The Secret History of MI6 - Keith Jeffery [156]
After the Indian government had withdrawn their support (for reasons of economy), and SIS had proposed reducing his pay, Denham left China in 1923 to become Inspector-General of the Straits Settlements Police in Malaya (and later a successful businessman). At some point in early 1923 a vice consul at Shanghai, Harry Nathaniel Steptoe, was recruited to help plug the gap left by Denham’s departure. The thirty-one-year-old Steptoe had first gone to China in 1912, served in the West African Frontier Force during the First World War and, exploiting a facility for languages, joined the Consular Service in China in 1919.15 Initially given the designation ‘C/33’, he began well and, over nearly twenty years with SIS, embodied both the strengths and, increasingly, the weaknesses of the Service’s Far Eastern work. In October 1923, the SIS representative in Singapore, who seems to have assumed some of the supervisory functions formerly exercised by Denham, hoped Morton would let the Chief know ‘how deeply we are indebted to C/33 for keeping Shanghai going during the last very difficult period of over half a year . . . In fact had it not been for his almost superhuman energy the whole show there would have dwindled to a dangerous degree.’
The Singapore representative’s proposals for what he called the ‘Shanghai Agency’ envisaged a junior role for Steptoe with a view to his eventual long-term employment in SIS. In the meantime Steptoe was fitting in SIS work with his ordinary consular passport and visa duties and, as yet, was not ‘sufficiently qualified to enable him to be a fully satisfactory whole time representative for S.I.S.’. These reservations throw light both on Steptoe and on some of the qualities thought necessary for a ‘whole time’ SIS officer. It was thought that Steptoe was a bit ‘young’ and ‘does not always perhaps control his indignation or his zeal when, for example, hostile criticisms are directed against the S.I.S.’. The Singapore representative had spoken to Steptoe about this, ‘saying that it was only the bitter pangs of experience which had caused me to become a hypocrite when I deemed it necessary, thereby, at times, being able to turn an unfriendly critic into a friendly patron!’. He felt that Steptoe would be able to take over the Shanghai station in about two years and that in the meantime another member of the Consular Service could take Denham’s place.
There were some delays before this individual’s secondment to SIS could be finalised in June 1924. Meanwhile Steptoe, who continued to fill in, was ‘far from fit’ and beginning to show signs of the chronic ill-health that was increasingly to plague him. In January 1924 it was noted that Steptoe was ‘very fully occupied as Passport Officer, etc. all day, and his work for us is done at nights, on Saturdays and on Sundays’. Despite these concerns, and after he had gone home on sick leave, in July Singapore again reported on Steptoe in glowing terms: ‘He has a natural flair for our work, and I hope you will keep your eye on him for future work.’ Once Denham’s successor was installed in Shanghai (where he remained only until August 1925), Steptoe was posted to Peking, with cover as a local vice consul. In June 1925 SIS provided the British minister, Charles Palairet, with evidence that the Soviets were fomenting unrest in China. This was a photograph of a letter signed by the Russian ambassador, ‘procured from a very secret