This Film is Restricted: Training Films of The British Security Service

In 1962, following a series of spy scandals, the Security Service and the Central Office of Information (COI) created a security education campaign to raise awareness of the Soviet espionage threat to state and industrial secrets, and to provide security training for military and civilian personnel handling classified material. Several instructional films were commissioned, using fictional scenarios to dramatise the cold war threat to security personnel. This paper will examine four of these declassified and highly inventive films – <i>It Can’t Happen to Me</i> (1962), <i>Persona Non Grata</i> (1964) and <i>The Lecture</i> (1968), produced by James Carr’s World Wide Pictures; and <i>Any One of Us</i> (1970), directed by Seafield Head for Verity Films. Drawing on COI production files at the National Archives and the films themselves, I explore the making and underlying message of these long-neglected and highly stylised pieces of cold war propaganda; how they anticipate key texts of the 1960s spy genre like <i>The Spy Who Came in from the Cold</i> (1965); and how they compare to American security education films from the same period.