The Spies of Winter

by Sinclair McKay

  The British bases had to remain inviolate; intelligence gathering was not their only role. From here, the wireless interceptors would also analyse radio traffic, determining from where signals were being sent. In other words, they formed part of a great early-warning system, constantly watching for outbreaks of Soviet aggression in the regions around Turkey and Greece. On a daily basis, in the late 1940s and early 1950s, quantities of raw intelligence were being sent back to GCHQ Eastcote. Additionally, the intercept experts went about jamming Soviet stations and signals. This, together with the added presence of the RAF, was why Cyprus was indispensable, no matter how fervently its people wanted complete independence.

  Through the eyes of those young men conscripted for National Service, either working as wireless interceptors or otherwise, Cyprus itself was unthinkably colourful and beguiling; not just because of the wonderful fresh food (an age before kebabs were co-opted by the British to serve as a synonym for drunken nights out), but also because of the tokens of older faiths than the Church of England. Bob Montgomery, who was a ‘cypher mechanic’ with the Royal Signals, remembered being mesmerised by the icons of the Greek Orthodox churches, and also the local custom of offerings made to saints in the form of pieces of bright white cloth left hanging on small trees. Montgomery himself, while on leave, adventurously took a trip up into the mountains to visit a Greek Orthodox monastery – the air suffused with rich perfumes and the monks themselves the soul of generosity, offering to supplement his meagre army sandwiches with some of their own food and drink.

  It was his open, enquiring mind that clearly led Montgomery to be selected for an extremely secure job that he was mindful he could not discuss – very early on in his National Service training at Catterick in Yorkshire, he signed the Official Secrets Act. There had been, he recalled, some ‘selection process’ which he had barely been aware of. The next thing he knew, he was immersed in highly technical electronic training; not decyphering, so much, but rather setting up all the machinery and transmitters and keeping the more classified electronics running smoothly. He also kept an eye on volumes and direction of traffic, anything that might serve as an indicator of trouble. On his travels through Cyprus, Montgomery appreciated the sight of women working in brick kilns, and his chances for swims in indigo harbour waters. But as an alert, intelligent young man, he also noted the local political tensions.

  What the Cypriots wanted was ‘Enosis’: not so much independence as the full embrace of their Hellenic heritage, joining with Greece and sharing its statehood. Some of this was religiously motivated; those same Orthodox monks who had shown such kindness to Bob Montgomery were deep conservatives who revered the Greek saints and prelates through the ages. Elsewhere, those who worked the land, those who fished the seas and those who worked in the towns, wrote Tom Nairn, ‘found the fully fledged hypnotic dream of Greek nationalism already there, beckoning them. It was inevitable that they should answer that call to the heirs of Byzantium rather than attempt to cultivate a patriotism of their own.’2

  This was not all dreamy romanticism; there was also a significant Communist movement, AKEL, at work on Cyprus too. As a result, the British bases were guarded with the greatest of care. ‘Cypher mechanics’ like Bob Montgomery had to take care too; his superiors needed to check the local situation carefully before they let him and his friends go off exploring the local culture, and not all the Cypriots they met would have been as willing to greet them warmly.

  After the retreat from Egypt, as the numbers of cryptologists and other cypher staff increased, so too did the security on the island. Back in London, there were officials at the Foreign Office who had an idea for smothering – at least a little – the growing calls for union with Greece, and the rising temperature of potential violence. They looked at the minority Turkish population of the island and decided – as one diplomat termed it – that this was a card to play. The mainland of Turkey was a mere 40 miles (65 kilometres) across the sea; the Greek mainland some 400 (650). Very quietly, the British made representations to the Turkish government about the well-being of the Cypriot Turks and about their future. Some way down the line, there was even the outside possibility mooted of partition; of an island divided, with the British maintaining their bases in what would now be Turkish territory.

  Events are never so easily guided, and cynicism frequently backfires. Efforts to turn Greek against Turk were, in the years to come, to have the most violent and tragic repercussions. In the 1950s, as with Egypt, the Americans looked on with a mix of distaste and horror at some British tactics; as if the Americans were somehow any less ruthless in seeking to arrange the results that they wanted. As it happened, it was the Americans who were propping up the mainland Greek government financially; and the security of the Cyprus bases – through some turbulent decades to come – remained. Indeed, in November 2015, those military bases were once more in the news, with Britain offering RAF facilities to France to help with its assaults on Daesh, or Islamic State. In cypher terms, there are corners of Cyprus that also remain very firmly in the business of intelligence.

  By 1953, GCHQ had established and developed a rather brilliant empire of intelligence, and had made itself invaluable to the government. Partly as a result of technological change, and partly as a result of the quicksilver minds of Travis, Nigel de Grey and Hugh Alexander, who constructed a codebreaking structure that worked piercingly fast, signals intelligence was quickly becoming more prominent that human intelligence. One male or female secret agent on the ground could only ever hope to learn so much by means of infiltration or subterfuge. On the other hand, someone with the power to listen in to the quietest, most private conversations, someone who could look at the chilly chaos of binary digital codes, and summon the hidden meanings, could change the terms of the invisible war being fought on all continents.

  On top of this, by 1953, confidence in Britain’s human intelligence had been comprehensively shattered by the revelation of treachery at the very heart of the establishment. By contrast, the newest intelligence service was facing its greatest challenges, while looking to expand its own territory.

  Chapter Twenty

  The Loss of a National Asset

  The British establishment – this use of the term was coined by political journalist Henry Fairlie in 1955 – looked and sounded in the early 1950s much the same as it had done long before the war. From the olive-green corridors of Whitehall departments to the high ceilings of the richly furnished club rooms in which politicians, senior civil servants, judges and members of the House of Lords would mingle, that quiet, unspoken, profound assurance seemed immovable. And yet there had been profound changes in society. Clement Attlee’s socially crusading government had found huge support and help from what now looks like a seriously radicalised middle class. Not even the return to power of Winston Churchill in the early 1950s could turn back this social tide. The Ealing Film producer Michael Balcon, reflecting years later on this period, proclaimed that it was men and women such as himself who had been thinking the truly revolutionary thoughts on improving British society. The country now had a health service that was free to all; an epic house-building programme; and a creative cultural zest, as displayed to the world at the 1951 Festival of Britain. By 1952, with the death of George VI, and the accession to the throne of his young daughter, there was almost a sense of slick modernity that came with the idea of Britons being the ‘New Elizabethans’.

  In a curious way, the codebreakers at Eastcote – preparing for their move to bigger, more spacious premises down west – were a symbol of this bright, modern post-war society. In contrast to their sister service MI6 – still very much flavoured by the ethos of public schools and Pall Mall clubs – the men and women of GCHQ were of different provenance. Arthur Bonsall – a formidably brilliant presence who had made such an impact with his work on Luftwaffe codes – was born in Middlesbrough and educated at Bishop’s Stortford College. His distinguished career at GCHQ would later see him reaching the top of
the organisation. Equally un-grand was the immensely popular figure of Wing Commander Eric Jones. In 1952, this former textile merchant was to take over the entire organisation.

  The old director Edward Travis had for some time been suffering from lumbago; the pain from his lower back – although this was obviously never stated – could not have been helped by the fantastic stress of his job. In the years that he had built up this new service, the common purpose of war had given way to something many times more complex. On top of this, the main objective – that of getting a reliable, regular hook into Soviet and Communist codes – had proved elusive. Whatever form the department took – from the First World War’s Room 40, to the Government Code and Cypher School, to GCHQ – this was a responsibility that could not be borne for a huge amount of time.

  There were those from other departments, other services, other corridors of power, who clearly felt that the stockily built Eric Jones was a little below the salt; comment was made on his apparent ponderous manner, which could also appear pompous to some. Yet the truth was that he was a man who weighed his words extremely carefully. As befitted a cryptanalyst who was sensitive to the tiniest subtleties of different languages and different translations, he always saw it as a matter of vital principle that people should express themselves as clearly and truthfully as possible. Upon ascending to the directorship of GCHQ, he ensured that all cryptanalysts were issued with what he saw as an absolutely key reference text: Fowler’s Modern English Usage.

  In this reverence for language, Jones was in a way quite similar to Alan Turing, in the sense that there was a fascination for the symbolism of words (or in Turing’s case numbers) and an acknowledgement that getting these symbols to fit reality precisely was one of the great philosophical struggles. It was Jones’s perceived straight dealing that made him such a huge hit with the American codebreakers; indeed, while he was director of GCHQ, they tried to poach him for a senior job over there, involving the US Air Force. Jones modestly declined.

  His leisure hours were also determinedly un-aristocratic. By contrast with, for instance, the young Radio Security Service operator Hugh Trevor-Roper, who spent his spare hours near Bletchley Park riding with the Whaddon Hunt, Jones was a man who favoured golf. He was also a very keen skier. Most importantly, he was a calm and trusted figure who seemed to inspire affectionate loyalty. He was presiding over a department (still called the London Signals Intelligence Centre in some quarters) that was steadily expanding. Jumps in radio technology, as well as computing evolution, were greatly widening the possibilities open to the cryptanalysts.

  There was certainly no longer enough room for them to operate amid the avenues and villas of Eastcote. For the last few years, the codebreakers had been casting about for a potential new base. Moscow’s acquisition of the atomic bomb was one pressing reason why they should consider somewhere far from London, which would of course be the prime target in any outbreak of nuclear war. (In one of those exquisite historical coincidences, just one mile away from Eastcote, there was to be a hugely unlikely nuclear spy drama with the arrest of a couple called Peter and Helen Kroger in impeccably bourgeois Ruislip. The Krogers, American citizens, had moved to London, and he had set himself up as an antiquarian bookseller on Charing Cross Road. Helen Kroger, meantime, was far from an average 1950s housewife: neighbours recalled her loud, confident manner, even the piercing whistle she could give with two fingers. But here, nestled in the staidest of all London avenues, the Krogers were in fact at the centre of a Soviet spy-ring. Communist agents who had been spying on British naval establishments were reporting to them. The Krogers in turn were reporting their intelligence to Moscow via radio transmitter. As well as having its own historical curiosity, the story also now begs the question of what would have happened if they had moved in five years earlier; the sensitive antennae of the establishment hidden away just a matter of yards down the road would surely have identified it instantly.)

  A suitable site for the new GCHQ had been identified in the late 1940s: a genteel spa town set in some rather beautiful Gloucestershire countryside. The legend is that intelligence operative Claude Daubney was the first man to point to Cheltenham as a possibility quite simply because of its racecourse; he was fanatical about his race meetings. True or not, it swiftly came to be seen as a fine option. It was some distance from London, but had a good regular train service. The town itself, though not enormous, would be large enough to house what was an ever-growing staff (unlike, say, at Bletchley Park, where codebreakers and debutantes were crammed into billets with very confused families of railway workers and brickmakers from the local town).

  The only initial obstacle was the comically pervasive one of bureaucracy and a slightly truculent workforce. Even before any such move had been officially settled on, some typists in the administrative section were most unhappy about the prospect of leaving London. ‘Thank you for your letter… with regard to established typists who may not wish to transfer to Cheltenham,’ ran one interdepartmental memo to the War (or Defence) Ministry. ‘I have made a note of Miss MacAvoy and Miss McBride as being the people we can get in touch with should established typists wish for a transfer.’ Equally, there was a top-secret letter from the Foreign Office, eager not to let incredibly dependable and discreet administrative staff go. ‘We have been asked by the Ministry of Civil Aviation whether you have any established typists who, rather than transfer to Cheltenham, are thinking of resigning and looking for other jobs.’1

  Rather like the dissolution of Bletchley Park, the business of transferring the nation’s secret communications headquarters could hardly be achieved overnight. As well as relocating the staff and finding them appropriate housing, the work they did was naturally a 24-hour operation all week round; at this point in the Cold War, there was not a corner of the globe that the cryptologists could afford to take their eyes off. There was also the matter of clandestine equipment – several generations of codebreaking and code-generating machinery – to be moved without a living soul noticing. It is worth remembering that from the point of view of the general public and the press, the organisation simply did not exist.

  Down in Cheltenham, they were not building from scratch, although such an intensely sensitive and secure operation would obviously need some highly specialised and very well-defended premises. In fact, back in 1939 as war had broken out, the government had thought about the precautionary move of relocating parts of the War Office to Gloucestershire; fields at Benhall Farm and Oakley Farm just outside Cheltenham were quietly purchased.

  Then, in the early years of the war came the first of some utilitarian blocks, and indeed the initial transfer of War Office staff from London. Gradually the site grew, and further buildings were added. It acquired a military presence; the Gloucestershire regiment was billeted there, as indeed were army wireless mechanic trainees. In terms of civil servants, there were roughly 2,000 working at the site. As the war progressed, and after America joined, Cheltenham played host to a US department called Services of Supply. With the Americans also came a very large number of telephone landlines. This was one of the factors that made the site so interesting to GCHQ ten years later. For naturally it was not just the early proto-computers that lay at the heart of the work: it needed a large quantity of telephone and teleprinter connections, too. Not all regions possessed these. Even if the brilliant Tommy Flowers of the GPO was working hard to bring the country up to date, there were some regions (as with super-fast broadband today) that were lagging behind.

  Cheltenham was not the only medium-sized town that the codebreakers were looking at. Oxford was briefly considered; and Cambridge was given some serious thought (not least, doubtless, because of the possibilities of recruitment from colleges and an osmotic flow of professors). Shrewsbury, the pretty town in Shropshire, was an early candidate. Manchester was another idea (again, it is easy to speculate that the work at that city’s university being carried out by Max Newman and Alan Turing on the new generation of computers was a
strong factor in its consideration). Harrogate was another possibility given serious thought (and again, the proximity of the nearby Forest Moor aerial array, with its daily harvest of Soviet communications traffic, must have been some inducement).

  But Cheltenham simply had the better links to London. Once it had been (more or less) agreed upon in complete secrecy by Commander Travis and senior figures in the War Office and in the Treasury, they started to let the staff know that the move was coming. Amusingly, among the key people who did not know of any such decision were the councillors of Cheltenham Town Hall; they were startled when they eventually learnt, near the turn of the decade, that it was their area that had been chosen for the influx of 2,000 new professionals (described simply as working for the Foreign Office).

  As it happened, the news was welcome. Cheltenham – with its beautiful Victorian and Regency architecture, its wide gracious avenues and its proximity to the rich beauty of the Cotswolds – had somehow to maintain its gentility. The surrounding area had, for decades, seen a great deal of light industry, and there was a lot of agriculturally-based manufacturing. By the end of the war, though, firms were closing up and moving away. On top of this, the council was anxious to replenish and renew the town’s housing stock; like everywhere else in Britain in the late 1940s, the pressure on housing was uncomfortably intense. The idea that the town could be a home to 2,000 well-paid middle-class civil servants was terrific; but first, there would have to be a mighty construction programme.