Confronting the Colonies (16 page)

Overall, the JIC's weekly output, influenced by Colonial Office assessments regarding internal threats, was broadly accurate. By 1956, the committee clarified that there was no united front between communists and nationalists and that AKEL was not a particular threat as it had been ‘preoccupied with the problem of playing an appropriate role in the Enosis campaign led by Right-wing nationalists without sacrificing its own principles'.
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By April 1958, discussion of AKEL was relegated behind longer appreciations of EOKA and Turkish resistance. The committee had by this time dismissed AKEL, concluding that ‘they are not believed to be equipped to conduct a terrorist campaign on the lines of EOKA'.
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The role and purpose of strategic intelligence in such weekly reporting is interesting and not immediately obvious. As a body which sat in London far removed from operational and tactical developments in the theatre, it is important to ask what can be gained from regular updates issued under the JIC banner. This is especially the case when the central intelligence assessment machinery added little itself to local appreciations. Some context on the weekly product is, however, first necessary.

In 1955 the weekly summaries of current intelligence did not adequately cover the colonies. Colonial officials bypassed the Heads of Sections
meetings and so imperial security was covered patchily at best. Indeed, by October 1955 Patrick Dean was arguing for important colonial developments to be included.
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This initial neglect seems not to have been a conscious decision, but rather because the reviews were an evolution from the previous JIC ‘Review of the Situation Round the Soviet and Satellite Perimeter' which began in 1951. Weekly summaries were replaced in June 1956 with two new weekly products: the ‘Weekly Review of Current Intelligence' (WRCI) or Grey Book, and the ‘Weekly Survey of Intelligence' (WSI) or Red Book, compiled by the Heads of Sections and issued by the JIC. As part of this development, the Colonial Office reluctantly agreed to work with the Heads of Sections, but refused full-time permanent membership. This meant that internal issues were now adequately considered, but that external matters not obviously or immediately relevant to the colonial sphere (such as events in Egypt or Greece) were overlooked.

Both weekly products reviewed developments of the past week. They aimed to produce a document giving an ‘intelligence evaluation of important information received and trends revealed', thus keeping ‘other interested parties abreast of current intelligence'. The Red Book was more highly classified than its counterpart, with the Grey Book having a far wider circulation. The former was issued to an exclusive clientele in London, including the private secretaries to the minister of defence and prime minister, whilst the latter catered ‘for the broad mass of officials' in London and overseas.
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The level of joint intelligence organisation input into the actual information disseminated is important. It reveals a number of instructive issues: firstly, the purpose of current intelligence at the strategic level; secondly, the nature of the intelligence assessment process; thirdly, the amount of integration between the JIC and its constituent departments; and fourthly, the impact this all had on the intelligence product issued. JIC weekly output drew heavily on weekly reports sent from local officials in Cyprus to the Colonial Office. These reports included detailed updates, analysis, appreciation and forecasts and were then processed and summarised by departments ready for the JIC weekly review.
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Consequently, there exists ample evidence of information from weekly updates being repeated almost verbatim in the following Grey Book. To give just one example: a weekly report from Cyprus stated in September 1956 that ‘grenades have been used more extensively during
the past week than for some considerable time'. It then provided a detailed discussion on grenade use including a description of the eighteen incidents that week. The Colonial Office received this report, summarised it and handed it to the Heads of Sections for inclusion in the weekly Grey Book. As a result, the version issued by the JIC the following week lacked any of the detail contained in the original, but consisted only of the exact phrase quoted above along with a one-line summary of the rest of the original paragraph.
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This pattern is striking. It was repeated regularly, with many JIC threat assessments of violence patterns coming directly from the most recent weekly report from Cyprus. The central intelligence machinery added surprisingly little, apart from an occasional shift in emphasis or tone.

Inserting local updates verbatim worked well regarding assessments of the internal situation. They required minimal interdepartmental assessment and cross-analysis (which was just as well given the lack of Colonial Office integration). Consequently, JIC weekly output reflected local thinking more than the broader and more detailed intelligence reports (which had gone through the interdepartmental assessment process) could manage.

What then was the point of the JIC and its strategic current intelligence? The central intelligence machinery in Whitehall drew on departmental representatives and contacts to collate, summarise and distribute information to consumers in London and beyond. The Grey Book was a useful vehicle for this, particularly once colonial security was included. However, the Grey Book's utility was only relevant to internal security and was limited when discussing the impact of external events on colonial security, especially when relevance may not have been immediately apparent. It was relatively straightforward for the Colonial Office to insert an update on Cyprus into the JIC's weekly output, yet lack of full colonial integration into the joint intelligence organisation—in the form of full-time representation at Heads of Sections meetings—rendered interdepartmental discussion of broader regional developments more problematic. It created tension between the Colonial Office and the JIC.
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This goes some way to explaining why, on internal threats at least, JIC weekly reports highlighted EOKA over AKEL. Furthermore, it raises important questions about levels of integration in all source intelligence assessment and the impact this can have on the balance of conclusions in potentially favouring one department or viewpoint.

Disseminated as part of the Grey Book, the updates on Cyprus (and other colonies) formed part of a broader and coordinated intelligence output. They added value to the updates from the theatre despite contributing little extra information. The format allowed a range of consumers to keep up to date with global events easily and efficiently. It allowed consumers to consider broader trends across time and subject. Moreover, assessment and dissemination through the JIC machinery served as a useful interdepartmental point of reference ensuring that the various players approached the issue from as similar a foundation as possible and reduced duplication.

In February 1958, nearly three years into the conflict, the JIC issued a thoroughly comprehensive assessment of insurgent capabilities and intentions. Shortly after his arrival in office, the new governor, Hugh Foot, feared a recrudescence of terrorist activities. In response, Patrick Dean commissioned the Colonial Office to conduct, on behalf of the JIC, an appraisal of the ‘trouble sources' in Cyprus. This was to include the relative strength of EOKA, TMT (the Turkish resistance organisation) and the communists, as well as an assessment of inter-communal violence.
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That this report formed the first comprehensive JIC assessment of the situation demonstrates the impact of the committee's transition into the Cabinet Office. In distancing the committee from military conceptualisations, the transition subsequently broadened its agenda and improved JIC relations with the Colonial Office, although it should be noted that relations still fell short of an integrated drafting process.

Meanwhile, the intelligence assessment's impressive level of depth perhaps reflects the improving local intelligence organisation. Specificity was now possible. In fact, according to Dimitrakis ‘since mid-1956 British intelligence had had very good information about the Greek-Cypriot group, covering critical anti-guerrilla tasks and EOKA's communications networks, concealment practices and financing'.
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As such, the JIC were able to offer a detailed assessment of EOKA, including its ideology, control, capabilities and intentions. On the latter point, however, intelligence prematurely concluded that EOKA was ‘moving against the resumption of all out violence'. Although it opined that the prospect of British withdrawal had brought instability to the surface, the JIC did not predict the increase in tension witnessed a few months later.
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As the conflict persisted into late 1958 and early 1959, the JIC became aware of ameliorative developments and successfully predicted the end of the violence. The important caveat here, however, is that such a prediction came so late on as to be of little use to policymakers. Indeed, Alan Lennox-Boyd was taken by surprise at the decline in violence, revealing shortfalls in intelligence.
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Prospects for peace in Cyprus improved when, in early 1959, Greece and Turkey began to work together over a settlement. Shortly afterwards an SIS representative on the JIC accurately informed his colleagues that, based on reports from Athens, ‘there appeared to be a degree of cautious optimism regarding the possibility of a Cyprus settlement'.
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This proved accurate: Greco-Turkish discussions in Zurich in early February 1959 moved further towards a settlement, before tripartite talks in London in mid-February culminated in the Lancaster House Agreement.
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The agreement was swiftly followed by a JIC assessment which argued that ‘there will be a general acceptance of the results of the London conference by the Greek Cypriots, including both Grivas and the left wing [and that] the Turkish community will abide by the decision of the Turkish Government and their leaders'.
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Although the JIC later feared a rise in ‘extreme militant nationalism' amongst the youth,
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the February assessment was broadly accurate. Violence wound down by March 1959 and Cyprus achieved independence in 1960.

External pressures frequently buffeted colonial policy. Cyprus proved no exception and the JIC was quick to latch on to the impact of international developments. Demonstrating similarities with intelligence assessments of events in Malaya, Cyprus was conceptualised within a broader context as an international rather than colonial dispute. Aware that events rarely occur in isolation, Harold Macmillan, then prime minister, often tried to frame the issue in complex international terms, and stressed that Cyprus was ‘not a colonial problem but a great international issue'.
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This inevitably created the usual tension in Whitehall, with territorial Colonial Office officials predictably reluctant to allow insurgencies to become distorted by international politics. Moreover, Lennox-Boyd had to defer to the view of the foreign secretary and the prime minister in a climate in which the ‘conventional bargaining process
between the Government and colonial nationalists had to be subordinated to a broader set of international considerations'.
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Colonial officials loathed playing second fiddle on imperial issues.

Macmillan's international framing of the issue resonated with the JIC agenda. Any JIC value was, however, once again subject to whether intelligence assessments could accurately pick apart the internal and external intricacies. Indicative of the difficulties of achieving interdepartmental consensus in an area in which one department felt it should take the lead, tension soon flared up within the JIC. On the one hand Colonial Office sources were inherently insular, whilst on the other hand, intelligence assessments needed to examine the wider impact of international events on the Cypriot threat, so as to formulate broader foreign and defence policy. As mentioned in the previous section, this dilemma was overcome regarding assessments solely on the internal situation when Colonial Office sources took obvious precedence. By contrast, regarding the bigger international picture, the intelligence process became much more complicated.

When assessing Malaya, the predominance of Cold War thinking across Whitehall engulfed intelligence. The exact same thing happened half a decade later regarding Cyprus. It has already been demonstrated that focus on the Cold War affected warning capabilities, but this continued to impact upon agenda-setting throughout the campaign, particularly until late 1957. Within this context, the JIC recognised that committee members ‘are interested in Communist-inspired disorders wherever they may break out, since these all form part of a larger picture and cannot be considered merely in isolation'. Therefore the JIC was also interested in ‘the external Communist threat to British interests',
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which, as a front line in the Cold War, certainly included the colonies.

When the chiefs of staff came to discuss the Cyprus insurgency in July 1955, they perceived communism to be the principal threat. They believed that AKEL aimed to exploit the
enosis
‘agitation' and had the ‘greater potential power' than their right-wing rivals.
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Similarly, Ministerial Committee on Cyprus directly quoted Templer's report on colonial security (which itself was based heavily on a JIC paper) and argued that ‘the communist menace in Cyprus was at least as great as that of
nationalism'.
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Whilst a legitimate concern, the communist danger was overestimated at the expense of the right-wing nationalists, with whom the real threat lay.

In contrast to the internal assessments, Colonial Office input was marginalised when it came to appreciations of the external threat. Owing to its place within the chiefs of staff structure, the JIC was driven by fears of conventional warfare with the Soviets. Taking a familiar state-centric approach, the JIC considered the possibility of an atomic attack and potential Soviet targets in Cyprus, whilst in late 1956 the committee examined the air threat in the Eastern Mediterranean. Similarly, in early 1957 the JIC argued that in a global war ‘attacks with nuclear weapons are likely by a small number of medium bombers […] on the air base at Akrotiri and possibly the Headquarters at Episkopi'.
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At one point a hapless JIC secretary was summoned before the chiefs to explain himself after the allied commander-in-chief had criticised a JIC report on the air threat to Cyprus for being too optimistic. In response, the committee agreed to send a full report every night to Allied Force Headquarters providing them with up-to-date intelligence.
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This was all going on at the same time as the security situation in Cyprus was rapidly deteriorating.