'Make Do and Mend': A Publishing and Communication History of the Ministry of Information, 1939-45

The Ministry of Information was set up by a democratic society at a point in history when its fundamental values were under serious and immediate threat. It not only dramatised the war of information but also made visible a whole series of networks in the culture of communication that were usually invisible in peace time. The MoI had to adapt rapidly to a series of internal pressures and external circumstances, and did so with limited resources. Its organisation was partly the product of employing what was to hand and, when necessary, improvising: 'Make Do and Mend', therefore, is particularly apt. Located in Senate House, the MoI created a vast amount of publicity material, employing artists, writers, journalists, researchers, and film directors to devise films, radio programmes, posters, books, and exhibitions. The MoI also assisted other ministries in the production and distribution of publicity materials, including the Ministries of Food, Health, the Board of Trade, and the War Office. The MoI also encouraged private firms to publish informational material. The control of paper supply gave the MoI considerable power over a publishing industry suffering from acute shortages. The MoI's Censorship Bureau was responsible for the censorship of newspapers, journals and books. The Bureau required significant intelligence-gathering capacity, and good working relationships with newspapers and publishers. All these procedures were fraught with practical and ethical difficulties created by the exercise of overt censorship in an open society at war with a series of closed societies. As the model for the Ministry of Truth in Orwell's 1984, the MoI's influence continued to reverberate, but not just as metaphor. The difficulties of striking a balance between openness and social cohesion are subjects of fierce debate to this day.
The project will address some of the historical and cultural problems raised by the MoI by using the discipline of publishing history which, for the first time, is being applied systematically to government institutions. Publishing history investigates the relationships between author and publisher; between publisher, printer and bookseller; explores the nature of the relationship between reader and book; and also describes the ways in which reading materials survive in libraries and archives to influence the next generation. The complexity and range of our subject however obliges the discipline to move up a gear and embrace the broader subject of which it is a part: communication history. This studies the transport of materials (e.g. pamphlets, posters, handbills, exhibitions) and the transmission of all sorts of information through a wide variety of media (e.g. radio and film).
The project will analyse an extensive array of primary resources including materials available at the National Archives (TNA), the Imperial War Museum (IWM), BBC Archives at Caversham, Senate House, and Mass Observation at the University of Sussex. Additionally, this decade is the last in which those who were actively engaged with, or affected by, the MoI during the period will still be alive in significant numbers. There is still the chance to interview them and create an oral history resource that will otherwise be lost to us.
In addition to a comprehensive, scholarly history of communication, the project will make all the materials from our investigation available on the Web in the form of 'MoI Digital' which will consist of a virtual archive, containing all the material we have worked on, and a museum that explains MoI by use of striking examples from the archive, 'guided tours', and the facility to create personal collections by 'drag and drop'. The project will thus present its findings in a highly accessible way that will interest teachers, students, journalists, broadcasters as well as large numbers of the general public. Additionally we shall organize a physical exhibition in either Senate House or the Imperial War Museum.

Interest in the project will certainly stretch well beyond academic circles. We aim to serve the needs of the wider public through the creation of MoI Digital and an exhibition. The website will include a chronology of the MoI, an extensive prosopography, information about Senate House, and a catalogue of the productions of the MoI. The museum element of MoI Digital will present a number of examples of MoI pamphlets and posters, as well as clips of radio and film programmes.
Support for teaching: The project will benefit secondary schools and universities across Britain. Teachers will be able to draw on the website's biographies of notable authors or artists employed by the MoI, or direct students to war-time documentaries; they could illustrate their classes and lectures with posters created by the Ministry of Information and presented as part of the museum element of MoI Digital. Pupils will be able to use the website for their presentations and essays on the Second World War - always a popular subject - as well as for projects on individual authors or titles, or on art and artists. Additional local oral history projects could be undertaken by school pupils and university students which, posted on our blog, would help augment the project. Both schools and universities will be able to draw on the substantial resources available via the project's MoI Digital archive.
The third sector: The project will also benefit the archives and libraries which house collections related to the MoI or to WWII more generally. The scholarly history will make extensive use of the records of the MoI; the project will also explore the holdings of the British Library to uncover some of the publications of the MoI, and also the archives of publishing houses to illuminate the relationship between the Ministry and the book trade. The project will also draw on the records of Mass Observation, and the Reading Experience Database, hosted by the Open University. The history will therefore help to articulate a multitude of resources and make these collections more usable by academics in a wide range of disciplines. By displaying a significant collection of the MoI's publicity materials, particularly the posters and pamphlets in MoI Digital, the project will also extend the reach of TNA to researchers outside London, and, indeed, outside the UK. The project may also have an opportunity to provide material that will augment the digital collections of the National Archives and the Imperial War Museum, and thus support their efforts to conserve the originals.
The media: The Second World War is still vivid in the popular imagination, and interest in the Home Front is growing. Programmes on the subject on TV and radio are common, and feature films still frequently draw on WWII for plots or settings; and local newspapers and radio stations frequently feature older local residents who have a wartime story or experience to relate. For this reason the oral history project will generate a lot of interest both nationally and locally. MoI Digital will provide a wealth of textual and graphical material that could be used to contextualize this coverage.
Policy-makers: The MoI was controversial - nevertheless it had considerable impact both in the UK and abroad. Politicians, civil servants, and others currently concerned with explaining the decisions and acts of local and national government to the public will learn something through studying the successes and failures of the UK's first government-supported public relations unit.
Local communities and the wider public: The project will help support local museums and collectors wishing to put their collections of Second World War memorabilia into a broader and more intelligible context. The prosopographical study that will be part of MoI Digital will prove an invaluable resource for family and local historians. This will help to encourage the public to engage further with its cultural heritage.