ABSTRACT
In October 1951, Winston Churchill led the Conservative Party back into Downing Street. Although Churchill’s enthusiasm for covert activities has been well documented, his attitude towards the use of propaganda is less well known. The historian, Philip M.Taylor, has only recently corrected the long accepted assertion, made by Duff Cooper, a somewhat hapless wartime Minister of Information, that Churchill was not interested in propaganda.1 Taylor asserts that during the Second World War, Churchill played a central role in the elevation of propaganda as an instrument of government. Churchill’s wellknown appetite for covert operations, Taylor observes, certainly encompassed propaganda and disinformation. It was on Churchill’s initiative that the Special Operations Executive was established to ‘set Europe ablaze,’ with a brief which included covert propaganda as well as sabotage and subversion. Moreover, Taylor reveals, it was Churchill who set in motion the reorganization of government machinery which led, in 1946, to the establishment of the Central Office of Information.2 Indeed, as a politician, writer and former war correspondent renowned for his own rhetorical skill, Churchill was perhaps more acutely aware than most of the impact of propaganda. According to Sir lan Jacob, who served under Churchill in war and peace, he was certainly aware of the potential dangers. He was, Jacob found, suspicious of broadcasting in all its forms, ‘he thought it was a dangerous development, because out of that box in the Englishman’s sitting room came things over which he had no control.’3
