Confronting the Colonies (6 page)

After initial Whitehall disagreement, the JIC and policymakers acknowledged the ominous threat of Soviet communism. The increasing reality of the Cold War soon overshadowed former priorities and altered the nature of others. It shaped the perspective from which the government viewed the world. By the late 1940s, a consensus had emerged amongst senior politicians and military planners that the Soviet Union represented a long-term threat to the security of the United Kingdom and its overseas possessions. International communism became the overriding defence policy priority. Clement Attlee (who was initially sceptical of the threat) and Ernest Bevin faced a wide variety of Soviet-inspired and -led challenges, including in Eastern Europe, Czechoslovakia and Berlin. Such challenges swiftly became a priority. Furthermore, the manifestation of the Cold War in the Far East and South-East Asia, generally perceived as an area of British responsibility, presented a host of dilemmas for the government. It impacted greatly upon the appreciation of the situation in Malaya.

Owing to the export of tin and rubber, Malaya was economically important. This was a factor not to be underestimated given the economic pressures on the Attlee government. The war had decimated the British economy and the currency crisis of 1947 served only to stress the significance of economic matters. Politically, the colony was also an essential cornerstone of the British Empire. As South-East Asia became a Cold War battleground, the desire to contain communism, which cannot be separated from British colonial or counterinsurgency policy when examining Malaya, grew increasingly important. In an echo of the Truman Doctrine, James Griffiths, Attlee's colonial secretary, argued that potential British withdrawal from the federation would result in ‘the subjugation of the Malayan people by a ruthless minority, and the subjugation of their country into a docile satellite'.
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Such fears were combined with aspirations of upholding the British position and prestige in the region; the maintenance of which would require victory in Malaya. This fact was not lost on the chiefs of staff, who reported that ‘the British position in the Far East necessitates internal security being restored in Malaya'.
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As the conflict worsened throughout late 1949 and 1950, it became clear that the British had to modify their response or face defeat.

The year 1948 was a year of intelligence reform in Whitehall. By the end of it, owing largely to wartime successes and the 1947 review into the post-war British intelligence machinery by Air Chief Marshal Sir Douglas Evill, the JIC had gained influence within the Whitehall hierarchy. Illustrating its enhanced reputation, the committee was upgraded from sub-committee to full committee status. The chairman was promoted to the rank of under-secretary in the Foreign Office. This was a contrast to the start of the war when Victor Cavendish Bentinck was JIC chairman. Younger than his colleagues, Cavendish Bentinck began his term at both first secretary and acting counsellor level. These diplomatic ranks placed him problematically below other members of the committee. The powerful directors of intelligence sitting around the JIC table outranked their chairman and patronisingly felt that war was no place for a civilian. To remedy this, Cavendish Bentinck at one point suggested that he be replaced by someone more superior. This fell on deaf ears as the chiefs of staff unsympathetically told him to ‘soldier on'. As a result, Cavendish Bentinck had to rely on his personality and leadership to get by. In this he was in fact very successful and ascended the diplomatic ranks throughout the war.
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Building on its performance in the Second World War, the JIC maintained its network of subordinate sub-committees. The Joint Intelligence Staff (JIS), the committee's report drafting body, was expanded to reduce further the burden on the JIC.
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The committee was also aided by, and oversaw, several out-stations that were originally set up during the war, but which had survived and continued to liaise with the JIC in London. Such regional outposts included JIC (Germany), JIC (Middle East) and most significantly for this chapter, JIC (Far East). The JIC in London worked closely with the JIC(FE): London helped set its agenda and offered advice on its reports. Regional JIC(FE) assessments often formed the basis of final JIC reports.

Despite Foreign Office chairmanship and (belated) Colonial Office representation, the JIC in 1948 was a predominantly military committee. It was part of the chiefs of staff system, thus giving it a
de facto
military nature, whilst the inclusion of the three service directors of intelligence created a military dominance in terms of personnel. Indeed, the records show that it was the military members who tended to most dominate discussion. Despite this, certain military figures feared that the
Foreign Office was becoming too powerful within the JIC machinery.
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This was premature but hinted at future tension regarding the direction of strategic intelligence and the nature of security. The militaristic set-up reflected British priorities and perceived threats at the time. The security system had only recently moved from wartime to peacetime and was only beginning to face up to the emerging Soviet threat which would overshadow the next four decades.

The JIC's charter was adapted. The committee was now instructed to ‘give higher direction to operations of defence intelligence and security, and to keep them under review in all fields and to report progress'. Similarly, it was to ‘assemble and appreciate available intelligence for presentation as required to the Chiefs of Staff and initiate other reports as the Committee may deem necessary'.
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Chaired by the Foreign Office, its remit, however, remained wider in practice and this potential to stray into the realm of politics created tension—especially whilst the JIC was existentially chained to the chiefs of staff. Such tension impacted upon how the intelligence agenda was framed and how intelligence assessments were used. Moreover, this dual yet predominantly militaristic nature created some confusion amongst consumers. It hampered the JIC's role. The JIC, then, was supposed to be the crucial nexus between the diplomats and the military, but this was not without its friction.

In terms of distribution of output, strategic intelligence reports were officially disseminated to the chiefs of staff. Then, subject to approval, they were forwarded on to the minister of defence and, depending on the nature of the report, to the Foreign Office and occasionally to the Colonial and Commonwealth Relations Offices. However, reports generally stayed within the hands of the civil service, as government ministers were not formally on the distribution list until reforms in 1957.
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Strategic intelligence assessments were also distributed to military planners, with whom coordination became increasingly necessary as the Cold War intensified.

By 1948, the JIC included the three directors of intelligence of the service ministries; a chairman from the Foreign Office; the director of the Joint Intelligence Bureau (dealing with scientific and economic intelligence); and the heads of MI5 and SIS. Two other levels of the committee also existed. These included deputy directors and less senior officials and discussed matters of lesser importance. A Foreign Office chairman presided over all three levels. At the outbreak of the Malayan
Emergency in 1948, the JIC was chaired by the youthful William Hayter. Coming from a family of empire administrators, Hayter was a scholar-diplomat and upon retirement from the Foreign Office became warden of New College, Oxford. He was certainly more of a thinker than his bustling predecessor as chairman, Harold Caccia. Whatever the instructions, Caccia was primarily a man of action. At the start of 1950 Hayter was replaced by Patrick Reilly. A borderline-workaholic with much influence over Britain's covert affairs in the early 1950s, Reilly fell more into the Hayter mould. He too went on to enjoy retirement in academic environs of Oxford.
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Importantly in the context of counterinsurgency, the Colonial Office joined the JIC from October 1948. The move was largely as a result of ongoing security issues within the empire, in which Malaya can certainly be included. Fearing encroachment on their jurisdiction however, the colonial officials were rather reluctant to join and were more or less forced by the prevailing security climate to attend top-level intelligence and security committees across Whitehall.
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Attendance of the JIC was by no means the Colonial Office's idea, but was the suggestion of Ernest Bevin and was approved by Attlee himself.
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Clearly imperial security was becoming a priority as colonial territories became perceived as a front line in the Cold War. MI5 agreed. Percy Sillitoe, for example, on becoming director-general in 1946 quickly recognised the connection between the Cold War and imperial security, and travelled extensively accordingly. Occasionally adorning farcical disguises in an attempt to avoid the press, Sillitoe travelled as far afield as Canada, Africa and New Zealand.
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Furthermore, George Seel, the first Colonial Office representative on the JIC, had previous experience of the Colonial Office's South-East Asia desk. This was surely no coincidence and demonstrates the growing importance of security in the region.

All interested departments needed to be represented. It was vital to ensure integrated intelligence assessments took all available sources into account and the Colonial Office's absence from the apex of the central intelligence machinery at the outbreak of the insurgency is therefore significant. Although Seel's addition came too late to be of use at the outbreak of violence in Malaya, it proved to be the first step towards greater coordination between the JIC and the Colonial Office, which was integral to accurate strategic intelligence assessment.

However, in 1948 relations between the two remained seriously underdeveloped. This sorely impeded the JIC's coverage of imperial
security. As General Sir Gerald Templer noted in his 1955 report on colonial security, in an era when colonial security was becoming increasingly vital and unstable, it was ‘significant that neither in the JIC Charter, nor in the discussions connected with its production in 1948, nor in the Evill Report on Intelligence of 6
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November 1947, was there any mention of Colonial Territories or the Colonial Office, which was not then represented on the JIC'.
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Even after the Colonial Office was dragged grumbling to the committee's table, no change was made to the JIC's charter. Moreover, the Joint Intelligence Staff still lacked a full-time Colonial Office representative. The JIC had little input in colonial affairs and held no formal responsibility for overseas territories. Similarly, the Colonial Office had little input into the JIC's agenda.
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Colonial security, therefore, remained under-represented within the central intelligence machinery. This had severe consequences for Whitehall's understanding of insurgencies. The limited liaison that did exist was generally passive and retrospective, involving brief updates provided by Colonial Office officials. It was with these responsibilities and within this organisational framework that the JIC faced the insurgency in Malaya and its broader regional implications.

Violence and rioting escalated in early 1948. Culminating in the murder of European plantation managers, it forced the high commissioner to declare a state of emergency on 17 June. A striking feature of the declaration was that the violence took the government by surprise, thereby attracting much criticism of the Malayan intelligence and police organisation. Neither the JIC nor its regional outpost in Singapore foresaw the violence and both failed to warn British authorities about the serious situation. Coming out of the Second World War, the committee had no explicitly defined warning role enshrined in its charter.
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Interestingly however, such a function was informally becoming increasingly expected by the JIC's military consumers. In fact, William Hayter was forced to defend the performance of the joint intelligence network to his bosses in the chiefs of staff.

Setting intelligence requirements and agendas is vital in ensuring the means to provide warnings. Identifying an emerging insurgency is,
however, a particularly difficult task. Carl von Clausewitz famously claimed that identifying ‘the kind of war on which they are embarking' is ‘the most far-reaching act of judgment that a statesman and commander have to make'.
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This is problematic when it comes to insurgency and low-intensity operations. As the historian Charles Townshend argues, the beginnings of insurgencies are characterised by low-level action and resistance. They therefore contain ambiguity and obscurity, which makes the intelligence analysts' job of identifying the conflict more difficult than in conventional warfare.
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Monitoring irregular non-state actors and providing warning of impending violence pose other challenges as well. For example, time pressure is more important than regarding conventional threats, which are characterised by arms build-ups and mass troop movements. When facing a state threat the joint intelligence organisation has time to gradually acquire detailed knowledge of that state, its leadership, hierarchy, military and strategic culture. By contrast, irregular actors and non-state threats can be fluid, less stable and fast moving. Intelligence analysts lack the time to develop comprehensive understanding. Secondly, given the amorphous and uncertain nature of irregular threats, it can be especially difficult to describe a brewing problem to policymakers. As such the danger of mirror-imaging becomes amplified. One is more likely to project one's own state-centric norms and frameworks onto non-state actors. For example, intelligence analysts (and policymakers) may want to know issues of hierarchy and organisation of groups threatening trouble, when in reality even the potential insurgents themselves may not know such information. Similarly, intelligence and policymakers may be keen to understand non-state actors in a state-centric context by looking for an external state with which to identify the non-state actor. A further difficult issue relating particularly to colonial security was that the actual declaration of emergency was ultimately a political act. It was designed to restore the status quo of British authority over the colonial population. This therefore placed extra pressure on intelligence assessment in terms of the plausibility of objective analysis in a highly politicised colonial context. It is therefore perhaps questionable whether an objective warning could or should have been provided in these circumstances—especially as conflict was arguably inevitable given the natural inequality enshrined in the model of imperial rule.
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