The Secret History of MI6 - Keith Jeffery [360]
Menzies felt that a blanket prohibition on dealing with ‘these semi-political matters’ would impose on him an ‘impossible’ and ‘unwarrantable handicap’. ‘In its more detailed aspects,’ he argued, ‘the study of Communism abroad is irremediably linked with counter-espionage Intelligence.’ He had, moreover, appointed a senior officer to co-ordinate all aspects of this work and proposed ‘to establish a separate section charged to deal with this particular subject’. Menzies wanted the restriction deleted from the report. He convinced Nevile Bland, who thought he had made an ‘irrefutable case’.17 Loxley was less impressed, and thought that Menzies’s comments were ‘the pure milk of the doctrine of Colonel Vivian’ (not inaccurately casting the veteran head of Section V as an inveterate anti-Communist). Forwarding Menzies’s paper to Cadogan, Loxley observed that while the Foreign Office certainly wanted SIS to watch ‘Russian activities’, which might, for example, include studying ‘the Communist Party in e.g. Greece’, he thought it wrong ‘that S.I.S. should go witch-hunting and study Communists for their own sake. The Communist Party’, he continued, ‘is a legal party in this country and it would be a great mistake if the S.I.S. ever came to be regarded as an instrument of the Right Wing.’ Loxley was ‘frankly scared of the “Indian policeman” outlook in connexion with counter-espionage’. Loxley also thought Menzies was wrong to resist the appointment of senior service officers to SIS. ‘The Service Departments’, he wrote, ‘will always make trouble if they aren’t allowed a nominee of their own at Broadway.’18
After further consultations with the Bland committee members and Cadogan, Menzies formally proposed some revisions for the report before a final version was circulated. Regarding SIS relations with the service ministries, it was conceded that ‘Senior Service Representative’ would replace ‘Senior Service Adviser’, but the only substantial amendment concerned potential counter-espionage activities. Evidently responding to Loxley’s worries about the potential political leanings of the Service, Menzies asked that the non-political nature of SIS activities should be firmly embedded in the text. Following a statement that SIS ‘may from time to time be required to investigate the activities of foreign political groups or parties, e.g. Nazis, Communists, Anarchists, etc’, he requested Loxley to include the following significant admonition, which covered Service activities generally as well as his own specific responsibilities as Chief:
We think it important that those concerned in the S.I.S. should always bear in mind that they are not called upon to investigate such organisations because of their political ideology; and that they should therefore only engage in such investigations when there is prima facie evidence that the organisation in question may be used as instruments of espionage, or otherwise when specifically requested to do . . . We consider it to be of great importance that the S.I.S. should avoid incurring any suspicion that it is the instrument of any particular political creed in this country, and we believe therefore that C would always be well advised to seek guidance from the Foreign Office as to what political parties in foreign countries need special watching, and for how long.19
Loxley accepted this, and Menzies’s statement, almost exactly as drafted, was included in the final version of the report.20 There was, of course, an advantage to having such a resounding and perhaps emblematic declaration of political disinterest placed on the record. And by following the correct constitutional line that the Foreign Office directed the work of the Service, it could usefully release