Sir Basil Clarke, KBE (12 August 1879 - 12 December 1947) was an early pioneer of public relations and British government wartime propaganda expert. 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.

Early life

Born in Altrincham, the son of a chemist, Thomas 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. For a year or so, he travelled throughout Europe, earning a living playing piano in cinemas and elsewhere. He won an appointment teaching English at Heidelberg University.

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.

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 soon moved to Ireland to head the British government's propaganda unit set up in Dublin Castle in August 1920.

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'."

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 he was running a significant operation with 60 staffers. The same year he was associated with "the setting up of ‘National Propaganda’, later to become ‘The Economic League’.

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 (publisher Arthur Sanderson, London). Between 1929 and 1931, he worked as a public relations expert for the Conservative Party.

During the reign of King 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."

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 founder 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. He was also made a Knight of the Realm during the brief premiership of Andrew Bonar Law.

References

Sources

• Murphy, Brian P., The Origins and Organisation of British Propaganda In Ireland - 1920, Aubane Historical Society and SpinWatch (2006)