As explained before, colonial economic interest was vital to many sections of British industry. To them, and to the Conservative party that backed them, there was no better solution for the economic depression of post-war years than promoting inter-imperial trade. In the high unemployment period of 1920s such an ‘imperial solution’ to the economic problems of the working class seemed perfectly suited, both as a counter-ideology to socialism and as a way of diverting the possible adversary effects of free trade on British industry, as explained by Constantine:
Some sections of industry were convinced that the free-trading international system which in 19th century served the interests of a uniquely advantaged British economy … suited Britain ill when other nations industrialised (1986: 196).
These groups therefore proposed a policy of tariff protection which would discriminate against foreign import but facilitate trade exchange among nations of the Empire. When this policy was dismissed by the government of the time (1924) in favour of free-trade,
the supporters, in search of an alternative, proposed that the government “should instead spend money improving the marketing of Empire foodstuffs in Britain… as a non-tariff way of encouraging inter-imperial trade” (ibid:198). The proposal was accepted and the government set up a department called the Empire Marketing Board (EMB) in May 1926, to carry out the plan, appointing Sir Stephen Tallents as its secretary (Sussex, 1975:4). As part of the efforts to develop new techniques in the field of public relations, Tallents formed a Publicity Committee for the purpose of enhancing public opinion of imperial trade. This function of the Board however, was not limited to commercial advertising, but also included publicity for government departments and services. As the first secretary of the board, Sir Stephen Tallents believed that in a mass democracy the public should be educated about the functions of government through public relations services (Crinson, 2004: 209). Tallents firmly believed in the effectiveness of public relations as a means of achieving a constructive impact upon public opinion that could subsequently lead to “public approval, consent and action” (ibid: 204). He thus pursued the task of public relations by means of marketing, advertising and research, and through all channels and media (ibid: 184).
The full range of available media explored by EMB to carry out its task of publicity and marketing included pamphlets, leaflets, poster films and postcards which were printed to advertise products from around the Empire. Posters like ‘Highways of Empire’ were printed for hanging on classroom walls (Mackenzie, 1984: 234). Subsequently a press officer was appointed to draw newspapers’ attention to EMB activities, and an EMB display, usually “its specially-designed eye-catching pavilion” was mounted in seventy or so different exhibitions (Constantine, 1986: 206). The board also launched a nationwide series of public lectures on topics related to Empire and its affairs to public audience. There was no difficulty for the Board gaining access to broadcasting and from 1928 onwards “brief morning bulletins were broadcast to housewives describing Empire produce in season” (ibid: 207).
Following other media, the potential of film for shaping public opinion, action and consumerism, soon attracted the Board’s attention. The Publicity Committee of the EMB
deemed cinema as having the greatest advertising power in the world, as an extract from one of its reports shows:
The cinema is not merely a form of entertainment but… a powerful instrument of education … and even when it is not used avowedly for purpose of instruction, advertisement or propaganda, it exercises indirectly a great influence in shaping the ideas of the very large numbers to whom it appeals (Cunliffe-Lister quoted in Constantine, 1986: 208).
The Publicity Committee therefore decided that cinema performances of short educational or propaganda films dealing with Empire products should be included in publicity plans. For Tallents, for whom education and propaganda were “inseparably bound up with imperialism” (MacKenzie, 1984: 83), cinema presented a perfect new channel for spreading imperialist ideology. The significance of cinema as a means of education and advertising for the Empire can be best understood in terms of the wide range of audiences it reached:
The audiences were said to be predominantly women, but the range was wide and included members of literary societies, the YMCA, working –men’s clubs, cooperative societies, adult and army schools, training colleges, Women’s Institutes, Rotary Clubs, Grocers’ Association and meeting in public libraries (Constantine, 1986: 204).
To exploit the full potential of cinema for public relations, therefore, a film unit was founded in the EMB. As we shall see in the next section the film unit of the EMB was going to be the first sponsor of what would later be known as the British Documentary Movement. This was then the climate in which the origins of British documentary appeared, a climate bound up with marketing, advertising and research and focused mainly on promoting the Empire and its commercial interests for Britain. A quote form Mackenzie elaborates this context nicely:
However unsophisticated the audience, however complex the problems of communication theory, one conclusion is unavoidable. Most of the plots of the adventure films, most of the newsreel, documentary, and actuality material remained incomprehensible except within the matrix of perceptions about the world shared by makers and audience alike. Censorship ensured that no efforts to break that mould were allowed, and indeed there is little indication that they
would have been forthcoming in any case. Not even the ‘radical’ documentarists could escape the power of the core ideology (MacKenzie, 1984: 91).
In the following sections the relationship between the ‘core ideology’ and the economic basis of documentary productions will be explored in more depth through discussing the significance of the British Documentary Movement of the 1930s to the 1950s.