From World War to Cold War: the records of the FO Permanent Under-Secretary’s Department, 1939-51

now? As Bridges pointed out in a letter of 13 February 1947 to Sir Orme Sargent, FO Permanent Under-Secretary, it was essential that any plan be agreed by the Prime Minister.10 In short, India presented the kind of problem where flexibility was essential but hard to achieve. Given the need to get something agreed before Indian independence, bureaucratic compromise (some would call it fudge) came to the rescue. Guy Liddell, Deputy Director General of MI5, provided some creative wording: ‘It is impossible to foresee what the state of our relations with India is likely to be in June 1948, and the present arrangements and division of functions between the Security Service and SIS have, therefore, been reached without prejudice to any possible modification of the existing directive which may be thought necessary in the meantime.’ The following month, on a visit to India, Liddell secured the Nehru government’s agreement to the stationing of an SLO in New Delhi after independence.11 Attlee, though rather a stickler for detail in matters of jurisdiction and with a particular interest in India, seems to have concurred in these arrangements. Possibly this was due to the skill of Bridges, who admitted to Sargent that he had not argued the case to the Prime Minister in detail, but had rather presented the proposals ‘as something which the Prime Minister will accept as right’.12 Trouble arose, however, when in March 1947 the SIS Chief put forward the name of his candidate to serve in Delhi, a former officer in the Indian Police. The British High Commissioner, Sir Terence Shone, objected to the appointment of someone who was already well-known in India for his intelligence connections, making it impossible, in Shone’s view, for him to carry out credibly a mainstream diplomatic role as cover. The man in question did not help by being very indiscreet in making his arrangements for travel and accommodation (demanding, among other things, an American car, two airconditioning units for his bungalow and lodging for two English female secretaries).

However, despite Shone’s protest and representations from the FO in London, Menzies insisted that his officer was the only possible candidate and would be able ‘to work in India without detection’: he would, the SIS Chief said, ‘confine his activities . . . entirely to handling first-class, trustworthy, British head agents’.13 In retrospect, it seems extraordinary that Menzies persisted with a plan so unwelcome to the senior British diplomat on the spot, who eventually capitulated somewhat grimly with the comment that if it all went wrong, no one could say he had 69