The Great War, military recruitment and the public relations work of the Parliamentary Recruiting Committee, 1914–1915

Abstract

Several historians have acknowledged the impact of the First World War on the development of public relations in Britain. However, while there remains a general recognition of the importance of the war in fostering new forms of public relations practice, few studies of major practitioners or organisations have been carried out. Focusing on the period immediately following the declaration of war and using the Parliamentary Recruiting Committee as a case study, this article seeks to fill in some of the gaps that have emerged in the literature. Tasked with boosting enlistment in the armed forces, the Parliamentary Recruiting Committee occupied a central place in the government’s wartime communications machinery. Though usually studied for its advertising and poster work, a case is made here for an understanding of the Committee as an early public relations organisation which boasted some of the features, and much of the spirit, of later ventures in the field. Its work, which involved an extensive programme of public events, a major campaign of public opinion research and an attempt to influence newspaper coverage of recruitment, suggests a need to revise traditional conceptions of Great War propaganda. Yet it also has significant implications for the history of public relations in Britain and the relationship the Parliamentary Recruiting Committee shared to similar organisations set up in other countries at the same time.