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By Root 2859 0

activities of such bodies as the Security Executive, British Security Co-ordination in New York, Security Intelligence Middle East (SIME) and Security Intelligence Far East (SIFE). MI5 increased its representation overseas especially in the Middle East, where British forces were widely deployed. By 1944 SIME, GHQ Middle East’s counter-espionage and security organisation, had links extending to India, Algiers and Italy. After 1945, as Britain pulled in its horns across the world and with pressure for decolonisation being applied at home and abroad (especially from the United States), the question of what was domestic and what was foreign intelligence became increasingly difficult to answer.

Disagreements between SIS and MI5 were especially problematic in the Middle East, where SIME operated in a number of foreign countries. In January 1947, Sir Percy Sillitoe, whom Attlee had appointed Director-General of MI5 the previous spring, wrote to the Foreign Office arguing that the SIME system should continue. William Hayter thought that Sillitoe’s objective was ‘the establishment of a permanent M.I.5 organisation in the Middle East, involving the suppression of C’s organisation there’. Hayter argued that, since SIS had ‘greater and more lasting responsibilities in that area’, MI5 ‘should only operate in Palestine [still a British mandate], and that C should be responsible for everywhere else’ with ‘a representative in Jerusalem to maintain liaison with M.I.5 there’. Menzies thought that Sillitoe had even greater ambitions. ‘The logical conclusion of this argument’, he wrote, ‘is that there should be a single world-wide secret service under his control.’ This contention, asserted Menzies, had ‘already been rejected by Findlater Stewart. Furthermore,’ he added a touch acerbically, ‘I cannot but feel that the energies of the Security Service would better be devoted to the problems confronting it in this country, where I suspect that a great deal of work could usefully be done in combating Communist penetration.’13 The dispute rumbled on for nearly two years. Late in 1948 Sillitoe took his case to Sir Edward Bridges (Permanent Secretary to the Treasury). ‘We are faced with a situation’, he wrote, ‘in which S.I.S. is given an ill-defined security responsibility which overlaps with mine.’ The resulting failure of collation, and ‘uncontrolled and unsystematic duplication’, was producing ‘a weakness in our national security’ and, ‘incidentally, a wastage of manpower’. But another official, Eion Donaldson, was not convinced. ‘Root of the trouble’, he minuted, ‘is the tradition of hostility between M.I.5 and S.I.S. which results in mutual reluctance to exchange information and in a general atmosphere of non-cooperation.’ Sillitoe should be told that he ‘cannot be given complete and undisputed authority for the study from every standpoint of all subversive activities wherever they may occur’, as this ‘would interfere with the appreciation of political intelligence from the Foreign Office angle which is, and must remain, the function of S.I.S.’.14

But Menzies and Sillitoe managed to patch things up between themselves. Towards Christmas 1948, after a lunch together at Menzies’s club, White’s, Sillitoe went to Bridges to tell him that ‘the atmosphere between S.I.S. and M.I.5 had completely changed’. Menzies had proposed a joint working party ‘from the point of view that there were gaps between them which ought to be filled, and also [Menzies was a keen huntsman] that they ought on occasion to be able to chase the fox over the boundary into the other hunt’s territory’. ‘I hope’, noted Donaldson, ‘the Christmas spirit will inspire the huntsmen!’15 Apparently it did. Meeting during the first half of 1949, the working party agreed that neither service was ‘charged with the task of collecting straight intelligence in British (including Commonwealth) territory’ and that this constituted ‘a serious gap’. By 4 July a joint ‘memorandum of agreement’ had been agreed. It assumed that the two services would ultimately share headquarters in London, and