ABSTRACT
The Shorter Oxford Dictionary defines propaganda as ‘any association, systematic scheme, or concerted movement for the propagation of a particular doctrine or
practice’. [2] Lasswell placed the emphasis elsewhere, describing it as ‘the technique of influencing human action by the manipulation of representations’. [3] As far as
they go, both are useful and complementary definitions. However, the Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences provides a fuller interpretation of the word which more exactly fits
the actions of the propagandists I will shortly consider, when it argues that ‘propaganda is the relatively deliberate manipulation by means of symbols (words,
gestures, flags, images, monuments, music, etc.), of other people’s thoughts or actions with respect to beliefs, values and behaviours which these people . . . regard as controversial’. [4]
Sophistication, it has been asserted, characterizes twentieth-century propaganda. The modern proponent, it has been suggested, has long disdained the ridiculous lies
and outmoded crudities of the past. [5] He deals cleverly in truth of a kind – halftruth, limited truth, truth out of context. His purpose is to focus issues and spur men
to effort. Such effort, it has been further maintained, is essentially of two kinds: agitation or integration. Propaganda aims to turn resentment into rebellion or loose
coalition into unity. In the immediate context of this chapter there are further dimensions to propaganda worth noting – that whatever the subtleties or lack of subtleties inherent in the various attempts to define the term, it is widely accepted
that the propagandist presents a prefabricated and biased argument, that education is not necessarily a prophylactic against propaganda’s influence but often a successful
instrument ensuring its effective assimilation, that propaganda speaks most effectively to the converted. In the words of Aldous Huxley, ‘The propagandist is a
man who canalises an already existing stream. In a land where there is no water, he digs in vain.’ [6]
Finally there is, of course, a close association between propaganda and ideology. Propaganda can be a powerful tool of ideological persuasion propelling men into
action. Imperialism as a period ideology of late nineteenth-century England was described
in 1899 by Lawson Walton, the Liberal Imperialist, as a formula for interpreting the
duties of government in relation to Empire. As such he argued, it comprised an emotion, a conviction, a determination and a creed:
‘In as modest language as a necessarily swelling theme will allow’, Lawson maintained
that the British were imperialists in response to the compelling influence of their destiny. The energy of their race gave them their Empire. Nature then supplemented
this bequest with gubernatorial qualities which distinguished their ancestry. In short, race was the basis of imperialism. And the spirit of the people which won empires would never relax its grasp. Its genius would find scope in developing and extending
its possessions. In the process of extension, Lawson proposed, the English public schools would furnish an unstinting supply of youth with the stuff out of which great
imperial administrators were made; men who would bear their powers and dignities meekly, whose one effort would be to govern with a single eye to the good of the
population committed to their charge, and who would ever be ready to sacrifice self to duty. [8]
As a consequence, inter alia, of such propositions, the last quarter of the nineteenth century saw a close relationship established between the system of secondary schooling, propaganda and the concept of imperialism. It was a relationship
substantially restricted to the British public school. Prior to the Balfour Education Act of 1902, and in reality for a long time after, Britain was a nation of two
educational systems – the wealthy and well-developed private system of preparatory and public schools and the poor and under-developed state system of elementary,
higher elementary and state-owned or state-subsidized grammar schools. The idea and ideals of imperialism were propagated and took root more slowly in the latter.
Initially there were more pressing matters than preparation for imperial adventures and responsibilities. State schooling was preoccupied with the creation of a system of
organized instruction and with training in the increasingly essential artisan skills of reading, writing and arithmetic. [9] There were also socialist critics of empire who, in the urban areas especially, were often less than enthusiastic advocates of the imperial
dream. For many years it would seem that the proletariat, while nursing a vague pride
in the Empire, were less knowledgeable than the middle classes about its dimensions, nature and extent, and less certain of a personal role in its maintenance and survival.
It was not until well after the First World War that the Empire became part of the educational consciousness of the state-educated. Of course, well before this time
some enthusiastic state teachers took it upon themselves to foster in their charges an ethnocentric vision of imperial greatness, and ‘once instructed . . . the indigent
remained staunchly patriotic. They did not know whether trade was good for the Empire or the Empire was good for trade but they knew the Empire was theirs and
they were going to support it.’ [10] Nevertheless imperial propaganda in British education in its earlier years is concerned essentially with the growing awareness of empire among public schoolboys and with a persistent attempt to portray their role
as predominantly one of martial self-sacrifice. [11] This conditioning, incidentally, bore remarkable similarity to that of the adolescent educational elite of Nazi
Germany and likewise involved a structure of values based on four interlocking spheres of socio-political consciousness – the need to establish an ideal of selfless
service to the state; the need to establish a sense of racial superiority as a cornerstone of this selflessness; the need to establish and maintain an imperial chauvinism,
waxing and waning in reaction to imperial crises but always persistent; and the need to engender uncritical conformity to the values of the group. [12] As in the case of
the Third Reich, a major purpose of this interlinked set of values was to create a ‘fighting community’, in this instance ready to serve the nation in the plethora of its imperial struggles, large and small.
