Amenazas Transnacionales y «Redes Privado-Estatales»: Contra-subversión del IRD en la Gran Bretaña de principios de la guerra fría
Autor | Thomas J. Maguire |
Páginas | 62-99 |
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In the past 15 years, the 'cultural Cold War' has been increasingly recog-nised as an important subfield of scholarly research for understanding sig-nificant aspects of the ideological and intelligence battles waged by both state and non-state actors in the broader Cold War. The concept of 'state-private networks', in particular, has gained credence as a tool for analysing the aims and methods of governmental and non-governmental cultural inri uence, propaganda, and psychological operations.1 Where initially this concept was used to demónstrate a unidirectional hegemony of persuasión — from 'state', through 'prívate', to society — it has been subsequently re-fined and modified, with appeals to sub-concepts such as 'negotiation' by the various private groups and organisations studied but yet still 'under the general direction of a hegemonic state with which the groups tended to share a general outlook and cultural predisposition.' While primary atten-tion in this arricie is given to the role of the state in these networks, this subfield has been opened to further research from the perspective of those involved private bodies (Dumbrell, 2006; Saunders, 1999; Wilford, 2008).
Research within this field and using this concept, while addressing a plethora of private organisations2 from several nations — predominantly in
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Europe — has, however, focused largely on the American state to the effec-tive exclusión of other governmental machines.3 In the case of Britain, from the early Cold War onwards this machine revolved around the Foreign Office Information Research Department, a covert anti-communist propaganda body established in January 1948. Several studies of this department have been conducted since the official reléase of its records in the late 1990s.4 Yet none, thus far, have sought to place an examination of the me-chanics of this department's machine into the scholarly contexts of the cultural Cold War, state-private networks or the developing concept of 'trans-nationalism'.5 Furthermore, while recent research has analysed British counter-subversion of the early Cold War threat from domestic commu-nism, the role of persuasión and propaganda — and, therefore, the IRD — in this process remains unclear (Andrew, 2009; Schlaepfer, 2009). As Hugh Wilford has shown with regard to the Central Intelligence Agency (CÍA), American actors involved in state-private networks with an ostensibly foreign focus not only intended to influence opinión abroad but also at home (Wilford, 2008). The role of propaganda and state-private networks in counter-subversion in early Cold War Britain must, therefore, be under-stood from a perspective that does not treat as sepárate ostensibly domestic and foreign arenas of operation: a transnational perspective.
This article, consequently, seeks to clarify the role of the IRD in early Cold War counter-subversion efforts directed at the transnational threat of
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communist non-state actors in Britain. It aims to contribute to a greater understanding of the British dynamics of state-private networks, and of how these networks allowed for more restrained policies rather than heavy-handed state coerción. Additionally, it examines the coordination of IRD operations with British intelligence agencies, such as the Security Service (MI5) and the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), in combating those irregular, non-state and transnational threats under scrutiny, revealing how intelligence sharing encouraged more focused and understated information pro-grammes. While British intelligence agencies confronted their own, distinct difficulties when facing non-state opponents, attention here is given pri-marily to those asymmetrical challenges tackled through government propaganda operations and state-private networks.
Furthermore, this article analyses how the IRD coordinated action through a process of subtle negotiation with a network of two key private British bodies in particular, bodies that largely shared its conception of the communist threat: the Labour Party and the Trades Union Congress (TUC). It also examines in detail the IRD drive to counter the Soviet-inspired Peace Campaign and promote western rearmament. But why was IRD involved in domestic counter-subversion and why did it seek to opérate through these unofficial channels? The central contention of this article is twofold: firstly, the threat of communism was perceived by officials and ministers as transnational — linking the actions of non-state actors within Britain with those abroad — and as thus requiring a symmetrical, transnational response; and secondly, reinforcing this, private British institutions were seen as the most effective media for conveying transnational clandes-tine state influence. While the Attlee administration is, here, of principal fo-cus — the height of fears of domestic communist agitation — these two factors remained predominant in state counter-subversion throughout the early Cold War. Given the contemporary significance attributed by British ministers and officials to countering subversión of British and other societies by violent and non-violent extremists, understanding the similarities (and differences) between these counter-subversion strategies — transnational re-sponses to transnational, non-state threats, using symmetric programmes through state-private initiatives — can aid more relative analytical judge-ments of both these and other campaigns. This article highlights the need for further study in this matter.
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Unlike their perception of the principal communist threat to countries such as France and Italy — which stressed the political weight of national communist parties — the primary domestic concern of British officials and ministers by the time of the IRD's establishment in January 1948 was communist subversión of industry and the labour movement (Andrew, 2009: 400-19). MI5 reported in June 1948 that with increased communist influence in trade unión executive committees carne the 'risk that the unions might...stimulate unrest or persuade their members to a policy designed to support the Soviet Union against this country.'6 This represented a threat, therefore, that extended to foreign as well as domestic policy. Additionally, this threat was not perceived in isolation, but as part of wider subversión of European labour by communist non-state actors and of global Soviet foreign policy manoeuvres. During several select Cabinet committee meetings on 'European Policy' in mid-1948, concerns over subversión of the continental European and British labour movements were discussed within the same framework: the five-point agenda at one such meeting included 'Propaganda', 'Communism in the United Kingdom', and 'Communism in Western Europe'.7 By 1950, this perception of interconnected domestic and foreign communist subversión — and those interlinked responses necessary — had evolved into a more concrete, transnational paradigm. As the Over-seas Planning Section of the Foreign Office explained:
International Communism is a world-wide forcé and it is impracticable to treat any área in isolation from the rest of the world. The essence of the threat is its all-pervasiveness. Ñor can we afford to treat Communism in the United Kingdom as a problem detached from the main Soviet threat to our existence. It is part and parcel of that threat.8
One consequence of this transnational perception of communist subversión was a symmetrical, transnational response by the British state. As will be high-
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lighted, the IRD's propaganda operations — which had an ostensibly foreign remit — blurred the distinction between foreign and domestic spheres.
Compounding the nature of this response, it was agreed shortly after the IRD's inception that the best media for the Department's operations were those unofficial organisations of British civil society that held influence both at home and abroad. Given the context of labour subversión, officials deemed liaison with the Labour Party and the TUC — highly credible organisations within the labour movement — of primary significance. State-private networks such as these formed the cornerstone of the IRD's unat-tributable, or 'grey', propaganda. Their significance is exemplified by the agenda for a 1948 Cabinet committee meeting on anti-communist propaganda, on which propaganda through 'unofficial agencies' ranked highly.9 A 1951 IRD report on 'Anti-Communist Propaganda Operations', part of a government review of British information activities, outlined in detail the importance of such seemingly 'neutral', credible and, therefore, influential channels both in Britain and abroad:
In any organised community there are certain leaders on whom the general public depends for a large part of its thinking. These leaders and the confidence reposed in them by the public are key to any campaign of indoctrination. By working through them, the appearance of official propaganda is avoided. In a western state the greater part fall into the following categories:- ministers and members of parliament, trade unión leaders, churchmen, editors and journal-ists, certain professors and teachers [etc]...
In the same vein, IRD was 'always seeking new channels via British non-governmental organisations (such as, for example, Transport House [the Labour Party], the T.U.C., the British Council of Churches, etc.) to inter-national bodies with which they may be associated.'10 These included, as will be examined, the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) and the Committee of International Socialist Conferences (CO-
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MISCO). Additionally, not only were these networks both unattributable and credible, but they also broadened IRD's reach, for it could utilise the influence and plethora of contacts built up...
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