Confronting the Colonies (12 page)

It would, however, be difficult to determine whether or not the JIC's recommendations directly influenced any reforms. Back in the theatre, Henry Gurney was sceptical of the JIC's proposals and resisted creating an LIC. He feared that ‘arrangements for the collation of political intelligence from Colonial territories are in some danger of becoming confused with the Joint Intelligence Committee functions', and gave three arguments against its implementation.

Firstly, the high commissioner argued that the JIC(FE) was too much a militaristic ‘inter-services body'. He was critical of its lack of representation of the ‘Government or Police Forces of the Colonial territories in its area'. Although political representation did occur on the JIC(FE), it is fair to say that, as in London, the committee was dominated by military personnel. Secondly, Gurney argued that an LIC would be too formal in its fixed membership. This would ‘appeal to the tidy mind', but would, according to Gurney, reduce the efficiency of intelligence analysis, which should be done on a flexible basis by those best qualified in each particular subject. Thirdly, he feared that an LIC would naturally be subordinate to Malaya's Local Defence Committee, and would thus include ‘unofficial representation'.
¹³⁶

Gurney thus dismissed the JIC's proposals. His reasoning, however, reveals two interesting factors. It firstly demonstrates consumer conceptions that the JIC was overly militaristic. The committee was militarily dominated, but Gurney's argument that it excluded political representation is unfair, and perhaps illustrates ongoing consumer confusion about the JIC's role. Secondly, Gurney's dismissal reveals the JIC's lack of authority to effectively implement and execute its management design as far as colonial intelligence was concerned. Even with future reforms to the JIC structure, this lack of practical authority was to plague the
committee throughout the end of empire era. Despite Gurney's rejection however, and despite there being no mention of an LIC in the Briggs Plan of May 1950, Briggs did create a Joint Intelligence Advisory Committee. This performed similar functions to the JIC's Local Intelligence Committee proposals in that it ‘coordinated the collection, analysis, and distribution of intelligence on insurgent locations, activities, and plans from whatever source'.
¹³⁷
It was not until 1956 that the Colonial Office finally insisted that all colonies were required to establish a Local Intelligence Committee.
¹³⁸

The JIC's tentative role in Malaya is indicative of a committee finding its feet after the successes in the Second World War. Although the JIC's wartime achievements were recognised and its status was enhanced accordingly, the committee had yet to acquire an understanding of what its peacetime role was to be. This was certainly the case regarding colonial territories, on which the charter was vague and relations with the Colonial Office were underdeveloped. As a result, this chapter portrays a committee in its relative infancy struggling to be heard and to make a tangible impact on these issues at a time when colonial security was beginning to be taken more seriously across Whitehall.

It was becoming clear that given the broader and overlapping interests at play, a more coordinated and integrated interdepartmental approach in Whitehall was needed to better consider Malayan security and its wider implications. Yet the machinery was not yet in place to make this happen. The JIC and its regional outpost, the JIC(FE), failed to provide warning of the violence in Malaya. Despite not being an official role of the committee, such a warning was informally expected by certain consumers. Indeed, warning of strategic trends in violence, particularly in arenas that cross departmental jurisdictions, requires a collective effort bringing together all source intelligence and ensuring that every avenue is thoroughly assessed and exploited. However such a system is only effective when the central body, lacking in executive function, has the mechanisms available to ensure coordination with all relevant parties.
Regardless of the quality of local intelligence (which was flawed structurally, cognitively and in terms of both presentation and dissemination), the centralised intelligence system lacked the required integration with necessary actors to do this effectively.

The ability to provide strategic warning was also impeded by a lack of clarity regarding channels of communication and bureaucratic function. Meanwhile, infighting and accusations of empire building made the situation worse. Something of a vacuum of responsibility regarding monitoring and warning was generated by actors and departments being unaware of responsibilities, jurisdictions and channels of communication from the periphery to the centre. These issues were particularly important in counterinsurgency warfare, which transcended the traditional regional-central divide. It often takes recognition of the severity of a threat to pull together those involved and focus the mind—but by which time it can be too late. It is vital that all actors know their own roles and that their responsibilities are clearly defined.

JIC assessments did not consider the evolution of the insurgency in isolation. Local violence impacted upon broader policy thinking and vice versa. Therefore, an important role of strategic intelligence assessments was to conceptualise events in Malaya as part of a broader context, involving Cold War geopolitics and strategy. This was a potentially useful function in providing all source assessments for an interdepartmental audience that brought together all relevant factors involved, thereby aiding an understanding of the interplay between internal and external forces and placing the violence in a bigger picture to aid policy-making at the ministerial level.

However, any utility depended on accurately assessing this interplay. Ultimately, the approach of internationalising Malayan security into a Cold War framework overestimated the links between the internal violence and external Soviet-driven communism. A tendency to view the world through a Cold War prism and to conflate imperial with Cold War developments emphasised external factors at the expense of considering both a more nuanced interplay between external and internal factors and the role of local agency in an uprising. Parallels exist here, with the desire to blame local intelligence structures for the lack of warning,
as officials emphasised external conspiracy and subversion over spontaneous uprisings against legitimate grievances—marginalising local agency and suppressing questions about the weaknesses of imperialism in the process. This was not necessarily a deliberate distortion of intelligence, but a natural response to the overarching mindset that pervaded Whitehall and to the composition and nature of the JIC at the time. It was, and remains, important therefore to ensure that all relevant actors are sufficiently integrated into the joint intelligence system so as to allow for thorough assessments of sources against those provided by other departments at an early stage. An awareness of institutional mindsets and the possibility for cognitive closure would also have been beneficial, as would the placement of the JIC system within the Cabinet Office away from the interests of one particular department.

The committee's agenda was predominantly set by the chiefs of staff (although the JIC did have some scope for freedom of action) and the manner in which issues were framed impacted upon the output. It was hardly surprising that if the military consumers were concerned about the Cold War, then the JIC would be commissioned to place insurgent violence within this broader framework. This, however, creates a vicious and self-reinforcing cycle of agenda, output and requirements. The intelligence machinery ran the danger of delivering flawed assessments owing to flawed requirements and biased issue framing by partisan military planners. This was not necessarily conscious, but a result of the manner in which the agenda was set.

As the conflict progressed, the JIC continued this contextual role, but with the Cold War intensifying emphasis shifted to assessing Malaya in the state-centric context of future conventional warfare. Again this illustrates the impact of the agenda and of the military nature of the committee. As a chiefs of staff committee, issues were framed in a manner appropriate to military interests and thus increasingly focused on conventional warfare at the expense of the irregular threats. Non-state actors were very much seen through a state-centric prism: it was not until the JIC moved to the Cabinet Office in 1957 that this balance was addressed.

Local intelligence failures impeded any warning of the insurgency and hampered government responses once it was underway. Indeed, they were a factor behind the JIC's incessant desire to look towards international factors when assessing the threat. As colonial security became increasingly perceived as important, the management of the overseas intelligence and security machinery became ever more centralised. Yet in 1948, the JIC, at the apex of British intelligence, was overlooked during Whitehall's attempts to reform colonial intelligence. Even when members were invited to comment by the Oversea Defence Committee in 1949, their recommendations were rebutted by local colonial figures, fearing an encroachment of the militaristic JIC onto Colonial Office territory. It was, of course, difficult for a predominantly military committee to exercise management or oversight over civilian bodies and again the JIC struggled to implement its duties, despite offering some sensible suggestions. Perceptions of the JIC were therefore important, as the committee's military nature and consumer confusion about its exact role both counted against it.

Overall events in Malaya have shown the beginnings of the need for coordinated intelligence assessment bringing together all relevant actors, to ensure that all sources were exploited and balanced against competing interpretations, and that all implications were considered. Such functions evolved to become vital in strategic intelligence assessments of insurgencies. Between 1948 and 1951, however, the JIC was still in its infancy and both consumers and committee members were unsure about the committee's post-war role. This left the JIC lacking impact to the extent that the chiefs of staff were unable to offer the cabinet combined all-source assessment of the situation in South-East Asia.

CYPRUS, 1955–1959

By the mid-1950s, near-continuous insurgencies had forced the British government to recognise the importance of imperial security. Responses became increasingly centralised, thereby affording a greater role to actors such as MI5 and the Joint Intelligence Committee. Although the violence in Malaya had been brought under control by the middle of the decade, it had been superseded by the Mau Mau rebellion in Kenya—which began in 1952. Other potential trouble spots across the empire also flared up, including unrest in Nyasaland and apparent communist subversion in British Guiana. Correspondingly, the JIC in London increasingly acknowledged the growing importance of non-defence intelligence, irregular threats and popular discontent regarding British security. Challenging orthodox conceptualisations of a ‘threat', the committee urged greater coordination with the Colonial Office in order to ensure that colonial intelligence and security were no longer neglected. It was not long, however, before the intelligence system was seriously tested. On 1 April 1955 an uprising began on the Mediterranean island of Cyprus.

This time the insurgents were EOKA (the National Organisation of Cypriot Fighters), a right-wing rebel group seeking
enosis
, or union with Greece. EOKA was led by the wiry moustached figure of George Grivas.
Nicknamed Digenis after a mythical hero of Byzantine legend, Grivas was a retired colonel. A steely character renowned for his strict discipline, he was politically extremely right-wing. This formed a stark contrast to the communist insurgents battling the British from the dense jungles of Malaya. Indeed, Grivas had made his name fighting the communists during the Greek civil war. He quietly arrived in Cyprus in late 1954 and quickly began to organise EOKA cells around Nicosia.
¹
They launched the first attacks in spring 1955.

The insurgents had links with the Cypriot Orthodox Church. Its charismatic leader Archbishop Michail Christodoriou Makarios III was a keen supporter of
enosis
and aided EOKA in terms of funding and protection. The archbishop, who went on to become president of an independent Cyprus, relented to pressure from Grivas in agreeing to an armed campaign against the British. Naïvely, Makarios hoped the violence would last only six months and that few people would be harmed. He was wrong.

As the bombings and assassinations intensified, the new governor, John Harding, declared a state of emergency in November 1955—the delay owing to reluctance in Whitehall where officials feared alienating Greece in preliminary talks.
²
Harding, a former chief of the Imperial General Staff was a ‘strong-minded soldier'. He had been planning for retirement when Anthony Eden, the new prime minister, sounded him out about the governorship of Cyprus owing to his experience as commander-in-chief (Far East) during the Malayan conflict. Out of a sense of duty, Harding reluctantly accepted.
³

During the violence, there were numerous political attempts, ranging from conferences to constitutions, to resolve the issues. Negotiations developed alongside an often-vigorous counterinsurgency effort which extended from the mountains to the towns. Accordingly, the numbers of British forces increased dramatically and by 1956 there were 12,000 troops and 2,000 police officers crowding the small island in an attempt to quell just 1,000 guerrillas. By the start of 1958 there was a staggering one member of the security forces for every Greek Cypriot household.
⁴

Hugh Foot, a long-time colonial official with service in Jamaica and Nigeria, replaced Harding as governor in late 1957. His appointment illustrated the desperate need for a political solution to the conflict. The overly military approach was clearly not working and served only to alienate the population, many of whom supported Grivas. Foot prioritised
the use of intelligence to capture the elusive EOKA leader and invited MI5 to send someone out to assist. The subsequent efforts were impressively successful and by February 1959 Grivas's hiding place had been tracked down, only for Harold Macmillan to refuse permission to capture him. The prime minister had been warned that eliminating Grivas would have thrown into disarray the delicate peace negotiations which were simultaneously progressing in London.
⁵