The Secret History of MI6 - Keith Jeffery [375]
In the spring of 1947 Sir David Monteath, the Permanent Under-Secretary at the India Office, produced a brief on future intelligence liaison with India which proposed the incorporation of IPI into MI5, where it would continue to operate in co-operation with SIS, which itself would carry out covert operations in India. Sending this brief to the high commissioner in Delhi, Sir Terence Shone, Monteath noted that ‘in theory Secret service cannot operate in British Commonwealth territory, but we feel that for this purpose we should be wise to treat India as a foreign country’. Since this ran counter to the 1946 MI5 Directive, the Prime Minister’s approval had to be obtained, which was done in March 1947. Menzies chose a former Indian policeman, to head his new covert station in India, which was established in August. Although he went with cover as an ‘economic adviser’, Shone felt that he was too well known as a security official and protested about the appointment, but Menzies insisted and Shone withdrew his objection, though he warned the Foreign Office that if things went amiss, ‘you will remember my reluctance’.19
Things did go wrong. In March 1948 Dick Ellis reported to a production conference that the officer’s D.I.B. [Delhi Intelligence Bureau] background had been resurrected and was considered sufficiently dangerous politically to lead him to suggest his immediate recall’. For the meantime he was bringing him home on leave, ‘with a distinct possibility of his not returning’, and he felt that this probably meant ‘the abandonment of a permanent representative’s post and a fresh approach on C.P.R. lines’, that is to say with some sort of ‘natural’, rather than diplomatic, cover. When a new high commissioner, General Sir Archibald Nye, was appointed to India later in the year, he took the view that an SIS station was not necessary at all in Delhi and that British intelligence requirements could be met through the existing MI5 Security Liaison Officer. Again the matter went to the Prime Minister, who now decided that SIS should withdraw completely from India at the end of 1948. This decision established a precedent which became known as the ‘Attlee doctrine’. Attlee’s instructions about India came to be regarded by the Commonwealth Relations Office (which in July 1947 had been formed in place of the Dominions Office) as establishing a general principle, understandably supported by MI5, that SIS could not undertake any intelligence-gathering activity in any Commonwealth country without the full knowledge and approval of that government. In terms of the old white Dominions – such as Canada and Australia, which were beginning to set up their own foreign intelligence organisations – the 1948 decision was not unreasonable, but in terms of newly independent ex-colonies in Asia (and later in Africa) the ‘doctrine’ threatened to hamper SIS’s operations, especially against the perceived worldwide threat of Communism.
Recruitment and conditions of service
Significant improvements in recruitment and conditions of service were introduced in the mid-1940s, closely following the Bland Report recommendations, and they brought the arcane world of intelligence firmly into the ambit of the modern civil service. This was also marked by the appointment of the new Director of Finance and Administration, and although he was primarily a financial specialist, his regime marked the emergence of SIS as a civilian career service, rather different from the armed services attitudes and standards which had hitherto prevailed. Again following Bland (and in this instance rather in advance of other government departments), Regional Controllers were asked in May 1946 ‘to consider where, both at home and abroad, women could be employed as officers’.20 The Director of Production told them ‘that several women officers were now available for