Confronting the Colonies (13 page)

Communal divisions within Cyprus seriously complicated the counterinsurgency effort. Eighty per cent of the island's population were of Greek ethnicity, and sought
enosis
. The rest of the population were Turks and strongly opposed any links with Greece. Although there had been a strong communist trades union movement that had the potential to span the ethnic divide, by the mid-1950s issues of communalism dominated local politics. The ethnic balance of the security forces became a crucial issue in undermining intelligence gathering and in the development of the insurgency more broadly. Grivas initially sought to target the underfunded police system. EOKA hoped to recruit Cypriots from the police to act as informants, whilst other policemen were left under no illusions that interference with the EOKA campaign was a crime punishable by assassination.
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The police, however, had very poor relations with the local population. By 1956, thirty-seven per cent of the Cypriot police force was Turkish Cypriot. By 1958, the recruitment of over 900 more Turkish Cypriots swelled the size of the police force and left Greek Cypriots outnumbered by a ratio of five to three.
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EOKA initially avoided targeting the Turkish Cypriot community, instead targeting British installations and then Greek ‘traitors'. Aware that he could not fight everyone at once, Grivas forbade victimising the Turks. Attitudes slowly shifted, however, and a gradual ethnic polarisation meant that from 1957, rising inter-communal violence between the Greek and Turkish communities in Cyprus characterised the campaign. The first Turkish policeman to be killed, Ali Riza, died in January 1956.
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His death was followed by protests and riots, which became a familiar pattern for the British authorities. Underground Turkish movements became more active and intercommunal violence flared (although not all the violence was linked to attacks on the police).

It was quite a tangle and inter-communal divisions extended to the level of international diplomacy. That all three nations involved, Britain,
Greece and Turkey, were part of NATO further complicated matters and shaped perceptions of the violence. The insurgency lasted until spring 1959, after eventual agreement was reached at Lancaster House in February of that year. It was agreed that Cyprus would have a Greek president, but a Turkish vice president and that a House of Representatives would be composed of thirty per cent Turkish membership. Cyprus gained independence from Britain in August 1960.

1955 was also the year the Warsaw Pact was established. The Cold War was well underway. Dominating the international agenda, Cold War considerations certainly shaped British thinking and Cyprus was deemed important in terms of the external pressures impacting upon British policy. For example, the Cypriot violence threatened to affect Cold War calculations. Not only did it tie up British troops, who arguably could have been preparing to be deployed in potential Cold War operations, but it also involved NATO countries: Greece and Turkey. Instability on NATO's south-eastern flank heightened the importance of the Cyprus Emergency.

Meanwhile, decolonisation, nationalist unrest and growing transnational networks hostile to imperialism also influenced policy formulation. Although there was no grand design, by the mid-1950s decolonisation was in progress. The tide was turning and a string of colonies were being swept away from London's control on a wave of nationalist fervour. Against this loss of imperial authority, Whitehall policy unsurprisingly sought to navigate the stormy seas and somehow preserve Britain's role as a global power. Owing to its importance, Cyprus was an exception to broader decolonisation. In allowing British forces to cover the Soviet bloc and the Middle East, the island was perceived as strategically vital, particularly in the context of British decline when other assets were being lost. Independence, therefore, was not forthcoming. Cyprus became home to the general headquarters for British land and air forces in the Middle East, and was thus an ‘unsinkable aircraft carrier' from which Britain could fulfil its duties under the Baghdad Pact.
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Additionally, Cyprus was significant in terms of intelligence. It was host to eighty per cent of British signals intelligence facilities in the region, including covert facilities and listening stations. The island also provided the regional headquarters of SIS from 1950.
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Moreover, black radio stations disseminating British propaganda were broadcast from Cyprus. Aiming to undermine the nationalist Egyptian president, a covert station
known as SCANT operated from the island throughout 1957. It broadcast for six hours a day (the same two-hour programme was broadcast three times) and officials in London were confident that the locals were listening.
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The colony also housed the JIC's regional outpost, the JIC (Middle East).

Both of these overarching frameworks intersected defence, colonial and foreign policy matters, and it was against this background that the Cypriot violence emerged. Within this international context, colonial security rose up the priority list and, for the JIC at least, the late 1950s and early 1960s proved the high point for a centralised focus on (and intervention in) colonial affairs.

By 1955, the JIC was well established in its post-Second World War form. And yet it underwent a number of important changes during the years of the Cyprus Emergency, which changed the nature of the JIC forever and significantly impacted upon its ability to assess insurgencies. By the mid-1950s, it had become clear that intelligence was covering a variety of fields outside of those that were purely military. Concepts of security were changing as the traditional divide between military and political spheres blurred. This recognition, implemented via Gerald Templer's influential ‘Report on Colonial Security', laid the foundations for considerable reform of the committee's structure, function and place within Whitehall. Consequently, the practice of having the chiefs of staff as principal consumers became outdated and reforms to the central intelligence machinery culminated in the JIC's move to the Cabinet Office in the autumn of 1957.
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The committee continued to be supported by an array of subcommittees and remained assisted by its drafting body, the Joint Intelligence Staff (JIS), and the Heads of Sections, who met weekly to compile hebdomadal reviews and aid the JIS in drafting the reports. The Heads of Sections were ‘the main conduit for current intelligence information to be fed into the Joint Intelligence Staff drafting process'.
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Surprisingly, despite the move away from the chiefs of staff, the composition of the JIS (and the Heads of Sections) continued to reflect a military dominance in terms of its personnel. The body of the joint intelligence organisation was slow to catch up with the head. Yet overall, the transition
into the Cabinet Office slowly allowed the committee to engage with a broader range of requirements and reflect the shift in global threats since 1945. British intelligence was slowly coming to terms with insurgency.

Patrick Dean, assistant under-secretary of state at the Foreign Office, chaired the JIC between 1953 and 1960—a remarkably long time. A lawyer by training, Dean's keen analytical mind allowed him to quickly become a high-flyer at the Foreign Office. He was ‘detached, cool, and highly intelligent', and a man of strong nerves. Whilst chairman of the JIC, Dean was promoted to deputy under-secretary of state and knighted, although he is perhaps most remembered for his role in the collusion with Israel regarding Suez in 1956.
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Other members in 1955 included a representative from the Colonial Office, the director of naval intelligence, the director of military intelligence, the assistant chief of air staff (intelligence), the director of the Joint Intelligence Bureau and the heads of MI5, SIS and GCHQ (the latter became a member in 1951). Other officials, such as the Ministry of Defence's scientific intelligence advisor, attended when required.

In May 1956, Dean and his colleagues reluctantly accepted Commonwealth Relations Office (CRO) membership. Interestingly, the JIC was not keen on permanent and formal association with the CRO and initially rejected its request for membership back in 1955. The CRO had argued that it could offer political intelligence and background material regarding the Commonwealth, which would help in intelligence analysis and evaluation. The Commonwealth was, however, a different entity to the empire and its intelligence arrangements were understood differently. Dean argued that the CRO was ‘already very closely associated' with the JIC and that it would have been unable to contribute much given that its function was one of intelligence liaison rather than production. Other committee members put the case more forcefully, arguing that the CRO ‘had nothing to offer in the way of intelligence'.
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The JIC also feared that inclusion would threaten existing liaison with individual Commonwealth countries. CRO membership threatened to undermine the channels of communication between the JIC and British intelligence agencies on the one hand, and their opposite numbers in the Commonwealth on the other. There was a danger that the intelligence branches of Commonwealth countries would be ‘upset' if they thought that discussions of intelligence matters had been influenced by the CRO.
Commonwealth countries were ‘free agents' and, according to the director of military intelligence, ‘it was not right that it should even be suspected that they were being represented on the J.I.C. by a political department in London'. At the very least, CRO representation might have created a ‘feeling of inhibition' amongst Commonwealth intelligence officials visiting the JIC. The CRO did have an interest in the committee's business, however, in so far as it was progressively assuming responsibility for colonies acquiring independence. The CRO therefore needed to be kept fully aware in advance of any intelligence problems involved. This, Dean strongly argued, could however be catered for simply by CRO attendance at the appropriate JIC meeting. As a result, Anthony Eden denied CRO membership in October 1955 and it is unclear why the JIC reversed its stance on the matter less than a year later.
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The functions of the JIC evolved in order to match its changing requirements and threat perceptions. In November 1955, the JIC charter was withdrawn and re-issued jointly by the foreign secretary, the minister of defence and the colonial secretary.
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This represented a significant development: it aimed to ‘regularise and facilitate close cooperation between the Colonial Office and JIC'.
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In doing so it allowed the department greater ability to frame the JIC agenda and define issues in a broader manner. Despite this, the JIC's functions in 1955 remained similar to those in 1948. A couple of subtle changes did, however, afford it greater powers to deal with broader matters—again reflecting the perceived priorities of the day. For example, the 1955 charter instructed the JIC to ‘give higher direction to, and to keep under review, intelligence operations and defence security matters'. This represented an understated yet important development from the 1948 charter, which referred only to ‘defence intelligence'.
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Although the JIC's links with Whitehall changed during this period of reform, the transition to the Cabinet Office by no means served as a direct break from the chiefs of staff. The chiefs remained keen consumers of intelligence products, but the reforms did indicate closer liaison with the political departments, specifically the Foreign, Colonial and Commonwealth Relations Offices. The JIC hoped that its products would become more relevant to consumers and consequently more widely used. Whilst the 1955 charter confined the JIC to ‘assemble, appreciate and present intelligence as required by the Chiefs of Staff', post-1957 JIC requirements could be set by cabinet or individual ministers
as well as by military figures. Similarly, JIC reports were passed directly to the cabinet secretary, with whom the decision to circulate them to cabinet or individual ministers rested.
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How did these reforms affect the colonial sphere, which was integral to considering insurgencies? The JIC recognised in 1957 that ‘it is the Colonial Office, and not the JIC, who are ultimately responsible for intelligence in the colonies'. Despite this acknowledgement, the JIC did profess an increasing interest in colonial territories, and thus attempted to extend its influence by fashioning an imperial role for strategic intelligence. Members argued that the chiefs of staff needed warning of insurgencies to help plan troop movements and that, during the Cold War, communist-inspired insurgencies needed to be considered as part of a broader global or regional picture. Strategic intelligence was therefore necessary. Additionally, the JIC sought a greater hand in overseeing reform to colonial intelligence structures.
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Despite attempted integration, relations between the JIC and the Colonial Office were somewhat strained in the years preceding the transition. Tensions and suspicion also lingered long after 1957. Hostility, as is so often the case, can be traced back to bureaucratic rivalries and turf wars. The Colonial Office feared JIC encroachment—and, by extension, encroachment by the chiefs of staff—onto its traditional territory of internal security in the colonies. Fighting back, angry colonial officials consequently attacked the very nature of the JIC, the quality of its product and its performance. Evoking bizarre images of the Wild West manifesting itself in the stuffy corridors of Whitehall, the Colonial Office threatened a ‘showdown'. Even the prospect of the JIC's move to the Cabinet Office did little to alleviate Colonial Office frustration. Officials feared that the JIC would become a competing voice that undermined Colonial Office departmental judgements and ministerial advice.
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Frustrated colonial officials argued that the JIC simply could not adequately consider political matters whilst constrained by the chiefs of staff framework. Despite the committee beginning to identify the increasing importance of political threats and the relevance of the colonies in early 1955, it conceptualised the Cold War from a military perspective.
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Even after the shift away from the military, however, the Colonial Office continued to resist proposed integration into the joint intelligence structure. Concerned officials still feared JIC encroachment onto their territory—although perhaps this was unsurprising given that
vast swathes of the empire were being swallowed up by the march towards independence. The entire raison d'être of the Colonial Office was under attack. Aware that such territorial thinking would have held little sway within Whitehall, colonial officials also pointed to more practical reservations, such as a lack of manpower to offer full-time representation in the central intelligence machinery. For its part, the JIC continued to stress the importance of integration of colonial matters into JIS and Heads of Sections reports. This, according to the committee, ‘was the essence of “Joint” intelligence'.
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The JIC had growing ambitions to cover intelligence as broadly as possible.