THE FORMATION OF THE CENTRAL OFFICE OF INFORMATION IN 1946. HOW AND WHY IT WAS CREATED.
The Central Office of Information (COI) was conceived in 1946 as a replacement for the wartime Ministry of Information (MOI). Post war planning by the Coalition Government had drawn up proposals for a peace time information service accepting the recommendations of the then Minister of Information Brendon Bracken. These recommendations were that the role of a Minster of Information should be abolished. In future all policy decisions that contained a need for public information content should revert to departments and departmental Ministers. The Departmental Information Divisions would devise and implement Departmental policy and would keep Ministers in touch with public opinion.
On 17 December 1945 Prime Minister Attlee announced that the MOI would be abolished at the end of March 1946. However because the information services both in the UK and overseas were “an important and permanent part in the machinery of Government”. He said that:
“It is essential to good administration under a democratic system that the public shall be adequately informed about the many matters in which Government action directly impinges on their daily lives and it is, in particular, important that a true and adequate picture of British institutions and the British way of life shall be presented overseas. Hansard, House of Commons, Vol.417, col.916
Thus the policy for a government information service, as defined by the Attlee government, was that all departments of government that have a need, sometimes great, sometimes small, to communicate items of information to the public. Either to let people know of some government initiative or to persuade people to take some action such as driving more carefully.
Deciding what information messages to communicate and the nature of the message were effectively political decisions that should ultimately be made by Ministers. During the wartime years many information decisions had been taken centrally by the Ministry of Information then headed by a Cabinet Minister. The end of the war meant that the need for a Ministry of Information making political decisions ceased hence the new policy.
However in addition to defining the role of departmental information services, the experience of running MOI had demonstrated the need to have a central organisation of specialised staff to supervise the actual production and technical functions of producing information materials. It would not be sensible, for example, for each department to have separate specialists in in the publication of books or the design and construction of exhibitions, or the organisation of a photographic service or, indeed, to provide the expertise required to produce a range of films to satisfy the many different requirements of departments of government.
The essential difference between the MOI and the new COI was that the MOI had been a Ministry with its own Cabinet Minister able, where it had been necessary, to initiate policies and make political decisions. The new COI was not a ministerial department. COI was set up as a service department reporting directly to the Treasury but funded with its own Parliamentary Vote. Its functions were to provide the actual design and production of information materials. The departments would provide the need and the rationale for the information materials. The COI would ensure that the materials produced would effectively carry the required information messages to the target audience.
It can not be emphasised too strongly that nothing was produced by COI in the years that followed its inception whether an exhibition, a film or a book or a poster, that was not asked for by a Ministerial Department such as the Home Office, the Department for Transport, the Department for the Environment or the Foreign Office.
When discussing information materials for campaigns, in support of road safety, anti smoking or wearing seat belts, critics are apt to say “COI did this or COI did that” suggesting that COI was a nanny figure forever wagging a finger on its own account. This is incorrect. It was the department of government that was wagging the finger. It was simply COI’s task to design and produce the finger to the objectives set by government.
When the COI came into being in April 1946 the Prime Minister announced that:
“ The COI will have a separate Parliamentary Vote for which Treasury Ministers will be responsible to Parliament……..and will also deal with matters affecting staffing, efficiency and methods” Hansard, House of Commons, Vol420s 520-1
Such decision making power that COI possessed, therefore flowed from the policies set out by the government. The Director General was accountable to the Treasury and to Parliament for any expenditure by the COI. It could, in theory, block expenditure where the expenditure was felt to be unwise.
An important element in the creation of COI was that departments were required to use COI services in the production of all information materials. Departments had no choice. If a film was required the department had to contact COI and provide a brief setting out what was required. COI would find a production company and supervise all stages of production checking back with departments that the film was meeting their information objectives.
The requirement to use COI and meet the costs of COI’s involvement was sometimes a source of strained relations between COI and departments. However the requirement remained from 1946 to the end of the 1980s. For good or ill it provided government with a media factory that was often visited by delegations from other countries envious of the service available to the British Government.
More detail about the way the COI and the Film Division obtained its funding through its own Parliamentary Vote operated. How proposed annual expenditure was arrived at can be found in the next section FUNDING FILM DIVISION AND ITS FILMS