[…] about the British secret state since Fitzgerald and Bloch’s British Intelligence and Covert Action in the early 1980s. The incremental uncovering of the Information Research Department ( IRD) story has been one of the continuing threads of British parapolitics since Richard Fletcher’s pioneering work on it in the mid 1970s; and for several years […]
In their recent history of the Information Research Department ( IRD), Paul Lashmar and James Oliver discuss George Orwell’s decision to collaborate with that organisation’s anti-Communist propaganda operations. They write that ‘George Orwell’s reputation as a left-wing icon took a body blow from which it may never recover when it was revealed in 1996 […]
A small section of this appeared in Lobster 12. Although this is incomplete and under researched, we thought it worth putting out now. The origins of IRD 1947 saw the creation of the Foreign Office’s Information Research Department (IRD). It is generally accepted that IRD was the brain-child of the then Labour M.P. Christopher […]
[…] they are hidden, though they can be traced by reference to GCHQ outposts like Darwin (Australia). Also known as the ‘Government Code and Cypher School’ (GCCS) ( IRD) ‘Information Research Department’. Usually listed for major posts. Later transformed into the ‘Overseas Information Dept’ (OID) and, later still, the plain ‘Information Dept’. (C) Controversial. (Ex) […]
[…] put up with IRD’s incompetent meddling until 1976 remains a mystery: Carruther’s account of the politics of official propaganda does not get that deep. Anybody interested in IRD – or the wider issues of propaganda in British counter-insurgency policies – will find important new material here. A short version of this, concentrating on the […]
[…] just like his boss at the time, Ernest Bevin, come to that. This short (142 pages) book contains 47 pages of Mayhew reminiscing about his involvement with IRD. His recollections were taped and edited by Lyn Smith, author in 1980 of one of the first big academic articles about IRD. One or two passages, […]
[…] Research Department Andrew Defty Oxford and New York: Routledge, 2004, £23.99, p/b Thinking about this book, I wondered why people like me have been so interested in IRD for the last 30 years. There are two reasons, I think. The first is that way back in the 1970s, when information about the British secret […]
From Garrick Alder Re: John Newsinger’s ‘Orwell and the IRD in Lobster 38 The appearance since Lobster 45 of further details of Orwell’s dealings with the IRD has reminded me how very interested I was by Mr Newsinger’s admirable reappraisal of the Orwell/IRD incidents. Two things have struck me that seems to have escaped […]
[…] DUTCH SECTION 44-45 SOE FAR EAST SECTION AND AUSTRALIA -50 ATTENDED DUTCH PARLY INQUIRY INTO VORDOPOL BLOGG, DAVID B. 1944 GCHQ 1984 DESIGN ENGINEER GCHQ BLUNSON, TERRENCE IRD 50-60’S REGIONAL NEWS SERVICE MIDDLE EAST -80’S REUTERS BROOKE-BOOTH, COL. S.P. MI5 (‘ERRORS OF JUDGEMENT’, NICHOLAS KELSO 1988) 1939-45 COMMUNIST SECTION UNDER HOLLIS BROWN, ALLAN IRD […]
[…] services of several countries Britain, the US and the Soviet bloc. The first I want to look at is the UK’s. In 1948 the psychological warfare organisation, IRD, the Information Research Department, was set up within the Foreign Office. IRD worked abroad trying to combat nationalism in the British Empire, and at home to […]
