Military Information Policy Committee
British Army committee at HQ Northern Ireland, set up in November 1971 to control military information policy
The Military Information Policy Committee was a committee at British Army Headquarters Northern Ireland (HQNI), set up in November 1971 and chaired by the General Officer Commanding Northern Ireland. Its members included the Commander Land Forces and Colonel Maurice Tugwell, head of the Information Policy Unit. Tugwell also chaired a Military Information Working Party whose members included a psyops specialist known to the Bloody Sunday Inquiry as INQ 1873 and Hugh Mooney.[1]
Origins
The Bloody Sunday Inquiry found that in July 1971 INQ 1873, then running the Army's Information Liaison Department, had proposed "a psyops committee", with a smaller psyops working committee for day-to-day matters. Tugwell, who arrived in Northern Ireland on 30 August 1971 to head the new Information Policy Unit, called the proposal "a monument to an aspiration", and both men told the Inquiry that the Psyops Committee never met.[2] Minutes of a meeting of the Military Information Policy Committee on 17 November 1971 showed that its composition "was substantially different from that of the Psyops Committee proposed in July 1971".[1]
Questioned at the Inquiry, INQ 1873 was asked whether the committee set up "was called the Military Information Policy Committee", given that the term "PsyOps" was not to be used. He answered: "It may have devolved from that".[3]
Existence and meetings
Tugwell told the Inquiry he thought it possible that the committee "never met at all". The Inquiry found documents indicating that it "did in fact meet to agree the composition of itself and of the Military Information Working Party", and that a reference to it in a note by Tugwell dated 24 January 1972 showed it "was in existence in late January 1972".[1] The Working Party's terms of reference, drafted in November 1971, required it to counter hostile propaganda "by ensuring that a truthful account of military activities is presented to the media, in such a way that the reasons for action are seen to be sensible and that our policies are leading towards success".[1]
Black propaganda
In paragraph 19 of his note of 24 January 1972, Military Information Policy for January – June 1972, Tugwell wrote:
- "Black Propaganda. We have reservations about 'black' activities. In so closely observed a situation as Northern Ireland almost nothing remains secret for long. This does not exclude isolated exercises for specific purposes but it certainly excludes such activities unless authorised by the Military Information Policy Committee."[4][5]
The same note recommended that the term "psyops" should not be used because of its "somewhat sinister connotations".[4] Under cross-examination in 2002 Tugwell was asked whether his requirement was that black activities "should be carefully controlled … by the Military Information Policy Committee", and agreed: "I think so, yes".[3] The Inquiry said it had "seen no Military Information Policy Committee document that contains any material relevant to Bloody Sunday", nor evidence that the committee "authorised any black activity in relation to that day" in Derry.[6]
Analysis
David Miller argues that Tugwell's answer "seems a clear admission that 'black' ops were not themselves ruled out", and that the official witnesses' line, that psyops had ended with the creation of the Information Policy Unit, was "difficult ... to accept" given INQ 1873's evidence that the plans for a psyops committee "may have 'devolved'" into the new structure.[3]
See also
- Information Policy Unit
- Psyops
- Maurice Tugwell
- Hugh Mooney
- Colin Wallace
- Information Research Department
- Perimeter (codeword)
Notes
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 Bloody Sunday Inquiry, Report of the Bloody Sunday Inquiry, Volume IX, 15 June 2010, chapter 178, paras 178.13–178.15, citing documents G30D.226.8, G70C.441.11 and KM6.108–109.
- ↑ Bloody Sunday Inquiry, Report of the Bloody Sunday Inquiry, Volume IX, 15 June 2010, chapter 178, paras 178.6–178.7 and 178.10–178.11.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 David Miller, Sociology, Propaganda and Psychological Operations, in Matt Dawson, Bridget Fowler, David Miller and Andrew Smith (eds), Stretching the Sociological Imagination: Essays in Honour of John Eldridge, Palgrave Macmillan, 2015, pp.163–188, doi:10.1057/9781137493644_9 (author’s final copy).
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 Bloody Sunday Inquiry, Report of the Bloody Sunday Inquiry, Volume IX, 15 June 2010, chapter 178, paras 178.27–178.29, citing document G70C.441.9; oral evidence Day 241/111–112.
- ↑ Maurice Tugwell, Military Information Policy for January – June 1972: A note by the Chairman Military Information Working Party, NISEC 13/5/2, 24 January 1972, Bloody Sunday Inquiry evidence G70C, archived by The National Archives (archive address as given in Miller 2015).
- ↑ Bloody Sunday Inquiry, Report of the Bloody Sunday Inquiry, Volume IX, 15 June 2010, chapter 178, para. 178.30.