From circumspection to centrality: prime ministers and the growth of analysis, co-ordination, management in the UK intelligence community

ABSTRACT

We argue that British intelligence was transformed during the eleven years that Winston Churchill and Clement Attlee were in power. This change focused on the relationship between intelligence and Downing Street. Previous premiers were uninterested, naïve and inexperienced in their approach. When Churchill took office all this changed since he not only harnessed the power of intelligence but also oversaw the development of a central brain in the form of the joint assessment machinery. Yet it required Clement Attlee, with a rather different personality from Churchill, to complete the revolution. Together they not only developed the machinery used by successive prime ministers, they also trained Eden, Macmillan, and Douglas-Home in the transformative power of intelligence – changing the nature of the core executive in the process. Nevertheless, intelligence under each new administration increasingly reflects the character of the premier.

KEYWORDS:

• Analysis
• assessment
• Britain
• intelligence
• leadership
• premiers

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

¹ Christopher Andrew, For the President’s Eyes Only: Secret Intelligence and the American Presidency from Washington to Bush (London: Harper Collins, 1995).

² Christopher R. Moran et al., eds., Spy Chiefs: Volume 1: Intelligence Leaders in the United States and United Kingdom (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2018); and Christopher R. Moran et al., eds., Spy Chiefs: Volume 2: Intelligence Leaders in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2018).

³ John N.L. Morrison, “British Intelligence Failures in Iraq,” Intelligence and National Security 26, no. 4 (2011): 509–20; Eric Herring and Piers Robinson, “Report X Marks the Spot: The British Governments Deceptive Dossier on Iraq and WMD,” Political Science Quarterly 129, no. 4 (2014): 551–84; and Alan Doig and Mark Phythian, “The National Interest and the Politics of Threat Exaggeration: The Blair Governments Case for War against Iraq,” The Political Quarterly 76, no. 3 (2005): 368–76.

⁴ Exceptions include the work of Peter Hennessy, The Prime Minister: The Office and Its Holders since 1945 (London: Allen Lane, 2000) who has devoted considerable space to the connected subjects of intelligence, security and resilience in his important studies of Prime Ministers. A more recent exception is Michael S. Goodman (Goodman, The Official History of the Joint Intelligence Committee: Volume I: From the Approach of the Second World War to the Suez Crisis (London: Routledge, 2014) which admirably places intelligence assessments within the context of government policymaking.

⁵ Goodman, Official History of the JIC.

⁶ Daniel W. B. Lomas, Intelligence, Security and the Attlee Governments, 1945–51: An Uneasy Relationship? (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2017).

⁷ Philip H. J. Davies, “Twilight of Britain”s Joint Intelligence Committee?” International Journal of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence 24, no. 3 (2011): 427–46; and Joe Devanny and Josh Harris, report, Institute for Government, King”s College London, 2014. https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/sites/default/files/publications/NSC final 2.pdf.

⁸ Baronness Park of Monmouth (speech, Intelligence Services Bill [H.L.], London, December 9, 1993), https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/lords/1993/dec/09/intelligence-services-bill-hl.

⁹ David French, “Spy Fever in Britain, 1900–1915,” The Historical Journal 21, no. 2 (1978): 355–70.

¹⁰ John Turner, Lloyd George”s Secretariat (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980).

¹¹ Daniel Larsen, The First Intelligence Prime Minister: David Lloyd George (1916–1922) (Cambridge University, 2013), https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/80179/Lloyd-George-as-PM.pdf.

¹² CAB 13/55/3. Cabinet Minutes, 32(27)2, 20 May 1927; and KV 3/15. ‘Documents Illustrating the Hostile Activities of the Soviet Government and Third International Against Great Britain’, Cmd. 2874, 1927.

¹³ Michael Smith, Six: The Real James Bonds 1909–1939 (London: Biteback, 2011).

¹⁴ Richard J. Aldrich, GCHQ: The Uncensored Story of Britain”s Most Secret Intelligence Agency – Centenary Edition (London: HarperCollins, 2019).

¹⁵ Tony Benn, Conflicts of Interest: Diaries 1977–80 (London: Hutchinson, 1990).

¹⁶ Gill Bennett, A Most Extraordinary and Mysterious Business: The Zinoviev Letter of 1924 (London: Foreign & Commonwealth Office, General Services Command, 1999).

¹⁷ Brian Lee Crowe, Sir, “Sir Brian Lee Crowe Interviewed by Gwenda Scarlett on Wednesday 15 October 2003 for the British Diplomatic Oral History Programme,” interview by Gwenda Scarlett, 2003, https://www.chu.cam.ac.uk/media/uploads/files/Crowe.pdf.

¹⁸ Antony Best, “Intelligence, Diplomacy and the Japanese Threat to British Interests, 1914–41,” Intelligence and National Security 17, no. 1 (2002): 85–100.

¹⁹ Christopher Layne, “Security Studies and the Use of History: Neville Chamberlains Grand Strategy Revisited,” Security Studies 17, no. 3 (2008): 397–437.

²⁰ Goodman, Official History of the Joint, 11–12, 44–46; and Nick Crowson, Facing Fascism: The Conservative Party and the European Dictators 1935−1940 (London: Routledge, 1197), 140.

²¹ Winston Churchill, The World Crisis, 1911–1918 (London: Penguin Classics, 2007), 193.

²² Christopher Andrew, “Churchill and Intelligence,” Intelligence and National Security 3, no. 3 (1988): 181–93; and David A.T. Stafford, Churchill and Secret Service (London: Abacus, 2000).

²³ David Reynolds, In Command of History: Churchill Fighting and Writing the Second World War (New York: Basic Books, 2005), 36–37.

²⁴ Christopher Andrew, The Defence of the Realm: The Authorized History of MI5 (London: Penguin Books, 2010).

²⁵ Andrew, “Churchill and Intelligence”.

²⁶ Francis Harry Hinsley, “Churchill and the Use of Special Intelligence” in Churchill, ed. Robert Blake and Wm. Roger Louis (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 412.

²⁷ Max Hastings, The Secret War: Spies, Codes and Guerrillas 1939–1945 (London: William Collins, 2015), 13, 17, 70, 80.

²⁸ Simon Anglim, Orde Wingate and the British Army, 1922–1944 (London: Routledge, 2010), 13–14.

²⁹ Hinsley, “Churchill and the Use of Special Intelligence,” 408; and Goodman, Official History of the Joint, 71–72.

³⁰ Hinsley, “Churchill and the Use of Special Intelligence,” 409.

³¹ Francis Harry Hinsley, British Intelligence in the Second World War, Volume 1.: Its Influence on Strategy and Operations (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1979), 295.

³² Goodman, Official History of the Joint Intelligence Committee, 74–82.

³³ Gill Bennett, Churchills Man of Mystery: Desmond Morton and the World of Intelligence (London: Routledge, 2009), 266.

³⁴ Hennessy, Prime Minister: The Office, 152.

³⁵ CAB 134/2. “Official Committee on Communism (Home): Constitution and Terms of Reference of the Committee,” AC(H)(51)1, 7 June 1951.

³⁶ Thomas J. Maguire, “Counter-Subversion in Early Cold War Britain: The Official Committee on Communism (Home), the Information Research Department, and ‘State-Private Networks’,” Intelligence and National Security 30, no. 5 (2014): 637–66.

³⁷ Keith Jeffery, The Secret History of MI6: 1909–1949 (New York: Penguin, 2010).

³⁸ Francis Beckett, Clem Attlee (London: Politico”s, 2007), 231; and Robert Desmond Pearce, Attlee (London: Longman, 1997), 164.

³⁹ W. Scott Lucas and C.J. Morris, “A very British crusade: the Information Research Department and the Beginning of the Cold War,” in British Intelligence, Strategy and the Cold War, 1945–51, ed. Richard J. Aldrich (New York and London: Routledge, 1992), 85–90.

⁴⁰ DEFE 28/1, John Ward to Air Marshall William Elliott, February 20, 1950; Rory Cormac, “The Pinprick Approach: Whitehall”s Top-Secret Anti-Communist Committee and the Evolution of British Covert Action Strategy,” Journal of Cold War Studies 16, no. 3 (2014): 5–28.

⁴¹ CAB 21/2992. “Composition and Terms of Reference,” AC(M)(49)1, 31 December 1949.

⁴² Giselle Gwinnett, “Attlee, Bevin, and Political Warfare: Labours Secret Anti-Communist Campaign in Europe, 1948–51,” The International History Review 39, no. 3 (2016): 426–49.

⁴³ TNA, PREM 8/1365, Brook to Attlee, “Meeting of the Ministerial Committee on Communism, 21 December 1950,” December 20, 1950.

⁴⁴ Michael Herman, “The Postwar Organisation of Intelligence: The January 1947 Report to the Joint Intelligence Committee on the Intelligence Machine,” in Learning from the Secret Past: Cases in British Intelligence History, ed. Robert Dover and Michael Goodman (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011).

⁴⁵ Goodman, Official History of the Joint; Hennessy, Prime Minister: The Office, 152–5; and Peter Hennessy, The Secret State: Whitehall and the Cold War (London: Penguin, 2002), 95–97.

⁴⁶ Calder Walton, Empire of Secrets British Intelligence, the Cold War and the Twilight of Empire (London: HarperCollins, 2013), 334.

⁴⁷ Harold Macmillan, The Macmillan Diaries Vol II: Prime Minister and After: 1957–1966, ed. Peter Catterall (London: Macmillan, 2011), 510.

⁴⁸ TNA, PREM 11/4721. Macmillan to Foreign Secretary, 1 August 1960.

⁴⁹ Tom Bower, The Perfect English Spy: Sir Dick White and the Secret War, 1935–90 (London: Mandarin, 1996), 146.

⁵⁰ Stafford, Churchill and Secret Service, 390.

⁵¹ Richard J. Aldrich, The Hidden Hand Britain, America and Cold War Secret Intelligence (Woodstock and New York: Overlook Press, 2001), 220; and Andrew, Defence of the Realm, 155, 224, 229.

⁵² Richard Toye, “Winston Churchill”s “Crazy Broadcast”: Party, Nation, and the 1945 Gestapo Speech,” Journal of British Studies 49, no. 3 (July 2010): 655–80.

⁵³ Andrew, Defence of the Realm, 177.

⁵⁴ TNA, PREM 11/1582, Eden, “Counter-Subversion,” 10 December 1955.

⁵⁵ Mark Curtis, Secret Affairs: Britain”s Collusion with Radical Islam (London: Serpent”s Tail, 2012), 71; and TNA, FO 371/121858, Lloyd to Eden, 15 March 1956.

⁵⁶ Woodhouse 8/1. Note by Woodhouse. 2 December 1954. Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives, King”s College London.

⁵⁷ TNA, PREM 11/1582, Macmillan to Eden, 19 October 1955.

⁵⁸ Rory Cormac, Disrupt and Deny: Spies, Special Forces, and the Secret Pursuit of British Foreign Policy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), 126–137.

⁵⁹ Spencer Mawby, “The Clandestine Defence of Empire: British Special Operations in Yemen 1951–64,” Intelligence and National Security 17, no. 3 (2002): 105–30.

⁶⁰ Hansard, 1963, Douglas-Home. 16 December 1963. Vol 686 col858.

⁶¹ Richard Norton-Taylor, “No 10 Downing Street Bugged by MI5, Claims Historian,” The Guardian, April 18, 2010, https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2010/apr/18/mi5-bugged-10-downing-street.

⁶² Many of these are preserved in the papers of Julian Amery, see for example AMEJ, 1/2/7, “Report on Visit to Aden and Saudi Arabia,” Julian Amery papers, Churchill College Cambridge, January 1964.

⁶³ Hansard. Douglas-Home. vol 699 cc267-9 268. 21 July 1964.

⁶⁴ But for an eloquent resistance to this terminology see Keith Dowding, “The Prime Ministerialisation of the British Prime Minister,” Parliamentary Affairs 66, no. 3 (2012): 617–35.

⁶⁵ Bennett, Most Extraordinary and Mysterious, 234.

⁶⁶ TNA, PREM 13/3471, Trend to Wilson, “Security,” October 17, 1964.

⁶⁷ Edward Heath, The Course of My Life: The Autobiography of Edward Heath (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1998), 464.

⁶⁸ John Campbell, Edward Heath: A Biography (London: Jonathan Cape, 1993), 492–3; and Antony Beevor and Artemis Cooper, Paris After the Liberation 1944–1949, Revised ed. (London: Penguin, 2004), 74–76.

⁶⁹ Elisabeth Barker and Anthony Seldon, “Number 10 under Edward Heath” in The Heath Government 1970–74: A Reappraisal, ed. Stuart Ball and Anthony Seldon (London: Longman, 1996), 68.

⁷⁰ Antony Acland, Sir, “Sir Antony Acland Interviewed by Liz Cox on Monday 23 April 2001 for the British Diplomatic Oral History Project.,” interview by Liz Cox, 2001, https://www.chu.cam.ac.uk/media/uploads/files/Acland.pdf.

⁷¹ Confidential interview.

⁷² Hennie Van Vuuren, Apartheid Guns and Money: A Tale of Profit (London: Hurst, 2018), 359–61.

⁷³ Gordon Corera, The Art of Betrayal: The Secret History of MI6: Life and Death in the British Secret Service (New York: Pegasus Books, 2014), 277.

⁷⁴ THCR 3/1/5f.84, Thatcher to Carter, Thatcher MSS, Churchill Archive Centre, 26 January 1980.

⁷⁵ Peter A. Carrington, Reflections on Things Past: The Memoirs of Lord Carrington (New York: Harper & Row, 1989), 285.

⁷⁶ TNA, FCO 79/498. Central Policy Review Staff (CPRS) review of the Information Research Department.

⁷⁷ Jonathan Powell, The New Machiavelli: How to Wield Power in the Modern World (London: Vintage, 2011), 286.

⁷⁸ The Report of the Iraq Enquiry, report (2016), 64.

⁷⁹ Even in 2008 there were still some WMD true believers lurking in MI6, entry for 29 October 2008: Chris Mullin, Decline and Fall: Diaries 2005–2010 (London: Profile, 2011), 387.

⁸⁰ Robin Butler, Lord, Review of Intelligence on Weapons of Mass Destruction (London: Stationery Office, 2005); and Philip H.J. Davies, “Intelligence Culture and Intelligence Failure in Britain and the United States,” Cambridge Review of International Affairs 17, no. 3 (2004): 495–520.

⁸¹ Christopher Meyer, DC Confidential (Phoenix, 2006), 285.

⁸² Philip H.J. Davies, Intelligence and Government in Britain and the United States: A Comparative Perspective, vol. II, II vols. (New York: Praeger, 2012), 307.

⁸³ Rory Cormac and Richard J. Aldrich, “Grey Is the New Black: Covert Action and Implausible Deniability,” International Affairs 94, no. 3 (2018): 477–94.

⁸⁴ Gordon Corera, “Boris Johnson: PM tried to restrict ex-minister”s access to intelligence,” BBC, July 5, 2019, https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-essex-51563388.

⁸⁵ Christopher Moran and Richard J. Aldrich, “Trump and the CIA: Borrowing From Nixon”s Playbook,” Foreign Affairs, April 2017.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and a Leverhulme Trust Major Research Fellowship.

Notes on contributors

Richard J. Aldrich

Richard J. Aldrich is Professor of International Security at the Department of Politics and International Studies, University of Warwick. His most recent book is The Black Door: Spies, Secrets and British Prime Ministers (2016) co-authored with Rory Cormac. Since September 2016 he has been a Leverhulme Major Research fellow working on the future of secrecy.

Rory Cormac

Rory Cormac is a Professor of International Relations at the University of Nottingham. A Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and a leading expert among a new generation of intelligence historians, he specialises in British covert operations and the secret pursuit of foreign policy. He has published widely on intelligence and security issues and regularly appears on radio and television. His most recent book is Disrupt and Deny: Spies Special Forces and Secret Pursuit of British Foreign Policy. He featured on Channel 4’s two-part documentary Spying on the Royals.