Does the Foreign Office need a new Information Research Department?
The Big Ask | No. 23.2024
Britain’s key competitors are increasingly using propaganda to further their political aims, push their ideological narratives and undermine the free and open international order. In this era of intensifying geopolitical competition and with new forms of mass communication, such strategies have considerable reach and influence. In the Cold War, the United Kingdom (UK) countered Soviet misinformation and pursued its own information campaigns through organisations such as the Information Research Department (IRD). So, in this week’s Big Ask, we asked seven experts: Does Britain need a new Information Research Department?
Senior Lecturer in National Security Studies, King’s College London*
Britain doesn’t need a new IRD. The Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) should not waste its time and risk its reputation by spreading false information. It would undermine its core diplomatic mission – and the FCDO probably wouldn’t be very good at it.
The FCDO does – and should continue to – implement strategic communications campaigns supporting UK policy. This is not propaganda, but it is an overt effort to influence perceptions and change behaviour. While the FCDO has good reason not to be involved in the greyer area of information operations, His Majesty’s (HM) Government will sometimes need to conduct them. When such operations are necessary, they should be conducted by intelligence agencies.
Adversaries conduct information operations, but this does not mean Britain should too. The UK should set its bar higher, because of its values, and because such operations will often offer dubious value for money. Far better to counter this threat by disrupting its perpetrators and imposing costs on those who direct them or provide them with safe harbour.
There will be times when information operations are appropriate and could produce impact, but these are likely to be specific, targeted efforts rather than mass audience propaganda. Britain needs to understand its adversaries and their respective information environments to determine which efforts are going to be most effective.
Director, Mayak Intelligence
The IRD was always active, often imaginative, deeply secretive – but did it really do much good? There are times when lies – however they may be dressed up as disinformation or strategic communications – are useful instruments of statecraft, especially on a tactical level, misdirecting an enemy before an attack or triggering a crucial moment’s hesitation.
However, in a political war, I would argue that cunning lies are less effective than open truths. The most powerful British weapon during the Cold War was the British Broadcasting Company (BBC), which became regarded as the gold standard of non-partisan accuracy by all those subjects of the Kremlin desperately tuning in with their short-wave radios and then eagerly – if carefully – recounting the latest to their friends, workmates and neighbours. It was their yardstick to find out just when and how their masters were lying to them.
In a click-and-post age of what the Russians call infoshum, disorientating ‘info-noise,’ that is all the more important today. The dark arts can, to be blunt, be left to the intelligence services and hired info-gunmen; what Britain needs is not a new IRD, but a renewed commitment to a foreign-language public broadcaster that is not just allowed but required to be open, honest, and impartial.
Lord Hannay of Chiswick, GCMG
Member of the House of Lords (2001-)
Throughout the decades of the first Cold War – roughly from the late 1940s until the late 1980s – the West and its friends were subjected to tidal waves of propaganda, disinformation and indeed outright lies from the Soviet Union and its satellite allies. Gradually, Britain and its allies learned how to counter this. Partly by open source material, of which the BBC World Service was the outstanding example – listened to and trusted by millions worldwide. But partly too by the work of a little known and now forgotten branch of the Foreign Office, its IRD, whose job was to counter Soviet penetration and distortion of international cultural and social networks – artists, authors, sporting groups, trade unions and many others. Over time, this worked effectively. But, with the end of the first Cold War, it largely lapsed.
Now the world is facing a second cold war, set off by Russia’s many acts of aggression against Ukraine, and backed up by many onslaughts of disinformation designed to help re-build the Soviet Empire. What is Britain doing to counter this?
Of course, the challenges are not identical, nor do they require using the IRD template precisely. As before, part of the response has to be open source outlets such as the BBC World Service, but one properly financed through the British tax system, not as now regressively by the licence payer. And the new challenges – the misuse of social media, cyber attacks, Artificial Intelligence (AI) – need new types of response not necessarily played by the Queensberry Rules.
So far, there is not much sign of that beginning. There is some legitimate reluctance to reveal too much. But that can easily lead to complacency and inaction. So, time to act and to learn a bit more about what the UK is doing to combat these new challenges.
Director, Strategy, Statecraft, and Technology (Changing Character of War) Centre, University of Oxford
Thomas E. Lawrence ‘of Arabia’ once wrote: ‘The printing press is the greatest weapon in the armoury of the modern commander.’ He understood very well the power of persuasion by learning the language and culture of those with whom he engaged. He also grasped the importance of drawing together common interests.
In the Cold War, the West enjoyed great success in promoting a vision of a free world, with prosperity, accountability, pluralism, and adherence to the law. The IRD and Radio Liberty were part of that process of promoting a benign agenda of personal and collective freedom from the tyranny, arbitrary government, and oppression that characterised the communist bloc. They sought to draw together the West’s common, fundamental human interests: a society where individual rights are respected and the public governed by consent.
IRD tried to promote publications that tackled communist agendas, including George Orwell’s cautionary tale Animal Farm. In retaliation, the leftist groups distributed free copies of the Communist Manifesto. The centre ground tried to keep open the debate; the extremists tried to close it down with denunciation and intimidation.
There were setbacks to the free world: communist subversion, especially amongst some of the educated and trade unionists, and militant activism, captured the idealistic. These reappear today in arguments of moral equivalence, certain anti-war movements (which oppose Euro-Atlantic governments regardless of the merits of each case), those who promote vexatious legal claims and generate doubts, and those who proffer some vague internationalism to justify their exclusive thinking.
Whether one has an IRD or not, free nations need open dialogue, the tools to expose extremists, and the education to combat ‘political correctness’ or other forms of intimidation.
Charles Parton
Chief Advisor, China Observatory, Council on Geostrategy
To start with the no. The IRD was a semi-covert organisation, in theory under the Foreign Office, but in practice, the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) budget clandestinely financed much of its work. Many, if not most, of its activities were directed by intelligence officers, who recruited and inserted agents in foreign and British media. Their job was to counter the disinformation put out by Moscow and the communist bloc. It is doubtful whether in today’s world, with different types of media, centred on the internet rather than on television, radio and newspapers, the hand of the British government could be concealed, as it was with the IRD. Exposure of government involvement would undermine the message and forfeit the moral high ground.
Now to the yes. In the new cold war, in which the so-called ‘Global South’ is the battlefield, the UK and other free and open countries are losing out to the narrative of authoritarian regimes. Britain is not putting out its message convincingly, nor is it effectively countering their – particularly the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) – propaganda and disinformation. As an example from Covid-19 times, people assume that the People’s Republic of China (PRC) contributes the most to the World Health Organisation (WHO). In fact, its contributions are significantly less than the UK’s or the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s funding. Britain needs a new IRD. Its message should be made accessible to the global youth by using new media. Publicising the UK’s good actions will be as important as countering Beijing’s half-truths and mistruths.
Co-founder and Director of Research, Council on Geostrategy
Ernest Bevin, then Foreign Secretary, established the IRD in 1948 to push a ‘third force’ narrative in international affairs. With years of domestic politics behind him, he well-understood the need to engage in political combat against an organised and well-armed communism. The department became one of the largest in the Foreign Office, and assembled a potent discourse coalition to spread forms of ‘white’ and ‘black’ propaganda, both at home and abroad.
In today’s world, under the watch of the modern media, it would be almost impossible for such an organisation to exist. It also raises ethical issues: most of the academics and thought leaders in the IRD’s network may not have known that they were being instrumentalised by HM Government.
However, if an age of genuinely ‘systemic competition’ is upon us, the UK needs the tools to protect its interests. For years, countries such as Russia and the PRC have run amok in Britain’s media space, spreading false and fictitious narratives, while attempting to alter the British perception of (geo)political reality. It is simply not good enough to say: ‘We are better than that’, or bleat about our ‘soft power’, which is, in any case, largely an illusion. Thoughts need to be organised and funded to do battle.
For example, has anyone in government identified and analysed the nature and character of Russian and Chinese geopolitical discourse? Do they know how the chains of meaning are held together, or how they might be dislocated? Have they worked out how to make the ‘British offer’ to other countries sound more attractive? Or how to target foreign discourse the UK finds unattractive or damaging to British interests? Undoubtedly, British embassies have small pots of funding to project specific messages, but the resources often pale compared to the UK’s rivals – or even allies and partners – which are also more organised.
In an age of systemic competition, Britain ought to be bolder. A country’s ability to pursue its interests hinges on a confident and well-organised national narrative. In short: to be more impactful, a ‘progressive realist’ foreign policy needs an updated version of the IRD.
Policy Fellow on China, Council on Geostrategy
In short, yes, although in a different form and with a binary function: it must work to counter foreign propaganda disseminated domestically, and promulgate the voice of true facts and democracy abroad. The UK is currently losing out on both fronts to the propaganda and misinformation campaigns conducted by the CCP. The authoritarian, one-party rule of the PRC allows for the coordination of multiple state departments in its mission to control party narratives abroad in a ‘whole of state’ approach, in what is known as the United Front Work Department (UFWD) – the main organ in the PRC’s foreign propaganda machine.
The UFWD gathers intelligence on influential individuals abroad (both wholly foreign and Chinese diaspora) and attempts to sway opinion in favour of party narratives by swooning senior figures in the media and education sectors. There is evidence of UFWD operations in Britain.
It would be clumsy for HM Government to respond with an equivalent apparatus. But, aside from monitoring propaganda from overseas, such as from the UFWD, a modern-day IRD should have a dedicated strategy and budget to disseminate the UK narrative abroad. It is unwise for the BBC World Service to reduce its operation in countries in the so-called ‘Global South’, where allegiance is teetering away from the free and open nations towards the PRC and Russia. These authoritarian states are now filling the silence with their own voices.
*Writing in a personal capacity.
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