Abstract

COHEN, Andrew. "Voice and Vision" - The Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland's public relations campaign in Britain: 1960-1963. Historia [online]. 2009, vol.54, n.2, pp.113-132. ISSN 2309-8392.

By the late 1950s, the future prospects of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland were increasingly portrayed in a pessimistic light in the British press. The Federal government chose to counter this coverage by undertaking a comprehensive public relations campaign in the United Kingdom. This article examines their decision to hire the London public relations company, Voice and Vision, and this company's subsequent attempts to rehabilitate the Federal image between 1960 and 1963. It will be argued that although the campaign achieved limited success in some quarters, it revealed that the Federal government had misunderstood British politics, and did not grasp the erosion of the ties that might previously have secured the Federation's future in British public sympathy only ten years earlier.

Keywords : Africa; Britain; Butler; Central African Federation; colonial history; decolonization; Macleod; Macmillan; Maudling; Public Relations; Rhodesia; Salisbury; Voice and Vision.

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