The Empire Marketing Board was formed in May 1926 by the Colonial Secretary Leo Amery to promote intra-Empire trade and to persuade consumers to 'Buy Empire'. [1] It was established as a substitute for tariff reform and protectionist legislation and this is why it was eventually abolished in 1933, as a system of imperial preference replaced free trade. During its brief existence, the Empire Marketing Board was unsuccessful in raising Britain's imports of products from the Empire. [2]
Amery was its first chairman, Sir Stephen George Tallents its secretary, [1] [3] Edward Mayow Hastings Lloyd its assistant secretary, [4] and Walter Elliot was chairman of its research committee. [5]
The EMB had three principal aims:
In 1925 the Imperial Economic Committee; a board which hosted representatives from the Dominions and Britain; conceived the Empire Marketing Board to generate public support for purchasing Empire goods. The committee wrote “that the grant of £1 million per annum should be spent by an ‘executive commission’ which would undertake a ‘national movement’ to increase Empire buying by the British public”. [6] The Empire Marketing Board would implement its budget on a variety of projects including scientific research and advertisement. The clear purpose of the Empire Marketing Board was to boost Empire trade through the promotion of Dominion and British goods while also improving their production to become more advantageous to foreign competition. The Empire Marketing Board's formal objectives were declared shortly after its creation in saying that scientific research and marketing tactics were primary objectives for the board to assist private industries across the Empire. This message is found in the first annual report of the Empire Marketing Board with an address by Secretary Stephen Tallents who wrote
Fundamentally the stimulation of Empire marketing must depend on the private enterprise of producers and traders… The best service that can be done to the Empire producer is to place freely at his disposal the resources of science and economic investigation – to see that he is made aware of sowing and planting, of tending and harvesting; to show him how his produce should be graded and packed to ensure that it is transported safely and without deterioration: to suggest lastly how its presentation, in the shop window or on the counter, may be fitted to win the housewife’s critical eye. [7]
Scientific research took up a large proportion of the EMB's work and budget. It also assisted 126 agricultural and medical research projects and issued many Intelligence Notes, pamphlets and surveys. In 1931 Walter Elliot of the Royal Society detailed the research programs of the Empire Marketing Board in saying that
a large group of grants is made towards the fostering of Central Institutions are trained, such as Cambridge University and the Imperial College of Tropical Agriculture in Trinidad. For these two purposes £189,000 has been pledged. Another example is a grant of £65,000 for the study of animal health problems, to Onderstepoort Station at Pretoria, the sum of £58,000 to a wide investigation into the deficiencies of natural pasture centred at the Rowett Institute at Aberdeen, and £160,000 to the Low Temperature Research Station at Cambridge, with its allied Cold Store at East Malling in Kent. [8]
The mandate to focus on scientific research would prove to be a large undertaking when accompanied by an aggressive advertising campaign that would run until 1933. The scientific research was large and widespread across the Empire encompassing a multitude of the branches of the sciences with large amounts of funding put into each program.
The research would continue across the Empire with investigations into improving Empire production and industry with large amounts of funding until 1933 with the closure of the Empire Marketing Board.
The EMB made links with buyers and produced analyses of markets to help producers. Tallents decided that EMB's staff should employ personnel directly from the media and the advertising industry – as well as giving commissions to some of the most talented poster artists of the day. [1]
The EMB organised poster campaigns, exhibitions, 'Empire Shopping Weeks', Empire shops, lectures, radio talks, schools tour, its own library, advertisements in the national and local press and of shop window displays. Most famous was the EMB film unit led by John Grierson, [9] often considered the father of modern documentary film, which produced around 100 films with such names as Solid Sunshine (which promoted New Zealand butter), [10] Drifters (North Sea herring), [11] [12] The Song of Ceylon (tea), [13] [14] Wheatfields of the Empire, [15] Industrial Britain [16] [17] and One Family. [18] [19] None of the "empire shops" proposed in the 1920s ever opened. A public art exhibit in 2016 used the empire shops as a way of thinking about postcolonialism and globalization. [20]
Efforts by the Empire Marketing Board to increase consumer purchasing of Empire produced goods was pursued through a large scale aggressive advertisement campaign. The primary method of advertisement came through the use of posters and printed media with large print and vibrant colours to entice consumers. The posters were uniquely designed as the Empire Marketing Board “used a series of five posters in a sequence, a little like a cartoon strip, with each of the posters telling a part of the story in pictures, or with copy and slogans… erected in over 1700 sites, in 450 British cities and towns”. [21] This ad campaign flooded British markets and was to a lesser extent across to the Dominions. The messaging on the posters was tailored to men and women separately in order to support the old styled imagery connected to the Empire. The posters that were released by the Empire Marketing Board “depicted men as ‘Empire Builders’ and showed women buying empire products, especially food. The idea of women as citizen-consumers was spread further by the BBC's Household Talks in 1928 in collaboration with the EMB to encourage and instruct women in the use of empire materials and goods”. [22] These advertisements attempted to use bold colours and stir patriotic feelings amongst citizens of the Empire but the effectiveness of the campaign also drew criticism.
Colonial governments were reluctant to join the EMB, however. Some Dominions of the Empire protested that the posters did not have an effect on their exports and there were unintended effects. The government of New Zealand reported that the poster series were “ineffective as sellers of produce and of little practical value… The whole empire propaganda work is carried out from the political angle of impressing the dominions with what it is doing rather than from the point of selling Empire Produce”. [23] What opinions may exist about the Empire Marketing Board and its short campaign for inter-Empire trade did have a lasting impact through the posters, shopping weeks, radio shows and numerous other advertisements it ran.
The EMB was ended September 1933 as a result of government cuts and the introduction of Imperial Preference. [1] The film unit was moved to GPO, and during World War II was reorganised into the Crown Film Unit.
There is a collection of the EMB's posters at the Manchester Art Gallery and some originals at the Victoria Falls Hotel, Zimbabwe, as well as the National Archives of Canada. [24]
John Grierson was a pioneering Scottish documentary maker, often considered the father of British and Canadian documentary film. In 1926, Grierson coined the term "documentary" in a review of Robert J. Flaherty's Moana.
John Louis Beddington (1893–1959) was a United Kingdom advertising executive, best known for his work as publicity director for Shell in the 1930s and as head of the Ministry of Information Films Division during World War II.
Imperial Preference was a system of mutual tariff reduction enacted throughout the British Empire as well as the then British Commonwealth following the Ottawa Conference of 1932. As Commonwealth Preference, the proposal was later revived in regard to the members of the Commonwealth of Nations. Joseph Chamberlain, the powerful colonial secretary from 1895 until 1903, argued vigorously that Britain could compete with its growing industrial rivals and thus maintain Great Power status. The best way to do so would be to enhance internal trade inside the worldwide British Empire, with emphasis on the more developed areas — Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and South Africa — that had attracted large numbers of British settlers.
Nanette Newman is an English actress and author. She appeared in nine films directed by her husband Bryan Forbes, including Séance on a Wet Afternoon (1964), The Whisperers (1967), Deadfall (1968), The Stepford Wives (1975) and International Velvet (1978), for which she won the Evening Standard Film Award for Best Actress. She was also nominated for the BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role for another Forbes-directed film, The Raging Moon (1971).
Night Mail is a 1936 British documentary film directed and produced by Harry Watt and Basil Wright, and produced by the General Post Office (GPO) Film Unit. The 24-minute film documents the nightly postal train operated by the London, Midland and Scottish Railway (LMS) from London to Scotland and the staff who operate it. Narrated by John Grierson and Stuart Legg, the film ends with a "verse commentary" written by W. H. Auden to a score composed by Benjamin Britten. The locomotive featured in the film is LMS Royal Scot Class 6115 Scots Guardsman.
Bury Park is an area of Luton, Bedfordshire, England. It is located 1 mile north west of the town centre on the A505 road to Dunstable. The area is roughly bounded by Claremont Road and Highfield Road to the north, Telford Way to the south, Hatters Way to the west, and the Midland Main Line to the east.
Arthur Melbourne Cooper was a British photographer and early filmmaker best known for his pioneering work in stop-motion animation. He produced over three hundred films between 1896 and 1915, of which an estimated 36 were all or in part animated. These include Dreams of Toyland (1908) and according to some sources Dolly’s Toys (1901), as well as Matches: An Appeal, which Dutch independent researcher Tjitte de Vries has claimed may have been the first animated film to be shown in public.
Basil Wright was a documentary filmmaker, film historian, film critic and teacher.
Sir Stephen George Tallents was a British civil servant and public relations expert.
Maurice Elvey was one of the most prolific film directors in British history. He directed nearly 200 films between 1913 and 1957. During the silent film era he directed as many as twenty films per year. He also produced more than fifty films – his own as well as films directed by others.
Jameson Thomas was an English film actor. He appeared in more than 80 films between 1923 and 1939.
The 1923 Imperial Conference met in London in the autumn of 1923, the first attended by the new Irish Free State. While named the Imperial Economic Conference, the principal activity concerned the rights of the Dominions in regards to determining their own foreign policy.
The Department of Scientific and Industrial Research (DSIR) was a government science agency in New Zealand, founded in 1926 and broken into Crown Research Institutes in 1992.
Beryl May Jessie Toye,, known professionally as Wendy Toye, was a British dancer, stage and film director and actress.
The Documentary Film Movement is the group of British filmmakers, led by John Grierson, who were influential in British film culture in the 1930s and 1940s.
Stuart Legg was a pioneering documentary filmmaker. At the 14th Academy Awards in 1941, Legg's National Film Board of Canada film Churchill's Island became the first-ever documentary to win an Oscar.
Ethel Léontine Gabain, later Ethel Copley, was a French-Scottish artist. Gabain was a renowned painter and lithographer and among the founding members of the Senefelder Club. While she was known for her oil portraits of actresses, Gabain was one of the few artists of her time able to live on the sale of her lithographs. She also did etchings, dry-points, as well as some posters.
Selfridge Provincial Stores was a holding company of a group of department stores in the United Kingdom. The company was formed by Selfridge & Co. in 1926 and was active until 1940.
Granton Trawler was one of the only films that John Grierson directed himself for the Empire Marketing Board/GPO Film Unit. The documentary style film was made in 1934, and was noted for its experimental use of sound without voice over.
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