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Wartime apprenticeship: Labour and intelligence during the Second World War
What is needed is a new organization to co-ordinate, inspire, control and assist the nationals of the oppressed countries who must themselves be the direct participants. We need absolute secrecy, a certain fanatical enthusiasm, willingness to work with people of different nationalities, complete political reliability.1
Hugh Dalton, 2 July 1940
This chapter will illustrate how the Labour leadershipâs involvement with the wartime Churchill government brought ministers into the world of intelligence and security, an area previously overlooked by academics looking at this period.2 From the summer of 1940, Labour ministers were inducted into Britainâs intelligence and security community, enjoying access to some of the most secretive areas of the state. This chapter will show that this experience had two significant effects. Firstly, it continued the process already started during MacDonaldâs second government of improving relations between Labour and the intelligence community. Secondly, it constituted useful âwork experienceâ that allowed ministers to handle intelligence and security issues, and become fully acquainted with the complexities of the secret world. Other than receiving the fruits of British wartime intelligence, Labour ministers played an important role in the formation and early development of the Special Operations Executive, the wartime organisation established to inspire resistance in occupied Europe. This chapter shows how Hugh Dalton, Minister of Economic Warfare, attempted to develop a new brand of unconventional warfare with Labour at its forefront before his replacement in February 1942. It also shows the important role played by Attlee in supporting Dalton during several battles in Whitehall, and his continued role chairing important meetings of the Defence Committee at which SOEâs future was discussed. The chapter argues that Labour ministers were not averse to special operations, as has been previously suggested, but backed the amalgamation of the organisation with SIS to preserve Britainâs newly acquired special operations capability.3 On the wartime domestic front, Herbert Morrison regularly received MI5 material as Home Secretary, dealing with the political fallout from the internment of fascists and Nazi sympathisers, along with enemy nationals, as well as information dealing with the activities of the Communist Party of Great Britain. While MI5âs information ultimately failed to influence Churchill to implement vetting in government, the information reinforced the anti-communist leanings of Labour ministers.
The collapse of the Chamberlain administration following the debacle of the Norway campaign and its replacement by a coalition government in the summer of 1940 has been considered an important watershed in Labour Party history. For the first time since 1931, Labour ministers were at the heart of government, playing an important role in both domestic and diplomatic affairs.4 Attlee was the only figure, other than Churchill himself, to serve for the duration of the coalition. His importance was recognised in February 1942 when he was appointed Deputy Prime Minister, though he had already acted as Churchillâs stand-in since the coalitionâs formation. Having no departmental responsibility, save for his brief tenure as Secretary of State for Dominion Affairs, Attlee made a significant contribution to the running of important Whitehall committees, developing his skills as an experienced chairman. He was a member of the three important wartime committees â the War Cabinet, Defence Committee and Lord Presidentâs Committee, co-chairing the first two and, from September 1943, chair of the third. Field Marshall Lord Alanbrooke, Chief of the Imperial General Staff, described Attlee as a proficient chairman who ran meetings of the Cabinet and Defence Committee âvery efficiently and quicklyâ.5 While the name of Winston Churchill has become synonymous with the world of intelligence before, during and beyond the Second World War, Attlee fades into the background.6 To some extent this omission could be considered the result of Attleeâs private character. As his daughter-in-law, Countess Attlee, made clear in conversation, intelligence was the most secret subject for an already reserved individual.7 But, now at the heart of government, Attlee became part of an innermost circle of ministers and officials who, in addition to other paperwork, were privy to a stream of intelligence reports.
Inside government: Labour and wartime intelligence
Attlee was quick to criticise the intelligence world that he had recently been inducted into. As a member of the War Cabinet, Attlee, along with Arthur Greenwood, Labourâs Minister without Portfolio, received the reports of the Joint Intelligence Committee. On 17 May 1940 the JIC was instructed to issue reports on âany particularâ strategic development to the Prime Minister, the Chiefs of Staff and War Cabinet.8 Within months of the decision, Attlee came to appreciate problems with the machinery of intelligence. In November he wrote to Churchill requesting that the Chiefs of Staff should prepare a report on âthe organisationâ of Britainâs intelligence apparatus. Completed by November, their report suggested that, while intelligence coordination was far from satisfactory, it âseems to us very undesirable that a drastic reorganisation ⊠should be attempted at the moment when we are fighting for our livesâ.9 Despite his relative inexperience, Attlee was not afraid to challenge this. âThe fact that we were completely unaware of the elaborate and detailed plan of the Germans for the invasion of Norway,â he wrote to Churchill, âseems to me to have demanded a thorough overhaul of the Intelligence Services.â10 In fact, the Chiefs of Staff had recommended âwe should continue to use an inefficient systemâ. Instead, Attlee wrote âIt is precisely because we are engaged in a critical war that we ought to do ⊠what should have been done years agoâ and suggested the need for one âdirecting mindâ to oversee and improve intelligence. He would need to âbe a person of analytic mind, detached from all the Services â without parti prisâ.11 Attleeâs forceful letter failed to prompt action. While Churchill agreed that better coordination was necessary, the threat of imminent German invasion prevented swift change.12 The problem was only remedied after the intervention of the Director of Military Intelligence, Major General Francis Davidson, an âold friendâ of Attlee who had served with him in the same regiment during the First World War, which led to the formation of a sub-committee of the JIC to coordinate, assess and circulate strategic intelligence.13
Using intelligence
Labour ministers were also privy to the fruits of Britainâs prized intelligence asset: codebreaking. Within weeks of the formation of the coalition, cryptanalysts at Bletchley Park, GC&CSâs war station, enjoyed their first major success against the German âEnigmaâ machine. From May 1940 it was possible to read German traffic almost without a break for the duration of the conflict.14 Within six months, Attlee and three other Labour ministers â Ernest Bevin, Arthur Greenwood and A. V. Alexander, First Lord of the Admiralty (despite claims he âwas denied access to the most secret materialsâ)15 â were among a small group of those entrusted with information derived from this most secret source, known initially as BONIFACE or ULTRA.16 While it is unclear whether they were fully aware of the true nature of the material, the stringent measures used to protect it would most likely have alerted ministers to its great importance.17 In addition, Attlee also received intercepts from the chief of SIS, Sir Stewart Menzies, who had been âCâ since 1939.
Attleeâs access to the âgolden eggsâ of Britainâs intelligence community was a direct result of Churchillâs passion for raw intelligence, particularly his decision to request âall ENIGMA messagesâ on a daily basis in September 1940.18 While he saw only a selection of intercepts after 1941, Menzies continued to send this highly secret source of information to Downing Street in âbuff-coloured boxesâ that only Churchill could access.19 In the Prime Ministerâs absence, Attlee also received signals intercepts.20 During the Atlantic Conference of August 1941, Attlee saw âMost Secretâ summaries on Axis operations on the Eastern and Mediterranean fronts.21 Churchillâs increasingly frequent overseas visits meant that Attlee had further access and, in February 1943, with Churchill away at Adana, Turkey, he received intercepts detailing plans by German intelligence to assassinate the Prime Minister. Although the plot would have failed, Attlee immediately warned Churchill that âI and my colleagues, supported by the Chiefs of Staff, consider that it would be unwise for you to adhere to your present programme ⊠[it is] essential in the national interest that you ⊠proceed to Englandâ.22 At the end of the year, Attlee also received the intercept of a meeting between Joachim von Ribbentrop, the German Foreign Minister, and the Japanese Ambassador to Berlin, which lasted âmore than an hourâ during which the latter:
thanked [Ribbentrop] for his visit on the 8th and for GERMANYâs entry into the war two years ago in pursuance of the spirit of friendship of the Three-Power Treaty, and I made a suitable greeting. The Minister in his turn expressed, in dignified tones, his congratulations on the victories won by the Imperial Japanese armed forces during the past two years, and affirmed his enthusiasm for cooperation with JAPAN in the prosecution of the war.
Despite the dire situation on the Eastern Front, Ribbentrop optimistically said that âthere was no great change, operations continuing to be limited to local fightingâ, while in Italy, where German forces were in retreat, âthe position fluctuated from day to day and there was nothing special for him to tell meâ.23
A further illustration of Attleeâs use of signals intelligence can be found in May 1943. As Dominions Secretary, Attlee was consulted about the German legation in Dublin and the activities of its resident minister, Eduard Hempel. From early 1943 British officials had been able to read the legationâs diplomatic tra...