Modelos de turbulencia de viscosidad de remolino

3. Guidance to Editors: Manchester Guardian and the Censor

Price noted that Churchill ‘read more newspapers with greater attention than almost any other Prime Minister’ so, although the threat of the British Gazette was averted, the scrutiny of Fleet Street was constant.⁵¹ The archive of Manchester Guardian memos and correspondence has several examples of the generic pressure being applied by the government and, at a more specific level, the censor. In June 1940 a telegram from the Ministry of Information was received in the offices of the Manchester Guardian. Under the title ‘Guidance to Editors (Not for Publication)’, it laid out the government’s policy concerning the reporting of war news with a

particular reference to air raids:

Germany exercises rigid censorship over news of air raids. Very little information is released for publication and the meagre particulars which appear in the German press are always misleading when compared to authentic reports.

In this country, whilst no one would suggest that the enemy should be given useful information as to the result of his air attacks, it would be contrary to the traditions and spirit of our country that we should adopt such extreme methods as those employed by Germany in keeping facts from its people. We pride ourselves on the fact that ‘we can take it’.⁵²

The memo went on to say that the Luftwaffe was bound to get through, particularly at night and that ‘many casualties and severe damage are inevitable’.⁵³ Then,

contradicting the spirit it had initially espoused, the memo issued orders to the press,

49 Williams, Murder, p. 136; Taylor, British Propaganda, p. 164.

50 Margach, Abuse of Power, p. 84.

51 Price, Where Power Lies, p. 115.

52 Guardian Archive, Wartime Arrangements, June 1940.

53 Ibid.

stating there should be: delays to the full description of air raids; delays to lists and numbers of casualties; and restrictions on the mention of bombed areas ‘even of large towns’.⁵⁴

In the same month, at the meeting with the Editorial Committee that Duff Cooper ‘joked’ about a British Gazette, the Minister for Information was also quoted as saying that the voluntary system of censorship had not been satisfactory, and ‘it must now give place to a compulsory system’.⁵⁵ Duff Cooper asked the committee to consider three ‘possible solutions’. Namely:

1 Complete compulsory censorship using French system (delay of two to three days in publishing news).

2 Compulsory source of news so that newspapers could publish from official sources only.

3 Board of Censors, consisting of two members from the MOI, Admiralty, War Office, Air Ministry, Ministry of Home Security and the Press. Would meet twice a day and would decide what should be said on certain matters.⁵⁶

These reforms were successfully resisted by the combined force of Fleet Street, but individual editors continued to feel the overt presence of the censor. In June 1940 Crozier warned Bone that complaints had been made ‘from certain quarters (the P.

M.) about attacks in the Manchester Guardian’ – the brackets were Crozier’s – and five months later Cyril Ray, a war correspondent, reported that three newspapers, the Melbourne Argus, Toronto Star and Winnipeg Free Press, had withdrawn their London correspondents because of the heavy-handed censorship.⁵⁷ ‘Representations to the Ministry of Information,’ he wrote, ‘have generally been answered in an offhand way and have resulted in no improvement.’⁵⁸

In December 1940, at a lunch hosted by the Minister for Information, Duff Cooper, and the Home Secretary, Morrison, journalists were told: ‘The censorship as

54 Ibid.

55 Guardian Archive, Wartime Arrangements, 21 June 1940.

56 Ibid.

57 Guardian Archive, Ray to Crozier, 13 November 1940.

58 Ibid.

it affects air raids is to be tightened up… We are telling Germany too much about air raids.’⁵⁹ Morrison listed the new restrictions:

1. No mention of water shortages (for fear enemy would return to finish the job in the knowledge there would be little water to put our fires).

2. No criticism of the railway, post office or telephone breakdowns.

3. No mention of people moving out of towns and cities.

4. No mention of fires not being extinguished.

5. Unwise to mention the efficiency in putting out fires.

6. No mention of emergency services moving to help other towns.

7. Don’t mention land mines (had a fault and would not explode unless it hit the ground in a certain way).⁶⁰

Morrison finished this lecture by saying: ‘If the press is willing to go slow on all this, it is better to do it wholeheartedly. Tell your readers what you are going to do to cheat the enemy and make a patriotic virtue out of necessity.’⁶¹ Within a matter of days Manchester’s newspapers were given ample opportunity to practise their ‘patriotic virtue’ in the aftermath of the Christmas Blitz.

At a more mundane level there was the constant irritant of having to adhere to, and be under the scrutiny of, the censor. Even in 1943, with the war going the Allies’

way, Crozier was still being upbraided by a ‘very courteous gentleman from the MOI who reads leaders from all over the world each night’. The reprimand read:

The nightly extract from Manchester tends to criticise the government or to tell people not to be too optimistic, or, in short, all is not supremely well in the best of all possible worlds. They have difficulty, they say, in sending extracts abroad and ask for something not so critical.⁶²

By then, the dialogue between the MOI and the Guardian’s offices was well established. In November 1941 Crozier had written to the MOI complaining of its

‘technical ignorance’ of the cotton industry:

All references –and there have been many – to labour shortages in the cotton mills have spoken of the shortage in the cardroom, because that is the only department in a mule spinning mill in which women happen to be employed. The deletion of the

59 Guardian Archive, Wartime Arrangements, December 1940.

60 Ibid.

61 Ibid.

62 Ibid, 2 February 1943.

word ‘cardroom’ safeguards nothing from the enemy but merely destroys the point of the sentence.⁶³

Three months later he had to defend himself against the censor after the Guardian reported there was a shortage of ARP wardens in Salford. Emergency committees, he argued, had to use the press to draw attention to their needs. If the publicity was denied ‘the need will not be met and the deficiencies will not be remedied’.⁶⁴ In June 1942 Crozier was forced to apologise after the Manchester Guardian carried a small story under the headline ‘The Two Uncles’. It read: ‘In a recent letter received here from a prisoners’ camp in Germany this passage had been uncensored: “I hear that Uncle Sam and Uncle Joe are doing well”.’⁶⁵ The response from the censor was: ‘It is thought that any suggestion in our press of laxity on the part of German censorship may result in steps being taken to make it stricter.’⁶⁶ The fact that it took the MOI nearly three weeks to respond to the above was indicative of the delays brought by censorial involvement. On 8 December 1942 Crozier complained: ‘Montague’s message tonight, dated December 5, is useless, being covered by this morning’s news, so it goes on the spike... Our service is being almost completely ruined.’⁶⁷

The system for wartime photographs was also complex and slow. To get a permit from the MOI, a photographer had to have accreditation, usually from a newspaper or news agency.⁶⁸ Their work had to be given to the censor before it could be distributed, often to a pool for general use, although, to save time, the

photographers would self-censor beforehand. Even that was complicated because the

63 Guardian Archive, Crozier to the MOI, 18 November 1941.

64 Guardian Archive, Crozier to the MOI, 18 February 1942.

65 ‘The Two Uncles’, Manchester Guardian, 21 May 1942, p. 4.

66 Guardian Archive, MOI to the Manchester Guardian, 10 June 1942.

67 Guardian Archive, Crozier to Bone, 8 December 1942.

68 Amy Helen Bell, London was Ours: Diaries and Memoirs of the London Blitz, (London: Tauris, 2011), p. 29.

public reaction to their presence was not universally welcomed.⁶⁹ Inevitably, given the pressures of deadlines, there was friction. On 26 December 1940, two days after the Manchester Blitz, Crozier complained of the problems of getting photographs into the approved pool for publication: ‘I want to get them there as soon as possible lest by chance the Censor should release other people’s before he releases ours. In which case we shall be undone.’⁷⁰ A month later Crozier, normally succinct to the point of brusqueness in his diary, was so irritated about the dithering of the censor about photographs of the Duke of Kent’s post-Blitz visit to Manchester that he noted:

Censor stopped Duke of Kent in Manchester at 8 pm. Pictures now in page. Said he did not know what the MOI in Manchester had promised. (2 of them had said the stuff was all right for Thursday’s paper). D Herald protested because its stuff had gone in early editions. Censor rescinded his prohibition and the stuff went in – we took emergency pictures off machine and restored normal page. ⁷¹

For Crozier’s diary this number of words amounted to an essay and was perhaps indicative of his frustration at having to deal with such overt control.

Crozier rarely let this exasperation spill out into his newspaper, but the fall of Tobruk, Libya, in June 1942 was a rare example of the Manchester Guardian openly criticising the running of the war.⁷² Even then, the criticism was buried below an introduction to the editorial that read: ‘The edge has gone off the political threat to the Government in the Commons. The “no confidence” men have shown themselves to be a small muster’, but below was forthright condemnation:

We have had our share of disillusionment and disappointment. But the people have been ready to accept and forget. Norway could be forgiven as a scratch affair;

Dunkirk followed the defection of our allies… Hong Kong, Singapore and Java were an almost inevitable sequence after our gamble of Eastern unpreparedness had failed. But Libya, as the ordinary man sees it, is another matter. Here at least we were prepared to be strong…The government will have to put itself in the place of the workers who find that after they have worked so hard and so long their

69 Ibid, p. 30.

70 Guardian Archive, Crozier to Haley 26 December 1940.

71 Crozier, 15 January 1941, cited in Ayerst, Manchester Guardian, p. 542.

72 ‘The Discontents’, Manchester Guardian, 27 June 1942, p. 6.

production is thrown away in the field, battered by superior weight, or left as booty to the enemy.⁷³

This was exceptional, and perhaps the Manchester Guardian was emboldened because Churchill was being criticised in Parliament, but six days and five editions later it had reverted to type. Its editorial on 3 July read: ‘The government has beaten off the vote of “no confidence” by 475 to 25 votes. We must be all un-feignedly glad at the result.’⁷⁴