The Secret History of MI6 - Keith Jeffery [399]
By the time John Bruce Lockhart was posted to be head of the Paris station in January 1946 it is clear that the ban on SIS reporting on France had been relaxed. Writing to London in August, he discussed domestic French politics, including details of French Communist Party finances and reflections on Communist penetration in the French army and air force (an understandable interest, bearing in mind that Communist and leftist parties consistently won over a quarter of the vote in postwar French general elections). Much of this was based on a combination of documents supplied from the French intelligence services and what Bruce Lockhart called ‘gossip’. Bruce Lockhart’s successor, who took over in October 1947, continued to concentrate particularly on the Communist target. A year later the Controller Western Area (CWA) in London noted that the Paris station had two main responsibilities: ‘(a) Liaison with the French intelligence services, and (b) Procurement of intelligence by secret means on behalf of SIS’. But there was in practice a conflict between the two functions since the task of at least some French intelligence departments with whom the head of station was asked to liaise was precisely to prevent secret intelligence activities by foreign services. In order to reduce the risk of compromising SIS operations, Paris was instructed to limit the amount of work undertaken which ‘could be construed by any of the local authorities as being anti-French’. With a brief analysis of the Paris station’s ‘present penetration activity’, the CWA concluded ‘that apart from attacking the enemies of France on French soil no accusation could be levelled against the station that it is, in any way, pursuing activities inimical to the French state’. Even in neighbouring countries - Belgium, Spain and Italy - there was no current anti-French penetration work.
Duff Cooper’s successor as ambassador, Oliver Harvey, nevertheless, took a similarly dim view of secret intelligence work in France and in September 1948 protested to the Foreign Office about a reported instance of SIS operating in the country. Hayter wrote to Menzies asking for a ‘brief account of your present activities in France’ to use when soothing Harvey - whose views, Hayter said, were not shared by the Foreign Office’s Western Department, nor indeed by Bevin. Kenneth Cohen, as Chief Controller Europe, having consulted Menzies, drafted the response for Hayter. It confirmed that relations with the French were ‘of a cordial and fruitful nature’. Indeed, the main current difficulty was ‘largely in keeping pace with French demands for co-operation’. There was no doubt that it was ‘in the general interest that these relations should continue’. It was noted, nevertheless, that SIS staff also maintained ‘certain contacts of a “direct nature”. I have’, continued the draft, ‘never made it a secret from the French that I am not prepared to rely entirely on their own estimates of Communist activities in France and that I make a practice of pursuing direct enquiries into these matters.’ A further activity concerned ‘the uncovering of illegal immigration and arms-running organisations in connection with the Palestine dispute’. SIS’s efforts here, it was claimed, ‘have had considerable success’, but due to divergent French and British policies towards Palestine, they had ‘sometimes been a cause of friction’.
Postwar requirements, and agent-handling, can be illustrated by the instructions given to a British businessman based