The use of film in the public service started n the late 1920’s and continued during the 1930s as a means of conveying information or drawing attention to social issues as in the case of the British Gas Association and the 1935 film “Housing Problems”. World War 2 saw the use of film by the Ministry of Information and the Crown Film Unit refine the use of film as a powerful means of information and propaganda.
The work of COI Film Division (later MIAC) from 1946 to 2012 is substantially an account of the use of moving pictures by government when communicating with the public.
When the COI was formed in 1946 its remit was to arrange the production and distribution of information materials required by all departments of government, materials such as publications, photographs, exhibitions, distribution of press material and films. In effect materials for use through the available channels of communication from government to the public.
When in 2012 COI was closed it was a very different organisation. It still arranged the production of information materials. However the main thrust of the COI was that of a “full service communications agency” that had been initiated in 1999/2000 by CEO Carol Fisher. It was an organisation geared to address the opportunities of a digital age whose roots were in the late 1980s.
From that period COI as a whole had gradually developed to provide a service to Departments about planning the marketing of campaign messages to take advantage of the new technologies. The new role took over the structure of COI so that it changed completely. Comparison of the COI staff structure of 1984 with an Organogram of 2004 (see Research Materials) shows two entirely different organisations with the production of information (now called communications) materials subsumed within marketing operations.
The decision to close COI in 2012 has been portrayed simply as a cost saving measure following the freeze on information expenditure in 2011. While money was part of the decision, much wider issues about the overall organisation of the government information services was also a major factor. These issues included making the most effective use of the technologies arising from digital communications, from the internet, from social media and the like. There was concern about the relationship between the policy areas of government departments and the information or the increasingly called “communication” branch of departments.
The roots of these concerns within departments went back to the 1980s and eventually lead to the setting up of an inquiry in 1997 into the effectiveness of the Government Information and Communication Service (GICS). The inquiry report – the “Mountfield Report” made a number of recommendations. A further review the “Phillis Review” took place in 2003 reflecting continuing concerns about communications between government and the public. It said that to be effective there was a need for “strong central communications structure and strong, integrated departmental communications structures”
Nonetheless by 2010 when a new Conservative government came to power, concerns not only about the costs of government communications but also their effectiveness in a mature digital age remained. A further review by a Permanent Secretary Matthew Tee recommended sweeping changes among which was the proposal for a much reduced COI. This recommendation was overturned in favour of the abolition of COI with some of its staff being taken into the central GICS.
GICS was in turn reformed as the Government Communication Service (GCS) in 2014. It was said that the new integrated service “was one of the four main levers of government alongside legislation, regulation and taxation”. It was to be staffed with “professional multi-disciplinary teams”. GCS says that “our goal is to provide an exceptional standard of professional practice to support the government, implementing the priorities of the Prime Minister and the Cabinet …….”
The effect of these developments was to reverse the separation between government departments who developed policies and the COI who provided media expertise to create information or communication tools to inform or persuade the public of the value of the policies.
It is beyond the scope of this account to review how these developments have worked in practice. It is not known if there were any more documentary or in the parlance of MIAC, long form films, made for departments of government. In what way did the public information operations of departments continue to use moving pictures?
What can be said is that the original conception by the Attlee government of a media "factory" divorced from the political considerations of Departments. A "factory" tasked with taking the messages that Ministers wished to communicate to the public and fashioning high quality vehicles that would carry the messages forth. Despite numerous enquiries and reviews all of which gave the COI a clean bill of health, it was an efficient and effective method of producing information vehicles be they books or exhibitions or films over 66 years. So it was mourned by many in the media and not least by those who had contributed.
The following contemporary note by Andrew Lane Fox Deputy Director of Content in charge of Moving Image and Audio Content (MIAC) says it all.
Habitual Disquiet Some thoughts on the closing of COI And so, in a week when, ironically, those in power have so comprehensively demonstrated just how well they understand what good communications are, COI finally closes.
By the comments in the press, the sounds of alarm and dismay from both clients and suppliers and the disbelief of all others who’s opinion matters, it is at least a comfort to know that the only people who really felt any disdain for us were those proven experts in communication in this government. Having once spent a good deal of time in a creative role as a freelancer, I have long learnt that it is only the opinions of people you respect that matter. However for a long time this has been difficult to hold on to, so comprehensive was the briefing against us in the press, so oppressive the muzzling of us by those we answered to, so total and all encompassing was the tortuous and incompetent disassembling of COI.
Any one of you who is connected to me in any of the multifarious online ways we are linked today will no doubt be expecting an extended rant now. But apart from the fact that it’s all been said, a lot of it by me, in the words of Phil Mitchell ‘they’re not worth it’. The time for that has passed. Thinking, unavoidably, about the events of the past two years, I have come to a moment of clarity amidst the emotional turmoil of these days. It is interesting that in their rush to diminish, demean, belittle and blame a largely blameless organisation, the government has clearly lost sight of what is good for it. Perhaps they never had that strength of vision.
For what I have come to realise is that we are not a casualty of a battle between left and right, between public and private sector, between small government and rampant state-ism. We are not even collateral damage of a battle between a control freakishly centralising neo-liberal core and a disparate set of ministerial fiefdoms. (And I am certainly not even going to consider the ludicrous fallacy of cost cutting, or 'efficiency’ as they insist on calling it, because it clearly isn’t.) No what has become increasingly clear, from the government’s Maoist approach to reforming govt comms across the board and not just at COI, is this is a actually a demonstration of a certain small mindedness, of an old fashioned luddism that brings new meaning to small ‘c’ conservatism at the heart of this government.
When you realise this, it all becomes clear what’s at work here, over and above the behaviour of small time weirdos like Letwin, or the stove pipe hat and frock coat Victorianism of the quaintly creepy Michael Gove. No the bitter truth is that we have become not so much a nation of shopkeepers, but a nation ruled by shopkeepers and other small businessmen; small in mind if not in scale.
For how else would you explain the sort of mentality that closes the COI. You know it is still needed, I know it. Our clients know it. Joe public knows it. I suspect that, even through the red mist of their ideological frenzy, those running the show can see it, not that they are ever going to admit it of course. And what we all know is that, inevitably, there will have to be something put in place to do what we did.
And this is what betrays them. Only someone whose mind is in the traditional business economy of low paid and low skilled workers who are ultimately disposable, a business expense to be minimised, people who are used to all their assets being embodied by physical collateral, would take such a short sighted decision. Only people of a mindset that sees good business practice as the opening and closing of a branch of a shop or bank branch at will, or the shifting of an entire production base to another country, just to maximise their profit margins. Only such a person would be blind enough and out of tune enough with the knowledge economy of today.
For surely no one else can fail to recognise the fact that COI is something unique. It is a body of specialists, not generalist civil servants or even general comms professionals. And here lies the problem. You can’t just destroy a corporate memory stretching back 66 years and then scatter to the four winds the accumulated skills, experience and talent there, and ever expect to get it back. Once it’s gone, it’s gone for ever. There ain’t no putting Humpty together again.
If I had been in their shoes I would have thought long and hard and realised that. I would have acted only once I had taken account of the risk that I might need those skills again. I certainly would not have thrown it away out of political expediency. But then I also wouldn’t have put the entire future of COI and indeed the whole of government comms in the hands of a team of people who’s single distinguishing characteristic was that not one of them had any experience or knowledge of communications.
It is an uncomfortable truth for some, and one this government will clearly only accept when it comes to CEOs and bankers, but talent is the rising commercial currency of today’s knowledge economy. And in closing COI they have done the equivalent of Gordon Brown selling off the gold reserves.
I, for one, will feel a profound sadness tomorrow, no doubt helped along by a drink or two. But I will also feel a profound sense of relief. I will be truly glad its over. It means we will have escaped from what has amounted to an abusive relationship over the last two years. And like anyone escaping such a relationship, I am only now realising that I am not really useless, that everything I have done over the past 7 years has not been in vain. More importantly I am also realising that life does go on and though this is the end, it can also be a beginning.
And in a way I can’t help feeling a little smug. For I have something they can only dream of having. I have pride, a sense of achievement, a shared identity with a group of friends and future collaborators who I know, admire and respect and whom I have no doubt I will stay connected with for the rest of my working life. And a nicer, better, more talented bunch of people you couldn’t ask for. More than that I have been part of something genuinely good, that helped people, that changed the way people behaved, that improved and even saved lives. Despite all we are encouraged to believe by the Tories and the Daily Mail, this is the primary motivation for most public servants. And in that sense we have succeeded; indeed succeeded beyond our wildest dreams. And that is one thing that they can never take away.