ABSTRACT
Nostalgia has encouraged the belief that the British people closed ranks with bulldog determination under the unchallenged leadership of Churchill during the Second World War. This mythical view obscures the political and social crisis of the early war years, which led to a major confrontation between the government and the left press. Many senior politicians and officials doubted the commitment of the
British people to winning the war. A significantly named Home Morale Emergency Committee of the Ministry of Information reported in June 1940 on ‘fear, confusion, suspicion, class feeling and defeatism’. Even the Ministry’s parliamentary secretary, Harold Nicolson, confided in his diary during this period. ‘It will now be almost impossible to beat the Germans.’1 For at least the first two and a half years of the war, the relationship between the authorities and the press was dominated by a constant and probably misplaced concern about the state of public morale. This anxiety was combined with growing concern among conservative politi-
cians and civil servants about the growth of radicalism in Britain. In February 1942 the Home Intelligence Division reported a wave of admiration for Soviet Russia and a growing suspicion among sections of the working class that financial vested interests were hampering the war effort. A month later it commented on what was to become a familiar theme – the flowering of ‘home-made Socialism’ of which important elements were ‘a revulsion against “vested interests”, “privilege”, andwhat is referred to as “the old gang”’ and ‘a general agreement that things were going to be different after the war’.2 Left-wing press criticism, in these circumstances, appeared to some politicians to be especially damaging. It was strengthening political division at home when the country needed to be united against a common enemy. It was also undermining military discipline and impeding efficient arms production. The maintenance of public morale came close to being equated, in some quarters, with suppressing radical criticism of any kind. Yet a succession of military defeats provoked mounting attacks on ‘the old
gang’. In 1940 Neville Chamberlain was forced to resign as Prime Minister. The new Coalition government under Churchill also came under growing attack as the military situation deteriorated. A cumulative political crisis
developed which was only partly defused by changes in the Cabinet and leadership of the armed forces in 1940, 1941 and 1942. Press censorship thus became part of a beleaguered administration’s battle for survival. The Second World War was also different from previous wars in that the
British people were in the front line for the first time. The strategic objective of the blitz was to both physically impede war production and destroy psychologically the will of the civilian population to service the war effort. Extensive censorship controls were needed, it was claimed, in order to combat the new, deadly technology of aerial warfare.
