The Secret History of MI6 - Keith Jeffery [213]
But it was not all sweetness and light. Late in 1941 SOE proposed that the two services be jointly represented in West Africa under an SOE nominee. Menzies’s chief of staff, Rex Howard, did ‘not like the proposal at all’. SIS, he wrote, ‘is an established organisation whereas S.O.E. is of mushroom growth’. Although SIS officers headed joint representation in the USA and Malta, the converse certainly did not apply: ‘I consider the principle of allowing S.O.E. to be in charge of S.I.S. activities in any area would be wrong.’ There were also problems with communications, prompting a sharp minute on 8 December from Gambier-Parry, who felt ‘most strongly that we must face a complete show-down with S.O.E. that we either absolutely control their communications, including the manufacture and supply of equipment, training, preparation of operations . . . or we cut completely adrift and let them wallow in their own mire!’. Just before Christmas 1941 Dansey, citing the dispute over West Africa and accusing SOE of ‘a lack of good faith’, withdrew as arbitrator between the two services .37
Gambier-Parry returned to the fray in January 1942, complaining about SOE’s escalating demands for independent wireless communications. ‘It invariably comes back to the point’, he wrote, ‘where they envisage hundreds upon hundreds of agents equipped with wireless sets all over the face of the world, particularly of Europe.’ In February Gambier-Parry described SOE communications plans as ‘extravagant, insecure, fatuous and very dangerous’. In the end Menzies, perhaps happy to be rid of this particular poisoned chalice, agreed that SOE should broadly have charge of its own wireless communications. Nelson was clearly delighted, on 27 March sending Menzies a handwritten note along with his formal acceptance of the new arrangement: ‘Dear Stuart [sic]. Thank you so much!’ Other activities caused alarm in SIS, including ‘Pickaxe’ operations - whereby SOE planned to infiltrate Soviet agents into Western Europe. Menzies, who first learned of this in February 1942 only after Calthrop got hold of a leaked SOE report on the matter, emphatically reminded SOE that they were obliged to have prior Foreign Office clearance for such proposals and to consult SIS about them.
In February 1942 Hugh Dalton was replaced as Minister for Economic Warfare (with responsibility for SOE) by Lord Selborne, an altogether more emollient character. From the start Selborne was concerned about the friction between SOE and SIS and raised the matter with Anthony Eden (Foreign Secretary since December 1940), who had apparently been unaware of the problem. Selborne sent Eden a paper by Nelson in which he emphasised his own good personal relations with both Menzies and Dansey, but described SIS’s overall attitude as ‘to delay rather than to expedite the natural expansion of S.O.E.’. He suggested that whereas SIS initially saw SOE as a ‘rather ineffective and ridiculous collection of amateurs who might endanger S.I.S. if not kept quiet’, they now seemed to regard SOE ‘as dangerous rivals who, if not squashed quickly’, would ‘eventually squash them’. This was because ‘we have outstripped them in many directions and proved ourselves in many directions to be a more efficient organisation. It is nonetheless’, he added (with perhaps a hint of disingenuousness), ‘both foolish and deplorable since the last thing S.O.E. wants is to obstruct S.I.S. in the slightest