Calder Walton - Empire of Secrets - British Intelligence, the Cold War and the Twilight of Empire

This is the first book to draw on that secret archive. At the time of writing, only the first wave of records has been released to the public, but more are to follow. This book is therefore necessarily the first word, not the final word, on the secrets contained at Hanslope Park. Even though only the first tranche of these records, amounting to about 1,200 files, is available at the time of writing, they still reveal a number of previously unknown horrific stories. They show that the ‘elimination of ranking terrorists’ was a repeated theme in secret monthly reports circulated by the director of intelligence in British-controlled Malaya in the 1950s, suggesting that Britain effectively operated a shoot-to-kill policy there. They also show that successive British governments hoodwinked Parliament and the public over the decision to give the US a military base on the small island in the Indian Ocean, Diego Garcia, and that in order to pave the way (literally) for this, Britain forcibly removed islanders from their homes. This sad story has a resonance closer to our own times: the same base on Diego Garcia has apparently been used as a transfer site by the US as part of its policy of ‘extraordinary rendition’ in the so-called ‘war on terror’.

As well as adding a new dimension to our understanding of both Britain’s last days of empire and the Cold War, this book reveals clear – and often alarming – parallels with the world today. Among other matters, it reveals how Western governments have both used and abused intelligence; it describes the practical limitations that were faced by under-resourced intelligence services, as well as the fine line that existed between safeguarding security and upholding civil liberties, a line that in some instances was crossed; it reveals a number of dramatic, unpublicised spy scandals; it shows that just over half a century ago the British government conspired with its allies to bring about ‘regime change’ in the Middle East, and ‘sexed up’ intelligence reports in order to do so; it demonstrates the difficulty of tracking down terrorist cells that are determined to cause death and destruction; and the central role that intelligence played in combating brutal guerrilla insurgencies. It also offers a new history of ‘rendition’, revealing that during the Second World War, German agents were captured in various parts of the British empire and then transported to top-secret interrogation facilities in Britain, despite MI5’s recognition of the dubious legality of doing so. It provides a haunting testimony to the fact that, in several post-war colonial ‘Emergencies’, British soldiers tortured detainees during interrogations – despite the belief of British intelligence that doing so was counter-productive and would not produce reliable intelligence. A central theme of this book is that a repetition of such catastrophic failures can only be avoided if we understand those that occurred previously; or as Winston Churchill put it, in order to understand the present, let alone the future, we must first look back at the past.

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