Professionalizing clandestine military intelligence in Northern Ireland: creating the Special Reconnaissance Unit

This article explains the origins of the British Army’s covert counter-insurgency intelligence efforts in Northern Ireland, and shows how the army professionalized its approach to clandestine intelligence collection there. It traces the pre-1969 precedents for covert collection. It also shows that the early ad hoc efforts proved insufficient and problematic; some collection operations were exposed and compromised. Thus, the army decided to ‘professionalize’ the clandestine collection of intelligence, and created a special body–the Special Reconnaissance Unit–to handle the task. This laid the foundations for later intelligence successes and for current army intelligence doctrine.     

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.     

The role of MI6 in Egypt’s decision to go to war against Israel in May 1948

David Ben-Gurion, the founder of the State of Israel, repeatedly accused Britain of provoking the Arab states to invade Israel the day after its establishment in May 1948. To date, historians have not found proof of his accusations in British archives. However, evidence may be found in French archives, especially in Syrian and secret British documents obtained by the French secret services, originating from agents who had infiltrated the Syrian government in Damascus and the British Legation in Beirut. This article, based on French, Syrian, Israeli and British sources, argues that under the Labour government, Arabist MI6 officers in the Middle East, in collaboration with the British High Command in Cairo, pursued an alternative policy to that of the Foreign Office. They provoked Egypt’s King Faruq to go to war against Israel without the knowledge or approval of either Prime Minister Clement Attlee or Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin, frequently misinforming and misleading them. This watershed research provides details of the goals and modus operandi of those involved in that clandestine plot.     

Eyes of the underground: Jewish insurgent intelligence in Palestine, 1945–47

This article represents an attempt to fill in some gaps in the historiography of Israeli ingelligence. It describes the origins and development of Jewish insurgent intelligence organizations and their operations against the British in Palestine, 1945–47. The essay presents a picture of rudimentary but effective intelligence serivces that made a significant, if not decisive, contribution to the armed struggle against the Briitsh. It examines critically some mysteries and myths surrounding Jewish intelligence in that conflict. By examining insurgent intelligence from the ‘bottom up’ ‐ against a government ‐ the article suggests there is a whole new ‘missing dimension’ of intelligence studies that bears scholarly attention.     

Roger Hesketh and the de Guingand letter

Historians have long questioned the extent to which British Intelligence knew about Japan's impending operations on the eve of the Pacific War. An examination of archival sources from Britain, Canada and the United States, as well as credible post-war testimony from former participants in Second World War intelligence operations, produces several conclusions. Throughout 1941, British Intelligence pointed to a war with Japan in South-East Asia. On the eve of the Pacific War, intelligence staff of the British Commonwealth monitored the vast expanses of the North Pacific. Apart from anticipating conflict in South-East Asia, British Intelligence, according to some sources, also suspected that a Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor was imminent, an assessment shared with the United States.     

Counter-Subversion in Early Cold War Britain: The Official Committee on Communism (Home), the Information Research Department,and ‘State-Private Networks’

This article applies the concepts of ‘transnationalism’ and ‘state-private networks’ to early Cold War Britain to analyze the aims and methods of governmental and non-governmental counter-subversion and propaganda in the ‘Cultural Cold War’. Using recently declassified and underutilized files, the article explores the roles of the Official Committee on Communism (Home) and, more particularly, the Foreign Office Information Research Department. The Attlee and Churchill administrations of the late 1940s and early 1950s increasingly perceived the primary non-military threat of communism to Britain as part of Soviet-inspired transnational subversion of western European societies. This created a growing impetus for a symmetrical, transnational response through both domestic and foreign clandestine ‘indoctrination’ campaigns operating via influential non-state British institutions. Despite constitutional concerns still relevant today, in 1951 ministers endorsed the domestic component of this response as a fully-fledged strategy that would encourage greater state intervention in British society in the Cold War struggle for both liberty and security.     

American Militarism and Blowback: The Costs of Letting the Pentagon Dominate Foreign Policy

"Blowback" is a CIA term first used in March 1954 in a report on the 1953 operation to overthrow the government of Mohammed Mossadegh in Iran. It is a metaphor for the unintended consequences of covert operations against foreign nations and governments. The suicidal attacks of September 11, 2001, on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were instances of blowback from American clandestine operations in Afghanistan. They have greatly accelerated tendencies toward militarism in the United States, which is defined as the phenomenon in which a nation's armed services come to put their institutional preservation ahead of effectiveness in achieving national security or a commitment to the integrity of the governmental structure of which they are a part.     

A double agent down under: Australian security and the infiltration of the left

Because of its clandestine character, the world of the undercover agent has remained murky. This article attempts to illuminate this shadowy feature of intelligence operations. It examines the activities of one double agent, the Czech-born Maximilian Wechsler, who in the early 1970s successfully infiltrated two socialist organizations. Wechsler was engaged by the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation. However, he was ‘unreliable’: he came in from the cold and went public. The article uses his exposés to recreate his undercover role. It seeks to throw some light on the recruitment methods of ASIO, on the techniques of infiltration, on the relationship between ASIO and the Liberal Party during a period of political volatility in Australia, and on the contradictory position of the Labor Government towards the security services.     

‘Where the state feared to tread’: Britain,Britons, covert action and the Yemen Civil War, 1962–64

The Egyptian-inspired revolution that overthrew the Imamate in Yemen in September 1962 presented British policy makers with a series of acute dilemmas. While the defence of Aden was regarded by the Chiefs of Staff as central to the protection of British interests in the Middle East, the means by which this was to be achieved exposed deep cleavages among policy-makers chastened by the experience of Suez. While officials in Whitehall condoned a series of official covert operations along the Federation border with Yemen they remained strictly controlled and defensive in nature. By contrast, a group of influential Conservative MPs, having already engaged in what might be termed para-diplomacy that effectively stymied British recognition of the new regime in Sana'a , looked to extend British clandestine activity to include direct aid to, and training of, the Royalist Forces deep inside Yemen itself. With the initial support of key Middle Eastern potentates, a private mercenary organization emerged that, while enjoying the tacit encouragement of some in Whitehall, acted above and beyond the control of London in support of what they considered to be Britain's interest, an interest which, despite the huge political and diplomatic risks involved, came to enlist the help of Israel. At a time when much academic attention has been focused on the rise of the private military organization, the debates over their efficacy, both political and moral, as a tool of foreign policy can be traced to events in the mountains and deserts of the Yemen over four decades ago.     

Hide seek and negotiate: Alfred Cope and counter intelligence in Ireland 1919–1921

British intelligence in Ireland between 1919 and 1921 has been characterized as a toxic mix of incompetence and mendacity. This article will challenge this judgement by examining the activities, impact and consequences of a British civil servant, Alfred Cope, who between 1920 and 1921 was an Assistant Under Secretary in Dublin Castle. Using the three criteria of counter-intelligence operations: the ability to locate, identify and neutralize a target, it will be shown that within months of his posting to Dublin British intelligence, albeit inadvertently, had located and identified him as passing classified information to Sinn Fein. Political patronage meant the ability of the intelligence community to neutralize his impact was nugatory. Latterly Cope recognized the consequences of his actions reverberated beyond the period of his time in Ireland.     

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.     

The clandestine defence of empire: British special operations in Yemen 1951–64

This article provides an account of the special operations in Yemen authorized by successive Conservative governments in the 1950s and early 1960s. It suggests that these were undertaken in response to a perceived threat from Yemeni irredentism and Arab nationalism. The secrecy surrounding the operations was regarded as a useful means of avoiding the international condemnation which overt military action would attract. It is argued that the case of British involvement in Yemen provides further evidence of the continued commitment of post-war British governments to the defence of empire, and that the policy of clinging on to the remains of empire in this region was based on an over-optimistic analysis of the likely impact of Arab nationalism.     

British Intelligence and the Jewish Resistance Movement in the Palestine Mandate, 1945–46

At the end of the Second World War, British and Zionist interests came into conflict over the issue of Jewish immigration to Palestine, which raised the broader issue of what sort of National Home could exist within the British Mandate. As a result, in 1945–46, the three Jewish armed groups in the Mandate, the Haganah, Etzel and Lehi, started a loosely coordinated armed struggle against British rule. Even the moderates in the Jewish Agency rejected their former partner against Hitler, Britain, and used force against it in order to achieve their political goals. This article assesses British intelligence on these developments, and demonstrates that it failed to anticipate or even to understand the threat until the destruction of the King David Hotel. The article demonstrates that these mistakes occurred because British intelligence relied heavily on the intelligence organs of the Jewish Agency itself for intelligence about political threats within Palestine. The article assesses this intelligence failure, and its heavy costs. However, it denies that bad intelligence caused British failures in the Mandate. On the contrary, that failure stemmed from deeper problems of policy.     

‘In God We Trusted,In China We Busted’: The China commando group of the Special Operations Executive (SOE)

In the summer of 1941, the British Special Operations Executive (SOE) and the Chinese government began a joint intelligence and special operations project called the China Commando Group. It was meant to be a grand scheme of military operation designed to benefit both the British and the Chinese in their common objective of thwarting the aggressive Japanese advances in Asia. Yet the China Commando Group evolved into a fiasco that lasted only eight months. The demise of the China Commando Group is a story that epitomizes the complex environment in which the war was fought on the East Asian mainland. This article tells a tale of policy failures in London, a thick cloud of mutual suspicions between Britain and Nationalist China, and the chasm between colonial and nationalist mindsets which led to the bitter end of the China Commando Group.     

Protecting secrets: British diplomatic cipher machines in the early Cold War, 1945–1970

This article examines how effectively Britain secured its diplomatic communications against hostile decryption during the early Cold War. It shows that between 1945 and 1970 the Foreign Office and the Commonwealth Relations Office introduced and operated four advanced cipher machines, Typex, Rockex, Noreen and Alvis, which produced very strong ciphers. However, Britain did suffer physical compromises of Rockex through Soviet espionage and an attack on the British embassy in Beijing. Rockex was also vulnerable to technical surveillance of its acoustic and Tempest emissions, and the Soviets exploited this to read the encrypted communications of the British embassy in Moscow.     

Compromising liberty: Friedrich Hayek's The road to serfdom in practice

Abstract

This paper examines a rare and unstudied piece of consultancy work undertaken in 1944 by Friedrich Hayek for the British Colonial Office and for the Government of Gibraltar. Hayek's subsequent reports suggested the reorganization of the state-regulated Gibraltar housing market in line with free market principles designed to relocate the colony's working-class population into neighbouring Spain. However, rather than freeing Gibraltarians from the evils of state planning, as identified in The road to serfdom (also 1944), this proposal would have delivered them into the dictatorship of General Franco. Not only was Franco's regime brutal, but it also practised autarkic economic policies virtually identical to those which Hayek maligned in The road to serfdom. In sum, Hayek's proposals would have benefited Gibraltar's landlords at the expense of the liberty of the majority of the civilian population.     

British Employment Policy in the 1980s: Learning from the American Experience

During the 1980s the Thatcher Government implemented numerous changes to the British employment system. Most of these changes had the effect of linking the receipt of welfare benefits to an individual's willingness to participate actively within a government sponsored employment or training scheme. These changes culminated in the Social Security Act (1989) which linked the receipt of welfare payments to an individual's active job search and willingness to accept any officially offered job after a maximum grace period of 13 weeks. While these changes are important in their own right, more interestingly, most trace their origins back to the American welfare-to-work system initiated by the Reagan administration during the early 1980s. This article will demonstrate why the Thatcher government turned to the United States in the development of their employment policy. Once an explanation for this has been provided the article will highlight the key policies transferred by the Thatcher Government in the development of the British welfare-to-work system. This entire analysis will be placed within a policy transfer framework in order to illustrate its usefulness in the analysis of policy development.     

Semiotising the student perception of learning outcomes in British higher education

This article presents a semiotic analysis of the student perception of learning outcomes in British higher education. It centres on three annotated images in Frank Furedi’s article “The Unhappiness Principles”, published in Times Higher Education in 2012. Drawing upon Peircean semiosis and iconicity, it provides a rhetoric-infused interpretation of the word–image complementarity exhibited in student participants’ written commentaries on the three images. This leads to a dialectical view of formative and summative assessment, in which process and product create each other through the same continuum of learning and teaching. In highlighting intellectualism as central to the ethnography of university life, this article argues that learner autonomy and the potential for transformation is deemed essential to the student experience in higher education.     

‘Words are cheaper than bullets’: Britain’s psychological warfare in the Middle East, 1945–60

Psychological warfare, the use of propaganda to aid military operations, acquired prominence in British strategy in the early Cold War Middle East. This article argues planning made limited progress until the 1956 Suez crisis. Suez produced optimism about propaganda’s ability to address threats from Egypt, the USSR and the Yemen. In Oman, Aden and Cyprus, psychological warfare was practiced to demoralise enemies, bolster allies and counter smears about British conduct. Only mixed results ensued though, and doubts about the military’s involvement in propaganda lingered. Psychological warfare endured because it was a cheap option that might sometimes work, and could induce opponents to surrender rather than fight on.     

British Intelligence and Propaganda during the 'Confrontation', 1963-1966

This study examines the importance of British intelligence and propaganda in the Confrontation with Indonesia. It shows that Britain had access to human and signals intelligence on Indonesia, which influenced British policy and strategy in several ways. In particular, signals intelligence gave London the confidence to launch 'Claret' cross border raids against Indonesia from 1965. The study also reveals that Britain mounted an aggressive propaganda campaign against Indonesia during the Confrontation and especially after an abortive coup attempt in 1965. British propaganda successfully encouraged the army to destroy the Indonesian communist party, remove President Sukarno from power and end the Confrontation.