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Information, Public Relations, the Press, and Broadcasting: Libel and Other Actions against Newspapers, etc., 1954-1961

 File
MSS. Welensky Papers 281
Held at the Weston Library

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Various of the Libel action files seem to have been those of the (Federal) Secretary for Law, whom the Federal Prime Minister consulted on such matters before, where necessary, resorting to libel lawyers in private practice.

Dates

  • Creation: 1954-1961

Extent

10 folders

Language of Materials

  • English

Shelfmark

MSS. Welensky Papers 281

Arrangement

Material relating to The Northern Rhodesian (Zambian) Government Information Department in the pre-Federal era will be found at MSS. Welensky Papers 51/4; speeches and related material can be found at MSS. Welensky Papers 433/1-456/6. The previous section, relating to security matters, included files concerning various publications of the Malawi Congress Party and details of incidents whose wider publicity (in London, etc.) was desirable from the point of view of the Federal Government. The agency for such publicity was Voice and Vision Ltd., chaired by Sydney Wynne. Wynne was also involved in the revitalisation of the Federal information services within the Federation (Zimbabwe, Zambia, and Malawi) and at Rhodesia House. Voice and Vision organised tours of the Federation (Zimbabwe, Zambia, and Malawi) by United Kingdom parliamentarians - see series 4 of this catalogue. Wynne was entrusted with other tasks by Welensky, e.g. as an intermediary to the opposition in Ghana (Dr Busia) - see MSS. Welensky Papers 231/14. The campaign for federation had involved the employment of public relations advisers - the United Central Africa Association (UCAA) was a campaigning organisation. David Cole, sometime editor of The Northern News, had turned to public relations consultancy work for the Selection Trust mining group and others (see MSS. Welensky Papers 599/8-601/1), as well as advising the Federal Government and the (United) Federal Party on such matters.

Material concerning broadcasting seen from the point of view of Welensky's ministerial responsibility for it (as Minister of Posts, 1954-1956), or from the security angle, subversive radio propaganda from abroad, will be found in the relevant sections. Publicity material and publications of the Federal Government (or of Voice and Vision on its behalf) by way of advertising, propaganda, or polemic are included.

Related Materials

For broadcasting policy, see MSS. Welensky Papers 336/1-6; for subversive radio propaganda, see MSS. Welensky Papers 222/4, 237/8, and 238/8; and for broadcasts, see MSS. Welensky Papers 283/7 and 295/1-296/5. MSS. Welensky Papers 278/6 and 279/1 are modern compilations. Despite the existence of files for individual newspapers, further references may sometimes be found in the general 'press' files.

See also MSS. Welensky Papers 244/3, 244/5, 584/4, 607/2, and 662/4-6 and the files on charities (the recipients of some of the damages awarded to Roy Welensky) at MSS. Welensky Papers 573/3-574/4.

Repository Details

Part of the Bodleian Libraries Repository

Contact:
Weston Library
Broad Street
Oxford OX1 3BG United Kingdom