Security Service MI5 - History
In March 1909, the Prime Minister, Mr Asquith,
instructed the Committee of Imperial Defence
to consider the dangers from German espionage
to British naval ports. On 1 October, following
the Committee’s recommendation, Captain
Vernon Kell of the South Staffordshire Regiment
and Captain Mansfield Cumming of the Royal
Navy jointly established the Secret Service
Bureau. To fulfil the Admiralty’s requirement for
information about Germany’s new navy, Kell
and Cumming decided to divide their work.
Thereafter, ‘K’ was responsible for counter-espionage
within the British Isles while ‘C’, as
Cumming came to be known, was responsible
for gathering intelligence overseas.
Between March 1909 and the outbreak of the
First World War, more than 30 spies were
identified by the Secret Service Bureau and
arrested, thereby depriving the German
Intelligence Service of its network. At the time,
the Bureau had a staff of only ten, including
Kell himself. The Bureau was rapidly mobilised
as a branch of the War Office. In January 1916
it became part of a new Directorate of Military
Intelligence and was then titled MI5.
Wartime legislation increased the responsibilities
of MI5 to include the coordination of
government policy concerning aliens, vetting
and other security measures at munitions
factories. MI5 also began to oversee counter-espionage
measures throughout the Empire. By
the end of the War, during which a further 35
spies were identified and arrested, MI5 had
approximately 850 staff. Details of the work of
MI5 up to the end of the First World War may
be found in the Service’s surviving records from
this period, which were released for public view
by the Public Record Office in November 1997.
After the Bolshevik coup d’état of October
1917, MI5 began to work on the threats from
Communist subversion within the Armed
Services, and sabotage to military installations.
On 15 October 1931 formal responsibility for
assessing all threats to the national security of
the United Kingdom, apart from those posed by
Irish terrorists and anarchists, was passed to
MI5. This date marked the formation of the
Security Service, although the title MI5 has
remained in popular use to this day.
Following Hitler’s rise to power, the new Service
had to face the threat of subversion from Fascists.
However, at the time of the outbreak of the
Second World War it was ill-equipped for its
many tasks, which included counter-espionage;
monitoring of enemy aliens and advising on
internment; vetting checks for government
departments; visiting firms engaged in war work
to advise them on security measures against
espionage and sabotage; and dealing with reports
by members of the public concerning suspicious
activity. In early 1939 the Service’s strength stood
at only 30 officers and its surveillance section
comprised just six men. To make matters worse,
in September 1940 many of its records were
destroyed by German bombing.
Shortly before the outbreak of the Second
World War, the Service had moved premises to
Wormwood Scrubs Prison, but in late 1940 the
majority of staff were evacuated to Blenheim
Palace. In early 1941, Sir David Petrie was
appointed the first Director General of the
Security Service, and was given the resources to
rebuild a substantial organisation.
Internment at the outbreak of the War
effectively deprived the Germans of all their
existing agents. Moreover, when German
intelligence records were studied after 1945,
it was found that all of the further 200 agents
targeted against Britain during the course of
the War had been successfully identified and
caught. Some of these agents were ‘turned’ by
the Service and became double agents who fed
false information to the Germans concerning
military strategy throughout the War. This was
the famous ‘Double Cross’ system. This highly
effective deception contributed to the success
of the Allied Forces landing in Normandy on
‘D Day’ in June 1944.
In 1952 the Prime Minister, Winston Churchill,
deputed his personal responsibility for the
Security Service to the Home Secretary, Sir
David Maxwell Fyfe, who issued a Directive
describing the Service’s tasks and setting out
the role of the Director General. This Directive
provided the basis for the Service’s work until
1989, when the Security Service Act placed the
Service on a statutory footing for the first time.
By the early 1950s, the Service’s staff had
increased to about 850. These included some
40 Security Liaison Officers overseas who
provided advice and assistance to governments
in the Commonwealth and Colonies. Following
the defeat of Nazi Germany and the advent of
the Cold War, the Service turned its attention
to the threat from the Soviet Union. It had for
some time already been focused on the
activities of the Communist Party of Great
Britain which, at its peak in the early 1940s,
had 55,000 members. In March 1948 the Prime
Minister, Clement Attlee, announced that
Communists as well as Fascists were to be
excluded from work “vital to the security of the
state”. This was achieved through the setting up
of the vetting system, which the Service was
charged to support. The cases of Philby, Burgess
and MacLean, in particular, showed how
effective the Russian Intelligence Service had
been before the War in recruiting ideologically-motivated
spies in Britain.
In the 1960s, the successful identification of a
number of spies – including George Blake, an
officer of the Secret Intelligence Service; the
Portland spy ring; and John Vassall, an
employee at the Admiralty recruited by the KGB
in Moscow – illustrated the need for still greater
counter-espionage efforts. Lord Denning’s
report into the Profumo Affair in 1963 revealed
publicly for the first time details of the Service’s
role and responsibilities. This period of its
history culminated in the mass expulsion from
the UK in 1971 of 105 Soviet personnel, which
severely weakened Russian intelligence
operations in London.
By the late 1970s, the Service’s resources were
being redirected from work on subversion into
international and Irish terrorism. The Service’s
counter-terrorist effort had begun in the late
1960s in response to the growing problem of
Palestinian terrorism. Major incidents, including
the terrorist sieges at the Iranian Embassy in
London in 1980 and the Libyan People’s Bureau
in 1984, tested the Service’s developing
procedures and links with other agencies.
During this period, the Service played a leading
role in establishing an effective network for
cooperation on terrorism among Western
security and intelligence services.
In 1983, Michael Bettaney, a member of the
Service who had offered information to the
KGB, was detected, charged and subsequently
convicted of espionage. Following a Security
Commission inquiry, whose findings were critical
of aspects of the Service, Sir Antony Duff was
appointed as Director General. He initiated the
discussions which laid the foundations for the
Service as it exists today, strengthened by the
legal status conferred upon it by the Security
Service Act 1989.
Major changes in the focus of the Service’s
work took place in the early 1990s with the end
of the Cold War. The threat from subversion
had diminished, and the threat from espionage,
though it persisted, required less of the Service’s
effort. Terrorism, however, had not abated. In
October 1992 responsibility for leading the
intelligence effort against Irish republican
terrorism on the British mainland was
transferred to the Service. In this new work, the
Service was able to draw on the experience it
had gained in the 1970s and 1980s in running
long-term intelligence operations to counter
other manifestations of terrorism. Between 1992
and April 1998 the Service’s work with the
police against Irish republican terrorism resulted
in 18 convictions for terrorist-related offences.
Many intended terrorist attacks, including large
city-centre bombings, were prevented.
Recent years have seen other significant
developments. The Service now has a role
working alongside other government
departments and agencies in efforts to prevent
the proliferation of weapons of mass
destruction. And in 1996 the Security Service
Act was amended to give the Service the
additional function of supporting the police and
other law enforcement agencies in the
prevention and detection of serious crime.
External oversight of the Service has also
increased: in 1994 the Intelligence and Security
Committee was established under the
Intelligence Services Act, supplementing the
oversight measures already in place under the
Security Service Act.
Meanwhile, a number of
measures have been introduced in order to make
more information about the Service publicly
available. The aim has been to be as open as
possible about the Service, providing a factual
context within which its work can be
understood, but without damaging its
operational effectiveness or putting its staff or
agents at risk. The Service’s first major step in
this area was the publication in 1993 of the first
edition of a booklet, which included an
address for public correspondence.
A revised
edition was issued in 1996.
Other steps in
openness have included public speeches by the
Director General, such as the Dimbleby Lecture
given in 1994 by the then Director General,
Stella Rimington; the recruitment through
openly-advertised procedures of all staff
employed on general duties; and the release by
the Public Record Office in 1997 of the Service’s
earliest historical archives.
http://www.fas.org/irp/world/uk/mi5/history.htm
Created by John Pike
Maintained by Steven Aftergood
Updated Thursday, August 06, 1998 6:30:35 PM
