Information Research Department

The Information Research Department (IRD), founded in 1948, dissolved in 1977, was a section of the Foreign Office (the British Ministry for Foreign Affairs). This “Department of search for information” was created clandestinely to counter Soviet propaganda and the infiltration in Occident.

Activities

The IRD was the secret ministry of the Cold war in Great Britain, charged to fight the influence Communiste and to defend actively the ideas Anti-communiste S. His objective was “to propose an ideology which competes with Communism”, which consisted in attacking the Soviet Union by denouncing the many analogies between the Nazi regime and the Communist regime, while praising the merits of the Libéralisme. For that, “the IRD worked out " reports/ratios; factuels" on any kind of subjects in order to distribute them among the members of the British Intelligentsia, of which it was then awaited that they recycle the facts in their own work”. These reports/ratios, concerning the Soviet Union, the Popular republic of China and the other countries communist, were disseminated through a broad variety of channels, as the press or the radio, but without their source being revealed.

This propaganda anticommunist campaign was secretly financed and did not post itself like such near the public. Arthur Koestler, writer British of Hungarian origin, was one of the most important advisers of the IRD at the time of his installation. These efforts allowed the establishment of a new consensus on the opportunity of the cold war, as well as the insulation of the defenders of a communist world order. The activity of propaganda was accompanied by a purging of the Communists within the trade unions, the Labor Party and the apparatus of State.

John Disavows, which later on was with the head of the Secret Intelligence Service (LOCATED), more known under the name of MI6, directed the Department of 1953 to 1958. The IRD was dissolved in 1977 by the Foreign Minister David Owen. The last one directing IRD was Raymond William Whitney, which became later elected with the Parlement of England for the Conservative party and Secretary of State.

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