A Potted History of FCO Communications

. . . s m a r g e l e t m o r f

...to eGra ms

A POTTED HISTORY OF FCO COMMUNICATIONS

Foreword

Over the years of my time in Comcen management I became aware that there was no 'record' written down about the birth and life of the Comcen, nor yet a reasonably coherent account of how Telegrams evolved and came to be such an important part of the working life of the FCO. I have therefore tried to produce a 'first' record - before my time runs out and I retire in November 2004. It has been an extremely interesting process, hooking up as much relevant information as possible and trying to pat it all into a sensible sort of shape. I hope I have achieved at least some of what I set out to do.

I am indebted to Kate Crowe (PDD) and Records and Historical Department (RHD) for a wealth of historical notes about FCO telegrams in general and to Library and Information Services (LIS) for the freedom to browse through historical photographs and select those for inclusion in this booklet. I have borrowed lines and paragraphs by the hundredweight in an effort to produce a document that I hope can inform as well as be 'of some interest'. Without their help and support, this would be a much less meaningful and interesting document. I am also grateful for input from various serving and retired members of Cypher and Signal Branch who contributed in many ways, adding their two penn'orth to a total sum of collected memory.

Any errors contained within are very firmly my own responsibility. I would be grateful for any feedback that might point out errors or provide deeper understanding so that appropriate updates can be made for any future reprinting.

W J M Dunningham (Bill) Head of Comcen and Cypher & Signal Branch ICT Comcen FCO Services Foreign and Commonwealth Office 16 August 2004 Extracts have been taken from: FCO RECORDS dated August 1991, 1992 and 1993.

The Historical Journal dated 1979.

From Quills to Computers - Information Technology in the FCO 1782-1992. (LRD) THE FCO - History Notes (Policy, People and Places, 1782-1991) (LRD) Photographs have been provided by FCO Library Services and Comcen records. Š Crown copyright. A product of FCO Services. Design and printed byFCO services: Crystal Print.

1

Introduction

conveying FCO instructions, reports and information via the global email pathways.

Once again in the history of Foreign and Commonwealth Office communications there is an inexorable movement towards a period of fairly major change in the way we do our business and this has served as a prompt that perhaps this is one of those moments in time when we should sit down and record ‘where we have been’, ‘where we are now’ and perhaps a short line or two about where the track might lead for the future. Some facts and figures will be necessary as building blocks but I will try to 'top off' with something more like a time-lapse snapshot of the area which the members of Cypher and Signal Branch will have inhabited for past couple of decades. Whilst we were not around for the birth of the Telegram, we were for part of its heyday – and within a scant few months, will be there to witness its sad demise during the Autumn of 2004 as new technology in the form of eGrams takes over the burden of

With regard to where we have been, Library have been so kind as to provide us with some photographs and Kate Crowe of Public Diplomacy Department (PDD as it was when the information was requested!) earned our major thanks by providing some history and background information we could draw on. One assumes it was necessary for her to dig around in those dark and dusty recesses where the history of much of the office lies quietly sleeping. We have also spoken to some of our more ‘experienced’ (aged) staff prior to their leaving to well earned retirement in case they had any ‘historical moments’ of their own to share. Many of these, whilst being highly entertaining, actually had little to do with the office – but could well form a separate book of their own!

Cornhill Station where the first telegram arrived

3

From the beginning

came in 1253. On his appointment to Rome in 1479, John Shirwood became the first resident English Ambassador. In 1505, John Stile, appointed by Henry VII as ambassador to Spain, became the first English ambassador resident at a secular court. By the reign of Elizabeth I, further resident ambassadors had been appointed to Vienna, Venice, France and Constantinople and the outline of a network of foreign embassies was thereby established. During 1640, the Northern and Southern Departments were created. The chronology goes on to state that in 1782, the Northern Department became the Foreign Office housed at Cleveland Row, St James’s. There were further moves to the Cockpit, Whitehall in 1786 and to Downing Street and Fludyer Street in 1793. Apparently, Downing Street and its environs in those days was a much less salubrious place than the present

Where to start? Well, the best place is usually the beginning, but exactly where was the beginning?

Well, that’s not quite so easy to determine as you would think; there appears to be no previous history written of FCO Communications, just the odd mention here and there in other documents and the occasional photo. Finding the roots from whence sprung Cypher & Signal Branch (C & SB) was never going to be an easy task.

However, deep amongst the roots is evidence that cyphers were in fairly common usage during the late 1700’s; we have a copy of one dated 1795 and others during the early and later 1800’s.

Plainly, our roots go pretty deep into the FCO’s past. It is interesting to note that the office of the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs developed from the royal household of the middle ages. The first official mention in the context of foreign affairs of a King’s Secretary (John Maunsell)

An en-clair telegram to be decyphered by Book

4

an announcement of an Open Competition for new offices to be built on a site between Parliament Street and St James’s Park. In 1858, George Gilbert Scott was appointed as architect for the new Foreign Office building but Lord Palmerston objected to his Gothic design and instead, opted for the Italian Palladian style you see today. In 1868, the Foreign Office moved into the new building. A couple of other interesting dates to note are:

seat of government being full of public houses such as the Cat and Bagpipes and Rose and Crown, livery stables, dressmaking establishments and cheap lodging houses often used by Irish and Scottish MPs. In 1801, Colonial Affairs became the responsibility of the Secretary of State for War and the Colonies and the name Colonial Office began to come into common use.

During those times, the Office would have had the need to communicate with its outposts to send instructions and briefings and receive the latest political news and intelligence as to what was happening in various countries on a number of different fronts. In those days, written communications of course would have been infrequent, having to pass first by ship and then overland carried in a pouch – possibly through potential war zones, prey to attack also by bandits and warlords. All this may still sound familiar to those of you who may have served in certain countries fairly recently! This would have made adherence to the latest Whitehall policy and guidance extremely difficult and much reliance would have been placed upon the Heads of Mission to conduct their affairs in general accordance with the last known wishes of ministers in London.

1902 – The India Office Courtyard was the scene of Coronation celebrations for King Edward VII and renamed Durbar Court.

1919 saw the amalgamation of the Foreign Office and Diplomatic Service.

1925 – the FO Reception Suite was renamed the Locarno Suite following the signing of the Locarno Treaty in the largest of the three rooms.

1947 – FO take over the India Office part of the building (including Durbar Court).

1968 – The FCO was established by the merger of the Foreign Office and Commonwealth Office.

To set the scene a little, by way of background, perhaps we should look first at communications during those earlier years, firstly, prior to the formation of Cypher and Signal Branch. To help this process it might be interesting to look a bit closer at the chronology of the office. How did the present FCO building come into being? Well – apparently, in 1839, the Foreign Office and Colonial Office buildings were condemned as unfit and unsafe in a Report from a Select Committee on Public Offices. In 1856, there was

1978 – FCO take over all of the present building on Home Office removal to Queen Anne’s Gate.

5

Early despatches

which made the length and timing of sea voyages impossible to determine. Stricter controls on the timings of collections were introduced in 1830.

So, perhaps we should now take a flavour of early ‘despatches’, their preparation and how they were sent, as these would have been the precursors to telegrams. From its establishment as a separate ministry in 1782 until the beginning of the 20th century, the Foreign Office was indeed ‘a department of scribes’ and the familiar picture, from Dickensian illustrations, of clerks standing at tall desks and writing with quill pens held good until well into the 19th century.

Despatches were frequently dictated by the Secretary of State to an attendant clerk, who made a file copy in a large leather-bound register before sealing and addressing the original for transmission abroad. Lord Palmerston apparently made his clerks work very long hours, even on Sundays, while George Canning was famous for his ability to dictate to three clerks at once! Quill pens made by cutting a nib with a ‘pen-knife’ from goose or crow feathers, wore out so quickly that in 1795 the staff of nine at the Colonial Office went through 2,000 quills in less than a year. Metal nibs did not come into common use until the 1820’s.

The first distinct organisation of King’s Messengers for overseas use came in 1772 when the Secretaries of State for the Northern and Southern Departments were granted 16 of the 40 King’s Messengers. Their trips were expensive and dangerous. In 1775, a journey from London to Paris is recorded as costing £48.10.8, while a Messenger’s journey to St Petersburg in 1780 cost £459.3.4. There were numerous fatalities in the line of duty: George Sparrow was robbed of his despatches and stabbed to death in Sicily in 1807, George Lyell was murdered ‘by desperadoes’ in Madrid in 1815, while Thomas Brown died of fatigue brought on by a continuous journey of 23 days and nights when he arrived at St Petersburg in 1820.

Members of the Corps worked on a rota system, and one Messenger, returning from a trip to Russia and seeing his name at the bottom of the list had obtained permission from the Chief Clerk to go on leave in Monte Carlo. He then received a telegram: ‘Your wife says you are fast and dirty, return at once, Chief Clerk’. On arrival at the Office, he found that the telegram, sent on his wife’s behalf by a friend had been garbled on transmission. The original text read: ‘You are the first on duty, return at once, Chief Clerk’!

Until the middle of the nineteenth century, the Foreign Office received and sent despatches by means of the mail and by Foreign Service (Queen’s) Messengers. Messengers were used only for the most secret and important communications. Other material was cyphered, or even written in invisible ink and trusted to the general postal system. Until 1830, one man collected all outgoing mail from three government offices and took it all to Lombard Street Post Office for the 8 pm coach and as he frequently did not arrive until 7.45, the coach was often held up (it's unclear whether this meant 'delayed' or 'at gunpoint'!). Overseas mail was in turn often delayed by weather conditions

The Office has had an official Printer since 1800 when a salary of £150 was first paid to James Harrison. The printers carried out classified work up to the highest category, not only for the FO but also for the Cabinet Office, Treasury and other departments.

Other means of copying existed from the late 18th century to early 20th century such as the

6

The “Lady Typewriters”

installation of typewriters represented significant savings in time and money in that a skilful typist could do the work of two copy-writers at a third of their wages. Miss Sophia Fulcher was the first typist appointed by the Foreign Office in 1889 and she and her later colleagues were at first described as ‘Lady Typewriters’.

letter press and hectograph. The hectograph, which employed copying ink on a gelatine-filled tray, was capable of producing many copies and the memoirs of H J Bruce recall its use in the FO in the early years of the 20th century. He recalled that ‘The decyphering of telegrams was accompanied by a physically dirty job called "bluing". This meant that the decyphers of telegrams were written out in indelible copying ink and pressed onto a gelatine pad. Enough copies were then taken off for the King, the Secretary of State, the Cabinet etc. The next job was to decontaminate one’s hands as far as possible from the stickiness of the gelatine and the indelibility of the ink’.

It is interesting to note that the Treasury recommended the use of the photostat machine, on grounds of economy, to the FO in 1926, and by 1947, the Foreign Office Guide stated that ‘a fully equipped photostat department is established in the Main Foreign Office Building and should generally be used for the simple reproduction of documents in order to avoid placing a strain on the typing staff.

In 1886, the Treasury accepted that the

7

The first telegram

Telegrams: The term Telegraph is derived from two Greek words: tele meaning afar and graphos meaning writer. Following the invention of electrical telegraphy in the 1830s, the telegram system was first used by the Foreign Office in 1852. The first successful Submarine cables were laid across the Channel in 1850 and the Atlantic in 1858 (updated between 1866 and 1874 by Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s revolutionary iron ship, The Great Eastern). In December of 1852 the Paris Embassy became the first British mission abroad to send a telegram to the Foreign

Office, forwarding an announcement from the Governor of Malta on the arrest of a public figure. Telegraphic communication with Florence, Berlin and Vienna followed in 1853. At this early period, the messages came first to commercial telegraph offices (the Electric Telegraph Company or the Submarine Telegraph Company) and were then delivered to the Foreign Office. By 1859, cables had been laid connecting Great Britain with Constantinople and Suez, and in 1862 it was believed that 150,000 miles of telegraphs were in existence throughout the world. Messages which had taken months to arrive could be transmitted in as many hours, and by the end of the century, in just a few minutes.

By the end of the century, telegraphy was an essential form of worldwide communication, and had been the subject of a series of international conventions attempting to govern its use in times of war and peace.

Early Book Cypher dated 1795

8

Recognised as being the first telegram - 19 December 1852

9

The Electric Telegraph Company

However, telegraph cables were always liable to be cut during hostilities, and the possible disruption of British foreign policy and commerce was a nightmare never far from the minds of government officials. In 1911, therefore, the official government response to Guglielmo Marconi’s proposal for the establishment of a chain of high-power wireless telegraphy stations throughout the British Empire was remarkably positive. On 19 May 1911, a committee consisting of representatives of the Admiralty, War Office, Colonial Office, India Office, Foreign Office, Post Office and the Board of Trade, signed a report approving Marconi’s proposals and advising state ownership of the new system from the outset. These plans were implemented and were further developed by the establishment of the Cable and Wireless Company in 1928, which fused in one undertaking all the cable and wireless interests conducting communications between the various parts of the British Empire.

“

I dislike the telegraph very much, because you get nothing on sufficient record which passes by the telegraph, and you are very much tempted to answer off-hand points which had much better be considered. I think the tendency of the telegraph is to make every person in a hurry, and I do not know that with our business it is very desirable that that should be so"

Edmund Hammond, Permanent Under Secretary at the Foreign Office, 1858

This new medium was regarded with suspicion

by Edmund Hammond, then Permanent Under Secretary at the Foreign Office who told a Parliamentary Committee in 1858 "No, we do not have the Electric Telegraph in the office; provision was made to admit of its coming in, [to the proposed new Foreign Office building] because it was right and proper to make it, but I hope it will never come in". Hammond declared that it would be ‘a very inconvenient and very expensive arrangement to have the telegraph brought into the office’, and when asked if he favoured telegraphic communication between Government departments, he replied "No, I dislike the telegraph very much, because you get nothing on sufficient record which passes by the telegraph, and you are very much tempted to

”

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Telegram distribution by Box to other Government Departments

telegraphs, which was close to the original estimate prepared by the FO, but which the Treasury had reduced to £3500. (The shortfall was compensated by ‘economy…in the conduct of the Messenger Service’, the costs of which were reduced from £18,000 to below £16,000).

The telegraphic address PRODROME (from the Greek prodromos meaning precursor) was registered in 1884, PRODROME LONDON being used for diplomatic telegrams to the Office, and PRODROME followed by the name of the mission for telegrams from the Office.

This convention was also followed for Telex answerbacks and remains in force today. The telegraphic address BREASTRAIL was also registered in 1884 for consular telegrams.

answer off-hand points which had much better be considered. I think the tendency of the telegraph is to make every person in a hurry, and I do not know that with our business it is very desirable that that should be so".

Despite Hammond’s misgivings, a branch of the Electric Telegraph Company was installed in the Foreign Office soon afterwards, and by 1861 telegrams were an integral part of the communications systems connecting the Office with missions abroad. This would have effectively been the first FCO Comcen. In 1870, the General Post Office took over responsibility for telegraphs from the commercial telegraph companies. Foreign Office Accounts for the year 1871-2 show that over £4900 was spent on

11

The War Years

to be the responsibility of the Resident Clerks).

From 1914 telegrams and despatches were listed and numbered in separate annual series. This would have been the beginning of use of Telegram Numbers as commonly known now. In 1920 the handling of telegrams was divided between the Registry (receipt and registration) and the newly-established King’s Messengers and Communications Department – ‘Communications Department’ from 1923 – (decyphering and despatch).

In this early period, telegrams arriving during the day were delivered to departments like ordinary post and filed alongside letters and despatches.

The first telegram sent from Florence appears in the same volume as the corresponding despatch and enclosure, with a time difference of seven days between them. By 1878, telegrams were so frequent that they began to be numbered like despatches, and for some missions amounted to several hundreds each year. Until 1906, telegrams which arrived during the day were delivered direct to individual departments and their receipt and despatch was recorded in departmental diaries or registers. Telegrams received out of office hours were distributed by the Resident Clerk. After the establishment of the General Registry in 1906 telegrams were handled by the Registry (night-time telegrams continued

All telegrams were copied in the Distribution Room of Communications Department and circulated as required. The more important of the day’s telegrams and despatches were reproduced on printed sheets known as daily print sections, and circulated to the Prince of Wales, to members of the Cabinet and sometimes to missions abroad. H J Bruce recalled that the job of ‘sorting the print’ took several hours each day.

The first telegrams were sent en clair and received by the Foreign Office on commercial telegraph forms, but certain missions were also able to send telegrams in cypher from a very early stage. On 12 July 1853 for instance, Lord Westmoreland reported from Vienna that he had received the secret despatch of 2 July ‘transmitting a Printed Paper being the key of a Letter Cypher to be used when I have occasion to send messages of such a secret nature as it might not be expedient should be sent in words by the Telegraph between Vienna and London. In reply I beg to inform you that the necessary care and attention has been taken so as to give effect to

A telegram for decyphering by Book

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Duplicating copies of Telegrams

ahead of any other government department, there were complaints of congestion and delay, and of carelessness in the checking and distribution of telegrams. While the greatly increased volume of telegrams was a major contributory factor, management, equipment and accommodation were also to blame. Although the cyphering branch had taken over two rooms of the Locarno Suite, it was so far from the rest of Communications Department that delays ensued and supervision was limited. Major reforms, including the introduction of ‘modern installations and appliances, on an appropriate but not extravagant scale’ were recommended and carried out during the war.

the instructions contained in the abovementioned dispatch’.

Telegrams sent in cypher were originally followed by duplicates known as recorders which were sent through normal channels of communication, or by extenders, longer despatches providing more detail on the instructions sent by telegram. In 1890, recorders were replaced by paraphrases, so that if telegrams were intercepted, the cypher would not be compromised.

The outbreak of war in 1939 imposed enormous pressure on Communications Department, and although it was recognised that the standard of proficiency was high and its cyphering speed far

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Post war years

During the post-war austerity period, there were frequent requests for economy in the use of telegrams. In 1950, 225 staff (examiners, cypherers, teleprinter operators etc) were engaged in outward despatch procedures at the Foreign Office, and another 1-200 abroad. A one-page telegram of 350-400 words then took between 40 minutes to 2 hours to encypher and cost £25 to transmit to Lima, and just over £3 to Cairo. In view of all this (and the expense and danger of transcontinental telephone lines) greater use of the Bag Service was encouraged.

A wide range of posts also had fast nonconfidential bags for material graded Restricted

and below. Brevity was also encouraged.

Despite the reservations of such conservative officials as Edmund Hammond, the telegraph became a standard means of diplomatic communications.

Telephones: The first telephone was installed in the Foreign Office between 1898 and 1899 by the National Telephone Company, the number being 415 on the Westminster exchange. In 1902 this changed to Westminster 211 for the Office, with a separate line on Westminster 210 for the Private Office. In January 1906 the Treasury sanctioned the ‘installation of a system of telephonic communications in the Foreign Office’ at an estimated cost of £390.

The employment of ‘a female Switch Clerk’ at the usual rate of wages was also approved in return for the abolition of a Home Service Messenger slot as soon as a vacancy occurred.

The installation was carried out by the Post Office and was further extended in 1907 so that the FO had its own private branch exchange (PBX) which

by July 1909 could be accessed through calling Victoria 22 or 490.

Telex: In 1932, Post Office Telephones

Decyphering telegrams in Book cypher

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COMCEN - when sited in the Locarno Suite

informed the FO of a newly introduced service called ‘Telex’ which was a form of ‘typewriting over telephone wires’. A demonstration was offered, but the Chief Clerk refused it in a manner reminiscent of Edmund Hammond, saying ‘that it does not appear that this service would be suitable for introduction into the Foreign Office’. On 14 May 1940, however, the BBC Teleprinter Distribution system linked the Foreign Office with the Ministry of Information, and four years later, internal communications in the Office were boosted by the installation of a Pneumatic Tube system some parts of which

remain in use today.

Facsimile made its debut in the Office during the 1980s – both unclassified and classified. During the mid-eighties, room WH124 housed the Teleletter operation, the first Communications Operations Department (COD) unclassified fax and the classified Mufax (wet paper!) operation to posts abroad. At UKREP Brussels, during 1989, Comms section were handling about 200 pages of unclassified fax material per day. Two years later, this had grown to 2,000 pages per day! This rapid growth was reflected in many other areas of the Office.

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Cypher & Signal Branch 1950 onwards

HF radio: After the occupation of France in 1940, the Government asked the armed forces to establish communications with remaining allies and agents in Europe. This gave rise to a global, military communications network using High Frequency (HF) radio and morse code, which operated from Hanslope Park. Following the takeover of this network by the newly established Diplomatic Wireless Service in 1947, it was expanded, and the flow of classified traffic was considerably increased by the introduction of a basic machine cypher in the 1950s.

PICCOLO: Foreign Office communications were revolutionised by the development in 1963 of a teleprinter-based HF radio system called PICCOLO (to replace labour-intensive morse code), and by the provision in 1964 of on-line cypher protection for plain text during transmission (which speeded up the process of encryption and decryption). The Diplomatic Wireless Service was absorbed by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in 1973, as part of its new Communications Division.

Computer based messaging system: The first major computer-based communications systems were installed in 1986-7 (the Comcen Message Switch) to provide a fully operational Message Handling System from August 1987.

Communications and Information Technology functions of the FCO were brought together in January 1990 to form Information Systems Division. The latest rebrigading sees the Comcen operation as part of Information Communications Technology Group, one of the groups forming FCO Services, the service provider portion of the office.

Thanks to the Library, I have been able to put my hands on some early

Noreen cypher machine

16

photos (most from April 1941), which clearly show ‘communications department’ at work, much of it being work we all would clearly remember as doing during our tenure.

Cypher and Signal Branch was actually born in 1951. The grades were established roughly alongside the HCS grades, with Cypher Officers (now TCOs) midway between AO and EO, Cypher Supervisors at EO, Cypher Superintendents at HEO and Senior Cypher Superintendents at SEO. Those in higher grades conformed to HCS grades. The Fifties were a time of moving more and more into the use of Telex and teleprinter links via the occasional private wire. Extensive use of Book Cypher and the earlier machine systems such as ROCKEX/ERIC/NOREEN. All systems were offline and manual intensive relying much on the skill of the communications staff for the speed in which telegrams passed from originator to recipients.

Rockex cypher machine

Northwood in Middlesex. I had made up my mind not to renew my engagement and was leaving the Royal Navy to get married.

I wrote to several prospective employers and eventually, after two intimidating interviews (what books do you read? what newspaper do you read? what are your views on so and so? I was offered employment by the Foreign Office starting on 31 December 1962 as a Cypher Officer, (based in London) administered by the Diplomatic Wireless Service(DWS)which was based at Hanslope Park in those days.

The nineteen fifties and sixties were an extremely formative time for the Comcen with a huge influx of staff, mostly during the sixties, predominately from the military, comprising such well known names as Eddie Jarman, Laurie Walters, Harry Ashton, Derek Carroll, Dickie Larcombe, Derek Hardy, Pete James, Alf Shackleford, Pete Shaw, Den Glassett, Dave Eaton, Phil Wade, Ron Froud, Johnnie Crossland, Ian Sutton, Dickie Dawson and Chris Webb – and many more - we could easily fill a page rather than a paragraph! Some such as Ken Stride arrived following the closure of the LTS (London Telecommunications Service).

I can remember thinking to myself after I had got the job ‘the Foreign Office is going to be very grand’ and although it seemed so during my interviews I was later to learn otherwise over the coming months.

The winter of 1962 was pretty grim; lots of snow and ice and we new recruits gathered in the office to be shuttled over to Queen Anne’s Mansions in Petty France to begin our Book Cypher courses (3 weeks)- the site of the present Home Office.

The following is an interesting narrative insight from Denis Glassett: "In 1962 I was based at the NATO base at

17

Recollections

then subtracted (without carrying) in a one time pad. It was slow and labour intensive but fully secure. We also used ‘R Code’ and ‘GTC’ (Government Telegraph Code) which gave limited telegraphic protection to e.g Peoples/companies names. We also used a machine system called ROCKEX to a handful of posts.

The head of the training school was Pat Leslie a very able and talented lady who used to nominate one or other of us as ‘A Noddy’ if we did not understand what she was saying. Anyway all 4 of us passed the course and went across to Room 8 in the FO to be integrated into a shift dealing with the day to day work of the Office.

We worked in pairs and the new boys were put to work with the more experienced Cypher Officers.

I can remember being in Doha to install a system called NOREEN and train the staff in 1968 and the Deputy Political Advisor rushing in with a telex message which had an encryption in the middle of it. The Grade 10 didn’t understand it but I recognised it as GTC. When I asked him where his GTC was he didn’t know but I found it keeping the Registry door open!

I couldn’t believe what a filthy place The Office was. Room 8 was exceptionally grimy because it was occupied around the clock. Furthermore it was all so formal; Mr this and Mr that. The Head of Shift (DS Grade 7) would walk round saying ‘Please do not wear that tie again in the office or ‘ a roll neck is acceptable on night duty but not on the day duties between Monday and Saturday’!

In the late 1960s NOREEN replaced Book Cypher as the main line cypher. It was compatible with ROCKEX but was not the most user friendly piece of equipment. It ran on batteries and there was always the prevailing smell of sulphuric acid when we arrived in the Mission in the morning. I used to get so many holes in my shirts those days!

I hated it at first, but I felt I had to stick to it and it grew on me. I enjoyed the work and I knew that I had come into the FO at a time when it must expand and improve its communications.

In those days there was a Telex Room in Room 7. We encrypted the telegrams in Room 8 and the Telex Operators sent them. The main routes were Cable and Wireless/Telex and the London Traffic Centre(LTC) based in Stamford Street.

The FO amalgamated with the Commonwealth Relations Office in about 1965 and we inherited their crypto system called TYPEX which we continued to use to Commonwealth Posts until the last TYPEX was dumped offshore in the early 70s in Port Stanley. I had used the system in the RN in the early 50’s so it was really an antiquated system (there is one on show adjacent to the Comcen door in the main building).

All Embassies were required to register the telegraphic address Prodrome and Consulates Britain. If we had to revert to C&W those were the recognised cable addresses. The last post I instructed to register the Britain address was the Consulate in Shanghai when it opened in I think the early 90’s.

The Office also amalgamated with the Colonial Office in the late 60’s and they brought their Basic Book Cypher (Col E) with them! However, we eventually reduced the number of different cyphers that we were using and put everyone on the same system: NOREEN.

In the early 60’s Book Cypher (M55 Basic Book) was the primary system to most posts overseas.

A telegram was encrypted in the basic book and

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Telegram Enumerators

– often as telegrams (or cables) via Cable and Wireless. A copy would be passed to Telegram Distribution Selectors for retyping, copying and internal distribution. Incoming telegrams would be decyphered, copies prepared for all other addressees in the appropriate cypher system and despatched over the correct system, and a copy passed to TDS for distribution. The principles of how the section functioned then were pretty much the same as now – except the work was all achieved with a far higher element of manual input than now and the cypher processes were very much slower. Apparently, a huge wheel linking lower and upper rooms 8 constantly rotated carrying messages up and down.

Whenever the wheel jammed, it was necessary for someone fairly agile to climb up and retrieve whatever messages were en-route at the time, and I understand Harry Ashton was one of the best at this. Being aware of how high the ceilings are in the office I imagine it would take a fair amount of courage as well as climbing expertise to tackle such a task! But being of Welsh heritage, perhaps Harry had lots of climbing practice on the Black Mountains or thereabouts as a youngster!

Over a very long number of years we eventually came to ‘EDUCATOR’ in the mid 1990s and everything changed for the better. I suppose by now it is just a question of encrypted email.

Looking back I like to think that me and my mostly ex-RN colleagues shaped the FCO communications and got it to the way it is now, a very efficient system and second to none.

Denis Glassett FCO 1962-1998 From the mid-60’s to 1970, the importance of creating a secure communications network was seen as extremely important and a great deal of resources were put into expanding the use of professional communicators both at home and abroad. The Communications functions were built into various offices such as K7 (Telex Room) and K8 (Machine Room) and the Locarno Suite Upper Rooms 7 and 8 housing the ROCKEX and Book Cypher operations, with Telegram Distribution Section (TDS) taking up Portacabin space in Durbar Court.

Outgoing telegrams were received in handwritten blue draft form and processed by Telegram Enumerators, offline encyphered where necessary and despatched via appropriate means

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A new home for Comcen

call stations in the morning, switch on and leave running, as there were more stations to work than operators. Every so often a tape would be stopped and the distant operator asked if all was OK. On one occasion, the Hanslope operator asked the distant station if all was ‘OK’ and received the answer: "Am only getting dots".

Quick as a flash, the reply was made "OK – will send dashes later" and the machine was switched back on!

About that time, the use of specialist communicators was expanded abroad so that the radio network spanning out from the aerial farm at the Central Receiving Station (CRS) Hanslope Park was able to join many other posts to the FCO communications network. At the other major posts with whom we had dedicated links via BT such as Washington, New York, Brussels, Hong Kong, Paris etc communications staff was boosted to deal with the high input/output of telegram traffic. At the radio posts, DSC communicators received and sent their telegrams using a range of systems including PICCOLO and associated cypher devices. John Mitchell tells some good stories from those days - such as -"In days of yore when telegram traffic was passed between Diplomatic Posts and Hanslope Park CRS using morse code, the night watch made ‘long playing two unit tapes’ so they could

About the same period, Moscow was considered to be the busiest Post and demanded that two morse circuits be operated simultaneously to alleviate traffic build up. These circuits which were situated side by side were known as first operator and second operator. One afternoon, the second operator at the Hanslope end lit his pipe and threw, what he thought was an extinguished

HM The Queen’s visit to the FCO, December 1982

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HM The Queen’s visit to the FCO, December 1982

Unclassified Area was dominated by Telex machines and staff will all remember the sheer noise of working there, along with always being up to your knees in tape and paper! F and G arms were constantly on the go sending and receiving telegrams to and from Hanslope Park for the radio posts. Long Player tapes were compiled for the larger posts ready for when they came in at the beginning of their working day. The top end of the Comcen housed the Classified Telex systems (Alvis) which was also very noisy (T100s and T1000s) and constantly busy – and the pain of sticking hundreds of little pins into holes to make up the cypher ‘boxes’ will last in our memories forever.

match, into the wastepaper bin containing carbon paper, and it caught fire. The Hanslope first operator spotted this and sent a ditty to the first operator Moscow saying "Please ask your second operator to inform my second operator that his trousers are on fire". When this message was passed to the Hanslope second operator a very stunned and surprised young man quickly sprung into action to douse the flames!

The early 1980’s saw the completion of the purpose built Comcen (WH135) with all of the Communications Operations Department functions being brought into the Whitehall Ground floor area. Shortly after the reorganisation, on Wednesday 15 December 1982, HM The Queen visited the FCO and as part of the visit toured the new Comcen and Telegram Distribution areas. We were fortunate that Alan Harney who was present on the day, had retained his copy of the visit itinerary so have been able to add the pertinent pages for your interest. HM The Queen was accompanied by Francis Pym the Foreign Secretary. At this stage, the Message Handling System computer was not completely built – all systems were manual. The

For outgoing telegrams, we had the Telegram Enumerators applying telegram numbers. Some telegrams followed the official draft form and were input to an early Optical Character Reader which also produced the necessary paper tapes.

Some were in blue draft form and had to be typed up to produce a page copy and tape. The Telegram (Distribution) Selectors led by a grade 7 diplomatic officer plus a couple of grade 9s and some Comcen staff were responsible for

21

The first electronic Message Handling System

access through a hatchway. Telegram Copiers later became Crystal Print with a much wider remit for printing than just telegrams. The Boxroom consisted mainly of 3 very long tables on which were assembled racks of Black lockable boxes for each department and senior user. Copies of printed telegrams would be placed in the boxes throughout the day and night - the work never stopped. Three times a day, the boxes would be locked and passed up the internal lift system to the appropriate floors where Porters would wheel them around on trolleys to the appropriate offices. Once we moved over fully to electronic telegrams distribution, the Boxroom became the FCO créche; it can be slightly disconcerting walking past there and listening to the sounds of youngsters at play! Not exactly the sounds visitors to the Office might expect to hear when walking the 'corridors of power'!

Also the early ‘eighties’ saw the putting together of the computer systems (Message Handling System - MHS) that would see FCO communications right through until 2004. During

Craning in Telegram System Computers

applying distributions to telegrams on an ad-hoc basis but following laid down and well practised guidelines.

Telegrams were passed from Comcen to the Boxroom for distribution. The Boxroom had been sited in Durbar Court in Portacabins through the war years and beyond conveniently sited close to the Comcen offices of that time, rooms W7 and W8 and other offices in the old India Office area plus the Locarno Suite. When the Comcen operation moved into its (new) purpose built building during the early 80's, Telegram Distribution Section (TDS) were moved into a new Boxroom in WH112, again close to the Comcen operation. Telegram Copiers were sited in the room next to the Boxroom, with

Distribution Ferranti Computer

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Placing MHS Computers - Alan Ward (Firecrest) in foreground

add-ons to be fairly simple – flexibility in the future would be important to take onboard certain leaps in technology as they occurred. The MHS actually went live during 1986.

1983, Rod Fry, Dave Eaton, Ian Sutton and Betty Edwards commenced training to be Trainers – which involved their going to Manchester to actually get to grips with the kit and produce the necessary workpractices etc. The Ferranti MHS comprised of a suite of computers to handle the reception and onward routing of telegrams linked to another suite of computers (Message Distribution System – MDS and Message Introduction System – MIS) to handle distribution of telegrams in paper copy form around the office and to Other Government Departments (OGDs) – and to process outgoing telegrams prior to forwarding them on for transmission to addressees and for internal distribution. Each suite had the computing power of just 64 megs and although the disk systems were eventually upgraded from the old spinning disk systems to solid state emulation technology, there were few changes necessary to the MHS simply because the software was so well thought out and specific to what it was required to do.

Most importantly, the system was built to allow

Training on using the MHS took place between 1986/7 before it was possible to actually use the equipment. We therefore learned the operational commands by verbal instructions with pieces of paper with a computer screen and various commands on it, as a training aid! It sounds archaic, but it definitely worked since I don’t remember having any problems with the commands once installed in front of a ‘real’ terminal screen.

Those early years of the MHS were quite difficult. The links to post were generally speaking leased lines and data was being transmitted over them at 50 or 75 bauds. In the Message Distribution System (MDS), there were problems with the computer memory allocation tables and it was possible to ‘send’ a message from your screen, go and make a cup of coffee

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The first electronic Message Handling System

Douglas Hurd, Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, visiting Comcen

what had previously been ‘outside’ functions such as Telegram Enumerators and Distribution Selectors. There was room on the MDS system for standard Collective Distribution Lists and within the first couple of years at least 30 were in use. Seven years later, this had grown to about 300.

and it would return to your screen shortly after you returned to your seat! However, like all other problems, this was eventually sorted and after passing the Barrier Examination for distribution, we all gradually became used to our new duties and the systems settled down. The majority of work in the Unclassified Area (UCA) was handled by two small computers called Ferranti Telex Managers which were connected directly to the MHS. Whilst the Classified Telex systems continued to be used, at least it was possible to produce the paper tapes of their queuing traffic automatically from the Message Switch (MS) and input any messages from post.

Outgoing telegrams passed through a standardised procedure whereby they were typed onto a pink OCR form and input into the OCR which relayed the telegram into the Message Introduction System (MIS). It could then be processed quickly with one copy being sent automatically to the MS for transmission to posts and another copy sent to the MDS for

The MHS had actually subsumed a number of

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Pete James and Frank Francis, DSO days

Kong on approximately 3 year tours. DSCs working out of the CRS Hanslope Park went on postings to wherever there was a requirement for a radio link – and this could be large posts like Moscow or the many small posts in for example Africa. All of these communicators were forming important links in the chain required for dissemination of FCO foreign policy worldwide.

Almost all of these postings were recalled as excellent experiences both professionally and socially; personal links were forged with individuals and families of both diplomatic and communications staff, many of which have lasted for the better part of a lifetime.

distribution around the FCO and Whitehall OGDs. The lifeblood of the FCO is information flowing through the telecommunications veins to and from its many posts worldwide. At the heart of it, the MHS, pumping merrily away day and night, seven days a week (including public holidays!). From the mid-eighties, for perhaps the first time, the communications operation had been pulled into a really cohesive and standardised effort enabling the office and wider Whitehall to be properly ‘informed’ whenever they attended meetings with their counterparts either at home or abroad. The now fairly ancient MHS still sits there as of early 2004, still doing the job for which it was designed, efficiently and with very few technical problems. Its continuing presence remains as a tribute to those involved in configuring it to do the work required of it by the FCO – and ensuring the flexibility of being able to upgrade it as new demands were placed on the Comcen. It will be decommissioned once the new eGram system takes over from telegrams as the new 'carrier' of corporate reporting documents - during Autumn 2004.

The prime systems used to attain secure transmission of telegrams around this time involved very wide use of Book Cypher and One-time pads. The mechanics of these systems were somewhat complex as many will remember and not best carried out in the middle of the night! However, staff both at home and abroad became so proficient that they found themselves actually remembering many of the book groups in common usage. The problems tended to come with digits becoming transposed during the encryption process - leaving the decipherers to figure out what may have occurred in the original process so they could achieve a decrypt! Great fun! Other systems in use were the early machines, Alvis, Noreen and Rockex/Eric - then Topic, used mainly in the off-line mode.

During the sixties, TCO specialist communicators (then known as Cypher Officers), apart from working in the Comcen environment, were eligible to take up certain postings abroad such as UKREP EC Brussels, NATO Brussels, Paris, Bonn, Washington, New York and Hong

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The move to electronic distribution

This is probably a good time to fit in some 'memories' from the other side of the desk provided by John Rice, Head of Personnel Security (SSU):

Territory) came into the office and asked if I could zip up her dress, which did not have a lot underneath. It fair ruined the mental arithmatic!

Earlier in this booklet, Denis Glassett mentions installing and training staff in Doha on Noreen. I was ChargĂŠ in 1991 during the first Gulf war and probably the last one to use the machine Denis installed. Our Topic broke down with all of the flash traffic and the back-up was Noreen. The Grade 10 hadn't got a clue and I was the only one in the mission who could get the thing working (20 years after the Cypher School training). I persevered for two telegrams and that was it. Two months later the TMO dismantled the machine and after stripping out some gears and bearings, I dumped the chassis way out in the Gulf from my little Mirror sailing dinghy. I never did get to use the 4 pound hammer in the

"John Emerson was certainly a stalwart of the early Cypher school. He was my best man at our wedding in the Caribbean. Us Grade 10s certainly remember the infamous Pat Leslie (Head of Cypher Training School). We feared her and it would be made very clear to us if we were a minute late or talked in class. However, looking back her schoolmarm tactics did help us to remember the dreaded one time pad.

I remember 10 years on from my book training my last attempt at book cypher was in the Caribbean trying to remember whether to add or subtract when the Governor's wife (of the

Telegram Distribution Section, John Needham

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DSO at work, John Crossland

major improvements in line charges as the cost to Comcen was only for a short ‘burst’ two or three times a day instead of the charge for a leased line on a 24 hours basis.

destruction kit. Now that could make another story of how many did get to use the destruction kit!

Whilst we're dealing with 'memories', some things you can never forget. Kathleen Wain (SSU) tells me that after spending years of winding Murray code tape round her little finger and thumb, her sewing box is full of ribbons and thread - all folded in the recommended way for telegram tapes!

Other major changes followed shortly after as the Comcen moved to distribution of telegrams by electronic means. The first, early efforts towards electronic telegram distribution were in 1992 led

by Johnny Crossland involved the use of DiskFax. It was fairly cumbersome, involving sending a department's telegrams to them via telephone, uploaded from a floppy disk – but it worked, and enabled them to upload them into their Secure Unix systems for internal distribution and filing etc. While this was going on, the early Secure Office Administration systems (SOAP) were being upgraded by the introduction of Aramis and a new telegram distribution media initially called Secure Unix Distribution System (SUDS) – later changed to SWIFT, which doesn’t stand for anything particular at all other than perhaps an aspiration!

Small changes were made from time to time to upgrade the Comcen Message Handling systems but perhaps the most significant change of all involved the way in which the Comcen contacted posts to carry out their scheduled contacts. Prior to the first Gulf war, the limitation had been set by the equipment in use – 50 or 75 bauds. Work had however been underway to develop an improved interface for post, the MK1A workstation, which would replace telex machines and allow telegrams to be sent much faster, at 1200 bauds per minute (or later, at twice this speed for certain posts). This equipment was hurried into certain embassies abroad to facilitate passing the large amounts of telegram traffic that we knew would be generated by what was seen as the inevitable (first) Gulf War, now looming very close on the horizon. It functioned extremely well and was an obvious improvement that could be provided to all major posts – and a rollout quickly got under way. This also brought

SWIFT completely revolutionised telegram distribution. Telegrams were now being delivered direct to departments in accordance with the distribution appended by the MDS staff as they were processed, i.e. all day and all night. It was no longer necessary to wait for paper copies to appear distributed three times a day (except for Advance copies of urgent telegrams). Gradually,

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Good times, bad times

also had to endure some dark times, and since it also is part of our history, they should be mentioned. Comcen has always had some excellent managers – some super whizzkids and some real characters. Comcen also from time to time had to put up with some very unfortunate management decisions from senior staff (outside of the Comcen) – some situations were very badly handled. In 1993 for instance, a decision was made to close one of the Comcens, either London or Hanslope Park. Eventually, it was decided that Hanslope Park would get the chop and the radio operation running at Hanslope Park CRS would cease as of then, with all traffic being routed over PSTN/DEL lines. Granted this was before IiP etc, but staff were not consulted or warned – they were simply told on a certain day that the CRS would close and staff would either transfer to London or take other jobs at Hanslope Park. Some staff only received 24 hours notice to change to working in London and remain somewhat bitter to this day for the bad

paper copies disappeared from the Boxroom.

OGDs took on SWIFT and copied our technology of connecting their node direct to their own OA system. To get a full idea of the effect this had, we should remember that the Comcen process about a thousand telegrams a day. The (conservative) average distribution of each telegram was to about fifteen departments.

The (conservative) average number of paper copies to each department was about 6. Boxroom were therefore going through a minimum of 90,000 sheets of paper a day – not a forest, but definitely a respectable sized spinney! Paper copies are now reduced to just a few a day, to the European Union embassies in London and a couple of senior members of staff who receive paper copies of overnight traffic so they can start work without having to wait until their PA’s arrive.

Along with the ‘good’ times in the working environment, over the years, Comcen staff have

Part of the Comcen Main Traffic Hall

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Telegram Distribution Section, Joan Fenn supervising

Whilst we have looked at what has been happening in London and Hanslope Park, it is worth noting that since the inception of the Cypher and Signals Branch, Comcen staff have also been active in assisting managing situations that have arisen abroad. The earliest we can recall is Yom Kippur in 1967 where communications staff backed up a number of missions in the area involved as the work rate rose through the roof. I understand some were also employed in other tasks such as aircraft spotting and reporting their activities. More lately, we have supplied rapid deployment staff and portable equipment to assist Kabul (Dave Harvey), to Baghdad at the end of the second Gulf war (Dave Harvey) and to Istanbul following the bombing of the Consulate (Glenn Smith relieved by Stuart McCarthy). We have also on numerous occasions supported other missions around the world suffering with Comms/Registry staff droughts and no floater cover available.

way they were treated. Later on, as work practices drastically changed the Registry set up in Washington, staff were told they would be short toured even though many had made certain arrangements to cover the length of their tour such as letting their homes. Fortunately, Roger French, Counsellor Management arrived on the scene at this time and worked hard to change the ruling into something more pragmatic. Roger was later to become the Head of Information Management Group based at Hanslope Park – the umbrella sheltering the Comcen at that time – a really super guy, aware of the particular needs of the specialist staff and a constant crusader on Comcen’s behalf. He is remembered with affection. From about 1995, Comcen staff have effectively been living under the sword of Damocles. There has always been an awareness that technological changes in IT would make at least some parts of Comcen work redundant.

Some staff read the writing on the wall – and moved into other work or joined other departments – sometimes outside of the Civil Service. Those who stayed have always had a somewhat worried eye on the future.

The latest major changes to the way Comcen do business revolve around the new officewide Confidential Firecrest IT systems. Firecrest in

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eGrams

feel of receiving their telegrams via email systems and having the flexibility of being able to process them much more easily and quickly.

one form or another is already in almost every post abroad, including the smaller Consulates.

The gradual but inexorable shift to Confidential email appeared likely to cause a (premature) cutback of Comcen staff when Comcen were told by senior management that staff would be drastically cut in October 2000 as Firecrest and the Global Telecommunications Project (GTP) took over the work currently carried out by telegrams (this was locally nicknamed ‘Red October’). This was an attempt to reduce Comcen staffing numbers from 98 to about 31 to help pay for GTP. In fact, Confidential Firecrest was not ready to take over from telegrams at that point - and this evolution could not take place until the arrival of eGrams during October 2004.

However, the incident caused a great deal of concern to Comcen staff at the time leaving them even further unsettled with regard to their future employment.

In May 2003, following the need for ITSU to severely limit the scope of 'Focus' the Knowledge Management programme, Comcen were tasked with implementing eGrams to the office. Chris Webb, who retired from the Head of Comcen position in July 2003, volunteered to stay on as a ‘fee paid’ officer to act as Project Manager for Comcen change through the migration to eGrams. The software experts preparing the hardware and writing the software are Ciber UK some of whose staff, particularly Dave Atkinson and Mike Keehan have been providing us with computer based tools for over a decade now and are well tried and trusted - and all of their work is of an excellent standard. It is expected that the migration from telegrams to eGrams will take place during October 2004.

There has been slippage regarding migration dates but this has been to take on suggested improvements from staff both at home and abroad in response to various presentations and display of eGrams information about the product.

It was considered more important that the product should be in the best possible shape for the users rather than rushed out to meet a particular date and not be perhaps quite ready for use.

Nevertheless, improvements continued apace with regard to further automation enabling steady reductions in staff. One of these was called 'eTelegrams' where instead of receiving their telegrams via a scheduled contact, posts already on Confidential Firecrest were able to receive their telegrams via Firecrest. This involved Ciber UK putting in place various gateways that took telegrams direct from posts' queues on the Message Switch and passed them to the Firecrest servers for delivery in email form. Malcolm Daniels, Paul Brailsford and Pete Weedon (Comcen Operations Manager) worked doggedly away for over a year until to date, all bar six posts are currently enjoying the fruits of their labour. This process also took away a great deal of the manual intervention required in the Comcen. ETelegrams can be considered a direct forerunner of eGrams, giving posts at least the

eGrams will be produced through an FCO produced Outlook form, complete with FCO logo. They will take over from Telegrams as the corporate reporting document. eGrams will run (in theory) entirely through the Firecrest mail hubs and gsi/x.gsi gateways. Telegram originators at home and abroad will create their own address section, including the Collective

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31

Supporting acts

rewards were quickly plain: a more user friendly telegram medium, faster, enhanced viewing and printing, internal distribution via Summariser and ability to use a wide range of attachments. Initial feedback has been excellent. Thanks are due to all involved - some of whom were: Julia Edwards (AD(E)), Matthew Lodge, Nicola Friel, Esther and Claire from PUS's Private Office and of course Sir Michael Jay who was keen for his Office to be involved from the very beginning - and all of those in Accra who became the first Post to send and receive eGrams.

Address Groups we currently use in the Comcen, their text, and then apply an FCO distribution, either ad-hoc or by choosing one of the 300+ Collective Distribution Lists from the email Global Address List (GAL). This will enable a system much closer to desk-to-desk than has been achieved before. Connections to OGDs as addressees or as distribution recipients will be made where possible through the Gsi and x.Gsi inter-governmental IT links.

This should leave less traffic for the Comcen to manually process. The eGrams gateways and other related equipments are sited in the Comcen as part of the Comcen infrastructure rather than an IT operation - so it will be essentially business as before but under a different name. The future from October 2004 will certainly be different, but we hope will be just as interesting as the past proved to be. Preparing for the migration to eGrams has been a huge task, almost as big as the move to our first MHS Ferranti computer suite 20 years ago. Chris Webb, on retiring from the Head of Comcen post, took on the mantle of Project Manager for eGrams (preferring to retire gradually) and as ever, has done an excellent job.

All of Comcen management have been involved to a high degree and helped the project through to the present stage of readiness. IT Strategy Unit have led on the project as it is their policy area and Jill Bennett and Anne McCarthy (ITSU) have done a super job of polishing the project, advertising it and presenting the package to the Office. Well done both of you.

The coming migration to eGrams has caused some other problems for the Comcen. The Cabinet Office Comcen has been manned by FCO staff for at least the last 40 years; they are the same grade as FCO Comcen staff and part of the same cadre. Primarily, because of staffing issues, it was seen as necessary that all Comcen staff be drawn back into the FCO Comcen. FCO Comcen based staff are generally proving reluctant to work in the Cabinet Office environment so filling vacancies by volunteers is proving impossible. Also, the drawback of staff would ensure that any staffing decisions made as a result of the migration to eGrams affected them all. It is expected that the migration will create some redundancies in the workplace. At this time (mid July 2004), it is hoped that the FCO Comcen can take on the Cabinet Office and No 10 work as a wider markets initiative.

A second blow to be faced (for those who live south of the river) is the probability that as a casualty of the Lyons' Review, the (majority of the) Comcen operation will move site from London to Hanslope Park during 2007, continuing to serve all of its customers from there. With the current level of secure electronic linkages, this all seems eminently possible. We

Stop Press on eGrams - we have just completed the eGrams Pilot. The brave souls who volunteered for this were AD(E), the PUS's Private Office and Accra. All involved really applied themselves to finding the best way to make use of the new technology - and the

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Some of the COMCEN team

mention of Bletchley Park, whose staff played such a huge part during WWII deciphering the enemies signals, thus enabling the British government War Cabinet to anticipate much of the German's movements and wider war plans.

Their work would have helped shift the odds on winning to the allies and it is believed reduced the duration of the war. To accomplish this, Bletchley Park produced the very first computer, Colossus. It is a nice touch that this computer has been rebuilt for the D-Day celebrations of 2004.

The MK2 version was completed in 1944 and was capable of reading a message (in telegraphic tape format) at 5,000 characters per second and carrying out 100 Boolean calculations at any one time. It was so powerful it would take current computers the same amount of time to break codes. The machines were so successful that by the end of the war, 63 million characters of German messages had been decrypted. After the war, most of the machines were scrapped to protect their sophisticated secrets. However, this was the very start of the links between

appreciate that those members of staff who live south of the Thames will have some difficult decisions to make during the course of 2004-07 regarding their futures.

Throughout this article, thus far, little mention has been made of the Technicians who have supported all of the various communications equipments used in the Comcen, and indeed as TMOs at posts abroad. I know that everyone who has come into contact with them would agree that they are a very highly-motivated and extremely competent bunch of guys. Seldom happy to just maintain a piece of equipment, generally they love to 'tinker' - to explore exactly how things work - to see if they can improve the performance. They have for many years, and continue to, support the Message Handling operation both at home and abroad in exemplary fashion. Their expertise continues to expand with each new product that arrives in the workplace.

They have earned both our respect and thanks.

Before closing, perhaps we should provide a

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Conclusion

Last three Heads - Bill Dunningham, Alf Shackleford and Chris Webb

So, that is where we rest today, during the Summer of 2004. Some of the future is just beginning to appear in a hazy fashion in the crystal ball - but much of it still remains shrouded in mystery and will only be revealed a bit at a time, like peeling an onion skin - one shred at a time. Many big decisions cannot be made until more of the future has been revealed to us - much of the future of the Comcen will be shaped as we move along. We have seen many changes in the past - and know there are many more to come in the future as we update and perhaps carry out some changes of direction. It will be a fascinating process in many ways, not just from a technological point of view but also, now that Comcen is part of FCO Services, to observe how the need for good commercial business practices affects the development of messaging within the FCO and around Whitehall and environs. More and more, we are being constrained in how we 'tool up' and work by the

communications equipments, cyphers - and computers. Developing on from that start we now have systems that enable us to communicate freely and securely between all of our posts abroad and the FCO buildings at home.

As computer technology improved and improved, and Bill Gates arrived on the scene with his bag of goodies, the Microsoft products that we are now running on Firecrest have produced some strange results for some of us during the drafting process. Tim Jones of ITSU, sent me a copy of a telegram addressed to All Diplomatic Posts. The originator had unfortunately not checked the results of the Spellcheck of his telegram which changed 'Chechenya to TechNet' and even more hilariously, 'MFA to Mafiosi'. The context of the paragraph was with regard to Human Rights work! That particular paragraph must have produced some puzzled faces on being read around the bazaars.

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amount of funding available, and the need to compromise in all areas to keep down costs.

better group of guys to work with would be hard to find.

Looking back, particularly over the last 20 years, has been a fascinating process for me personally, noting the huge steps 'communications' has taken over a relatively very short time. This has been possible primarily because of the high calibre of technical staff we have had and still have working in the background to identify the business need and translate it into 'pieces of kit'.

Currently, these boffins now mostly reside in ICT Group and People and Best Practice at Hanslope Park. They will all know who they are so I will just mention a couple of names: Roger Castle-Smith, Dave Smith, Peter Martin, for IT Pat Cullen, Malcolm Daniels and many others.

They must have a great sense of pride in their accomplishments over the years towards improving the way the Office communicates.

Without all of the tools they have provided Comcen, perhaps we would all still be labouring away at Book cipher and one-time pad!

Throughout the existence of the Comcen, we have been very ably supported by our own, dedicated Technical Engineers, originally Engineering Services Department (ESD) and currently part of ICT Group - also assisting the IT sections where necessary as their skill set widens and moves more and more towards IT based systems. They made it their business to become extremely familiar with all elements of the Comcen Message Handling Systems so that no matter what problem they were faced with, they would be able to get the computer suites back on line in the shortest possible time. Their dedication and expertise is underlined by the computer time 'on-line' figures over the lifetime of the current message switch (almost 20 years) of 99.999%. This is little short of incredible. We have always valued their support - and friendship. Recent heads of sections have been Alf Shackleford (who went on to become Head of Comcen), Ken Jacobs, Jeff Dyson and currently Barry Weaver (ex-TCO who went back to school to learn about the letters I and T).

Many other changes to the Comcen infrastructure have been identified by those who actually work there and understand the business best.

Throughout the Comcen's existence, we have always sought to polish and improve either through updating systems or work practices.

Ideas have been suggested and taken up. The work force are Specialists, focused on what they do and fully understanding the very wide range of procedures and skills necessary to complete their tasks both efficiently and with the absolute security necessary when handling such sensitive material. Like all departments, we are fully furnished with our own complement of eccentrics (thank goodness!) - they have always helped to make the Comcen such an interesting, at times absorbing place in which to work. A

Well, I feel the reader has now been brought as up to date as can be accomplished at this time. I hope the baton will be picked up by someone else at a future date, to bring the record once more up to date - to record just how the Comcen continued to evolve after the Summer of 2004.

The past has been an interesting place to work and I'm sure the future offers its own brand of interest, in a different way. I hope it gets written down by somebody with a feeling for the history of the branch and Office!

I am conscious that in the past, we have probably not 'sold' ourselves as well as we could have

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and less 'people'. My hope is that we manage to get the balance right so that we can still support our posts when they need our help and maintain a good level of friendly interaction along with an efficient and forward looking operation. We have always had a good rapport with the 'sharp end' and hope this will continue well into the future.

done. Part of the reason for this is that because of the sensitive and often very highly classified material we handle, the whole communications organisation has always resided in out-of-theway, secret recesses inaccessible to everybody else. Nowadays, we are much more visible and positively encourage other members of staff to know and understand more about us and what we do as an organisation. As part of our work we have always done our best to make the various links with posts abroad and departments at home work as efficiently as possible and this often takes the form of 'talking' new staff abroad through the processes needed to make contact with Comcen and send and receive traffic. I well remember one young lady returning from a post abroad who came to see me because as she put it, "I was so impressed with the help and support given me by Comcen staff - particularly when things got really tricky - that I just had to come and say 'thank you' ". We often receive similar notes and messages of thanks - and whilst we inform Comcen staff, we have never quite got the hang of telling everyone else - blowing our own bugle! With the coming changes and financial squeezes there will be more automation

In finishing, current Comcen management, Dave Harvey, Dave Chalke, Pete Weedon, Ailsa Miller and the two Custodians: Shahida Hafizi and Paul McIlroy, not to mention our previous Head of Comcen, Chris Webb (in his Consultancy capacity of project manager for the eGrams project) and myself, would like to send our very best wishes to all members of Cypher and Signal Branch both serving, on SUPL and retired – and a special thought for some very special people, among them Harry Ashton, Derek Hardy, Pete James and Ron Froud, who have passed on over the last few years. You have all provided a ‘part of a very rich and complex fabric’.

For completeness, the very first 'live' eGram is also attached. This is numbered 80/04 but the first 79 were only test data.

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