Secret Life of Bletchley Park - McKay Sinclair [82]
On 1 February 1942, Denniston was removed as Director of Bletchley Park. He was instead bumped sideways to oversee the Diplomatic and Commercial side of the codebreaking operation, in Berkeley Street, back in London. He never received the knighthood that might otherwise have been automatically his due. But this was not a time in which anyone could afford to be remotely sentimental.
In his place came deputy Travis – although according to Mimi Gallilee, who was working in the house at the time, Travis maintained the title ‘Deputy’ for a while after these events. Perhaps out of a residual sense of loyalty and propriety?
A fascinating gloss on this ugly struggle was later offered by one Robert Cecil, who subsequently worked with Denniston in Intelligence in Berkeley Street. Cecil told Denniston’s son Robin that ‘the huts rose up rapidly at Bletchley; but there were less scrupulous and more ambitious men on hand to skim off much of the credit. Denniston left Bletchley and came back to London to escape the backbiting and get on with the job; he disliked the infighting more than he feared the Luftwaffe.’
Cecil added of Denniston and his time in Berkeley Street: ‘He always kept his ship on an even keel and his staff, who included a number of brilliant eccentrics, liked and respected him. One of them, whom I remember, had come down from Oxford with a First in Egyptology and had then become an astrologer; when his eccentricities began to affect his colleagues, Denniston just sent him on sick-leave and welcomed him back when he was restored.’4
We are invited to infer from this that Denniston’s reign at Bletchley Park was composed of similarly enlightened touches. And Robin Denniston adds a salty personal view – which must have been shared by his father – of Sir Stewart Menzies: ‘Menzies was a WWI hero and conducted most of his secret MI6 business at White’s Club in St James’s and BP’s intellectual feats were simply beyond him.
Also, as a manager of difficult and clever men, he [Menzies] was almost useless.’5
This image of the Intelligence man as club-haunting dilettante was very much part of a generalised impression of the secret services, certainly in the years following the First World War. But in the case of Stewart Menzies, the idea of a cocktail-glugging club-dweller was an unfair slur. It seems that he was initially distrusted at Bletchley on being appointed head of MI6 in November 1939; his predecessor, Admiral Sinclair, who had of course bought the house, was much liked. Not least because he was a naval man – the background of Bletchley’s senior personnel echoed back to Room 40, which was a naval concern. Menzies by contrast was an army man. The old service rivalries died hard.
According to Nigel de Grey, commenting more diplomatically later, these and other internal Bletchley Park conflicts were ‘an imbroglio of conflicting jealousies, intrigue and differing opinions’. Yet those furious threats of resignation from Dilly Knox – perhaps exacerbated by ill-health or simple short temper – interestingly also accused Denniston of not being up to the job.
Even the ‘Third Man’, Kim Philby, had a view on these intrigues, as he related in his memoirs: ‘Much of their work was brilliantly successful. I must leave it to learned opinion to decide how much more could have been achieved if the wrangling inside GC and CS had been reduced to manageable proportions.’6
One can easily see how difficult everyone’s position at Bletchley must have been; for the more successful the huts and the code-breakers became at their work, the greater the demands that were as a result placed upon them. And these demands had to be met with finite resources. While a number of bombe machines were now in operation, there was continuing conflict about how much time was dedicated to the decrypts relating to each branch of the Services. Obviously there were only so many hours in every day, so which would