Basil Clarke
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Sir Basil Clarke (1879-12 Dec 1947) was an early pioneer of public relations (PR) and British government propaganda specialist. He also acted as a war correspondent in the First World War, later writing a book of his experiences entitled My Round of the War.
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[edit] Early Life
Born in Altrincham, the son of a chemist, Basil Clarke went to Manchester Grammar School and then onto Oxford University, where he studied classics and music. As a young man, he was a member of the Lancashire rugby union fifteen, despite the handicap of having only one eye, the result of an accident in infancy.
Originally, he intended to make a music career. Instead, his widowed mother persuaded him to take up banking, which he reputedly hated. He soon left, apparently after learning how much money his boss made. For a year or so, he travelled Europe, earning a living playing piano in cinemas and elsewhere. He won an appointment teaching English at Heidelberg University but was soon sacked for striking a French professor in the jaw.
[edit] Journalist
His entry into journalism apparently came after a chance encounter in a pub, where he joined in with some strangers as the fourth voice in a Gilbert & Sullivan quartet and was invited to write an article on musical appreciation for the Manchester Guardian. This article was greatly admired by a leading member of the Sunday Times and Clarke was invited to join this paper and after working there for several years, later joined the Daily Mail.
At the outbreak of the First World War, he was sent as a clandestine war correspondent to France. Journalists were not allowed in the war zone at this time, but Clarke managed to evade the authorities longer than any other reporter to roam the front lines. Years later, war correspondents had become greatly respectable and he travelled to almost every theatre of war reporting for the Daily Mail.
[edit] Propaganda
In 1918, he became director of special intelligence at the Ministry of Reconstruction. After this, he spent a short time as editor of the Sheffield Independent before moving on to director of public information at the ministry of health. He was soon moved to Ireland by the British government to head the British government propaganda unit set up in Dublin Castle in August 1920. As historian Brian P. Murphy shows in his book The Origins and Organisation of British Propaganda In Ireland 1920 (Aubane Historical Society and SpinWatch, 2006), Clarke's forte was 'propaganda by news':
"In Dublin in 1920 the propaganda apparatus pumped out entirely false and deliberately misleading stories. 'Propaganda by news' was how they described it. The key quality that it must have, according to Basil Clarke who was in charge of the operation, was 'verisimilitude' - having the air of truth. According to his own account the routine 'issue of news gives us a hold over the press'. At the twice-daily press briefing at Dublin Castle, journalists 'take our version of the facts' and they believe all I tell them', wrote Clarke. The service 'must look true and it must look complete and candid or its "credit" is gone'. The policy, therefore was to disseminate lies and half truths which gave the appearance of truth. As Major Street, another of the propagandists noted: 'in order that it may be rendered capable of being swallowed', propaganda 'must be dissolved in some fluid which the patient will readily assimilate'." [1]
After the cease-fire in 1922, Clarke, who had earned a knighthood from George V for his anti-Irish propaganda activities, was sent as a liaison officer to the deep south of the country. He left government service in the early 1920s and set up one of the first PR agencies, Editorial Services, in 1924. By the end of the 1920s this was a significant operation with 60 staff. The same year he was associated with "the setting up of ‘National Propaganda’, later to become ‘The Economic League’. Clarke and his associates recruited former Black & Tans after the war in Ireland to break up strikes and to infiltrate trade unions and left wing organisations. The Economic League was notorious up until its demise in the 1990s for blacklisting workers on a massive scale and for other forms of clandestine reactionary subversion of left wing and industrial politics."[2]
[edit] Public Relations
In the mid-1920s, Clarke published a small brochure to promote wallpaper, The World's Greatest Adventure - The Quest of Columbus in Mural Decoration (London, Arthur Sanderson). Between 1929 and 1931, he worked as an early PR man for the Conservative Party. Little seems known about Clarke's doings in the 1930s, but addition to being on the board of Crusade Prospectors Ltd. there are indications that he was involved in planting anti-German news stories in the British and Commonwealth press.[3]
During the reign of George V, Clarke was asked to write several speeches for the monarch. George V apparently once remarked "Clarke, I like the speeches you write for me, you don't make me sound too bloody pompous"[4]
Among his PR "victories", he is credited with making pasteurised milk acceptable in England and campaigned for legislation to have imported skimmed milk marked "unfit for babies." On behalf of the Heinz organisation, he successfully fought for legislation to stop the use of harmful colouring matter and adulterants in preserved foods. Henry J. Heinz, the founer of the business, was personally brought over from America to give evidence at a select committee of the House of Commons on the subject.
The Danish government, for his services in "promoting Anglo-Danish friendship and trade," awarded him the Order of the Dannebrog, which is roughly comparable to a knighthood. He was also made a knight of the realm during the brief premiership of Andrew Bonar Law.
[edit] References
- ^ Spinwatch - British Propaganda in Ireland and its significance today
- ^ Imperialist Propaganda (Then and Now) - Indymedia Ireland
- ^ Dáil Éireann - Volume 57 - 19 June, 1935 - In Committee on Finance. - Vote 57—Industry and Commerce (Resumed)
- ^ Alan Clarke. The Life & Times of Sir Basil Clarke - PR Pioneer. Public Relations. 1969. Vol. 22 (2) pp. 8-13.
