionalized in January 1949 as the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance ). Stalin
22848-483: The USSR. In this way, this US would exercise " preponderant power ," oppose neutrality, and establish global hegemony . In the early 1950s (a period sometimes known as the " Pactomania "), the US formalized a series of alliances with Japan (a former WWII enemy), South Korea , Taiwan , Australia , New Zealand , Thailand and the Philippines (notably ANZUS in 1951 and SEATO in 1954), thereby guaranteeing
23052-527: The United Nations, was split up and dissolved in 1954 and 1975, also because of the détente between the West and Tito. The US and Britain merged their western German occupation zones into " Bizone " (1 January 1947, later "Trizone" with the addition of France's zone, April 1949). As part of the economic rebuilding of Germany, in early 1948, representatives of a number of Western European governments and
23256-518: The United States a number of long-term military bases. One of the more significant examples of the implementation of containment was the United Nations US-led intervention in the Korean War . In June 1950, after years of mutual hostilities, Kim Il Sung 's North Korean People's Army invaded South Korea at the 38th parallel . Stalin had been reluctant to support the invasion but ultimately sent advisers. To Stalin's surprise,
23460-401: The United States announced an agreement for a merger of western German areas into a federal governmental system. In addition, in accordance with the Marshall Plan , they began to re-industrialize and rebuild the West German economy, including the introduction of a new Deutsche Mark currency to replace the old Reichsmark currency that the Soviets had debased. The US had secretly decided that
23664-466: The United States government to distribute them using embassies as cover. Working closely with the British Council , the IRD built Russell's reputation as an anti-communist writer, and to use his works to project power overseas. Koestler enjoyed strong personal relationships with IRD agents from 1949 onwards and was supportive of the department's anti-communist goals. Koestler's relationship with
23868-480: The United States. Clement Attlee [REDACTED] Clement Richard Attlee, 1st Earl Attlee (3 January 1883 – 8 October 1967), was a British statesman who was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1945 to 1951 and Leader of the Labour Party from 1935 to 1955. Attlee was Deputy Prime Minister during the wartime coalition government under Winston Churchill , and Leader of
24072-510: The Warsaw Pact's primary function was to safeguard Soviet hegemony over its Eastern European satellites, with the pact's only direct military actions having been the invasions of its own member states to keep them from breaking away; in the 1960s, the pact evolved into a multilateral alliance, in which the non-Soviet Warsaw Pact members gained significant scope to pursue their own interests. In 1961, Soviet-allied East Germany constructed
24276-423: The Western agencies paid special attention to debriefing Eastern Bloc defectors . Edward Jay Epstein describes that the CIA understood that the KGB used "provocations", or fake defections, as a trick to embarrass Western intelligence and establish Soviet double agents. As a result, from 1959 to 1973, the CIA required that East Bloc defectors went through a counterintelligence investigation before being recruited as
24480-462: The accusation that the USSR was exerting increasing control over the countries lying in its sphere. He argued that there was nothing surprising in "the fact that the Soviet Union, anxious for its future safety, [was] trying to see to it that governments loyal in their attitude to the Soviet Union should exist in these countries." Soviet territorial demands to Turkey regarding the Dardanelles in
24684-674: The age of nine, Attlee was sent to board at Northaw Place , a boys' preparatory school in Hertfordshire . In 1896 he followed his brothers to Haileybury College , where he was a middling student. He was influenced by the Darwinist views of his housemaster Frederick Webb Headley , and in 1899 he published an attack on striking London cab-drivers in the school magazine, predicting they would soon have to "beg for their fares". In 1901, Attlee went up to University College, Oxford , reading modern history . He and his brother Tom "were given
24888-561: The allocation of $ 400 million to intervene in the war and unveiled the Truman Doctrine , which framed the conflict as a contest between free peoples and totalitarian regimes. American policymakers accused the Soviet Union of conspiring against the Greek royalists in an effort to expand Soviet influence even though Stalin had told the Communist Party to cooperate with the British-backed government. Enunciation of
25092-403: The balance of power in Europe... [and] destroyed the last fortress of democracy in Eastern Europe which stood in the way of his ambition. He has opened his way to the food, the oil and the resources which he requires in order to consolidate his military power, and he has successfully defeated and reduced to impotence the forces that might have stood against the rule of violence. [...] The cause [of
25296-426: The bureau responsible for foreign espionage and internal surveillance, was famous for its effectiveness. The most famous Soviet operation involved its atomic spies that delivered crucial information from the United States' Manhattan Project , leading the USSR to detonate its first nuclear weapon in 1949, four years after the American detonation and much sooner than expected. A massive network of informants throughout
25500-716: The chancellor of West Germany, with France the main opponent. Washington had the decisive voice. It was strongly supported by the Pentagon (the US military leadership), and weakly opposed by President Truman; the State Department was ambivalent. The outbreak of the Korean War in June 1950 changed the calculations and Washington now gave full support. That also involved naming Dwight D. Eisenhower in charge of NATO forces and sending more American troops to West Germany. There
25704-464: The communist party. Radio and television organizations were state-owned, while print media was usually owned by political organizations, mostly by the local communist party. Soviet radio broadcasts used Marxist rhetoric to attack capitalism, emphasizing themes of labor exploitation, imperialism and war-mongering. Along with the broadcasts of the BBC and the Voice of America to Central and Eastern Europe,
25908-496: The construction of the first Labour majority government , which aimed to maintain full employment , a mixed economy and a greatly enlarged system of social services provided by the state. To this end, it undertook the nationalisation of public utilities and major industries, and implemented wide-ranging social reforms, including the passing of the National Insurance Act 1946 and National Assistance Act 1948 ,
26112-497: The country and was banned following the 1991 Soviet coup attempt that August. This in turn led to the formal dissolution of the Soviet Union in December 1991 and the collapse of Communist governments across much of Africa and Asia. The Russian Federation became the Soviet Union's successor state, while many of the other republics emerged from the Soviet Union's collapse as fully independent post-Soviet states . The United States
26316-641: The country. Churchill chaired the first two, the War cabinet and the Defence Committee, with Attlee deputising for him in these, and answering for the government in Parliament when Churchill was absent. Attlee himself instituted, and later chaired the third body, the Lord President's Committee , which was responsible for overseeing domestic affairs. As Churchill was most concerned with overseeing
26520-494: The course of the second Labour government, Attlee had become increasingly disillusioned with MacDonald, whom he came to regard as vain and incompetent, and of whom he later wrote scathingly in his autobiography. He would write: In the old days I had looked up to MacDonald as a great leader. He had a fine presence and great oratorical power. The unpopular line which he took during the First World War seemed to mark him as
26724-407: The crisis which we have undergone] was not the existence of minorities in Czechoslovakia; it was not that the position of the Sudeten Germans had become intolerable. It was not the wonderful principle of self-determination. It was because Herr Hitler had decided that the time was ripe for another step forward in his design to dominate Europe... The minorities question is no new one. [...] [And] short of
26928-757: The department as a "peacetime PWE". Outside of full-time agents, many historians, writers, and academics were either paid directly to publish anti-communist propaganda by the IRD or whose works were bought and distributed by the department using British embassies to both translate and distribute their works across the globe. Some of these authors include George Orwell , Bertrand Russell , Arthur Koestler , Czesław Miłosz , Brian Crozier , Richard Crossman , Will Lawther , A. J. P. Taylor , Baron Wyatt of Weeford , Leonard Schapiro , Denis Healey , Douglas Hyde , Margarete Buber , Victor Kravchenko , W.N. Ewer , Victor Feather , and hundreds (possibly thousands) of others. Some authors such as Bertrand Russell were fully aware of
27132-528: The department used its propaganda to spread smear stories targeting trade union leaders and human rights activists, but was also used by the Labour Party to conduct internal purges against socialist members. British introductions to IRD were made discreetly, with journalists being told as little as possible about the department. Propaganda material was sent to their homes under plain cover as correspondence marked "personal" carried no departmental identification or reference. They were told documents were "prepared" in
27336-564: The end of World War II , and lasted until the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. The term cold war is used because there was no direct fighting between the two superpowers , though each supported opposing sides in major regional conflicts known as proxy wars . Aside from the nuclear arms race starting in 1949 and conventional military deployment , the struggle for dominance was expressed indirectly via psychological warfare , propaganda campaigns , espionage , far-reaching embargoes , sports diplomacy , and technological competitions such as
27540-408: The fall of the communist governments of Europe from 1989, which concluded with the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. The Western Bloc included the US and a number of First World nations that were generally capitalist and liberal democratic but tied to a network of often authoritarian Third World states, most of which were the European powers' former colonies . The Eastern Bloc was led by
27744-456: The first and second ballots, formally being elected Leader of the Labour Party on 3 December 1935. Throughout the 1920s and most of the 1930s, the Labour Party's official policy had been to oppose rearmament, instead supporting internationalism and collective security under the League of Nations . At the 1934 Labour Party Conference, Attlee declared that, "We have absolutely abandoned any idea of nationalist loyalty. We are deliberately putting
27948-401: The formation of NATO , which was essentially a defensive agreement in 1949. The Soviet Union countered with the Warsaw Pact in 1955, which had similar results with the Eastern Bloc. As by that time the Soviet Union already had an armed presence and political domination all over its eastern satellite states, the pact has been long considered superfluous. Although nominally a defensive alliance,
28152-429: The formation of the National Health Service (NHS) in 1948, and the enlargement of public subsidies for council house building. His government also reformed trade union legislation, working practices and children's services; it created the National Parks system, passed the New Towns Act 1946 and established the town and country planning system . Attlee's foreign policy focused on decolonisation efforts, including
28356-666: The funding for their books, while others such as the philosopher Bryan Magee were outraged when they found out. As part of its remit "to collect and summarize reliable information about Soviet and communist misdoings, to disseminate it to friendly journalists, politicians, and trade unionists, and to support, financially and otherwise, anti-communist publications", it subsidised the publication of books by 'Background Books', including three by Bertrand Russell, Why Communism Must Fail , What Is Freedom? , and What Is Democracy? The IRD bulk-ordered thousands of copies of Russell's books, including his work Why Communism Must Fail , and worked with
28560-524: The funding from the British government became known, the BBC paid Reuters "enhanced subscriptions" for access to its news service and was in turn compensated by the British government for the extra expense. The BBC paid Reuters £350,000 over four years. The IRD conducted a propaganda programme to prevent Salvador Allende from being elected president of Chile in the 1964 election . Allende's nationalisation policy threatened British and US interests since Chile's copper mines were largely owned by US companies. In
28764-401: The government. Attlee effectively served as Labour's acting-leader for nine months from December 1933, after Lansbury fractured his thigh in an accident; this raised Attlee's public profile considerably. It was during this period, however, that personal financial problems almost forced Attlee to quit politics altogether. His wife had become ill, and at that time there was no separate salary for
28968-416: The greatest betrayal in the political history of this country ... The shock to the Party was very great, especially to the loyal workers of the rank-and-file who had made great sacrifices for these men. The general election held in October 1931 proved disastrous for the Labour Party, which lost over 200 seats, returning only 52 MPs to Parliament. The vast majority of the party's senior figures, including
29172-424: The infant mortality rate, and took action to find work for returning unemployed ex-servicemen. In 1920, while mayor, he wrote his first book, The Social Worker , which set out many of the principles that informed his political philosophy and that were to underpin the actions of his government in later years. The book attacked the idea that looking after the poor could be left to voluntary action. He wrote that: In
29376-412: The kind of world-view, the kind of beliefs, and the social structure that would probably prevail in a state which was at once unconquerable and in a permanent state of "cold war" with its neighbours. In The Observer of 10 March 1946, Orwell wrote, "...after the Moscow conference last December, Russia began to make a 'cold war' on Britain and the British Empire." The first use of the term to describe
29580-472: The lead up to the election, the IRD was told by a British Cabinet Office unit called the "Counter-subversion Committee's Working Group on Latin America" that "it will be important to prevent significant gains by the extreme left". The IRD supported Allende's opponent Eduardo Frei Montalva in the lead up to the election by distributing material to its reliable contacts that was critical of Allende, and favourable to Frei. The distribution of propaganda material by
29784-428: The left or of the right. He always supported the crown , and as Prime Minister was close to King George VI . George Lansbury , a committed pacifist , resigned as the Leader of the Labour Party at the 1935 Party Conference on 8 October, after delegates voted in favour of sanctions against Italy for its aggression against Abyssinia . Lansbury had strongly opposed the policy, and felt unable to continue leading
29988-416: The leg by shrapnel from friendly fire while storming an enemy trench during the Battle of Hanna . The battle was an unsuccessful attempt to relieve the Siege of Kut , and many of Attlee's fellow soldiers were also wounded or killed. He was sent firstly to India , and then back to the UK to recover. On 18 December 1916 he was transferred to the Heavy Section of the Machine Gun Corps , and 1 March 1917 he
30192-402: The loyalty of non-aligned countries , such as India . By the 1970s, Japan and Western Europe rebuilt their economies, allowing them more diplomatic independence. After the Sino-Soviet split between the USSR and China in 1961, the U.S. initiated contacts with China in 1972 . In the same year, the US and USSR signed a series of treaties limiting their nuclear arsenals, which eased tensions for
30396-414: The most prominent architects of America's early Cold War strategy, especially those who believed that the Cold War would eventually be fought by political rather than military means, such as George F. Kennan. Soviet and Eastern Bloc authorities used various methods to suppress Western broadcasts, including radio jamming . American policymakers, including Kennan and John Foster Dulles , acknowledged that
30600-483: The most votes. He continued as Labour leader but retired after losing the 1955 general election and was elevated to the House of Lords , where he served until his death in 1967. In public, he was modest and unassuming, but behind the scenes his depth of knowledge, quiet demeanour, objectivity and pragmatism proved decisive. He is often ranked as one of the greatest British prime ministers , receiving particular praise for his government's welfare state reforms, creation of
30804-407: The names listed by Orwell included filmmaker Charlie Chaplin , writer J. B. Priestley , actor Michael Redgrave , historian E. H. Carr , New Statesman editor Kingsley Martin , New York Times ' s Moscow correspondent Walter Duranty , historian Isaac Deutscher , Labour Party MP Tom Driberg and the novelist Naomi Mitchison , as well as lesser-known writers and journalists. Only one of
31008-403: The party after its rejection of his proposals for solving the unemployment problem, and Attlee was given Mosley's post of Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster . In March 1931, he became Postmaster General , a post he held for five months until August, when the Labour government fell , after failing to agree on how to tackle the financial crisis of the Great Depression . That month MacDonald and
31212-406: The party. Taking advantage of the disarray in the Labour Party, the Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin announced on 19 October that a general election would be held on 14 November. With no time for a leadership contest, the party agreed that Attlee should serve as interim leader, on the understanding that a leadership election would be held after the general election. Attlee therefore led Labour through
31416-513: The people named by Orwell, Peter Smollett, was ever revealed to have been a real Soviet agent. Peter Smollett , who Orwell claimed "...gives strong impression of being some kind of Russian agent. Very slimy person." Smollett had been the head of the Soviet section in the British Ministry of Information , while in fact being a Soviet agent who had been recruited by Kim Philby . Reactions to Orwell's list have been mixed, with some people crediting Orwell's actions to mental illness, others labelling him
31620-539: The people will have to pay for their mistake in believing that it could be trusted to carry out a policy of peace. [...] This is a War Budget. We can look in the future for no advance in Social Legislation. All available resources are to be devoted to armaments. In June 1936, the Conservative MP Duff Cooper called for an Anglo-French alliance against possible German aggression and called for all parties to support one. Attlee condemned this: "We say that any suggestion of an alliance of this kind—an alliance in which one country
31824-559: The policy change. Once again, the East Berlin communists attempted to disrupt the Berlin municipal elections , which were held on 5 December 1948 and produced a turnout of 86% and an overwhelming victory for the non-communist parties. The results effectively divided the city into East and West, the latter comprising US, British and French sectors. 300,000 Berliners demonstrated and urged the international airlift to continue, and US Air Force pilot Gail Halvorsen created " Operation Vittles ", which supplied candy to German children. The Airlift
32028-441: The political decision-making level on either side. Similarly, there is no evidence, on either side, of any major political or military decision that was prematurely discovered through espionage and thwarted by the other side. There also is no evidence of any major political or military decision that was crucially influenced (much less generated) by an agent of the other side. According to historian Robert L. Benson, "Washington's forte
32232-424: The presence of the Red Army —alarmed the US and UK. Western leaders saw this as a clear instance of Soviet expansionism, clashing with their vision of a democratic Europe. Economically, the divide was sharpened with the introduction of the Marshall Plan in 1947, a US initiative to provide financial aid to rebuild Europe and prevent the spread of communism by stabilizing capitalist economies. The Soviet Union rejected
32436-481: The reputation of his administration was so badly and publicly damaged that it became clear a coalition government would be necessary. Even if Attlee had personally been prepared to serve under Chamberlain in an emergency coalition government, he would never have been able to carry Labour with him. Consequently, Chamberlain tendered his resignation, and Labour and the Conservatives entered a coalition government led by Winston Churchill on 10 May 1940, with Attlee joining
32640-497: The same years, led Bevin to change his position and to start discussing the details for the creation of a propaganda unit. After sending a confidential paper to the foreign secretary, Ernest Bevin, in 1947, Mayhew was summoned by Attlee to Chequers to discuss it further. On 8 January 1948, the Cabinet of the United Kingdom adopted the Future Foreign Publicity , memorandum drafted by Christopher Mayhew and signed by Ernest Bevin. The memorandum embraced anti-communism and took upon
32844-516: The short-lived first Labour government , led by MacDonald. Attlee opposed the 1926 General Strike , believing that strike action should not be used as a political weapon. However, when it happened, he did not attempt to undermine it. At the time of the strike, he was chairman of the Stepney Borough Electricity Committee. He negotiated a deal with the Electrical Trade Union so that they would continue to supply power to hospitals, but would end supplies to factories. One firm, Scammell and Nephew Ltd, took
33048-405: The source of the term, Lippmann traced it to a French term from the 1930s, la guerre froide . The roots of the Cold War can be traced back to diplomatic and military tensions preceding World War II. The 1917 Russian Revolution and the subsequent Treaty of Brest-Litovsk , where Soviet Russia ceded vast territories to Germany, deepened distrust among the Western Allies. Allied intervention in
33252-463: The specific post-war geopolitical confrontation between the Soviet Union and the United States came in a speech by Bernard Baruch , an influential advisor to Democratic presidents, on 16 April 1947. The speech, written by journalist Herbert Bayard Swope , proclaimed, "Let us not be deceived: we are today in the midst of a cold war." Newspaper columnist Walter Lippmann gave the term wide currency with his book The Cold War . When asked in 1947 about
33456-472: The state would have any serious effect. This sparked a process that caused him to convert to socialism . He joined the Independent Labour Party (ILP) in 1908 and became active in local politics. In 1909, he stood unsuccessfully at his first election, as an ILP candidate for Stepney Borough Council. He also worked briefly as a secretary for Beatrice Webb in 1909, before becoming a secretary for Toynbee Hall . He worked for Webb's campaign of popularisation of
33660-405: The summer of that year touring Essex and Somerset on a bicycle, explaining the Act at public meetings. A year later, he became a lecturer at the London School of Economics , teaching social science and public administration . Following the outbreak of the First World War in August 1914, Attlee applied to join the British Army . Initially his application was turned down, as his age of 31
33864-407: The war effort, this arrangement suited both men. Attlee himself had largely been responsible for creating these arrangements with Churchill's backing, streamlining the machinery of government and abolishing many committees. He also acted as a conciliator in the government, smoothing over tensions which frequently arose between Labour and Conservative Ministers. Many Labour activists were baffled by
34068-420: The wartime coalition government in 1940 and served under Winston Churchill, initially as Lord Privy Seal and then as Deputy Prime Minister from 1942. The Labour Party, led by Attlee, won a landslide victory in the 1945 general election , on their post-war recovery platform. They inherited a country close to bankruptcy following the Second World War and beset by food, housing and resource shortages. Attlee led
34272-436: The whole population, the present regime in Czechoslovakia is not essentially different from the regimes in the surrounding countries". Anthony Eden in the Munich debate acknowledged that there had been "discrimination, even severe discrimination" against the Sudeten Germans. In 1937, Attlee wrote a book entitled The Labour Party in Perspective that sold fairly well in which he set out some of his views. He argued that there
34476-411: The world, while Soviet involvement in regime change included the funding of left-wing parties , wars of independence , revolutions and dictatorships. As nearly all the colonial states underwent decolonization and achieved independence in the period from 1945 to 1960, many became Third World battlefields in the Cold War. At the end of World War II, English writer George Orwell used cold war , as
34680-400: The world. Movements against nuclear weapons testing and for nuclear disarmament took place, with large anti-war protests . By the 1970s, both sides had started making allowances for peace and security, ushering in a period of détente that saw the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks and the 1972 visit by Richard Nixon to China that opened relations with China as a strategic counterweight to
34884-400: Was 'signals' intelligence - the procurement and analysis of coded foreign messages." leading to the Venona project or Venona intercepts, which monitored the communications of Soviet intelligence agents. Moynihan wrote that the Venona project contained "overwhelming proof of the activities of Soviet spy networks in America, complete with names, dates, places, and deeds." The Venona project
35088-412: Was a strong promise that West Germany would not develop nuclear weapons. Widespread fears of another rise of German militarism necessitated the new military to operate within an alliance framework under NATO command. In 1955, Washington secured full German membership of NATO. In May 1953, Lavrentiy Beria , by then in a government post, had made an unsuccessful proposal to allow the reunification of
35292-419: Was also based at the IRD, working to recruit emigres from Eastern Europe. Many IRD agents were former members of Britain's WWII propaganda department, the Political Warfare Executive (PWE), including former Daily Mirror journalist Leslie Sheridan. This high level of PWE veterans within the IRD, coupled with the similarities between how these two propaganda departments operated, has led some historians to describe
35496-418: Was also fearful of a reconstituted Germany; his vision of a post-war Germany did not include the ability to rearm or pose any kind of threat to the Soviet Union. In early 1948, following reports of strengthening "reactionary elements", Czech Communists executed a coup d'état in Czechoslovakia (resulting in the formation of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic (9 May 1948)), the only Eastern Bloc state that
35700-433: Was as much a logistical as a political and psychological success for the West; it firmly linked West Berlin to the United States. In May 1949, Stalin backed down and lifted the blockade. In 1952, Stalin repeatedly proposed a plan to unify East and West Germany under a single government chosen in elections supervised by the United Nations, if the new Germany were to stay out of Western military alliances, but this proposal
35904-456: Was briefly a member of the Socialist League , which had been formed by former Independent Labour Party (ILP) members who opposed the ILP's disaffiliation from the main Labour Party in 1932. At one point he agreed with the proposition put forward by Cripps that gradual reform was inadequate and that a socialist government would have to pass an emergency powers act, allowing it to rule by decree to overcome any opposition by vested interests until it
36108-449: Was contingent upon German economic recovery. One month later, Truman signed the National Security Act of 1947 , creating a unified Department of Defense , the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and the National Security Council (NSC). These would become the main bureaucracies for US defense policy in the Cold War. Stalin believed economic integration with the West would allow Eastern Bloc countries to escape Soviet control, and that
36312-502: Was created in a joint operation between British and American government propagandists, which also included a pictorial version. To further promote Animal Farm , the IRD commissioned cartoon strips to be planted in newspapers across the globe. The foreign rights to distribute these cartoons were acquired by the IRD for Cyprus, Tanganyika, Kenya, Uganda, Northern and Southern Rhodesia, Nyasaland, Sierra Leone, Gold Coast, Nigeria, Trinidad, Jamaica, Fiji, British Guiana and British Honduras. In
36516-408: Was devoted to piling up the instruments of death. The Chancellor expressed great regret that he should have to spend so much on armaments, but said that it was absolutely necessary and was due only to the actions of other nations. One would think to listen to him that the Government had no responsibility for the state of world affairs. [...] The Government has now resolved to enter upon an arms race, and
36720-423: Was edited by Stephen Spender from 1953 to 1966. Spender resigned after it emerged that the Congress for Cultural Freedom , which published the magazine, was being covertly funded by the CIA. In 1948, fearing a victory of the Italian Communist Party in the general election , the IRD instructed the Embassy of the United Kingdom in Rome to disseminate anti-communist propaganda. Ambassador Victor Mallet chaired
36924-408: Was ever used for a show trial or a bullying "hearing" or a blacklist or a witch-hunt. He wasn't interested in unearthing heresy or in getting people fired or in putting them under the discipline of a loyalty oath. He just wanted to keep a clear accounting in the battle of ideas." During the Cyprus Emergency, IRD agents used newspaper journalists to spread fabricated stories that guerrillas belonging to
37128-404: Was far less sympathetic, labelling Orwell a "snitch" and a bigot for the information included in Orwell's notebook, another list of suspected Communists that came into the possession of the IRD. This notebook created by Orwell which contained 135 names, was also found to have been held by the Foreign Office. Within this document, Orwell describes African-American Civil Rights leader Paul Robeson as
37332-426: Was headed by career civil servants including Ralph Murray , John Rennie , and Ray Whitney who became a Conservative MP and minister. Although the vast majority of IRD staff were British subjects, the department also hired emigres from the Soviet Union, such as the rocket scientist Grigori Tokaty . Other staffers of note include Robert Conquest , whose secretary Celia Kirwan collected Orwell's list . Tracy Philipps
37536-556: Was in his 70s, and Stafford Cripps – another main figure of the Labour front-bench who had entered Parliament in January 1931 – lacked parliamentary experience. As one of the most capable and experienced of the remaining Labour MPs, Attlee therefore shouldered a lot of the burden of providing an opposition to the National Government in the years 1931 to 1935 ; during this time he had to extend his knowledge of subjects which he had not studied in any depth before (such as finance and foreign affairs) in order to provide an effective opposition to
37740-468: Was initially the Lord Privy Seal, before becoming Britain's first ever Deputy Prime Minister in 1942, as well as becoming the Dominions Secretary and Lord President of the Council on 28 September 1943. Attlee himself played a generally low key but vital role in the wartime government, working behind the scenes and in committees to ensure the smooth operation of government. In the coalition government , three inter-connected committees effectively ran
37944-402: Was kept highly secret even from policymakers until the Moynihan Commission in 1995. Despite this, the decryption project had already been betrayed and dispatched to the USSR by Kim Philby and Bill Weisband in 1946, as was discovered by the US by 1950. Nonetheless, the Soviets had to keep their discovery of the program secret, too, and continued leaking their own information, some of which
38148-454: Was left as the world's sole superpower. In February 1946, George F. Kennan 's " Long Telegram " from Moscow to Washington helped to articulate the US government's increasingly hard line against the Soviets, which would become the basis for US strategy toward the Soviet Union for the duration of the Cold War. The telegram galvanized a policy debate that would eventually shape the Truman administration 's Soviet policy. Washington's opposition to
38352-622: Was made public in 1996. The names included on the list were not made public until 2003. The list came into possession of the IRD in 1949, after being collected by IRD agent Celia Kirwan. Kirwan was a close friend of Orwell, she was also Arthur Koestler's sister-in-law and the secretary for fellow IRD agent Robert Conquest. Guy Burgess was based in the next office to her own. The list itself was divided into three columns headed "Name" "Job" and "Remarks", and referred to those listed as "FTs" meaning Fellow Travelers, and labelled people he believed of being suspected of being secret Marxists as "cryptos". Some of
38556-467: Was no point in Labour compromising on its socialist principles in the belief that this would achieve electoral success. He wrote: "I find that the proposition often reduces itself to this – that if the Labour Party would drop its socialism and adopt a Liberal platform, many Liberals would be pleased to support it. I have heard it said more than once that if Labour would only drop its policy of nationalisation everyone would be pleased, and it would soon obtain
38760-536: Was not such a ridiculous proposition. As Dalton later acknowledged, Franco skilfully maintained Spanish neutrality, whereas Hitler would likely have occupied Spain if Franco had lost the Civil War. In 1938, Attlee opposed the Munich Agreement , in which Chamberlain negotiated with Hitler to give Germany the German-speaking parts of Czechoslovakia , the Sudetenland : We all feel relief that war has not come this time... we cannot, however, feel that peace has been established, but that we have nothing but an armistice in
38964-488: Was now restricted to the island of Taiwan , the nationalist government of which exists to this day. The Kremlin promptly created an alliance with the newly formed People's Republic of China. According to Norwegian historian Odd Arne Westad , the communists won the Civil War because they made fewer military mistakes than Chiang Kai-Shek made, and because in his search for a powerful centralized government, Chiang antagonized too many interest groups in China. Moreover, his party
39168-403: Was parity in the quantity and quality of secret information obtained by each side. However, the Soviets probably had an advantage in terms of HUMINT (human intelligence or interpersonal espionage) and "sometimes in its reach into high policy circles." In terms of decisive impact, however, he concludes: We also can now have high confidence in the judgment that there were no successful "moles" at
39372-440: Was passed in April 1939. At the end of 1937, Attlee and a party of three Labour MPs visited Spain and visited the British Battalion of the International Brigades fighting in the Spanish Civil War . One of the companies was named the "Major Attlee Company" in his honour. Attlee was supportive of the Republican government in Spain, and at the 1937 Labour conference moved the wider Labour Party towards opposing what he considered
39576-400: Was promoted to the temporary rank of major , leading him to be known as "Major Attlee" for much of the inter-war period . He would spend most of 1917 training soldiers at various locations in England. From 2 to 9 July 1917, he was the temporary commanding officer (CO) of the newly formed L (later 10th) Battalion, the Tank Corps at Bovington Camp, Dorset . From 9 July, he assumed command of
39780-619: Was republished, distributed, translated, and promoted for many years by IRD agents. Of all the propaganda works ever supported by the IRD, Animal Farm was given more attention and support by IRD agents than any publication in the department's history and arguably given more support from the British and American governments than any other propaganda book in the Cold War. The IRD gained the translation rights to Animal Farm in Chinese, Danish, Dutch, French, German, Finnish, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese, Indonesian, Latvian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Spanish, and Swedish. The Chinese version of Animal Farm
39984-517: Was safe to restore democracy. He admired Oliver Cromwell 's strong-armed rule and use of major generals to control England. After looking more closely at Hitler , Mussolini , Stalin , and even his former colleague Oswald Mosley (leader of the new blackshirt fascist movement in Britain), Attlee retreated from radicalism, distanced himself from the League, and argued instead that the Labour Party must adhere to constitutional methods and stand forthright for democracy and against totalitarianism either of
40188-426: Was said to be closed down by then Foreign Secretary , David Owen , in 1977. Its existence was not made public until 1978. Cold War The Cold War was a period of global geopolitical tension and struggle for ideological and economic influence between the United States and the Soviet Union (USSR) and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc , that started in 1947, two years after
40392-459: Was seen as being too old; however, he was eventually commissioned as a temporary lieutenant in the 6th (Service) Battalion, South Lancashire Regiment , on 30 September 1914. On 9 February 1915 he was promoted to captain , and on 14 March was appointed battalion adjutant . The 6th South Lancashires were part of the 38th Brigade of the 13th (Western) Division , which served in the Gallipoli campaign in Turkey . Attlee's decision to fight caused
40596-410: Was seen as the favourite, but was distrusted by many sections of the party, especially the left wing. Arthur Greenwood meanwhile was a popular figure in the party; however, his leadership bid was severely hampered by his alcohol problem . Attlee was able to come across as a competent and unifying figure, particularly having already led the party through a general election. He went on to come first in both
40800-427: Was still useful to the American program. According to Moynihan, even President Truman may not have been fully informed of Venona, which may have left him unaware of the extent of Soviet espionage. Clandestine atomic spies from the Soviet Union, who infiltrated the Manhattan Project at various points during WWII, played a major role in increasing tensions that led to the Cold War. In addition to usual espionage,
41004-431: Was turned down by the Western powers. Some sources dispute the sincerity of the proposal. Britain, France, the United States, Canada and eight other western European countries signed the North Atlantic Treaty of April 1949, establishing the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). That August, the first Soviet atomic device was detonated in Semipalatinsk , Kazakh SSR . Following Soviet refusals to participate in
41208-418: Was unsuccessful, Attlee believed that it was a bold strategy which could have been successful if it had been better implemented on the ground. This led to an admiration for Churchill as a military strategist, something which would make their working relationship in later years productive. He later served in the Mesopotamian campaign in what is now Iraq , where in April 1916 he was badly wounded, being hit in
41412-434: Was weakened during the war against Japan . Meanwhile, the communists told different groups, such as the peasants, exactly what they wanted to hear, and they cloaked themselves under the cover of Chinese nationalism . Confronted with the communist revolution in China and the end of the American atomic monopoly in 1949, the Truman administration quickly moved to escalate and expand its containment doctrine. In NSC 68 ,
41616-458: Was widely accepted not to be a viable alternative government, owing to the National Government's overwhelming majority in the Commons. Attlee, along with Liberal leader Archibald Sinclair , was eventually consulted with by Baldwin on 24 November 1936, and Attlee agreed with both Baldwin and Sinclair that Edward could not remain on the throne, firmly eliminating any prospect of any alternative government forming were Baldwin to resign. In April 1936,
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