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. 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'. It appears that its services have now been taken over by the Public Affairs Team of the British Embassy in Washington DC.

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':

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.

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.

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. According to Thomas Mahl, 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."

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 [of] World War II - for the cost of freight to Davenport.

1970s

On his controversial appointment as ambassador Peter Jay

proposed a 50 per cent staff cut for the New York-based British Information Service - a move that stunned the BIS employees, who grumbled that it stemmed less from his stated desire to trim costs than from an attempt to concentrate control in his own hands. A British Cabinet committee rejects his recommendation, by a vote of 8 to 1.

This was described by Newsweek in 1978 as Jay's 'only setback, so far' Jay was however successful in removing Laurence O'Keeffe as head of the British Information Service in New York. This excited hostility in London from the conservative Party:

Conservative lawmakers Monday accused Britain's ambassador to the United States of trying to turn the government's information service in New York into a propoganda unit for his father-in-law, Prime Minister James Callaghan. A motion entitled "The Truth That is Fit To Print" was introduced in the House of Commons by a group of Tory legislators who say they plan to question Foreign Secretary David Owen about Ambassador Peter Jay's successful efforts to remove Laurence O'Keeffe as head of the British Information Service in New York... The Commons motion "deplores the removal from office of the director of the BIS New York by the prime minister's son-in-law because he O'Keeffe refuses to convert his daily digest of the British press to a pro-government propaganda medium."

A Foreign Office spokesman said: "It is not uncommon in the diplomatic service, for a variety of reasons, for people to leave their posts before completing a full tour.As to the future of the BIS itself we have recently reviewed the level of our information staff in major overseas posts . . . and this review obviously included the BIS in New York."

The row also reached the pages of The Economist:

That a staff establishment of 68 for the British Information Services (BIS) in New York is too big and should be cut is uncontroversial. But a lively, and now public, row continues on by exactly how much. Mr Peter Jay, the British ambassador in Washington, who is responsible for Britain's propaganda effort in the United States, reckons by half. The foreign office inspectors, who came to New York last winter, also favour a reduction of a so far undisclosed size. And the Whitehall think-tank, in a Beeching-type report on the British diplomatic service, thought Britain could get by with a quarter as many information people as it employs overseas.

Naturally enough all this talk has gone down rather badly with those most affected: the staff of the BIS in New York, whose numbers have been thinned to 56 by attrition over the past two years. Only five of them were sent out directly from Britain. The rest were hired locally. Some of the British and Australian citizens among them will lose their right to stay in the United States if they are declared redundant. The foreign office is suspected by them of picking on them in an effort to win a reputation for cold-eyed efficiency without being beastly to any real diplomats.

The head of the BIS in New York, Mr Lawrence O'Keefe, who is the author, under the pen name of Lawrence Halley, of a psychological thriller called "Simultaneous Equations" has, after a clash of wills with Mr Jay been told he will be removed half way through what was expected to be a four-year term. He has told friends he has got the sack.

At the storm centre of his dispute with the ambassador (who has already got rid of his press attache in Washington) is the future of a BIS survey called "Today's British Papers". It carries extracts culled by the BBC overseas service from editorials in the British press and is distributed by mail by the BIS as a service to news editors in the United States. Some of the extracts are critical of British government policies. On June 26th, for example, the survey quoted from an editorial in the Daily Express that asserted the Labour government was contributing to further violence in Rhodesia by refusing to accept the internal political settlement agreed in that country...

Writers of editorials for American papers say they find this service useful. Those spoken to on major dailies - the New York Times, the Chicago Tribune and the New York Daily News, among them - said a government willing to circulate material critical of itself was more likely to be believed by journalists...

Mr Jay is apparently unconvinced. He thinks the British embassy in Washington and the BIS in New York should concentrate more attention on disseminating what is called by the embassy "primary information material": economic statistics, speeches by British ministers, extracts from official British government reports and so on...

It remains unclear whether Mr Jay merely wants to make economies, and reasonably sees the bulletin as a target, or whether he really believes that the BIS should only be putting out good news for the government - which is not always the same as good news for the British taxpayer.

Blacks Britannica

Before finishing up as director general of BIS O'Keeffe had time to complain about a US TV film about racism in Britain:

British government officials and legislators said Thursday an American-made documentary movie on Britains racial problems presents a "horrific view of racism" in this country. Laurence O'Keeffe, director general of the British Information Services in New York, complained to the WGBH television station in Boston, Mass., that the documentary gives a distorted view of Britain's smoldering racial issue, government spokesmen said.

The 57-minute film, "Blacks Britannica," was commissioned by the WGBH Educational Foundation and made by independent producer David Koff of California. It was broadcast by the U.S. Public Broadcasting Service network Thursday night. Officials here said O'Keeffe, the British government's U.S. information chief, asked WGBH president David Ives for equal time on the non-commercial network to "put other points of view on race relations in Britain." The movie has been clouded in controversy since Koff finished shooting two months ago. The lanky, bearded producer was roasted by British critics at a preview-news conference in London July 11. Several accused him of giving a one-sided view of the plight of Britain's 1.9 million non-whites.

Koff said the movie was his contribution to the struggle against racism and fascism." He said the film "reflects the increasingly militant response within the black community to the continuing attacks upon it, both by organized fascist elements on the streets, and by the state itself." Koff also fought with WGBH over the final version of the movie. PBS at first refused to screen it unless he made some changes. Koff accused WGBH of censorship before the squabble was resolved Wednesday by the refusal of a court to issue a restraining order prohibiting broadcast of the edited program.

In the movie, radical non-whites charge the state is deliberately exploiting and suppressing them. One black in the version previewed in London commented: "There's a conspiracy against the colored population." The movie reflects growing racial tension in Britain, especially among an increasing badly hit by unemployment and swelling hostility from white extremists.

People

• 1945-1947 John D. Miller - director of British Information Services in the midwest, with headquarters in Chicago.
• 1947 to 1952 Frank Mitchell - headed the news division of the British Information Service in New York. He then was assigned to Los Angeles. He returned to London in 1955, and the following year was transferred to Chicago.
• 1978 Laurence O'Keeffe Director-General
• 1986-91 David Snoxell (British Information Services) (Director)

Publications

• list of BIS publications on the Open Library website: British Information Services