Ministry of Information (United Kingdom)
Later that year that department was renamed as a ministry and placed initially under the then Minister without Portfolio, Sir Edward Carson, and subsequently in early 1918 under a senior press figure, Lord Beaverbrook.
Secret planning for a Ministry of Information (MOI) had started in October 1935 under the auspices of the Committee of Imperial Defence (CID).
Their work reflected an increasing concern that a future war would exert huge strain on the civilian population and a belief that government propaganda would be needed to maintain morale.
However it was hindered by competing visions for the ministry, a requirement for secrecy which disrupted the making of key appointments, and the reluctance of many government departments to give up their public relations divisions to central control.
[9] The shadow Ministry of Information came into being briefly between 26 September and 3 October 1938 after the Nazi annexation of the Sudetenland (German occupation of Czechoslovakia) heightened international tensions.
The British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain publicly announced his government's intentions for the MOI in a parliamentary speech on 15 June 1939.
[19] The MOI's first publicity campaign also misfired with a poster bearing the message "Your Courage, Your Cheerfulness, Your Resolution, Will Bring Us Victory" criticised for appearing class-bound.
Reith sought to improve the MOI's governance, expanded its network of regional information offices and introduced a Home Intelligence division.
He also sought to secure the reintegration of the Press and Censorship Division in the belief that the decision to separate this function had been "obviously and monstrously ridiculous and wrong".
[23][24] Nazi advances in Western Europe encouraged the Ministry of Information (MOI) to increasingly focus on domestic propaganda after May 1940.
[27] Cooper was forced to confront further questions regarding the news and was dogged by accusations that he wanted to enforce a system of compulsory censorship.
Plans to increase control over public relations divisions in other departments were duly dropped and closer co-operation sought in their place.
[29] Bracken's experience as a newspaper proprietor encouraged a similar approach with regard to the press and he maintained that the MOI should not impinge upon the right to free speech.
Bracken also insisted that the MOI should be dissolved at the end of the war with Germany and that its activities made it inappropriate to peacetime conditions.
Through the Home intelligence Division, the MOI collected reactions to general wartime morale and, in some cases, specifically to publicity produced.
Dylan Thomas, frustrated at being declared unfit to join the armed forces, contacted Sir Kenneth Clark, director of the films division of the Ministry of Information, and offered his services.
Although not directly employed by the MOI, he scripted at least five films in 1942 with titles such as This Is Colour (about dye); New Towns for Old; These Are the Men; Our Country (a sentimental tour of Britain), and The Art of Conversation.
Henry Irving and Judith Townend have drawn parallels between information censorship in Britain during World War II and contemporary restrictions in reporting trials that relate to terrorism offences, such as the case of R v Incedal and Rarmoul-Bouhadjar (2014).
