British Information Services
The British Information Services (BIS) was the New York based information department of the British Embassy in Washington DC, an overseas post of the Foreign & Commonwealth Office, London. [1] There was also an office of the BIS in Ottawa (British Information Services (Ottawa))
The BIS aimed 'to answer the questions most frequently asked in the United States about Britain and provide up-to-date government comment on current events where Britain has a role to play'.[2]. It appears that its services have now been taken over by the Public Affairs Team of the British Embassy in Washington DC.[3]
Contents
History
Ronald Tree was amongst those who staffed BIS in the early 1940s. A 'connection' of the Astors and part of the Cliveden Set, 'He was born and brought up here, Winchester and all... became joint master of the Pytchley Hunt, was elected to parliament in the awakening 1930s and found Ditchley Park to live in'[4]:
- Tree is proof that the Astor network (miscalled the Cliveden set) had two quite opposite sides. He and his sort were as actively and resolutely against appeasement as others among their friends, relations and hangers-on were for it. He tells here ... of the birth and growth of the wartime British Information Services in the United States as neutrality shaded into alliance: Tree was midwife -- as he was of other more voluntary transatlantic ventures bringing relief and the co-operation of men with drive and pull.[5]
John Wheeler-Bennet was also at BIS:
- The book brings back with startling vividness the political and social flavour of that world of wartime diplomacy and propaganda. With the vividness goes, paradoxically, an equivalent sense of remoteness. How vanished are the years when we stood alone, as well as those when we were at the apex of the grand alliance. Sir John's Anglo-American story begins almost in a Bertie Wooster world -- the New York of the Stork Club and the Ziegfeld Follies and the London of clubland; it persists into a wartime social whirl that can still talk of "cutting" a German diplomat "in public" and of the "kindness" of the Ritz; it ends on the sober note of the atom bomb and Labour's victory in 1945. With great skill Sir John adapts his style to the changing environment. We begin in the columns of the Tatler. We end with the dour prose of Sir John Anderson.
- Two main stories dominate the book: first the narrative of Britain's cautious but tireless presentation of its claims to a sympathetic but apprehensive United States from 1939 to 1942; and the second the interweaving of British and American "political warfare" against the Reich which followed on Pearl Harbor. Both are told with vivid character-painting and a wealth of relevant anecdote. In the first narrative Sir John makes a notable contribution to the history still not fully told of the British Information Services in the Untied States. The second theme lends itself less well to narrative and personalisation, but for those who are interested it is just as significant a footnote to history.[6]
The British Information Services office was the British Ministry of Information's administrative offices in Rockefeller Center, New York City. It worked with British Security Coordination, also housed in Rockefeller Center.[7] According to Cull Wheeler-Bennet's role involved working closely with the covert work of BSC:
- Although he had technically been employed by the British Information Service - whose head, Sir Gerald Campbell, worked "hand in glove" with Bill Stephenson - in Rockefeller Center in 1941, Wheeler-Bennet had this to say about British Security Co-ordination: "...S.O.E. had established an office in New York under the direction of Bill (later Sir William) Stephenson....I had known many of them from pre-war days.. [and] I had maintained a fairly close contact with them."[8][9]
Post 1945
After the war BIS disposed of their film collection, giving them away to collector Kent D. Eastin, then 67, whose firm Blackhawk Films, Inc., was based in Davenport, Iowa,:
- In 1946, Eastin acquired 50,000 British Information Service films or World War II - for the cost of freight to Davenport.[10]
People
- John D. Miller - from 1945 to 1947 he was director of British Information Services in the midwest, with headquarters in Chicago.[11]
- 1986-91 David Snoxell (British Information Services) (Director)[12]
Publications
- list of BIS publications on the Open Library website: British Information Services
Notes
- ↑ Britain-info.org Website found on web.archive.orgaccessed 23-Feb-2008
- ↑ About BSI, Britain-info.org Website found on web.archive.org of 7 december 1998, Accessed 23-Feb-2008
- ↑ Britaininusa.com British Embassy in the USA
- ↑ Transatlantic midwife; WHEN THE MOON WAS HIGH: Memories of Peace and War, 1897-1942. By Ronald Tree. Macmillan. 208 pages. £4.95.The Economist July 26, 1975, SECTION: BOOKS; Pg. 112
- ↑ Transatlantic midwife; WHEN THE MOON WAS HIGH: Memories of Peace and War, 1897-1942. By Ronald Tree. Macmillan. 208 pages. £4.95.The Economist July 26, 1975, SECTION: BOOKS; Pg. 112
- ↑ Transatlantic; SPECIAL RELATIONSHIPS: America in Peace and WarBy John Wheeler-Bennett. Macmillan. 220 pages. £5.95. The Economist, November 22, 1975, SECTION: BOOKS; Pg. 111
- ↑ J. Wheeler-Bennett, Special Relationship. London: Macmillan, 1975. p191.
- ↑ Cull,Nicholas John, "The British Campaign Against American 'Neutrality,' Publicity and Propaganda." Ph.D Dissertation, University of Leeds, 1991. p. 448.
- ↑ J. Wheeler-Bennett, Special Relationship. London: Macmillan, 1975. p. 155.
- ↑ MARY ALICE KELLOGG with CHRIS J. HARPER in Chicago 'Roll 'Em', Newsweek, March 22, 1976, UNITED STATES EDITION, SECTION: ENTERTAINMENT; Pg. 44
- ↑ 'John D. Miller, British Journalist', The Washington Post, May 23, 1977, Monday, Final Edition, SECTION: Metro; C4
- ↑ Hermes Database July 4, 2000 Foreign And Commonwealth Office Fco Daily Bulletin - Tuesday 4 July 2000
