Sir Hedley Le Bas and the Origins of Domestic Propaganda in Britain 1914–1917

Hiley, Nicholas

doi:10.1108/eum0000000004710

Cited by 3 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 2 publications

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“…The origins of this drive have been recounted in an important but often overlooked study by Nicholas Hiley (1987: 31), who suggests that a chance meeting on a Surrey golf course between Seely, Sir George Riddell, managing director of The News of the World , and Hedley (later Sir) Le Bas, owner of a major publishing firm, marked the beginning of modern government propaganda in Britain. Hiley’s main focus is Le Bas’s role in Britain’s wartime propaganda machinery, and he devotes only two pages to the pre-war campaign.…”

Section: ‘What the Army Offers’: Selling Service In The Army 1913–1914mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Precisely that appears to have happened when Seely first met Le Bas on Walton Heath course in March 1913. Introduced to one another by Riddell, Seely agreed to hire Le Bas’s firm, the Caxtons Publishing Company, after Le Bas presented what Hiley (1987: 33) has called a ‘detailed publicity scheme’ to the War Office. This scheme would target both regulars and auxiliary personnel for the Special Reserve, a semi-professional force whose members were liable to be called up in the advent of war (Simkins, 2007[1988]: 13).…”

Section: ‘What the Army Offers’: Selling Service In The Army 1913–1914mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Although the texts associated with them – posters, films, newsreels, radio and television broadcasts and so on – are usually described as a form of government propaganda, they were often produced by private individuals whose perceived expertise at making and shaping media content gave them a privileged role within the state’s communications apparatus. This role has been explored in several accounts of wartime propaganda which directly or indirectly address matters of recruitment (Baker, 1990; Dutton; 1989; Hiley, 1985, 1987, 1997; Messenger, 1992; Paris, 1999; Reeves, 1983). Yet, it remains largely unexplored in studies of peacetime mobilization.…”

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confidence: 99%

“… 3. Hiley (1987: 31) dates the emergence of the Caxtons Publishing Company to 1899, but records of Companies House indicate that a company bearing the same name was incorporated at some point in 1865 (BT 31/1054/1850C). …”

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confidence: 99%

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Your Country Needs You? Advertising, Public Relations and the Promotion of Military Service in Peacetime Britain

Maartens

2019

Media, War & Conflict

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Historians have long taken an interest in military recruitment advertising and public relations. Much of their attention, however, has been directed towards promotion in wartime, with a lot less known about how governments used media to attract civilians in peacetime or during the many so-called ‘limited wars’ of the post-war era. This article addresses this shortcoming by exploring three separate recruitment campaigns waged in Britain at different moments in the 20th century. Giving a sense of the scale of official recruiting work, it highlights the central role played by commercial advertising and public relations professionals in the planning and development of campaigns and investigates whether recruiters were actually successful in convincing civilians to join up. The evidence presented here suggests that they had a negligible effect on enrolment rates. Yet, it also indicates that different types of appeal were used to attract civilians in peacetime, with material rewards typically taking precedence over notions of patriotic duty. Suggesting that such appeals effectively commodified military service, this article concludes by reflecting on their broader legacy to studies of media, war and conflict.

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Section: ‘What the Army Offers’: Selling Service In The Army 1913–1914mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: ‘What the Army Offers’: Selling Service In The Army 1913–1914mentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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confidence: 99%

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Your Country Needs You? Advertising, Public Relations and the Promotion of Military Service in Peacetime Britain

Maartens

2019

Media, War & Conflict

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“…The first large-scale communication of social or moral causes to America was experienced in 1914. Well-publicized atrocities of the Kaiser's army advancing through Belgium highlighted 1914 -16 British propaganda and its reliance upon advertising executives (see, e.g., Hiley, 1987). But by the 1920s, many Americans viewed Lasswell's (1927) analysis of all 1914 -18 efforts (and work of such revisionists as Ponsonby, 1928) as proof that propaganda was inherently alien and obscured U.S. interests.…”

Section: Social Marketing From Abroad In Historical Perspectivementioning

confidence: 99%

Woman to women: Social marketing an idea to the new world

Holden

1998

Psychol. Mark.

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In 1971, Kotler and Zaltman developed a formal planning process for social marketing. But this article highlights the marketing of the idea of Britain's moral cause to American women in 1939–41, a clever example of social marketing thinly disguised to avoid the abhorrence attached to propaganda. The authors show how Ruth Drummond's letters in Ladies' Home Journal contain an effective mix of communication elements dedicated to winning women to a way of thinking that they had rejected initially. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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The Great War, military recruitment and the public relations work of the Parliamentary Recruiting Committee, 1914–1915

Maartens

2016

Public Relations Inquiry

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Several historians have acknowledged the impact of the First World War on the development of public relations in Britain. However, while there remains a general recognition of the importance of the war in fostering new forms of public relations practice, few studies of major practitioners or organisations have been carried out. Focusing on the period immediately following the declaration of war and using the Parliamentary Recruiting Committee as a case study, this article seeks to fill in some of the gaps that have emerged in the literature. Tasked with boosting enlistment in the armed forces, the Parliamentary Recruiting Committee occupied a central place in the government’s wartime communications machinery. Though usually studied for its advertising and poster work, a case is made here for an understanding of the Committee as an early public relations organisation which boasted some of the features, and much of the spirit, of later ventures in the field. Its work, which involved an extensive programme of public events, a major campaign of public opinion research and an attempt to influence newspaper coverage of recruitment, suggests a need to revise traditional conceptions of Great War propaganda. Yet it also has significant implications for the history of public relations in Britain and the relationship the Parliamentary Recruiting Committee shared to similar organisations set up in other countries at the same time.

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Sir Hedley Le Bas and the Origins of Domestic Propaganda in Britain 1914–1917

Cited by 3 publications

References 2 publications

Your Country Needs You? Advertising, Public Relations and the Promotion of Military Service in Peacetime Britain

Your Country Needs You? Advertising, Public Relations and the Promotion of Military Service in Peacetime Britain

Woman to women: Social marketing an idea to the new world

The Great War, military recruitment and the public relations work of the Parliamentary Recruiting Committee, 1914–1915

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