Susan. L. Carruthers
Leicester University Press, London and New York, 1995 £45 hb, £16.99 pb.
This is an important study of British psy-war activities, and the politics thereof, since the war. Almost all of this book was new to me, though I haven’t studied anti-British insurgencies. Originally a PhD thesis, happily, in Carruthers case, this is good news; the massive documentation comes in a fine, simple prose. There is quite a chunk in here about IRD’s role in these insurgencies, and this is a significant contribution to our slowly increasing knowledge of IRD’s activities.
One of the author’s major themes is IRD’s constant attempt to fit events on the ground into its Communist Conspiracy theory, regardless of the actual situation – just as they did in Northern Ireland in the 1970s. (The Information Policy Unit there looks increasingly like IRD’s last stand.) The rest of the state’s information and diplomatic services involved in the insurgencies frequently objected to this line, sometimes successfully. Quite why the rest of Whitehall 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 IRD sections of the book, is ‘A Red Under Every Bed? Anti-Communist Propaganda and Britain’s Response to Colonial Insurgency’, in Contemporary Record, Vol. 9, No. 2, Autumn 1995.