The Secret History of MI6 - Keith Jeffery [433]
Of the first three Chiefs of SIS, Sinclair demonstrated the greatest tendency to cross the fine line between legitimate intelligence work, providing the government with clandestinely acquired information, as well as a political and military early-warning system, and becoming politically engaged in the policy-making process. During the Zinoviev Letter affair both Sinclair and his dynamic subordinate Desmond Morton (whom Sinclair loyally supported) asserted the genuineness of the letter rather more categorically than the evidence allowed. In part this was to protect the reputation of the Service, but it also reinforced a clearly anti-Labour political agenda. At the time of the Munich Crisis, Sinclair (in this instance supporting Malcolm Woollcombe) willingly supplied advice which broadly backed up the appeasement policy pursued by the Chamberlain government, and there are other indications in 1938-9 that politicians increasingly turned to him for policy advice. This may reflect the sheer intractability of the problems facing the government, underlying a tendency to seek advice from whatever quarter, as much as an increasing willingness on Sinclair’s part to step into a greater advisory role than hitherto.
Sinclair had a reputation as a terrific bon vivant. Two scrapbooks of memorabilia preserved in the National Maritime Museum record a heroic number of fine dinners and other social events which he attended between the wars. He hosted a dinner at the Savoy Hotel in August 1928 for colleagues, including Menzies, Woollcombe, Russell and Maw of SIS and Denniston, Fetterlein and Hooper of GC&CS. Another dinner at the Savoy, on 18 August 1938, may throw light on those whom Sinclair regarded as his closest allies and associates. Sir Robert Vansittart and Nevile Bland of the Foreign Office attended, as did Sir Herbert Creedy (Permanent Under-Secretary at the War Office) and General John Dill (a former Director of Military Operations and Intelligence, and a future Chief of the Imperial General Staff). Sir Vernon Kell, Blinker Hall and Stewart Menzies (the only other SIS officer) were there, while Sir Warren Fisher and Sir Maurice Hankey had been invited, but were unable to attend. The six-course meal was accompanied by a selection of marvellous wines, including Château Haut Brion 1924, Fonseca Port 1912 and Grand Champagne Cognac from 1865. No wonder Admiral Sir Percy Noble (recently Fourth Sea Lord, and about to take over as Commander-in-Chief, China Station) wrote afterwards to thank Sinclair for ‘the best dinner I have eaten for years’.11
Although Warren Fisher (Permanent Secretary to the Treasury and Head of the Civil Service, 1919-39) seems to have been a close confidant - his biographer says that he and Sinclair saw a lot of each other in the 1930s12 - even he could do little to improve the parlous financial position of the Service between the wars. Sinclair’s cri de coeur about finance in October 1935, when he complained that SIS had been ‘constantly hampered’ by lack of funds since 1919, had some effect, but the question remains, during his dozen years as Chief up to then, whether he might himself have done more to secure the Service’s finances on a better basis. The conflation of Service work within the Passport Control organisation, settled under Cumming just after the end of the war, certainly provided the Service with both cover and a regular source of income. But the arrangement also had considerable disadvantages. The maintenance of a Passport Control Office in any particular country depended on the prevailing visa requirements between that country and the United Kingdom, a matter over which SIS had little control. In 1928 a proposal to abolish the use of visas for Finland highlighted this problem, and although it was decided to retain their use in this case, Sinclair was moved to review the existing system. He noted that the ‘essential demands’ of a secret intelligence service abroad