Does the UK Have Influence in the EU Legislative Process?

The UK has influenced some major EU policies, such as the creation of the single market and enlargement. But how influential are the UK government and British MEPs in the day‐to‐day EU legislative process? To answer this question, this article analyses recent data from the Council of the European Union and the European Parliament. The evidence is mixed. In the Council, in recent years the UK government has been outvoted more often than any other EU government, yet UK officials remain well connected ‘behind the scenes’. In the European Parliament, British MEPs are now more likely to be on the losing side than are the MEPs of any other member state, yet British MEPs still win key committee chairs and rapporteurships. The evidence suggests that if the UK votes to remain in the EU, Britain's political elites will need to re‐engage with Brussels politics if the UK is to avoid becoming further marginalised from mainstream EU politics.     

The UK and EU Foreign and Security Policy: An Optional Extra

Foreign and security policy were not areas in which Prime Minister Cameron was seeking to renegotiate the relationship between the UK and the European Union (EU), but security may be a key issue in the EU referendum. The untangling of Britain's foreign and security policy from the EU following a Brexit vote would be relatively uncomplicated. The EU's arrangements for collective foreign and security policy, the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) and Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP), are conducted on an intergovernmental basis which allows the UK to preserve independence in its diplomacy while allowing for the coordination of policy where interests are held in common with other member states. The UK retains substantial diplomatic and military capabilities which would allow it to continue to pursue a separate national foreign, security and defence policy in the case of either a ‘Leave’ or ‘Remain’ outcome.     

Bringing the Emigration State Back In

The decades between 1948 and 1980 are often remembered as a time of mass immigration, yet almost 2 million more people left Britain than arrived in those years. Mass emigration has been an enduring part of Britain's modern history and this article explores its effects on British politics. The two world wars, the turn to tariffs, joining the EEC and leaving the EU: at these critical junctures, Britain's overseas diaspora was mobilised to reshape domestic politics and to transform the UK's global political economy. Charting the rise, fall and afterlife of Britain's ‘emigration state’ can contribute to our understanding of these events and help researchers analyse the effects of racism and empire on modern British politics.     

British Intelligence in the Middle East, 1898–1906

This article examines British intelligence efforts in Turkish Arabia at the turn of the twentieth century. It argues that intelligence collection was really three separate efforts, carried out by the War Office, the Foreign Office, and the Government of India, and it reflected concerns about British decline, the problems experienced during the Boer War, as well as an effort to penetrate the ‘information order’ of India's sub-empire. Although intelligence efforts suffered from bureaucratic disharmony in Whitehall, and between London and the Government of India, valuable contributions were nevertheless made to Britain's knowledge of Turkish Arabia.     

British Intelligence and the ‘Fifth’ Occupying Power: The Secret Struggle to Prevent Jewish Illegal Immigration to Palestine

At the end of the Second World War, British intelligence struggled to enforce strict limits imposed on Jewish immigration to Palestine. Holocaust survivors and Jews wishing to escape communism in Eastern Europe flooded the western Zones of occupation in Germany and Austria, while the Zionist movement worked to bring them to Palestine. Illegal immigration to Palestine was the key policy dispute between Britain and the Zionist movement, and a focus for British intelligence. Britain sought both overt and covert means to prevent the boarding of ships at European ports which were destined for Palestine, and even to prevent the entry of Jewish refugees into the American zones. This article highlights Britain's secret intelligence-gathering efforts as well as its covert action aimed to prevent this movement. It highlights a peculiar episode in the ‘special relationship’ between Britain and the United States, during which cooperation and partnership was lacking. British intelligence promoted a rumour that Soviet agents were using Jewish escape lines to penetrate Western Europe and the Middle East in order to persuade American authorities to prevent the movement of Jewish refugees. Instead, this article argues, American intelligence secretly cooperated with the Zionist organizers of the escape routes so to expose Soviet agents. Britain's attempt at deception backfired, and provided effective cover for the movement of hundreds of thousands of Jews during a critical period. Meanwhile its intelligence had dramatically improved, but policymakers failed to reassess Britain's ability to sustain immigration restrictions and the indefinite detention of tens of thousands of illegal migrants.     

From the horse's mouth: Luftwaffe POWs as sources for air ministry intelligence during the battle of Britain

British military intelligence as derived from the interrogation of prisoners‐of‐war (POWs) during the Second World War has been under‐valued by historians, whose attention has focused primarily on signals intelligence. While Sigint, in particular Ultra, was of undoubted value, Britain's armed services nevertheless attached much credence to POW‐derived intelligence, and by the war's end an abundance of information had been gleaned from the half a million plus Axis prisoners by then held in Britain. This article will examine the work of the Air Ministry Intelligence section known as AI1(K), which was responsible for POW interrogation, during the Battle of Britain, and attempt to illustrate both the wealth and value of such intelligence at a time when Ultra was still in its infancy.     

Dartmouth,Sir Mansfield Cumming and the origins of the British intelligence community

This article uses original archive material to trace the connection between two processes of institutional development that was to result in the British intelligence Community becoming an integral part of government. The first process was the development in the latter part of the nineteenth century of a scheme of education and training for naval cadets at Dartmouth. The importance of this scheme is that it gives, through the Records of Progress and Conduct, a unique insight into the qualities that the first two heads of Britain's foreign intelligence service, and the first head of Britain's signals intelligence unit brought to their respective posts. This article argues that there are a number of timeless and vital competencies which cadets Smith, Sinclair and Hall displayed, albeit in embryonic form, that were critical, later on, in propelling their respective organizations to the centre of government. This is the second process of institutionalization. It is a position that they still occupy today.     

Mussolini's Secret War in the Mediterranean and the Middle East: Italian Intelligence and the British Response

Little is known of the history, structure and operations of the Italian intelligence services in the Mediterranean and the Middle East. The challenge brought by Fascist Italy to the security of the British and French imperial systems is at the heart of this article, which sets out to assess not only the imperial dimension of Fascist intelligence but also the response provided by Britain's and France's colonial authorities to Mussolini's ambitions in the Mediterranean and the Middle East. An examination of British and French intelligence archival material sheds new light upon perceptions of power and threat afforded by British and French policy-makers keen to maintain political control over their colonial and client states. The paper suggests that despite comprising a multitude of competing agencies, the Fascist services could rely on the work of motivated individuals and on the support of Italian diplomatic representatives overseas. Their ability to establish relations – although short-lived – with Arab nationalist leaders and their intense activities in British colonies, protectorates and mandates generated concern within the British Foreign and Colonial Offices. Meanwhile, poor intelligence coordination and assessment coupled with misguided assumptions about the nature of Arab nationalism hindered Britain's response to the challenge mounted by Mussolini's regime.     

‘An important contribution to the allied war effort’: Canadian and North Atlantic intelligence on German POWs, 1940–1945

This article examines inter-allied efforts to collect, categorize and analyse material gathered from the thousands of German prisoners of war (POWs) in their hands during the Second World War. The different information gathered from enemy captives was valuable to British, Canadian and American intelligence services, helping them to evaluate morale of ‘Hitler’s soldiers’, to improve the security of their camp networks and to understand National Socialism ideology. Often viewed as a primarily British-American operation, POW intelligence also involved Canadian authorities. This article argues that Canada, far from being a secondary actor, had a central role within this transatlantic network.     

The Geopolitics of James Bond

This article considers the politics of James Bond in order to throw light on the interaction of 'real' geopolitics and literary and cinematic representations. The Bond literature provides many opportunities for considering aspects of the popular perception of the worlds of intelligence, including, for example, the stress on covert operations and on human intelligence rather than on signals operations. The stories can also be used to consider changing images of Britain, the United States and the world, and can at times be seen as efforts to create an impression of the normality of British imperial rule and Empire. Echoes of Anglo-American competition and tension are also to be found in the Bond literature. An important, albeit concealed, theme is Britain's diminished political and military presence in Cold War confrontations and a corresponding need to adapt to the United States. Cinematic representations of Bond have presented the world with an image of global struggle through Western eyes, having depicted shifts in the Cold War and addressing themes such as the space race, nuclear confrontation and drugs.     

Room 40 and German intrigues in Morocco: re-assessing the operational impact of diplomatic cryptanalysis during World War I

During World War I, Germany sought to provoke numerous insurrections throughout the British and French Empires. Examining the influence of signals intelligence within one of these colonial settings provides an opportunity to measure the operational importance of wartime cryptanalysis. Through a careful analysis of the original intercepts, this article reconstructs the responses of Room 40, the Admiralty’s cryptology department, to Germany’s Moroccan intrigues and highlights the development of intelligence practices. It argues that strategies to deploy diplomatic intelligence emerged gradually, but that Germany’s enduring support for Moroccan dissidents suggests diplomatic cryptanalysis only secured modest results within an operational context.     

Going it Alone? The Choice of Political Union in British Politics

This article explores the inter‐related debates over Britain's relationship with the EU and that over the future of the UK. It argues that euroscepticism and Scottish independence are based on exceptionalist identities that now revolve around economic policy. Elite euroscepticism cleaves to a neoliberal vision of minimalist regulation, while advocates of Scottish independence claim Westminster's austerity policies make the British Union incompatible with social democracy. However, this presentation of the choice facing British voters ignores the serious contradictions that overhauling the current order entails. Both forms of exceptionalism fail to recognize the significant limitations of self‐government outside and within the EU. If Conservatives can contain their neoliberal flirtation with EU withdrawal they are very well placed to prosper electorally. The dilemma of which union(s) to choose might thus constitute the prelude to the entrenchment of the economic and political order that gave rise to such contestation in the first place.     

Buying into Myths: Free Movement of People and Immigration

The way in which free movement of people has become the central issue of the British government's renegotiation and referendum campaign on the UK's relationship with the European Union (EU) risks obfuscating at least three central issues: why immigrants are coming to the UK; what impact EU migrants are having on the UK; and what can be done to effectively regulate such inflows. It is, however, not just the eurosceptics and the British government, but also ‘in campaigners’ and other EU member states, who risk perpetuating a number of widely held misconceptions about free movement and immigration for political reasons. Buying into such myths risks undermining attempts to have a more honest and more evidence‐based debate about immigration and migrant integration.     

Operation ‘Surgeon’ and Britain's post-war exploitation of Nazi German aeronautics

After 1945, Allied acquisition of intelligence on Nazi Germany's wartime aeronautical innovations became one of the most important immediate post-war aims. From July 1945 to July 1947, Operation ‘Surgeon’ became the focus of British efforts to exploit Nazi aeronautical advances. The objectives of the operation were the evacuation of state-of-the-art equipment from aeronautical research institutes and the recruitment of high-grade aviation experts for postwar work in Britain. This article analyzes the conduct and results of Operation ‘Surgeon’. The limited literature on this topic has fuelled a popular orthodoxy which holds that the UK intelligence effort and policies to recruit German defence scientists were classic examples of the ‘British disease’, or a more general inability to exploit a technological opportunity that was harnessed so effectively by the other victorious Allies. Drawing on the experience of Operation ‘Surgeon’, the article challenges this orthodoxy that has dominated the historiography of Britain's intellectual reparations from the Third Reich.     

‘Rivers of Blood’ and Britain's Far Right

This article examines the impact of Enoch Powell's speech on Britain's numerous right‐wing fringe groups and their response—in particular, that of the National Front, who benefitted the most from Powell's intervention on race and for a brief moment became Britain's fourth political party. It begins by looking at the growth of post‐World War II British fascism and how its emphasis switched from anti‐Semitism to anti‐colonial immigration. Throughout the piece, the relationship between Britain's far right and the Conservative party is examined to show how Powell inadvertently blurred the lines between the two. The article concludes with the 1979 general election victory of Margaret Thatcher who, by adopting Powellite themes but in more measured tones, destroyed the National Front's dream of an electoral breakthrough.     

Covert Operations and Official Collaboration: British Intelligence's Dual Approach to Ireland during World War II

Neutral Ireland posed a unique challenge to the wartime British intelligence community and the latter responded by adopting a dual approach. On the one hand, it carried out covert intelligence operations in Irish territory, involving the Service intelligence branches, the Ministry of Information, and, most importantly, the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS). On the other hand, unprecedented cooperation developed between military, police and intelligence agencies from Britain and Ireland, and in particular between MI5 and Irish military intelligence (G2). For most of the war British intelligence pursued this joint strategy of covert activity and official collaboration, and MI5 and SIS shared responsibility for Ireland. However, there was a gradual shift of emphasis towards cooperation and it was eventually concluded that the MI5-G2 link could serve all Britain's security needs. This article charts this evolution and places it within the context of Anglo-Irish wartime political relations.     

Creating a commonwealth intelligence culture: the view from Central Africa 1945–1965

This article examines attempts by the British intelligence community to improve the security arrangements of members of both the ‘old’ and ‘new’ Commonwealth in the post-war era. The process was regarded not only as a means of countering Communist subversion and protecting Britain's key relationship with the United States, but also as a way of entrenching British influence, particularly in countries nearing independence. The result of this process was a complex network of intelligence contacts reaching across the Commonwealth. Viewing this network from the perspective of the Federal Intelligence and Security Bureau (FISB), the intelligence organization of the Central African Federation, the article suggests that it offered both opportunities and dangers. It provided a potential channel for covert diplomacy. Yet it also threatened to undermine the credibility of Commonwealth intelligence chiefs whose links with the United Kingdom were perceived as being excessively close.     

Minilateral security's relevance to US strategy in the Indo-Pacific: challenges and prospects

The Indo-Pacific region's security landscape is unfolding in highly uncertain and potentially explosive ways. The postwar American-led network of bilateral alliances – underpinned by concrete guarantees of extended deterrence and containment – is now yielding to a more diverse set of alignments and coalitions to manage an increasingly complex array of regional security issues. Multilateralism and minilateralism have emerged as two increasingly prominent forms of such cooperation. Minilateralism's informality and flexibility appeals to those who are sceptical about multilateralism's traditional focus on norm adherence and community-building even as great power competition in the Indo-Pacific is sharply intensifying. However, minilateralism's track record in the region is underdeveloped. The potential for this policy approach to be applied by the United States and its regional security partners as an enduring and credible means of diplomatic and security collaboration in the region will remain unfulfilled as long as the Trump administration's own geopolitical orientation remains uncertain.     

Colin Davidson's British Indian Intelligence Operations in Japan 1915–23 and the Demise of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance

Colin Davidson was the British consular official in Japan during and after World War I delegated to run intelligence operations in the country on behalf of the British Indian security authorities. Davidson's original target, Indian revolutionaries based in Japan, soon expanded to include their clandestine links to powerful Japanese political patrons, violating the spirit of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance (1902–23). Davidson's expertise on Japan, combined with intelligence on Japanese ultranationalist support of Indian independence, proved crucial for confirming suspicions about secret Japanese intent against the British Empire, contributing to the decision not to renew the Alliance.     

Cold War Insecurities and the Curious Case of John Strachey

When Socialist intellectual John Strachey was appointed as Secretary of State for War in 1950, his pre-war record as a Marxist writer with close connections to the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) became a matter of public debate. A bitter campaign was run against him in the Beaverbrook press, and some members of the US defense and nuclear establishment pressed for an embargo on sensitive information being passed to the UK War Office. American suspicion of the political reliability of the Labour government was heightened by the appointment, but this does not explain how and why some Americans were so hostile to Strachey. The FBI's dossier on his pre-war activities, circulated amongst his American critics, documented Strachey's supposed secret membership of the CPGB's Central Committee. MI5 and Special Branch files show that this supposition was based on faulty intelligence. The readiness of American anti-Soviet protagonists to lend credence to such suspicions contrasts with the relaxed view of Strachey's past that was taken in Whitehall. Both positions were characteristic of their time, and of this stage in the Anglo-American alliance. This paper explores the ways in which American insecurities and a British climate of tolerance towards fellow travellers shaped the way that episode played out.