Untold lives blog

On 13 January 1941 a War Fund Fete was held at Government House, Madras.  As well as raising money for the Madras War Fund, the fete was also intended as a propaganda event.

India Office Private Papers Mss Eur C261/5/2 f 1 Front cover of the War Fund Fete programme

It was a grand affair with the programme featuring 91 entries for stalls, games, entertainments and food and drink establishments, along with more practical facilities including cloakrooms and parcel stores, lost property and medical stations.  Currency for the fete was in coupons and the public had to purchase books of coupons in order to make purchases or enjoy the entertainments on offer.

One local newspaper on the day of the fete described Government House as having been 'transformed into a pleasureland' for that night's merrymaking.  According to the Madras Mail of 14 January 1941, the fete was opened when 'Tough cowboys burst open the gates at Government House yesterday and their tempestuous entrance made it possible for the public to enter at last'.

Many of the stalls were similar to those featured at fetes nowadays with lucky dips, raffles, coconut shy’s, and bagatelle.  Others however had more unusual titles, including ‘Bunty pulls the strings’ and ‘Breaking up the happy home’ (similar to today’s crockery smash stalls).  There were also elephant rides, several magic gardens and even a Chinese Laundry!  One of the most popular stalls at the Fete was that of Woolworth’s.  One local newspaper the following day observed:
'Equally crowded was the excellent “Woolworth” stall, where the most effective household oddments, artfully and thriftily contrived, were sold for a song'.

Entertainment at the fete included two bandstands and a theatre which featured dance groups and musicians as well as plays.  The performances on show included the Tamil comedy The Sub-Assistant Magistrate of Sultanpet and the Tamil play The Pongal Feast.

Food and drink were also in abundance with American style diners and saloons, coffee and refreshment stalls and a Toc H Bar.  For those looking for a full evening’s entertainment there was a Tocaitchaski bar with its own orchestra, a banqueting hall with dancing from 9pm to 2am (evening dress was optional) and a cabaret dinner, promenade and bar with the cabaret performance at 9pm.

India Office Private Papers Mss Eur C261/5/2, f 23 Front page of The Mail 14 January 1941 showing the crowds surging into the fete

According to the newspaper reports people attended the fete in their thousands: 'In they surged, school boys and girls, scores of excited men and women, mothers with babies and with chattering kiddies clinging to available fingers, happy young things on the arms of their beaux, while burnished cars and buses squeezed through as well'.

In a letter written on 16 January 1941 Sir Arthur Hope, the Governor of Madras, congratulated Captain Thomas William Barnard, Honorary Secretary to the Fete’s organising committee, on the wonderful success of the fete and also commented that 'Apart from the financial result, it was a great piece of propoganda [sic] which will have its effect'.

Karen Stapley
Curator, India Office Records

Further reading:
India Office Private Papers Mss Eur C261/5/2 - The Great Fete at Government House Grounds Madras 13 January 1941
- Includes press cuttings from The Mail (formerly known as The Madras Mail) 14 January 1941

The Ministry of Information was the British Government department responsible for publicity and propaganda during the Second World War. On 22 August 1940, Arthur John Arberry at the Ministry of Information wrote to Roland Tennyson Peel at the India Office, enclosing colour portraits of Emir Abdullah of Transjordan (ʿAbdullāh bin Ḥusayn al-Hāshimī), the Sultan of Muscat and Oman (Sa‘īd bin Taymūr Āl Bū Sa‘īd), and the Shaikh of Bahrain (Shaikh Ḥamad bin ‘Īsá Āl Khalīfah, erroneously referred to as the Shaikh of Kuwait in the letter).

Arberry wrote that the Ministry’s Far Eastern Section had ordered a large quantity of these portraits for distribution in the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia), and that a caption would be added ‘indicating that these Muslim rulers support Britain in the present war’, in an attempt to foster support for the Allies amongst the predominantly Muslim population. He went on to request Peel’s advice ‘as to whether these portraits could appropriately be used for distribution on a large scale in the Middle East, especially in Hadhramaut and the Persian Gulf’, as propaganda.

This letter and the portraits, below, are included in the file IOR/L/PS/12/3942, which has been digitised and will soon be available to view on the Qatar Digital Library. 

Letter from Arthur John Arberry of the Ministry of Information, to Roland Tennyson Peel of the India Office, 22 August 1940. Reference: IOR/L/PS/12/3942, f 19. 

Portrait of Emir Abdullah of Transjordan (ʿAbdullāh bin Ḥusayn al-Hāshimī), c 22 Aug 1940. Reference: IOR/L/PS/12/3942, f 21.

The copyright status is unknown. Please contact [email protected] with any information you have regarding this item.

Portrait of the Sultan of Muscat and Oman (Sa‘īd bin Taymūr Āl Bū Sa‘īd), c. 22 August 1940. Reference: IOR/L/PS/12/3942, f 22.

The copyright status is unknown. Please contact [email protected] with any information you have regarding this item.

 
Portrait of the Hakim of Bahrain (Shaikh Ḥamad bin ‘Īsá Āl Khalīfah), c. 22 August 1940 . Reference: IOR/L/PS/12/3942, f 23.

The copyright status is unknown. Please contact [email protected] with any information you have regarding this item.

Arberry was sent a reply from John Percival Gibson of the India Office, advising him that ‘we think it undesirable to make any use for publicity purposes of the Sultan of Muscat’s portrait, chiefly for the reason given in Peel’s letter to Rushbrook Williams of the 23^rd January [1940]’. The letter referred to is not included in this file, however a draft copy of it can be found in file IOR/L/PS/12/2995, f 9. In this letter, Peel informs Laurence Frederic Rushbrook Williams of the Ministry of Information that ‘the Sultan of Muscat has asked that steps might be taken to prevent publicity being given…to Muscat. Apparently the Sultan is apprehensive that such publicity might draw unwanted attention to his country in German & Italian quarters’, and ‘We have promised to respect his wishes’. 

In Gibson’s reply to Arberry, he also stated that provided the Sultan of Muscat’s portrait was omitted, he did not think there would be any objection to distribution of the other portraits in the Middle East generally, but that this was more a matter for the Colonial Office and the Foreign Office. However, he added that ‘I doubt it would be worth the expense to make any distribution in the Persian Gulf, where the attitude of the Sheikhs is well enough known’.

Arberry further consulted the India Office about whether it would be politically acceptable to include a portrait of the Shaikh of Kuwait (Shaikh Aḥmad al-Jābir Āl Ṣabāḥ), to which Peel responded that there was no objection.

Before the portraits were finally approved, Sir Hassan Suhrawardy, Adviser to the Secretary of State for India, was asked for his opinion on them. Suhrawardy approved the green border of the portraits, but thought that it should be an olive shade instead. He also advised the Ministry of Information that the star and crescent symbol should be omitted from the border, for the reasons stated in the letter below.

Copy of a letter from Sir Hassan Suhrawardy to E J Embleton, Studio Manger at the Ministry of Information, 5 November 1940. Reference: IOR/L/PS/12/3942, f 11.

Susannah Gillard,

Content Specialist, Archivist

British Library / Qatar Foundation Partnership

Further reading

British Library, Coll 30/202 ‘Persian Gulf. Photographs of Notabilities (Sheikhs &c) (used for propaganda purposes)’ IOR/L/PS/12/3942

British Library, Coll 20/35 'Sultan of Muscat's desire to avoid wireless and press publicity during wartime' IOR/L/PS/12/2995

On 27 August 1939, the explorer Bertram Thomas sent a telegram to John Charles Walton of the India Office, offering his services to the Government of India in the event of war, in the Persian Gulf ‘or wherever my Arab experience may be of use’.

  Telegram from Bertram Thomas to John Charles Walton at the India Office, 27 August 1939 (IOR/L/PS/12/300, f 72). The copyright status is unknown. Please contact [email protected] with any information you have regarding this item. 

In 1931, Thomas had become the first European to cross the ‘empty quarter’ (the Rub' al Khali desert) of Arabia.  He had also served in Mesopotamia (Iraq) during the First World War, and had held offices in the Middle East including that of Financial Adviser to the Sultan of Muscat and Oman.

 
'ARABIA. Route Traverse across the RUB' AL KHALI from DHUFAR TO DOHA by BERTRAM THOMAS 1930-31' map (IOR/L/PS/12/2137, f 308)

After the declaration of war on Germany on 3 September 1939, Thomas wrote to the Foreign Office enquiring whether he could be of use to them in Iraq or elsewhere in the Middle East, in case the Government of India could not find a suitable role for him.  He stated ‘I want to serve the country’ and ‘I should feel wretched to be idling when I ought to be helping somewhere’.  He suggested that ‘I might be the sort of man the new Department of Propaganda has a use for, collecting information on the spot, or disseminating it there’.  Herbert Lacy Baggallay of the Foreign Office passed on Thomas’s letter to the Ministry of Information, remarking that Thomas’s ‘knowledge of Arabic and of Arab countries is, of course, very considerable’.

On 30 July 1941 the Ministry of Information offered Thomas the role of Publicity Officer in the Persian Gulf, responsible for the preparation and co-ordination of pro-British and Allied propaganda in the Gulf.  Thomas served in this role until he became first Director of the new Middle East Centre for Arabic Studies, a centre for training British personnel in the Middle East.  He held this post from 1944 to 1948.

Other individuals offered their services to the India Office and the Foreign Office during the Second World War including the mountaineer and author Frank Symthe (Francis Sydney Smythe).  Smythe had led the 1931 expedition which conquered the Himalayan mountain Kamet, the first summit over 25,000 feet (7,620 metres) to be climbed.  He had also taken part in Everest expeditions, including the 1933 expedition which equalled the height record (c 28,000 feet or 8,534 metres) established by Edward Felix Norton in 1924.

Symthe wrote to Walton at the India Office on 23 September 1939 that he was ‘anxious to undertake some work in which any special qualifications I may possess would be of the most use’.  In a further letter of 11 August 1941, he stated that ‘since the German attack on Russia the Indian frontier again becomes important’, and he suggested that he could train a corps of mountain scouts drawn from Gurkhas and Sherpas.
 

Letter from Frank Smythe to John Charles Walton of the India Office Political Department, 23 September 1939 (IOR/L/PS/12/300, f 66) © Frank S. Smyth (Creative Commons Non-Commercial Licence)

It appears that Smythe never served on the Indian frontier, but he did spend part of the Second World War training troops in mountain warfare and spent time in the Rockies with the Lovat Scouts.

Susannah Gillard
Content Specialist, Archivist
British Library/Qatar Foundation Partnership

Further reading:
India Office Records files which can be viewed on the Qatar Digital Library:
British Library, PZ 5277/1939 'War - Offers of service in the event of -' IOR/L/PS/12/300
British Library, ‘File 28/7 I War: Propaganda: local opinion’ IOR/R/15/2/687
British Library, ‘File 28/7 II War: Propaganda – Local Opinion’ IOR/R/15/2/688
British Library, 'File 1/44 Publicity Officer, Bahrain' IOR/R/15/2/1040
British Library, 'File 4/12 (1.a/52) Publicity Officer, Persian Gulf' IOR/R/15/2/933
British Library, Ext 5050/43 ‘Formation of an Arab Centre in the Middle East for providing selected British officers with knowledge of Arabic, Arab countries and Middle East problems’ IOR/L/PS/12/857

Francis Owtram (2015) Preparation Pays Off: Bertram Thomas and the Crossing of the Empty Quarter
Francis Owtram (2016) Dhofar, Doha and a ‘Road Trip’ to Riyadh: Bertram Thomas’ sojourns in Arabia
John Ure (2008) ‘Thomas, Bertram Sidney (1892–1950)’. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
Harry Calvert, Symthe’s Mountains: The Climbs of F. S. Smythe (London: Victor Gollancz Ltd, 1985).
Arnold Lunn, revised by A. M. Snodgrass (2011) ‘Smythe, Francis Sydney (1900–1949)’. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

A hundred years ago, Stockholm was the centre of Indian anti-colonialism and, at the same time, British counter-intelligence operations. In late April and early May 1918, the Indian lawyer and administrator A. Yusuf Ali gave a series of lectures on Indian culture in Scandinavia, including Copenhagen, Stockholm, Uppsala and Oslo.

A. Yusuf Ali from Træk af Indiens Kultur

Delivered in English, the lectures dealt with modern Indian poetry, Indian religion and the role of women in Indian, and they were translated into Danish and published as Træk af Indiens Kultur (Features of Indian Culture) in 1918. In the Foreword, Ali conceded that the lectures were not intended to be published in book form, but ‘valuable friends’ persuaded him to do so. What Ali did not admit was that these ‘valuable friends’ were the British Foreign Office (FO).

Træk af Indiens Kultur 

In fact, as reports from the FO show, the British were so worried about the anti-colonial activities of the Indian National Committee (INC) among the socialist delegates assembled in Stockholm for the proposed peace conference that they considered ‘the possibility of sending a trustworthy Indian to Stockholm who could put the case from a loyalist point of view’.

As it happened, the two Indian revolutionaries Virendranath ‘Chatto’ Chattopadhyaya and M.P.T. Acharya from the Berlin-based Indian Independence Committee had arrived in Stockholm in May 1917 and set up the INC. They met the organising Dutch-Scandinavian Committee in July 1917, putting their demands for independence to the socialists, but they were met with little sympathy. The Dutch socialist Pieter Jelles Troelstra noted that ‘the Indian question is important, but it is a distraction’ from the peace negotiations.

However, Chatto and Acharya remained in Stockholm and carried out extensive propaganda in the Swedish newspapers in the next couple of years. For instance, when Finland achieved independence in January 1918, the INC sent congratulatory wishes through the Swedish newspapers Svenska Dagbladet and Aftonbladet, hoping for Finland’s support for Indian independence.

It was such articles that prompted the FO to send Ali on his mission to Scandinavia. In response to the propaganda of the INC, Ali wrote in Stockholms-Tidningen in April 1918 that the Indian revolutionaries were wrong, there was no desire for independence in India, and that the ties between India and Britain had been strengthened during the war. Furthermore, he claimed that the Indian revolutionaries had no support in India, and he referred to them as ‘anarchists’. Chatto denied these accusations, in an article in Stockholms-Tidningen in May 1918, and asserted that they enjoyed widespread support in India, particularly from Bengal.

In his reminiscences of the time in Stockholm, Acharya later wrote that they used to attend Ali’s lectures and hand out their own material to the audience. This meant that many thought that Ali belonged to the INC and subsequently approached him for more information. Ali’s mission had failed, claimed Acharya, and the British called Ali back in the summer of 1918.

The British felt differently, however, as is clear from a review of Ali’s book from The Times Literary Supplement: ‘If it was the object of our Foreign Office to give the Scandinavian public an opportunity of knowing better and valuing more highly the genius of India it would appear that this aim has been excellently fulfilled’ (5 September 1918).

Ole Birk Laursen
Lecturer at NYU London and a Research Associate at The Open University

Further reading:
M. Yusuf Ali, Træk Af Indiens Kultur (Copenhagen: V. Pios Boghandel/H Branner, 1918)
M. A. Sherif, Searching for Solace: A Biography of Abdullah Yusuf Ali, Interpreter of the Qur’an (Kuala Lumpur: Islamic Book Trust, 1994)
British Library, India Office Records/L/PS/11/126, P 3449/1917 The War: Stockholm Peace Congress; attitude of Oriental delegates

A file among the records of the India Office Public & Judicial Department shows how the anti-German hysteria that developed in Britain after the outbreak of the First World War came to spread as far as central India.

Poster for Anti-German Union 1915 courtesy of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston

George Makrill was Honorary Secretary of the Anti-German Union  - motto: ‘No German Labour, No German Goods, No German Influence, Britain for the British'.  On 9 August 1915 he wrote to the India Office from the Union's headquarters on The Strand concerning ‘... certain information, which I have received from a source which I know to be trustworthy, and which appears to me to require immediate action’.

This potentially grave matter was then left hanging, as Makrill had forgotten to include in this initial communication a short list of persons with German connections who had worked or were working in the Central Provinces administration.  This was dispatched, with apologies, on 26 August.
 
The India Office thus found itself tasked with investigating four of its own civil servants:
• the late Sir Arthur Blumerhassett, former Chief Secretary - what damage might he have done the Allied cause before his death?
• Mr Marten, his successor - had he been ‘turned’ by Sir Arthur?
• Mr Grille, Assistant Commissioner - was he part of the conspiracy?
• Mr Hullah, Third Secretary  - what was his nefarious role?

Mr Makrill might himself have done some elementary checking prior to alerting the India Office, given that he must have meant Sir Arthur Blennerhassett who had died in late January.  It was soon established that the four individuals were all Oxbridge graduates, which before the Cambridge spy ring scandal erupted decades later must presumably have worked in their favour.  Departmental Secretary Malcolm Seton (Repton and Oriel College, Oxford) took it upon himself to deal with the matter, putting the laconic note in the file on 2 September : ‘Mr. J. T. Marten has a German mother, but the Martens are an old Gloucestershire family.  I have known him intimately for over 20 years.  He has always been rather anti-German in feeling’.  He was plainly not impressed by the error over the Blennerhassett surname: ‘Burke or Debrett could have been consulted’.

In retrospect it is clear that the whole episode stemmed from the Anti-German Union having somehow discovered that a handful of overseas civil servants had some German ancestry and/or had married German wives, and were keen for the India Office to investigate their backgrounds.  Seton’s sense of exasperation is plain in another written comment: ‘If the Anti-German Union hopes to proscribe every official who has German blood, its labours will be protracted’.  No further action seems to have taken place, and Messrs Marten (Clifton and New College, Oxford), Grille (Harrow and Jesus, Cambridge) and Hullah (Oundle and Caius College, Cambridge) were sensibly allowed to continue their careers unmolested.

Hedley Sutton
Asian & African Studies Reference Services

Further reading:
IOR/L/PJ/6/1395, file 3304
Papers of Sir Malcolm Seton India Office Private Papers Mss Eur E267

One hundred and one years ago today Edith Cavell was executed.  Last year, on the centenary of her death, her story was re-told in the press, the Royal Mint issued a commemorative £5 coin, and hundreds attended services to remember her.   In the years after 1915 she was not forgotten and people wrote poems and built memorials to her.  So it seems fitting not to let the 101st anniversary of her death pass by unnoticed, and to tell the story of the people who did not forget her.

Daily Sketch, 23 October 1915  Images Online 

Edith Cavell was executed on 12 October for treason, having smuggled French and British troops out of German-occupied Belgium.  Immediately after her death the world was in shock and masses of ephemeral items were produced.  Several examples are held in the British Library in the volume at shelfmark Tab.11748.aa.2. which I have been working on.  (Fuller records for individual items within this volume will appear in Explore the British Library in due course.)

Many people used her death for propaganda purposes, as a rallying point to entice more men to join in the fight against the Central Powers.  E. H. Rowe, of South Shields, helped feed this propaganda, writing a poem that described German soldiers as ‘her relentless foe thirsting for her life’ and ending with the ominous line ‘God’s will be done. He will repay’.  Another particularly dramatic poem by John Streaks begins ‘She died a martyr in her country’s cause; we mourn to know how foully she was slain’.

Illustration from a French journal © Coll.Dixmier/Kharbine-Tapabor/British Library Images Online

Some poems were printed and sold for charity.  The British Library holds a design for a memorial cross, adorned with a picture of her dressed in her nurse’s uniform and inscribed with the message ‘Nestling here the spirit of love ever watcheth and slumbering sleepeth not’.  The artist produced a small copy of this design with an explanation on the back, describing how he had chosen roses, maple leaves, thistles, shamrocks and oak leaves.  He wrote that by adding lamps to the composition a ‘sacramental feeling’ is produced, that makes one want to pause and remember.  He created a larger version of this image for sale, and hoped that a good proportion of the profits would go to ‘Homes of Rest for Nurses’.  The Daily Mirror (alongside the Daily Telegraph) raised money for an Edith Cavell Memorial Fund, which had poets composing sheets to be sold in order to raise money.  Her death was a rallying point for all Allied troops.  Even in Canada memorial sheets were sold to collect money for the Canadian Red Cross and Canadian Patriotic Funds.

Multiple poems were written about her legacy.  One printed pamphlet has a large drawing of her face inside a laurel wreath with the caption ‘A tribute written to the air of “Queen of the Earth” in memory of a woman, whose name will live in history, and whose fame will be as imperishable as that of either Florence Nightingale or Grace Darling’.  Nowadays the propaganda purpose of such items is well known, and historians are beginning to understand Edith Cavell as an individual, complicating the view of Nurse Cavell-as-martyr that is suggested by this ephemera.

Ann-Marie Foster
PhD placement student Printed Heritage Collections

Further reading:
The items cited are all from the guard volume at shelfmark Tab.11748.aa.2. except for the larger design for a memorial cross at shelfmark: 1820.h.8.(104.)
Edith Louisa Cavell
World War One atrocity propaganda
Diana Souhami, Edith Cavell (London, 2010)

Debates about Britain’s decision to go to war in 1914 typically focus on the actions of its government. We hear less about pressure groups which encouraged preparation for war with Germany. The Imperial Maritime League was one of the noisiest.

Imperial Maritime League. "Wake up England !" Tab.11748.a. poster 180. Images Online 

The league was co-founded in 1908 by Lionel Graham Horton Smith and Harold Wyatt. Both were senior members of the Navy League, but they became disillusioned with its refusal to criticise the Admiralty and Liberal government.

The two men were obsessed with the possibility that Germany might overtake Britain as a naval power. But far from disliking Kaiser Wilhelm II, Wyatt and Horton Smith admired his militarism. Their criticisms were instead directed at British society, for being ignorant about its reliance on the Royal Navy and lacking the resolve to fight rival empires.

 Wyatt believed in the necessity of war for national survival, though he lacked direct experience of the armed forces. Horton Smith, a lawyer, had some experience in the army. He wrote prolifically on the classics and Scottish culture, and deposited a large cache of the league’s surviving documents with the British Library on 21 October 1933.

 
Imperial Maritime League Pamphlet X.631/742  

Over a thousand members of the Navy League departed with Horton Smith and Wyatt to form the Imperial Maritime League, including famous names such as Rudyard Kipling and Arthur Conan Doyle. It also received support from some right-wing newspapers.

The league made progress in fund raising and organising large-scale petitions and rallies. These demanded increased naval spending and opposed international agreements that curtailed the Royal Navy’s capacity to wage war. Rattled by its upstart rival, the Navy League overhauled its organisation and campaigning, and as a result expanded its membership and political influence. With its thunder stolen, the Imperial Maritime League struggled to appear credible. Journalists mocked its campaigns as irrelevant, extremist and hyperbolic.

Exhausted and demoralised, Wyatt and Horton Smith resigned as joint secretaries in 1913. Wyatt left completely. Horton Smith remained to help the new management. But he became embroiled in petty internal squabbles typical of small extremist organisations. In August 1914, just before war broke out, the league was reduced to promoting its cause to tourists in Devon.

Yet the war supplied a new role for the league and Horton Smith. He headed its ‘Villages and Rural Districts Enlightenment and Recruiting Campaign’, lecturing young men on the necessity of enlisting. And he published a stream of pamphlets justifying the conflict, all deposited at the British Library.

Imperial Maritime League Pamphlets X.631/742

The Imperial Maritime League ceased in 1921, but it had unintentionally helped to revive the Navy League. The latter continues to the present day as the Sea Cadet Corps.

Horton Smith’s campaigning on behalf of the Imperial Maritime League corrects the popular misconception that war with Germany was unexpected in 1914. It also reminds us that sections of British society desired such a conflict, not only to stem the rise of Germany as a world power, but also to ‘improve’ British society.

 Imperial Maritime League Pamphlets X.631/742 

Neil Fleming
Senior Lecturer in Modern History, University of Worcester

Further reading:
N.C. Fleming, ‘The Imperial Maritime League: British Navalism, Conflict and the Radical Right, c. 1907–1920’, War in History, 23, 3 (2016).

Discover the work of Lionel Graham Horton Smith through Explore the British Library

An unassuming financial file contained in the records of the British Political Agency in Bahrain (that now form a part of the India Office Records held at the British Library) unexpectedly contains two rare examples of Arabic-language propaganda posters produced by the British Government during World War II. Remarkably, the only reason that the two posters have been preserved in the records is because financial accounts of the Bahraini government are typed on their reverse. It appears that the posters were used by the Agency in place of paper due to a shortage in supplies caused by World War II.

 
IOR/R/15/1/355 f. 42

The accounts on the posters’ reverse are for the hijri calendar years 1362 and 1363 (c. 1943) but the posters themselves are not dated. However, given that one of them depicts a children’s mock parliament discussing the post-blitz re-planning of London, it appears that they were produced sometime after May 1941 (when the blitz ended) and thus are roughly contemporaneous with the financial accounts printed on their reverse.

Front Cover of ‘File 19/176 VI Bahrain Finances’ (IOR/R/15/1/355)

Both of the posters seek to promote a strong, progressive image of Britain and stress the involvement of school children (of both sexes) in British society and in shaping the future of the country. By depicting children involved in a mock parliament, one of the posters alludes not only to Britain’s actual parliament – in contrast with Germany’s dictatorial system – but also to the supposedly inclusive nature of a modern Britain that involved young people in broader issues related to society.

The other poster presents a more overtly militaristic image of British youth and has the tag line يتمرن طلبة المدارس بريطانيا اليوم ليكونوا صناع و جنود الغد [Students of British Schools Practice Today to be the Builders and Soldiers of Tomorrow]. The poster has a large image of a boy in British Army uniform firing a Bren Machine Gun. Its text discusses military service for youth in the country.

IOR/R/15/1/355 f. 41  Training the People: British Boys and Girls discussing the re-planning of London

 تدريب الشعب اولاد و بنات بريطانيا يتباحثون في اعادة تخطيط لندن

On both of the posters, the slogan 'For the Sake of Freedom' appears below a picture of the Union Jack flag. The use of this slogan is ironic to say the least given that at this time Britain still ruled over a vast global empire that robbed millions of people around the world of the very freedom that they were ostensibly fighting for. Indeed, many of the individuals at whom these Arabic-language posters were targeted were living in areas that were under the imperial domination of the British.

This was especially true in the case of Bahrain. Although the country was never formally a part of the British Empire, a series of treaties agreed between the British Government and the Al Khalifa family in the nineteenth century had given Britain control over Bahrain’s foreign relations, incorporating the country into the British Imperial system.

'For the Sake of Freedom' (detail from IOR/R/15/1/355 f. 42)

During World War II, the Middle East was the site of a propaganda struggle between Great Britain and its allies, and Nazi Germany and the other axis powers. As my earlier blog post demonstrated, propaganda produced by the German Government – in this case radio broadcasts in Arabic – found a receptive ear in some areas of the Persian Gulf. The British made efforts to counter this German propaganda by radio broadcasts of their own and through the production of printed materials such as these posters.

Louis Allday
British Library/Qatar Foundation Partnership

Qatar Digital Library

Twitter @Louis_Allday