Flashes of Intelligence: The Foreign Office, The SIS and Security Before the Second World War

Abstract

IF the unveiling of hitherto secret material about British penetration of the enemy’s communications during the Second World War finds no precise parallel in the documents released for the period between the wars, the Public Record Office nevertheless offers a good deal of material about the ‘intelligence’ of those days. Admittedly, the records ofthe intelligence services themselves (a loose but convenient term to cover a number of agencies which gathered material in or about foreign countries, or carried out covert operations there, or resisted attempts to penetrate British secrets) are still withheld, as are the papers of committees which dealt with the intelligence services. Probably the pre-war archives of the intelligence services are but patchily preserved, though assurances have recently been given1 that such material is not wilfully destroyed, and will be kept in case its release ever becomes possible. But since the various services had to provide the fruits of their work to departments of state, and the Foreign Office controlled, under the direction of the Permanent Under-Secretary, the Secret Intelligence Service, material relating to SIS had occasionally to be incorporated in the records of that Office.