The Financial Times

Two new articles by Samuel Brittan

Andrew Heavens andrew.heavens@gmail.com

Sat 5/19/12

A real alternative to austerity economics
The Financial Times 11/05/12

The term austerity was introduced into political discourse by Sir Stafford Cripps, a postwar Labour chancellor known as “Austerity Cripps”. He was a moralist rather than an economist; and Winston Churchill is supposed to have said of him: “There but for the grace of God goes God.” Sir Roy Harrod, a Conservative Keynesian, gave a more erudite refutation, titled “Are these hardships really necessary?” Austerity economics is now being increasingly rejected by European public opinion and for once the popular reaction is right.
http://samuelbrittan.us1.list-manage.com/track/click?u=f3d103dd062d8e2eb1704a4f9&id=50373d4465&e=66c71111bc

Free market fairness
The Financial Times 07/05/12

Review of Free Market Fairness by John Tomasi
Tomasi much prefers the libertarian interpretation (of liberalism). But he notes that most of his friends and colleagues are left liberals, who are sceptical of the moral significance of private economic liberty and believe that a central function of government is to provide a wide range of social services … Being a theorist rather than a party manager, he is not content with an opportunistic compromise between the two ideals. He has his own conception, which he sometimes calls “market democracy” and sometimes “free market fairness”. His position is so sympathetic that I was looking forward to hailing his book as the most important of its kind for several decades; but in the end I could not.
http://samuelbrittan.us1.list-manage2.com/track/click?u=f3d103dd062d8e2eb1704a4f9&id=f569d79ebd&e=66c71111bc

Two new articles by Samuel Brittan

The Financial Times

Andrew Heavens andrew.heavens@gmail.com

Sat 5/19/12

The Expansion of international society

edited by Hedley Bull and Adam Watson

The Expansion of international society / edited by Hedley Bull and Adam Watson

Oxford : Clarendon Press,,
479 pages 1985, 1984 English Book

Creator

Bull, Hedley, 1932-1985

Subjects

International relations.; World politics.; International society.

Contents

• European international society and its expansion / Adam Watson
• The military factor in European expansion / Michael Howard
• Europe in the world economy / Patrick O’Brien
• Russia and the European States system / Adam Watson
• Spain and the Indies / Michael Donelan
• British and Russian relations with Asian governments in the nineteenth century / David Gillard
• European states and African political communities / Hedley Bull
• The emergence of a universal international society / Hedley Bull
• New states in the Americas / Adam Watson
• The Ottoman Empire and the European States system / Thomas Naff
• China‘s entry into international society / Gerrit W. Gong
• Japan‘s entry into international society / Hidemi Suganami
• The era of the mandates system and the non-European world / Wm. Roger Louis.
• The revolt against the West / Hedley Bull
• The emergence of the third world / Peter Lyon
• Racial equality / R.J. Vincent
• China and the international order / Coral Bell
• India and the international order : retreat from idealism / Gopal Krishna
• Africa entrapped : between the Protestant ethic and the legacy of Westphalia / Ali Mazrui
• Islam in the international order / James Piscatori
• The Soviet Union and the third world : from anti-imperialism to counter-imperialism / Richard Löwenthal
• France : adjustment to change / Christopher M. Andrew
• A new international disorder / Elie Kedourie
• The expansion of international society : the consequences for the law of nations / Ian Brownlie
• Diplomacy today / Michael Palliser
• The international order in a multicultural world / Adda Bozeman
• Unity and diversity in contemporary world culture / Ronald Dore.

Political Economy Club

The Political Economy Club was founded by James Mill^[1] and a circle of friends in 1821 in London, for the purpose of coming to an agreement on the fundamental principles of political economy. David Ricardo, James Mill, Thomas Malthus (the only one holding an academic post at the time), and Robert Torrens were among the original luminaries.^[2]

In the early 19th century there were no academic societies or professional associations for economists. The Political Economy Club was a way to establish a scientific community, test ideas, and provide peer review for their work.^[3]

Discussions

The participants soon found substantial difficulties in formulating and reaching agreement on their fundamental propositions. Ricardo felt that none of their views was safe from criticism. Reflecting on their theoretical discussions in 1823, Ricardo privately expressed his famous opinion about the “non-existence of any measure of absolute value.”^[4]

Participants

Ricardo, Malthus, James Mill, Torrens, Thomas Tooke, John Stuart Mill, John Ramsey McCulloch, Nassau Senior, John Elliott Cairnes, Henry Fawcett, William Newmarch, Samuel Jones-Loyd, 1st Baron Overstone, William Newmarch, Jane Marcet,^[5] George Ward Norman, William Blake, and Jean-Baptiste Say.

Later: William Stanley Jevons, Thomas Edward Cliffe Leslie, Walter Coulson, Robert Mushet, Henry Parnell , James Pennington, John Horsley Palmer, and Thomas Perronet Thompson. Others were drawn from outside the ranks of economists, including G. G. de Larpent, George John Shaw-Lefevre, John Abel Smith, Henry Warburton, Lord Althorp, William Whitmore, W. B. Baring, Poulett Thomson, Sir Robert Wilmot-Horton, Lord Monteagle, Charles Hay Cameron, J. D. Hume, George Grote, James Morrison, Edwin Chadwick, Sir Robert Giffen, Charles Buller, and Sir William Clay.

Significant elections after 1840 include Robert Lowe, Sir G. C. Lewis, Rowland Hill, Stafford Northcote, George J. Goschen, William Ewart Gladstone, and W. E. Forster.^[6]

Current meetings

Some current members of the society are David Willetts, Peter Jay, Charles Dumas and Tim Congdon. The Club now meets on a monthly basis in the Royal Automobile Club to hear papers presented by members of the club and a discussion over dinner.

References

1. http://cepa.newschool.edu/het/profiles/jamesmill.htm James Mill, 1773-1836

2. Elie Halévy, The Growth of Philosophic Radicalism, tr. Mary Morris. Boston, Beacon Press, 1955, p. 343.

3. http://press.princeton.edu/chapters/s7829.html D. P. O’Brien, The Classical Economists Revisited. Princeton University Press, 2004.

4. Ricardo to Malthus, August 15, 1823. Quoted by Halevy, Ibid., p. 352.

5. http://www2.hmc.edu/~evans/rpas.htm Gary R. Evans, Humanities 2 “Classics of Economic Thought”

6. http://press.princeton.edu/chapters/s7829.html D. P. O’Brien, The Classical Economists Revisited. Princeton University Press, 2004.

Archives

• Political Economy Club papers at the Archives Division of the London School of Economics.

Publications

• J. R. McCulloch, Early English Tracts on Commerce. London: Political Economy Club (1856); Cambridge University Press, 1954.
• Political Economy Club, Revised Report of the Proceedings at the Dinner of 31 May 1876, Held in Celebration of the Hundredth Year of the Publication of the “Wealth of Nations” (London: Longmans, Green, Reader & Dyer (1876).
• Political Economy Club : founded in London, 1821 : minutes of proceedings, 1899–1920, roll of members and questions discussed, 1821-1920 with documents bearing on the history of the club. Macmillan and Co., (1921)

The current book “His Majesty’s Opponent” by Professor Sugata Bose mentions the plot to assassinate Subhas Chandra Bose by the British SOE.

A component of the SOE is Force 136 located in Ceylon who play a key role in the 1957 movie, “Bridge on the River Kwai.” In the movie this commando unit is called Force 316.

His Majesty’s Opponent:

Subhas Chandra Bose and India’s Struggle against Empire

Sugata Bose (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Review

Subhas Chandra Bose was perhaps the most enigmatic of the great Indian leaders fighting for independence in the twentieth century. This wonderful book makes a major contribution to the understanding of the political, social and moral commitments of Netaji, the great leader, as he was called by his contemporaries.
–Amartya Sen, author of The Idea of Justice

Larger than life, more profoundly intriguing than the myths that surround him, Subhas Chandra Bose was India’s greatest ‘lost’ leader. In a remarkable narrative that pairs political passion with historical precision, Sugata Bose has beautifully explored the character and charisma of the man, while providing an elegant and incisive account of one of the most important phases of the struggle for Indian independence.
–Homi K. Bhabha, author of The Location of Culture

This is a definitive biography of Subhas Chandra Bose, written by the person most qualified to do so. It is an epic tale, told in an epic manner.
–Dr. Tim Harper, author of Forgotten Wars: Freedom and Revolution in Southeast Asia

This remarkable book places Subhas Chandra Bose fully in the context of Indian and world history. It should be read by everyone interested in the end of the British Empire.
–Arjun Appadurai, New York University

Product Description

The man whom Indian nationalists perceived as the “George Washington of India” and who was President of the Indian National Congress in 1938–1939 is a legendary figure. Called Netaji (“leader”) by his countrymen, Subhas Chandra Bose struggled all his life to liberate his people from British rule and, in pursuit of that goal, raised and led the Indian National Army against Allied Forces during World War II. His patriotism, as Gandhi asserted, was second to none, but his actions aroused controversy in India and condemnation in the West.

Now, in a definitive biography of the revered Indian nationalist, Sugata Bose deftly explores a charismatic personality whose public and private life encapsulated the contradictions of world history in the first half of the twentieth century. He brilliantly evokes Netaji’s formation in the intellectual milieu of Calcutta and Cambridge, probes his thoughts and relations during years of exile, and analyzes his ascent to the peak of nationalist politics. Amidst riveting accounts of imprisonment and travels, we glimpse the profundity of his struggle: to unite Hindu and Muslim, men and women, and diverse linguistic groups within a single independent Indian nation. Finally, an authoritative account of his untimely death in a plane crash will put to rest rumors about the fate of this “deathless hero.”

This epic of a life larger than its legend is both intimate, based on family archives, and global in significance. His Majesty’s Opponent establishes Bose among the giants of Indian and world history.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 448 pages
• Publisher: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press
• May 1, 2011
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0674047540
• ISBN-13: 978-0674047549

Special Operations Executive

Special Operations Executive Active 22 July 1940 – 15 January 1946

Country United Kingdom

Allegiance Western Allies

Role irregular warfare

Size Approximately 13,000

Nickname The Baker Street Irregulars

Commanders

Notable commanders:

Frank Nelson
Charles Jocelyn Hambro
Colin Gubbins

The Special Operations Executive (SOE) was a World War II organization of the United Kingdom. It was officially formed by Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Minister of Economic Warfare Hugh Dalton on 22 July 1940, to conduct warfare against the Axis powers by means other than direct military engagement. On its formation, it was ordered by Churchill to “set Europe ablaze”. Its mission was to encourage and facilitate espionage and sabotage behind enemy lines and in its early days, to serve as the core of the Auxiliary Units, a British resistance movement which would act in case of a German invasion of Britain.

Being a clandestine organization, few people were openly aware of its existence. To those who were part of it or liaised with it, it was sometimes referred to as “the Baker Street Irregulars“, after the location of its London headquarters. It was also known as “Churchill’s Secret Army” or “The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare”. For security purposes, various branches and sometimes the organization as a whole, were concealed behind names such as the Joint Technical Board or the Inter-Service Research Bureau.

SOE operated in all countries or former countries occupied by or attacked by the Axis forces, except where demarcation lines were agreed with Britain’s principal allies (the Soviet Union and the United States of America). It also made use of neutral territory on occasion, or made plans and preparations in case neutral countries were attacked by the Axis. The organization directly employed or controlled just over 13,000 people, about 3,200 of whom were women.^[1] It is estimated that SOE supported or supplied about 1,000,000 operatives worldwide.

History

Origins

The organization was formed from the merger of three existing secret departments, which had been formed shortly before the outbreak of the Second World War. Immediately after Germany annexed Austria (the Anschluss) in March 1938, the Foreign Office created a propaganda organisation known as Department EH (after Electra House, its headquarters), run by Canadian newspaper magnate Sir Campbell Stuart. Later that month, the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS, also known as MI6) formed a section known as Section D, under Major Lawrence Grand, to investigate the use of sabotage, propaganda and other irregular means to weaken an enemy. In the autumn of the same year, the War Office set up a department, nominally for the purpose of research into guerrilla warfare and known initially as GS (R), headed by Major J. C. Holland. GS (R) was renamed MI R in early 1939.

These three departments worked with few resources until the outbreak of war. There was much overlap between their activities and Section D and EH duplicated much of each others’ work. On the other hand, Section D and MI R shared information. Their heads were both officers of the Royal Engineers and knew each other.^[2] They agreed a rough division of their activities; MI R researched irregular operations which could be undertaken by regular uniformed troops, while Section D dealt with truly undercover work.^[2]

During the early months of the war, Section D was based at the Metropole Hotel in London.^[3] The Section attempted unsuccessfully to sabotage deliveries of vital strategic materials to Germany from neutral countries by mining the Iron Gate on the River Danube.^[4] MI R meanwhile produced pamphlets and technical handbooks for guerrilla leaders. MI R was also involved in the formation of the Independent Companies, autonomous units formed from within second-line Territorial Army divisions which were intended for sabotage and guerrilla operations behind enemy lines and which later developed into the British Commandos; and the Auxiliary Units, stay-behind resistance groups which would act in the event of an Axis invasion of Britain, as seemed possible in the early years of the war.^[5]

Formation

On 13 June 1940, at the instigation of newly-appointed Prime Minister Winston Churchill, Lord Hankey (who held the Cabinet post of Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster) persuaded Section D and MI R that their operations should be coordinated. On 1 July, a Cabinet level meeting arranged the formation of a single sabotage organisation. On 16 July, Hugh Dalton, the Minister of Economic Warfare, was appointed to take political responsibility for the new organisation, which was formally created on 22 July. Dalton used the Irish Republican Army (IRA) during the Irish war of Independence as a model for the organisation.^[6][7][8] One department of MI R, MI R(C), which was involved in the development of weapons for irregular warfare, was not integrated into the SOE but became an independent body codenamed MD1. (It was nicknamed “Churchill’s Toyshop” from the Prime Minister’s close interest in it and his enthusiastic support.) Majors Grand and Holland both returned to service in the regular army and Campbell Stuart left the organisation.

Leadership

The Director of SOE was usually referred to by the initials “CD”. The first Director to be appointed was Sir Frank Nelson, a former head of a trading firm in India, a back bench Conservative Member of Parliament and Consul in Bern.

Dalton was replaced as Minister of Economic Warfare by Lord Selborne in February 1942. Selborne in turn retired Nelson, who had suffered ill health as a result of his hard work, and appointed Sir Charles Hambro, head of the English banking firm Hambro’s to replace him. Hambro had been a close friend of Churchill’s before the war and had won the Military Cross in the First World War. Selborne also transferred Gladwyn Jebb who, as one of Dalton’s senior civil servants had run the Ministry’s day-to-day dealings with SOE, back to the Foreign Office.^[9]

Selborne and Hambro cooperated closely until August 1943, when they fell out over the question of whether SOE should remain a separate body or coordinate its operations with those of the British Army in several theatres of war. Hambro felt that this loss of control would cause a number of problems for SOE in the future. At the same time, Hambro was found to have failed to pass on vital information to Selborne. He was dismissed as Director, and became head of a raw materials purchasing commission in Washington, D.C., which was involved in the exchange of nuclear information.^[10]

Major General Colin McVean Gubbins, Director of SOE from August 1943

As part of the subsequent closer ties between the Imperial General Staff and SOE, Hambro’s replacement as Director from September 1943 was the former Deputy Director, Major General Colin Gubbins. Gubbins had wide experience of commando and clandestine operations and had played a major part in MI R’s early operations. He also put in practice many of the lessons he learned from the IRA during the Irish war of independence.^[6]

Organization

The organization of SOE continually evolved and changed during the war. Initially, it consisted of three broad departments: SO1, which dealt with propaganda; SO2 (Operations); and SO3 (Research). SO3 was quickly overloaded with paperwork^[11] and was merged into SO2. In August 1941, following quarrels between the Ministry of Economic Warfare and the Ministry of Information over their relative responsibilities, SO1 was removed from SOE and became an independent organization, the Political Warfare Executive.^[12]

Thereafter there was a single, broad “Operations” department which controlled the Sections operating into enemy and sometimes neutral territory, and the selection and training of agents. Operations were controlled by Sections, each assigned to a single country. Some enemy-occupied countries had two or more sections assigned to deal with politically disparate resistance movements. (France had no less than six).

Four departments and some smaller groups were controlled by the Director of Scientific Research, and were concerned with the development or acquisition and production of special equipment.^[13] A few other sections were involved with economic research and administration, although SOE had no central registry or filing system.

The Director of SOE had either a Deputy from the Army, or (once Gubbins became Director) an Army officer as Chief of Staff. The main controlling body of SOE was its Council, consisting of around fifteen heads of departments or sections. About half were from the armed forces (although some were specialists who were only commissioned after the outbreak of war), the rest were various civil servants, lawyers, or business or industrial experts.

Several subsidiary SOE headquarters and stations were set up to manage operations which were too distant for London to control directly. SOE’s operations in the Middle East and Balkans were controlled from a headquarters in Cairo, which was notorious for poor security, infighting and conflicts with other agencies. It finally became known in April 1944 as Special Operations (Mediterranean), or SO(M). A subsidiary headquarters initially known as “Force 133″ was later set up in Bari in Southern Italy under the Cairo headquarters to control operations in the Balkans.^[14] There was also a station near Algiers, established in late 1942 and codenamed “Massingham”, which operated into Southern France.

An SOE station, which was first called the India Mission, and was subsequently known as GS I(k) was set up in India late in 1940. It subsequently moved to Ceylon and became known as Force 136. A Singapore Mission was set up at the same time as the India Mission but was unable to overcome official opposition to its attempts to form resistance movements in Malaya before the Japanese overran Singapore. Force 136 took over its surviving staff and operations.

There was also a branch office in New York, formally titled British Security Coordination, and headed by the Canadian businessman Sir William Stephenson. This branch office, located at Room 3603, 630, Fifth Avenue, Rockefeller Center, coordinated the work of SIS and MI5 with the American Federal Bureau of Investigation and Office of Strategic Services.

Relationships

SOE cooperated fairly well with Combined Operations Headquarters during the middle years of the war, usually on technical matters as SOE’s equipment was readily adopted by commandos and other raiders. This support was lost when Vice Admiral Louis Mountbatten left Combined Operations, though by this time SOE had its own transport and had no need to rely on Combined Operations for resources. On the other hand, the Admiralty objected to SOE developing its own underwater vessels, and the duplication of effort this involved.^[15]

SOE’s relationships with the Foreign Office and with SIS, which the Foreign Office controlled, were usually more difficult. Where SIS preferred placid conditions in which it could gather intelligence and work through influential persons or authorities, SOE promised turbulent conditions and often backed anti-establishment organisations, such as the Communists, in several countries. At one stage, SIS actively hindered SOE’s attempts to infiltrate agents into enemy-occupied France.^[16]

SOE’s activities in enemy-occupied territories also brought it into conflict with the Foreign Office on several occasions, as various governments in exile protested at operations taking place without their knowledge or approval, which sometimes resulted in Axis reprisals against civilian populations. SOE nevertheless generally adhered to the rule, “No bangs without Foreign Office approval.”^[17]

Dissolution

Towards the end of the war, Lord Selborne advocated keeping SOE, or a similar body, in being. He proposed that the organisation could be useful against “the Russian menace” and “the smouldering volcanoes of the Middle East”,^[18] and that it would report to the Ministry of Defence. The Foreign Secretary, Anthony Eden, insisted that his ministry, already responsible for MI6, should control SOE or its successors. Selborne retorted that “To have SOE run by the Foreign Office would be like inviting an abbess to supervise a brothel.”^[18] Churchill took no decision, and after he lost the general election in 1945, the matter was dealt with by the Labour Prime Minister, Clement Attlee.

Selborne told Attlee that SOE still possessed a worldwide network of clandestine radio networks and sympathisers. Attlee replied that he had no wish to own a British Comintern, and closed Selborne’s network down at 48 hours’ notice.^[19] SOE was dissolved officially on 15 January 1946. Most of its personnel reverted to their peacetime occupations (or regular service in the armed forces), but 280 personnel were taken into the “Special Operations Branch” of MI6. Some of these had served as agents in the field, but MI6 was most interested in SOE’s training and research staff.^[20] Sir Stewart Menzies, the head of MI6 (who was generally known simply as “C”) soon decided that a separate branch was unsound, and merged it into the general body of MI6.^[20]

Locations

List of SOE establishments

SOE maintained a large number of training, research and development or administrative centres. It was a joke that “SOE” stood for “Stately ‘omes of England”, after the large number of country houses and estates it requisitioned and used.

After working from temporary offices in Central London, the headquarters of SOE was moved on 31 October 1940 into 64 Baker Street (hence the nickname “the Baker Street Irregulars“). Ultimately, SOE occupied much of the western side of Baker Street.

Another important London base was Aston House, where weapons and tactics research were conducted. However, the main weapons and devices research was carried out by two establishments; The Firs, near Aylesbury in Buckinghamshire, and Station IX at The Frythe, a former hotel outside Welwyn Garden City where, under the cover name of ISRB (Inter Services Research Bureau), SOE developed radios, weapons, explosive devices and booby traps.

Station XV, at the Thatched Barn near Borehamwood, was devoted to camouflage, which usually meant equipping agents with authentic local clothing, equipment. Various sub-stations in London, and Station XIV near Roydon in Essex which specialised in forgery of identity papers, rations books and so on, were also involved in this task.

The initial training centres of the SOE were at country houses such as Wanborough Manor, Guildford. Agents destined to serve in the field underwent commando training at Arisaig in Scotland, where they were taught armed and unarmed combat skills by William E. Fairbairn and Eric A. Sykes, former Inspectors in the Shanghai Municipal Police. They then attended courses in security and “tradecraft” at Group B schools around Beaulieu in Hampshire. Finally, they received specialist training in skills such as demolition techniques or Morse code telegraphy at various country houses in England and parachute training (if necessary) by STS 51 and 51a situated near Altrincham, Cheshire with the assistance of No.1 Parachute Training School RAF,^[21] at RAF Ringway (later Manchester Airport).

A commando training centre similar to Arisaig was later set up at Oshawa, for Canadian members of SOE and members of the American organisation, the Office of Strategic Services.^[22]

Agents

A variety of people from all classes and pre-war occupations served SOE in the field. In most cases, the primary quality required was a deep knowledge of the country in which the agent was to operate, and especially its language, if the agent was to pass as a native of the country. Dual nationality was often a prized attribute. This was particularly so of France. Many of the agents in F Section were of working class origin (some even reputedly from the criminal underworld).

In other cases, especially in the Balkans, a lesser degree of fluency was required as the resistance groups concerned were already in open rebellion and a clandestine existence was unnecessary. A flair for diplomacy combined with a taste for rough soldiering was more necessary. Some regular army officers proved adept as envoys, although others (such as the former diplomat Fitzroy Maclean or the classicist Christopher Woodhouse) were commissioned only during wartime.

Exiled or escaped members of the armed forces of some occupied countries were obvious sources of agents. This was particularly true of Norway and Holland. In other cases (such as Frenchmen owing loyalty to Charles de Gaulle and especially the Poles), the agents’ first loyalty was to their leaders or governments in exile, and they treated SOE only as a means to an end. This could occasionally lead to mistrust and strained relations in Britain.

SOE employed many Canadians; the Canadian government recruited Canadian volunteers for clandestine service to either SOE or MI9.

SOE was prepared to ignore almost any contemporary social convention in its fight against the Axis. It employed known homosexuals,^[23] people with criminal records or bad conduct records in the armed forces, Communists, anti-British nationalists etc. Although some of these might have been considered a security risk, there is practically no known case of an SOE agent wholeheartedly going over to the enemy.

Communications

Most of the resistance networks which SOE formed or liaised with were controlled by radio directly from Britain or one of SOE’s subsidiary headquarters. The main transmitting and receiving stations in Britain were at Grendon Underwood and Poundon, both in Buckinghamshire (and near the SIS-controlled Bletchley Park; the location and topography were suitable for all three sites).^[24] All resistance circuits contained at least one wireless operator, and except for early exploratory missions sent “blind” into enemy-occupied territory, all drops or landings were arranged by radio.

This made SOE highly dependent upon the security of radio transmissions. There were three factors involved in this: the physical qualities and capabilities of the radio sets, the security of the transmission procedures and the provision of proper ciphers.

SOE’s first radios were supplied by SIS. They were large, clumsy and required large amounts of power. SOE acquired a few, much more suitable, sets from the Poles in exile, but eventually designed and manufactured their own, such as the Paraset. Some of these, together with their batteries, weighed only 9 pounds (4.1 kg), and could fit into a small attache case, although larger sets were required to work over ranges greater than about 500 miles (800 km).^[25]

Operating procedures were insecure at first. Operators were forced to transmit verbose messages on fixed frequencies and at fixed times and intervals. This allowed German direction finding teams time to triangulate their positions. After several operators were captured or killed, procedures were made more flexible and secure.^[26] The SOE wireless operators were also known as “The Pianists”.^{[citation needed]}

As with their first radio sets, SOE’s first ciphers were inherited from SIS. Leo Marks, SOE’s chief cryptographer, was responsible for the development of better codes to replace the insecure poem codes. Eventually, SOE settled on single use ciphers, printed on silk. Unlike paper, which would be given away by rustling, silk would not be detected by a casual search if it was concealed in the lining of clothing.

The BBC also played its part in communications with agents or groups in the field. During the war, it broadcast to almost all Axis-occupied countries, and was avidly listened to, even at risk of arrest. The BBC included various “personal messages” in its broadcasts, which could include lines of poetry or apparently nonsensical items. They could be used, for example, to announce the safe arrival of an agent or message in London, or be instructions to carry out operations on a given date.^[27]

In the field, agents could sometimes make use of the postal services, though these were slow, not always reliable and letters were almost certain to be opened and read by the Axis security services. In training, agents were taught to use a variety of easily-available substances to make invisible ink, though most of these could be detected by a cursory examination, or to hide coded messages in apparently innocent letters. The telephone services were even more certain to be intercepted and listened to by the enemy, and could be used only with great care.

The most secure method of communication in the field was by courier. In the earlier part of the war, most women sent as agents in the field were employed as couriers, on the assumption that they would be less likely to be suspected of illicit activities.^[28]

Equipment

SOE was forced by circumstances to develop a wide range of equipment for clandestine use. Among products developed at Station IX were a miniature folding motorbike (the Welbike) for use by parachutists, a silenced pistol (the Welrod) and several miniature submersible craft (the Welman submarine and Sleeping Beauty). A sea trials unit was set up in West Wales at Goodwick, by Fishguard (station IXa) where these craft were tested. In late 1944 craft were dispatched to Australia to the Allied Intelligence Bureau (SRD), for tropical testing.^[29]

Although SOE used some silenced assassination weapons such as the Welrod and the De Lisle carbine, it took the view that weapons issued to resisters should not require extensive training or care. The crude and cheap Sten was a favourite. For issue to large forces such as the Yugoslav Partisans, SOE used captured German or Italian weapons. These were available in large quantities after the surrender of Italy, and the partisans could acquire ammunition for these weapons (and the Sten) from enemy sources. Most agents received training on captured enemy weapons before being sent into enemy-occupied territory. Ordinary SOE agents were also armed with hand guns acquired abroad, such as a variety of US pistols since 1941, and a large quantity of the Spanish Llama .38 ACP in 1944. Even a consignment of 8,000 Ballester-Molina .45 caliber were purchased from Argentina, apparently with the mediation of USA.^[30]

SOE also adhered to the principle that resistance fighters would be handicapped rather than helped by heavy equipment such as mortars or anti-tank guns. These were awkward to transport, almost impossible to conceal and required much training in their use. Later in the war however, when the resistance groups staged open rebellions against enemy occupation, some heavy weapons were dispatched, for example to the Maquis du Vercors.

SOE developed a wide range of explosive devices for sabotage, such as limpet mines, shaped charges and time fuses. These were later also used by commando units. SOE pioneered the use of plastic explosive. (The term “plastique” comes from SOE packaged plastic explosive originally destined for France but taken to the United States instead.) It was used in everything from car bombs, to exploding rats designed to destroy coal fired boilers.^[31] Other, more subtle sabotage methods included lubricants laced with grinding materials, incendiaries disguised as innocuous objects and so on.

SOE developed crossbows powered by multiple rubber bands to shoot incendiary bolts. There were two types, known as “Big Joe” and “Lil Joe” respectively. They had tubular alloy skeleton “stocks” and were designed to be collapsible for ease of concealment. Some of the other more imaginative devices invented by SOE included exploding pens with enough explosive power to blast a hole in the bearer’s body, guns concealed in pipes, explosive material concealed in coal piles to destroy locomotives and land mines disguised as cow or elephant dung. For specialised operations or use in extreme circumstances, SOE issued small fighting knives which could be concealed in the heel of a hard leather shoe or behind a coat lapel. Given the likely fate of agents captured by the Gestapo, SOE also disguised suicide pills as coat buttons.

Some devices were designed specifically to mark landing strips and dropping zones. Such sites could be marked by an agent on the ground with bonfires or bicycle lamps, but required good visibility, not only for the pilot of an aircraft to spot the ground signals, but also to navigate by landmarks to correct dead reckoning. Many landings or drops were thwarted by poor weather. A device later used by SOE and also by the Allied airborne forces was the Rebecca/Eureka transponding radar, which could allow an aircraft to home in on a point on the ground even in thick weather. However, it was difficult to carry or conceal. SOE developed the S-Phone, which allowed an aircrew or pilot to communicate by voice with the “reception committee”. It was clear enough for voices to be recognisable; a mission could be aborted if there was any doubt of an agent’s identity.^[32]

Transport

With the continent of Europe closed to normal travel, SOE had to rely on its own air or sea transport for movement of people, arms and equipment.

Air Marshal Harris (“Bomber Harris”), the Commander-in-Chief of Bomber Command, resented the diversion of bombers to SOE purposes (or indeed any purposes other than the offensive against German cities), but he was overruled and by April 1942, SOE had the services of 138 and 161 squadrons at RAF Tempsford.^[33]

The aircraft used by SOE included the Westland Lysander, which could carry up to three passengers and two panniers loaded with stores, and had an effective range of 700 miles (1,100 km). It could use rough landing strips only 400 yards (370 m) in length, or even less. Lysanders were used to transport 101 agents to and 128 agents from Nazi-occupied Europe.^[34] The Lockheed Hudson had a range 200 miles (320 km) greater and could carry more passengers (ten or more), but required landing strips twice as long as those needed for the Lysander.

To deliver agents and stores by parachute, SOE could use several aircraft originally designed as bombers: the Armstrong Whitworth Whitley until November 1942, the Handley Page Halifax and the Short Stirling. The Stirling could carry a particularly large load, but only the Halifax had the range to reach dropping zones in Poland (and even then, only from bases in Southern Italy).^[35] Later in the war, SOE also used the American-designed C47, which was often landed at airfields in territory held by partisans in the Balkans.

Stores were usually parachuted in cylindrical containers. The “C” type was 69 inches (180 cm) long and when fully loaded could weigh up to 224 pounds (102 kg). The “H” type was the same size overall but could be broken down into five smaller sections. This made it easier to carry and conceal but made it impossible to carry long loads such as rifles. Some stores such as boots and blankets were “free-dropped” i.e. simply thrown out of the aircraft bundled together without a parachute, often to the hazard of any receiving committee on the ground.^[36]

SOE also experienced difficulties with the Royal Navy, which also was usually unwilling to allow SOE to use its submarines or motor torpedo boats to deliver agents or equipment. Submarines were regarded as too valuable to risk within range of enemy coastal defences, and MTBs were in any case often too noisy and conspicuous for clandestine landings. However, SOE often used clandestine craft such as local fishing boats or caiques and eventually ran quite large fleets of these, from Algiers, the Shetland Islands (a service termed the Shetland Bus), Ceylon etc.

Operations

France

SOE F Section timeline and SOE F Section networks

SOE’s operations were usually mounted in order to feel out resistance groups willing to work with the Allies in preparation for invasion. In France, personnel were directed by two London-based country sections. F Section was under British control, while RF Section was linked to General de Gaulle‘s Free French government in exile. Most native French agents served in RF. There were also two smaller sections: EU/P Section, which dealt with the Polish community in France, and the DF Section which was responsible for establishing escape routes. During the latter part of 1942 another section known as AMF was established in Algiers, to operate into Southern France.

Maquisards (Resistance fighters) in the Haute-Savoie département in August 1944. Third and fourth from the left are two SOE officers

On 5 May 1941, Georges Bégué (1911–1993) became the first SOE agent dropped into German occupied France. He then set up radio communications and met the next agents parachuted into France. Between Bégué’s first drop in May 1941 and August 1944, more than four hundred F Section agents were sent into occupied France. They served in a variety of functions including arms and sabotage instructors, couriers, circuit organisers, liaison officers and radio operators. RF sent about the same number; AMF sent 600 (although not all of these belonged to SOE). EU/P and DF sent a few dozen agents each.^[37]

SOE included a number of women (who were often commissioned into women’s branches of the armed forces such as the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry). F Section alone sent 39 female agents into the field, of whom 13 did not return. The Valençay SOE Memorial was unveiled at Valençay in the Indre département of France on 6 May 1991, marking the fiftieth anniversary of the despatch of F Section’s first agent to France. The memorial’s roll of honour lists the names of the 91 men and 13 women members of the SOE who gave their lives for France’s freedom.

To support the Allied invasion of France on D Day in June 1944, three-man parties were dropped into various parts of France as part of Operation Jedburgh, to coordinate widespread overt (as opposed to clandestine) acts of resistance. A total of 100 men were eventually dropped, together with 6,000 tons of military stores (4,000 tons had been dropped during the years before D-Day.)^[38] At the same time, all the various sections operating in France (except EU/P) were nominally placed under a London-based HQ titled État-major des Forces Françaises de l’Intérieur (EMFFI).

Poland

SOE did not need to instigate Polish resistance, because unlike the Vichy French the Poles overwhelmingly refused to collaborate with the Nazis. Early in the war the Poles established the Polish Home Army, led by a clandestine resistance government known as the Polish Secret State. Nevertheless, there were many Polish members of SOE and much cooperation between the SOE and the Polish resistance.

SOE assisted the Polish government in exile with training facilities and logistical support for its 605 special forces operatives known as the Cichociemni, or “The Dark and Silent”. Members of the unit, which was based in Audley End House, Essex, were rigorously trained before being parachuted into occupied Poland. Because of the distance involved in air travel to Poland, customised aircraft with extra fuel capacity were used in Polish operations such as Operation Wildhorn III. Sue Ryder chose the title Baroness Ryder of Warsaw in honour of these operations.

Secret Intelligence Service member Krystyna Skarbek was a founder member of SOE and helped establish a cell of Polish spies in Central Europe. She ran several operations in Poland, Egypt, Hungary (with Andrzej Kowerski) and France, often using the staunchly anti-Nazi Polish expatriate community as a secure international network. Non-official cover agents Elzbieta Zawacka and Jan Nowak-Jezioranski perfected the Gibraltar courier route out of occupied Europe. Maciej Kalenkiewicz was parachuted into occupied Poland, only to be executed by the Soviets. A Polish agent was integral to SOE’s Operation Foxley, the plan to assassinate Hitler.

Thanks to cooperation between SOE and the Polish Home Army, the Poles were able to deliver the first Allied intelligence on the Holocaust to London. Witold Pilecki of the Polish Home Army designed a joint operation with SOE to liberate Auschwitz, but the British rejected it as infeasible. Joint Anglo-Polish operations provided London with vital intelligence on the V-2 rocket, German troops movements on the Eastern Front, and the Soviet repressions of Polish citizens.

RAF ‘Special Duties Flights’ were sent to Poland to assist the Warsaw Uprising against the Nazis. The rebellion was defeated with a loss of 200,000 casualties (mostly German executions of Polish civilians) after the nearby Red Army refused military assistance to the Polish Home Army. RAF Special Duties Flights were refused landing rights at Soviet-held airfields near Warsaw, even when requiring emergency landings after battle damage. These flights were also attacked by Soviet fighters, despite the U.S.S.R.‘s officially Allied status.^[39]

Germany

Due to the dangers and lack of friendly population few operations were conducted in Germany itself. The German and Austrian section of SOE was run by Lt. Col. Ronald Thornley for most of the war and was mainly involved with black propaganda and administrative sabotage in collaboration with the German section of the Political Warfare Executive. After D-Day, the section was re-organised and enlarged with Major General Gerald Templer heading the Directorate, with Thornley as his deputy.

Several major operations were planned, including Operation Foxley, a plan to assassinate Hitler, and Operation Periwig, an ingenious plan to simulate the existence of a large-scale anti-Nazi resistance movement within Germany. Foxley was never carried out but Periwig went ahead despite restrictions placed on it by SIS and SHAEF. Several German prisoners of war were trained as agents, briefed to make contact with the anti-Nazi resistance and to conduct sabotage. They were then parachuted into Germany in the hope that they would either hand themselves in to the Gestapo or be captured by them, and reveal their supposed mission. Fake coded wireless transmissions were broadcast to Germany and various pieces of agent paraphernalia such as code books and wireless receivers were allowed to fall into the hands of the German authorities.

The Netherlands

Section N of SOE ran operations in the Netherlands. They committed some of SOE’s worst blunders in security, which allowed the Germans to capture many agents and much sabotage material, in what the Germans called the “Englandspiel“. SOE apparently ignored the absence of security checks in radio transmissions, and other warnings from their chief cryptographer, Leo Marks, that the Germans were running the supposed resistance networks.

Eventually, two captured agents escaped to Switzerland in August 1943. The Germans sent messages over their controlled sets that they had gone over to the Gestapo, but SOE was at last more wary.

SOE partly recovered from this disaster to set up new networks, which continued to operate until the Netherlands were liberated at the end of the war.

Belgium

Section T established some effective networks in Belgium, in part orchestrated by fashion designer Hardy Amies, who rose to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel. Amies adapted names of fashion accessories for use as code words, while managing some of the most murderous and ruthless agents in the field.^[40]

In the aftermath of the Battle of Normandy, British armoured forces liberated the country in less than a week, giving the resistance little time to stage an uprising. They did assist British forces to bypass German rearguards, and this allowed the Allies to capture the vital docks at Antwerp intact.

After Brussels was liberated, Amies outraged his superiors by setting up a Vogue photo-shoot in Belgium.^[41] In 1946, he was Knighted in Belgium for his service with SOE, being a Named Officier de l’Ordre de la Couronne.

Italy

As both an enemy country, and supposedly a monolithic fascist state with no organised opposition which SOE could use, SOE made little effort in Italy before mid-1943, when Mussolini‘s government collapsed and Allied forces already occupied Sicily. In April 1941, in a mission codenamed “Yak”, Peter Fleming attempted to recruit agents from among the many thousands of Italian prisoners of war captured in the Western Desert Campaign. He met with no response.^[42]

In the aftermath of the Italian collapse, SOE helped build a large resistance organisation in the cities of Northern Italy, and in the Alps. Italian partisans harassed German forces in Italy throughout the autumn and winter of 1944, and in the Spring 1945 offensive in Italy they captured Genoa and other cities unaided by Allied forces.

Late in 1943, SOE established a base at Bari in Southern Italy, from which they operated their networks and agents in the Balkans. This organisation had the codename “Force 133″. This later became “Force 266″, reserving 133 for operations run from Cairo rather than the heel of Italy. Flights from Brindisi were run to the Balkans and Poland, particularly once control had been wrested from Cairo and passed to Gubbins. Close to Brindisi Air base SOE established a new packing station for the parachute containers along the lines of those created at Saffron Walden. This was ME 54, a factory employing hundreds, the American (OSS) side of which was known as Paradise Camp.^[43]

Yugoslavia

Yugoslavia and the Allies

In the aftermath of the German invasion in 1941, the Kingdom of Yugoslavia fragmented. In Croatia, there was a substantial pro-Axis movement, the Ustaše. In Croatia as well as the remainder of Yugoslavia, two resistance movements formed; the royalist Chetniks under Draža Mihailović, and the Communist Partisans under Josip Broz Tito.

Mihailović was the first to attempt to contact the Allies, and SOE despatched a party on 20 September 1941 under Major “Marko” Hudson. Hudson also encountered Tito’s forces. Through the royalist government in exile, SOE at first supported the Chetniks. Eventually, however, due to reports that the Chetniks were less effective and even collaborating with German and Italian forces on occasion, British support was redirected to the Partisans, even before the Tehran Conference in 1943.

Although relations were often touchy throughout the war, it can be argued that SOE’s unstinting support was a factor in Yugoslavia’s maintaining a neutral stance during the Cold War. However, accounts vary dramatically between all historical works on the “Chetnik controversy”.

Hungary

SOE was unable to establish links or contacts in Hungary before the regime of Miklós Horthy aligned itself with the Axis Powers. Distance and lack of such contacts prevented any effort being made by SOE until the Hungarians themselves dispatched a diplomat (László Veress) in a clandestine attempt to contact the Western Allies. SOE facilitated his return, with some radio sets. Before the Allied governments could agree terms, Hungary was placed under German military occupation and Veress was forced to flee the country.

Two missions subsequently dropped “blind” i.e. without prior arrangement for a reception party, failed. So too did an attempt by Basil Davidson to incite a partisan movement in Hungary, after he made his way there from northeastern Yugoslavia.

Greece

Greece was overrun by the Axis after a desperate defence lasting several months. In the aftermath, SIS and another intelligence organization, SIME, discouraged attempts at sabotage or resistance as this might imperil relations with Turkey,^[44] although SOE maintained contacts with resistance groups in Crete. When an agent, “Odysseus”, a former tobacco-smuggler, attempted to contact potential resistance groups in Greece, he reported that no group was prepared to cooperate with the monarchist government in exile in Cairo.

In late 1942, at the army’s instigation, SOE mounted its first operation, codenamed Operation Harling, into Greece in an attempt to disrupt the railway which was being used to move materials to the German Panzer Army Africa. A party under Colonel (later Brigadier) Eddie Myers, assisted by Christopher Woodhouse, was parachuted into Greece and discovered two guerrilla groups operating in the mountains: the pro-Communist ELAS and the republican EDES. On 25 November 1942, Myers’s party blew up one of the spans of the railway viaduct at Gorgopotamos, supported by 150 Greek partisans from these two organisations who engaged Italians guarding the viaduct. This cut the railway linking Thessaloniki with Athens and Piraeus.

Relations between the resistance groups and the British soured. When the British needed once again to disrupt the railway across Greece as part of the deception operations preceding Operation Husky, the Allied invasion of Sicily, the resistance groups refused to take part, rightly fearing German reprisals against civilians. Instead, a six-man commando party from the British and New Zealand armies carried out the destruction of the Asopos viaduct on 21 June 1943.

EDES received most aid from SOE, but ELAS secured many weapons when Italy collapsed and Italian military forces in Greece dissolved. ELAS and EDES fought a vicious civil war in 1943 until SOE brokered an uneasy armistice (the Plaka agreement).

A lesser known, but important function of the SOE in Greece was to inform the Cairo headquarters of the movement of the German military aircraft that were serviced and repaired at the two former Greek military aircraft facilities in and around Athens.^{[citation needed]}

Eventually, the British Army occupied Athens and Piraeus in the aftermath of the German withdrawal, and fought a street-by-street battle to drive ELAS from these cities and impose an interim government under Archbishop Damaskinos. SOE’s last act was to evacuate several hundred disarmed EDES fighters to Corfu, preventing their massacre by ELAS.^[45]

Crete

The team of SOE officers and Cretans which abducted General Kreipe on Crete, including Moss and Leigh Fermor, second and third from left in German uniform

In Crete, unlike mainland Greece, there were several resistance groups and Allied stay-behind parties after the Germans occupied the island in the Battle of Crete. SOE’s operations on Crete involved figures such as Patrick Leigh Fermor, John Lewis, Tom Dunbabin, Sandy Rendel, John Houseman, Xan Fielding and Bill Stanley Moss. Some of the most famous moments included the abduction of General Heinrich Kreipe led by Leigh Fermor and Moss, and the sabotage of Damasta led by Moss.

Albania

Albania had been under Italian influence since 1923, and was occupied by the Italian Army in 1939. In 1943, a small liaison party entered Albania from northwestern Greece. SOE agents who entered Albania then or later included Julian Amery, Anthony Quayle, David Smiley and Neil “Billy” McLean. They discovered another internecine war between the Communist partisans under Enver Hoxha, and the republican Balli Kombëtar. As the latter had collaborated with the Italian occupiers, Hoxha gained Allied support.

SOE’s envoy to Albania, Brigadier “Trotsky” Davies, was captured by the Germans early in 1944. Some SOE officers warned that Hoxha’s aim was primacy after the war, rather than fighting Germans. They were ignored, but Albania was never a major factor in the effort against the Germans.

Czechoslovakia

SOE sent many missions into the Czech areas of the so-called Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, and later into Slovakia. The most famous mission was Operation Anthropoid, the assassination of SS leader Reinhard Heydrich in Prague. From 1942 to 1943 the Czechoslovaks had their own Special Training School (STS) at Chicheley Hall in Buckinghamshire. In 1944, SOE sent men to support the Slovak National Uprising.

Norway

In March 1941 a group performing commando raids in Norway, Norwegian Independent Company 1 (NOR.I.C.1) was organised under leadership of Captain Martin Linge. Their initial raid in 1941 was Operation Archery, the best known raid was probably the Norwegian heavy water sabotage. Communication lines with London were gradually improved so that by 1945, 64 radio operators were spread throughout Norway.

Denmark

Most of the actions conducted by the Danish resistance were railway sabotage to hinder German troop and material movements from and to Norway. However, there were examples of sabotage on a much larger scale especially by BOPA. In all over 1,000 operations were conducted from 1942 and onwards.

In October 1943 the Danish resistance also saved nearly all of the Danish Jews from certain death in German concentration camps. This was a massive overnight operation and is to this day recognized among Jews as one of the most significant displays of public defiance against the Germans.

The Danish resistance assisted SOE in its activities in neutral Sweden. For example, SOE was able to obtain several shiploads of vital ball-bearings which had been interned in Swedish ports. The Danes also pioneered several secure communications methods; for example, a burst transmitter/receiver which transcribed Morse code onto a paper tape faster than a human operator could handle.

There are a series of Historic Notes written by David Lampe in his “The Danish Resistance” also called “The Savage Canary”.

Romania

In 1943 an SOE delegation was parachuted into Romania to instigate resistance against the Nazi occupation at “any cost” (Operation Autonomous). The delegation, including Colonel Gardyne de Chastelain, Captain Silviu Meţianu and Ivor Porter, was captured by the Romanian Gendarmerie and held until the night of King Michael’s Coup on 23 August 1944.

Other operations in Europe

Through cooperation with the Special Operations Executive and the British intelligence service, a group of Jewish volunteers from Palestine were sent on missions to several countries in Nazi-occupied Europe from 1943 to 1945.

Abyssinia

Abyssinia was the scene of some of SOE’s earliest and most successful efforts. SOE organised a force of Ethiopian irregulars under Orde Charles Wingate in support of the exiled Emperor Haile Selassie. This force (named Gideon Force by Wingate) caused heavy casualties to the Italian occupation forces, and contributed to the successful British campaign there. Wingate was to use his experience to create the Chindits in Burma.

Southeast Asia

Force 136

As early as 1940, SOE was preparing plans for operations in Southeast Asia. As in Europe, after initial Allied military disasters, SOE built up indigenous resistance organizations and guerrilla armies in enemy (Japanese) occupied territory. SOE also launched “Operation Remorse” (1944–45), which was ultimately aimed at protecting the economic and political status of Hong Kong. Through Force 136, SOE engaged in covert trading of goods and currencies in China. Its agents proved remarkably successful, raising £77m through their activities, which were used to provide assistance for Allied prisoners of war and, more controversially, to buy influence locally in order to facilitate a smooth return to pre-war conditions.

Later analysis and commentaries

The mode of warfare encouraged and promoted by SOE is considered by several modern commentators to have established the modern model that many alleged terrorist organisations emulate,^[6][7][46] pioneering most of the tactics, techniques and technologies that are the mainstays of terrorism as it is commonly known today.^[47]

Fiction featuring or based on SOE

Film

Now It Can Be Told (aka School for Danger) (1946)

Filming began in 1944 and starred real-life SOE agents Captain Harry Rée and Jacqueline Nearne. The film tells the story of the training of agents for SOE and their adventures in France. The training sequences were filmed using the SOE equipment at the training schools at Traigh and Garramor (South Morar) and at Ringway.

The Fight over the Heavy Water (1948)

A French/Norwegian black and white docu-film titled “La Bataille de l’eau lourde”/”Kampen om tungtvannet” (trans. “The Fight Over the Heavy Water“), featured some of the ‘original cast’, so to speak. Joachim Rønneberg has stated; “The Fight over Heavy Water was an honest attempt to describe history. On the other hand ‘Heroes of Telemark’ had little to do with reality.”

• Odette (1950)

Based on the book by Jerrard Tickell about Odette Sansom, starring Anna Neagle and Trevor Howard. The film includes an interview with Maurice Buckmaster, head of F-Section, SOE.

• Ill Met by Moonlight (1957)]

The Powell and Pressburger film, (released as Night Ambush in the States), based on the book by W. Stanley Moss, starring Dirk Bogarde and Marius Goring. It dramatises the true story of the capture of a German general by Patrick Leigh Fermor and W. Stanley Moss.

• Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) is a well-known classic British-made war-drama set in Burma during World War II, during the construction of the Siam–Burma railway through virgin jungle and endless hills and gorges, using malnourished, mistreated allied prisoners of war. A counter-story in the film, which collides with the main story at the climax, relates to a mission to destroy the newly-constructed railway bridge by a fictitious cloak and dagger sabotage organization called ‘Force 316′, whose training base is in Ceylon. In fact, this is a thinly-disguised reference to the real-life Force 136, part of SOE, who indeed had wartime jungle-training facilities in Ceylon at M.E. 25—Horona.
• Carve Her Name with Pride (1958)

Based on the book by R.J. Minney about Violette Szabo, starring Paul Scofield and Virginia McKenna.

• The Guns of Navarone (1961)

Based on a well-known 1957 novel about World War II by Scottish thriller writer Alistair MacLean. It starred Gregory Peck, David Niven and Anthony Quinn, along with Anthony Quayle (the same Anthony Quayle listed above as serving with SOE in Albania) and Stanley Baker. The book and the film share the same basic plot: the efforts of an Allied commando team to destroy a seemingly impregnable German fortress that threatens Allied naval ships in the Aegean Sea, and prevents 2,000 isolated British troops from being rescued, that were holed up on the island of Kheros in the Aegean, near Turkey.

• Moonstrike (1963)

A BBC television drama series comprising self-contained episodes of SOE’s work in occupied Europe.

• The Heroes of Telemark (1965)

Based on an SOE operation to sabotage the heavy water plant at Rjukan, Norway in 1943.

• Operation Crossbow (1965)

A spy thriller and World War II film, made from a story from Duilio Coletti and Vittoriano Petrilli. It is a highly fictionalized account of the real-life Operation Crossbow, but it does touch on the main aspects of the operation.

• Where Eagles Dare (1968)

A spy film directed by Brian G. Hutton and featuring Richard Burton, Clint Eastwood, and Mary Ure. The film’s screenplay and eponymous 1967 best-selling novel were written almost simultaneously by Alistair MacLean.

• Operation Daybreak (1976)

Based upon a true, dangerous operation in May 1942 to drop a small group of Czech and Slovak S.O.E. agents into their own occupied country with the singular deadly mission to assassinate Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler’s protégé, Reinhard Heydrich, Reichsprotektor (representing the Nazi protectorate over the Czech puppet-state) of Bohemia and Moravia, hated as The Butcher of Prague. The mission succeeded, but with tragic results.

• Nancy Wake Codename: The White Mouse (1987)

A docudrama about Nancy Wake‘s work for SOE, partly narrated by herself.

• Wish Me Luck (1987)

A television series that was broadcast between 1987 and 1990 featuring the exploits of the women and, less frequently, the men of SOE, which was renamed the ‘Outfit’.

• Charlotte Gray, (2001)

Based on a novel by Sebastian Faulks.

• Churchill’s Secret Army

A Documentary about the SOE broadcast on Channel 4 in 2001.

• Foyle’s War, episode “The French Drop” (2004)

Foyle, a detective in England during WWII, investigates what turns out to be domestic activity of the SOE. The series is known for its attention to historical detail, and many aspects of the real-life SOE are shown.

• Robert and the shadows, French Documentary on “France Television” (2004)

Did General De Gaulle tell the whole truth about the French resistance ? This is the purpose of this documentary. Jean Marie Barrere, the French director, uses the story of his own grand father (Robert) to tell the French what SOE did at that time. Robert, was a french teacher based in the south west of France and he worked with the famous SOE agent George Reginald Starr (Hilaire, Wheelwhright circuit)

• The 11th Day (2006)

A documentary film, with recreation, of the Resistance, on the island of Crete, during the Second World War. Includes a detailed interview with Sir Patrick Leigh Fermor with recreation of the kidnapping of German Major General Kreipe.

• The Bonzos (2008)

A BBC documentary film about the men sent to rescue Hitler’s hoard of looted art—including works by Titian, Tintoretto and Van Gogh—which the Nazis had stripped from Europe’s greatest galleries and museums and hidden in a salt mine in the town of Alt Aussee in Austria. Including archive footage, eyewitness testimony and contributions from historians.

• Les Femmes de l’Ombre

A French film about five SOE female agents and their contribution towards the D-Day invasions

Novels

• Author Ian Fleming, who knew both Maurice Buckmaster and Vera Atkins, is reputed to have used at least parts of them to create “M“, and “Miss Moneypenny” in his James Bond books. In his first Bond novel, Casino Royale, Fleming is said to have based the “Vesper Lynd” character on the SOE agent, Christine Granville. Other agents that Fleming used for his Bond character were Duane Hudson and Andrew Croft. Chief of SOE Technical Branch and later GS Branch MI6, Charles Bovill was represented in the Bond books as ‘Q’.^[48]
• Tim Powers‘ Declare and Charles Stross‘s The Atrocity Archives. Fictional versions of SOE turn up as the organisation in charge of occult activities in these books.
• Gravity’s Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon.
• Jackdaws by Ken Follett. Felicity Clairet, a female SOE agent leads an all women team into France to blow up a telephone exchange.
• Night of the Fox by Jack Higgins.
• The Tiger Claw by Shauna Singh Baldwin features an SOE agent based on Noor Inayat Khan.
• The Secret Army by Robert Muchamore features Air Vice Marshall Walker who is the Head of the SOE.
• Double Cross Blind by Joel Ross, an American helps a female SOE agent stop a Nazi plot that could turn the tide of the war.

Other Media

• In the 2003 video game Secret Weapons Over Normandy, the main protagonist, James Chase, is a member of the Battlehawks, an elite RAF squadron assigned to the SOE.
• The 2009 video game The Saboteur, which takes place in German-occupied Paris circa 1940, revolves around Sean Devlin, an analogue of real SOE agent William Grover-Williams. Devlin is depicted, however, as a member of the French Resistance, who works unofficially for the SOE in exchange for information. In addition, supply crates from the SOE are hidden all over Paris and serve as an in-game “collectible”.
• A Secret Army Exhibition at Beaulieu in Hampshire, UK tells the story of the British and overseas members of the Special Operations Executive (SOE) who completed their secret training at the Beaulieu ‘Finishing School’ during World War ll

Notes

1. 1. Foot, S.O.E, p.62
2. 2. ^{a b} Foot, S.O.E, p.12
3. 3. “‘Pat Line’ – An Escape & Evasion Line in France in World War ll”. Christopher Long. Retrieved 2009-07-21.
4. 4. Foot, S.O.E, pp.15-16
5. 5. Foot, p.17
6. 6. ^{a b c} “article by Matthew Carr Author The Infernal Machine: A History of Terrorism”. Thefirstpost.co.uk. Retrieved 2009-06-01.
7. 7. ^{a b} “The Irish [thanks to the example set by Collins and followed by the SOE] can thus claim that their resistance provide the originating impulse for resistance to tyrannies worse than any they had to endure themselves. And the Irish resistance as Collins led it, showed the rest of the world an economical way to fight wars the only sane way they can be fought in the age of the Nuclear bomb.” M.R.D Foot, as quoted in Geraghty, The Irish War, p.347
8. 8. Hugh Dalton letter to Lord Halifax 2/7/1940; quoted in M. R. D. Foot, SOE in France, 8.}
9. 9. Foot, S.O.E. p.31
10. 10. Foot, S.O.E., p.32
11. 11. Foot, S.O.E, p.22
12. 12. Foot, S.O.E., pp.24-25
13. 13. Boyce and Everett (2003), pp.23-45
14. 14. Foot, S.O.E., pp.40-41
15. 15. Boyce and Everett, SOE: The Scientific Secrets, pp.129-158
16. 16. Foot, S.O.E., p.87
17. 17. Foot, S.O.E., pp.35-36
18. 18. ^{a b} “Churchill’s top secret agency”. BBC – Today. 2008-12-13. Retrieved 2009-03-13.
19. 19. Foot, S.O.E., p.245
20. 20. ^{a b} “Churchill’s secret army lived on”. BBC – Today. 13 December 2008. Retrieved 2009-03-13.
21. 21. Francis MacKay. Overture to Overlord. ISBN 0850528925.
22. 22. Foot, SOE, p.65
23. 23. Foot, SOE, p.169
24. 24. Foot, p.110
25. 25. Foot, pp.108-111
26. 26. Foot, p.106
27. 27. Foot, pp.99, 142-143
28. 28. Foot, p.60
29. 29. “Welfreighter”. Welfreighter.info. Retrieved 2009-06-01.
30. 30. Seaman (2006), p. 27
31. 31. Norton-Taylor, Richard (1999-10-27). “How exploding rats went down a bomb and helped British boffins win the Second World War | UK news”. London: The Guardian. Retrieved 2009-06-01.
32. 32. Foot, pp.103-104
33. 33. Foot, S.O.E., p.95
34. 34. Gunston, Bill (1995). Classic World War II Aircraft Cutaways. London: Osprey. ISBN 1-85532-526-8.
35. 35. Foot, S.O.E, pp.95, 101-103
36. 36. Foot, S.O.E, pp.95-96
37. 37. Foot, S.O.E., p.214
38. 38. Foot, S.O.E., pp.222-223
39. 39. Orpen, Neil, ‘Airlift to Warsaw’ ISBN 0806119136
40. 40. glbtq >> arts >> Amies, Sir Hardy
41. 41. Day, Peter (2003-04-29). “How secret agent Hardy Amies stayed in Vogue during the war”. London: The Telegraph. Retrieved 2009-10-09.
42. 42. Crowdy, Terry; Noon, Steve (2008). SOE Agent: Churchill’s secret warriors. Oxford: Osprey. ISBN 978-1-84603-276-9.
43. 43. Special Operations: Aid to European Resistance Movements Major Harris G Warren^{[page needed]}
44. 44. Ball (2009), p.104
45. 45. Foot, S.O.E, p.236
46. 46. “We must recognise that our response to the scourge of terrorism is compromised by what we did through SOE. The justification… That we had no other means of striking back at the enemy…is exactly the argument used by the red brigades, the baader meinhoff gang, the PFLP, the IRA and every other half articulate terrorist organisation on Earth. Futile to argue that we were a Democracy and Hitler a Tyrant. Means besmirch ends. SOE besmirched Britain.” John Keegan, as quoted in Geraghty, The Irish War, p.346
47. 47. Churchill’s Secret Army, Channel 4 television UK
48. 48. Andy Forbes www.64-baker-street. “64 Baker Street”. 64 Baker Street. Retrieved 2009-06-01.

References

Official publications / academic histories

• Allan, Stuart (2007). Commando Country. National Museums of Scotland. ISBN 9781905267149.

Covers Commando and SOE training in the Highlands of Scotland. It describes the origins of the irregular warfare training at Inverailort House under MI(R) then the move of SOE training to the nearby Arisaig and Morar area.

• Boyce, Frederic; Douglas Everett (2003). SOE – the Scientific Secrets. Sutton Publishing. ISBN 0-7509-4005-0.

SOE had its own laboratories and workshops inventing and developing new weapons, explosives and sabotage techniques.

• Cruikshank, Charles (1983). SOE in the Far East. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-215873.

Official history commissioned 1980, companion to Foot, SOE, with access to papers (though researched 20 years later than Foot’s book, when many participants had died, see Preface)

• Cruikshank, Charles (1986). SOE in Scandinavia. Oxford University Press. ISBN 019215883X.
• Foot, M.R.D. (1999). The Special Operations Executive 1940–1946. Pimlico. ISBN 0-7126-6585-4.

The best book to read for an overview of SOE and its methods. Foot won the Croix de Guerre as a SAS operative in Brittany, later becoming Professor of Modern History at Manchester University and an official historian of the SOE. All his SOE books are well worth reading.

• Foot, M.R.D. (2000). SOE in France. Frank Cass. ISBN 0-7146-5528-7.

(orig. 1966, Government Official Histories, pub Frank Cass revised edition 2000, further edition 2004. Written with access to F Section files, (according to Ian Dear, see below) later revised

• Mackenzie, Professor William (2000). The Secret History of SOE — Special Operations Executive 1940–1945. BPR Publications. ISBN 0-9536151-8-9.

Written at the end of WW2 for the British Government’s own use without any intention of publication—in effect a confidential “official history”.

• Rigden, Denis (2001). SOE Syllabus: Lessons in Ungentlemanly Warfare World War II. Secret History Files, National Archives. ISBN 1-903365-18-X.

Authentic training manuals used to prepare agents covering the clandestine skills of disguise, surveillance, burglary, interrogation, close combat, and assassination. Also published as “How to be a Spy”.

• Stafford, David (2000). Secret Agent: The True Story of the Special Operations Executive. BBC Worldwide Ltd. ISBN 0-563-53734-5.

Professor David Stafford has written several books on resistance and the secret war, and contributed the foreword for MFD Foot’s book.

• Steinacher, Gerald (2002). Passive grumbling, rather than resisting: The Special Operations Executive (SOE) in Austria 1940-1945. 15 (International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence ed.). pp. 211–221.

First results of a research on the newly released Austrian SOE files of the Public Record Office Kew

• Valentine, Ian (2006). Station 43: Audley End House and SOE’s Polish Section. Sutton Publishing. ISBN 0-7509-4255-X.
• Walker, Jonathan (2008). Poland Alone: Britain, SOE and the Collapse of the Polish Resistance, 1944. The History Press. ISBN 978-1-86227-474-7.

First-hand accounts by those who served with SOE

• Dorothy Baden-Powell. They Also Serve: An SOE Agent in the WRNS (Robert Hale Ltd 2004 ISBN 978-0709077152)

A first hand account of one woman’s experiences during World War Two within the Special Operations Executive and the WRNS.

• Freddie Spencer Chapman. The Jungle is Neutral (Chatto and Windus 1949)

Chapman set up first jungle warfare school and operated in Malaya behind Japanese lines. Key figure in SOE in Far East.

• Arthur Christie. Mission Scapula SOE in the Far East ISBN 0-9547010-0-3.

A true story about an ordinary soldier seconded into MI5 and sent on a mission to Singapore just before it fell. With Freddy Spencer-Chapman

• Basil Davidson. Special Operations Europe: Scenes from the Anti-Nazi War. Irwin Pub, 1980 ISBN 0-575-02820-3
• Basil Davidson. Partisan Picture. Bedford, 1946.
• Sir Patrick Leigh Fermor. The 11th Day (Archangel Films 2006)

Firsthand documentary account of the kidnapping of Major General Heinrich Kreipe, the German army commander on Crete.

• Patrick Howarth. Undercover (Routledge, Kegan Paul 1980 ISBN 0-7100-0573-3, Phoenix Press 2000 ISBN 1-84212-240-1)

Covers the stories of a number of operatives, many known personally by Howarth, who was one of SOE’s founding members responsible for sevearl years for organising agent training in UK. Invaluable seven page bibliography of histories and memoirs.

• David Howarth. The Shetland Bus. (Thomas Nelson and Sons Ltd 1950)

Account of the Norwegian vessels which kept Britain in touch with the Norwegian resistance

• Andre Hue. The Next Moon (Viking 2004 ISBN 0-670-91478-9, Penguin 2005 ISBN 0-14-101580-2) Foreword MRD Foot.

First hand story of agent dropped into Brittany to organise resistance activities before and after D-Day.

• Fitzroy Maclean. Eastern Approaches (Jonathan Cape 1949, Penguin 1991 ISBN 0-14-013271-6)

Author witnessed SOE’s campaign with Yugoslav partisans as Churchill’s representative to Tito.

• Leo Marks. Between Silk and Cyanide (Harper Collins 1998 ISBN 0-00-255944-7)

Marks was the Head of Codes at SOE. He gives easily comprehensible introduction to codes, their practical use in the field, and his struggle to improve encryption methods. Engaging accounts of agents including Noor Khan, Violette Szabo, and a great deal of information on his friend Yeo-Thomas.

• William Stanley Moss. Ill Met by Moonlight (Harrap 1950)

Firsthand account of Moss and Patrick Leigh Fermor’s kidnapping of Major General Heinrich Kreipe, the German army commander on Crete. Later turned into a film of the same title.

• Jasper Rootham. Miss-Fire (Chatto & Windus 1946)

Account of the SOE’s mission to Yugoslavia in support of Mihailović and the Chetniks.

• David Smiley. Albanian Assignment (Sphere Books Ltd. 1984 ISBN 0-7221-7933-2)

Account of SOE’s missions to Albania.

• Sweet-Escott, Bickham. Baker Street Irregular. London: Methuen & Co. Ltd., 1965.
• Nancy Wake. The White Mouse: The Autobiography of the Woman the Gestapo called The White Mouse (Macmillan 1986 ISBN 978-0333400999)

Account of a female SOE field agents’ experiences in the F Section.

Biographies / popular books by authors without personal SOE experience

• Nigel Perrin Spirit of Resistance: The Life of SOE Agent Harry Peulevé DSO MC (Pen and Sword 2008) ISBN 978-1844158553

Biography of the remarkable F Section agent Harry Peulevé, who undertook two missions in France and was one of the few to escape Buchenwald concentration camp.

• William Stevenson (Canadian writer) Spymistress: The Life of Vera Atkins, the Greatest Female Secret Agent of World War II Arcade Publishing (2006) ISBN 978-1559707633 biography of Vera Atkins, of whom James Bond creator Ian Fleming said, “In the real world of spies, Vera Atkins was the boss.”
• Sarah Helm (May 2005). A Life in Secrets: The Story of Vera Atkins and the Lost Agents of SOE. London: Little, Brown. ISBN 0-316-72497-1.
• Marcus Binney The Women Who Lived For Danger HarperCollins (2003) ISBN 0-06-054087-7
• Beryl Escott A Quiet Courage: The story of SOE’s women agents in France (Patrick Stevens Ltd 1991) ISBN 978-1852602895
• Norman Franks Double Mission: Fighter Pilot and SOE Agent, Manfred Czernin (William Kimber, London, 1976) ISBN 0 7183 02540
• Liane Jones Mission Improbable: Salute to the Royal Air Force Women of Special Operations Executive in Wartime France (Bantam Press 1990) ISBN 978-0593016633
• R.J. Minney.Carve Her Name with Pride (1956), tells the story of Violette Szabo.
• Jerrard Tickell. Odette: The story of a British agent (1949), tells the story of Odette Sansom-Hallowes.
• Jean Overton Fuller. The Starr Affair, tells the story of John Renshaw Starr.
• Ian Dear. Sabotage and Subversion (Arms and Armour 1996, Cassell Military Paperbacks 1999, ISBN 0-304-35202-0)

General chapters on origins, recruitment and training, and then describes in detail thirteen operations in Europe and around the world, some involving the OSS.

• Bruce Marshall. The White Rabbit (Evans Bros 1952, Cassell Military Paperbacks 2000, ISBN 0-304-35697-2)

Famous biography of Wing Commander Yeo-Thomas who made secret trips to France to meet senior Resistance figures. Epic story of capture, torture and escape, written as told by ‘Tommy’ to Marshall (who was himself on the HQ staff of RF section).

• Mark Seaman. Bravest of the Brave: True Story of Wing Commander Tommy Yeo-Thomas – SOE Secret Agent Codename, the White Rabbit (Michael O’Mara Books 1997) ISBN 978-1854796509
• Mark Seaman. Special Operations Executive: a new instrument of war. Routledge, 2006. ISBN 0415384559
• Ray Mears, The Real Heroes of Telemark: The True Story of the Secret Mission to Stop Hitler’s Atomic Bomb, ISBN 0-340-83015-8, Hodder & Stoughton 2003

Associated with a three part BBC TV series, Ray Mears followed the route taken in 1943 along with some present day members of Royal Marines and Norwegian Army.

• Inside Camp X by Lynn Philip Hodgson, with a foreword by Secret Agent Andy Durovecz (2003). ISBN 0-9687062-0-7
• Joe Saward. The Grand Prix Saboteurs (Morienval Press 2006, ISBN 978-0-9554868-0-7)
• Ball, Simon (2009). The Bitter Sea. Harper Press. ISBN 978-0-00-720304-8. Gives tangential account of SOE’s operations in the Mediterranean and its quarrels with other intelligence agencies

Commentaries

Geraghty, Tony (2000). The Irish War. Harper Collins. ISBN 978-0006386742.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Force_136

Forests and Sea Power:

The Timber Problem of the Royal Navy, 1652-1862

(Classics of Naval Literature)

Robert Greenhalgh Albion (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

First published in 1926 as part of the Harvard Economic Studies series, this work was awarded the David A. Wells Prize and has been considered the standard reference on the subject ever since. It established for the first time the indivisible relationship between timber supply and sea power, and how this union influenced naval architecture and international law, as well as foreign, colonial, commercial, and forest policies. The result of an exhaustive, international research effort, the book also has been acknowledged by naval historians to be one of the very early attempts to broaden naval history into a serious study of logistics and supply and of technology and operations.

In a delightfully absorbing prose rare for such studies, Robert Albion relates these pivotal issues throughout the two-hundred-year period that saw most of the greatest naval wars of the Age of Sail, from the First Dutch War of 1652 to the introduction of the ironclad early in the American Civil War. The author explores how the timber supply problem affected other European maritime powers and their far-flung colonies, explains how it was driven by the conservatism and corruption of official bureaus and rapacious landowners conducting the business, and offers a fascinating portrait of the contemporary logging and timber transport industries.

An introductory essay has been written for this new Classics edition by Timothy Bean, a lecturer at the department of war studies at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst and a specialist in early eighteenth-century naval history. His essay examines Albion’s unique contributions to the understanding of the relationship between the military and commerce and applies Navy timber supply issues to twentieth-century problems with oil supplies.

Product Details:

• Hardcover: 485 pages
• Publisher: US Naval Institute Press; Revised edition
• May 2000
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1557500215
• ISBN-13: 978-1557500212

Considered the most outstanding single work on the economics of wooden navies in the sailing era.

The Man Who Knew Too Much Film from 1934:

Churchill, Hitchcock and the 1911 Sidney Street Disturbances

The Man Who Knew Too Much is a 1934 suspense film directed by Alfred Hitchcock, featuring Peter Lorre, and released by Gaumont British. It was one of the most successful and critically acclaimed films of Hitchcock’s British period.

Hitchcock remade the film with James Stewart and Doris Day in 1956 for Paramount Pictures; it’s the only film he ever remade. The two films are, however, very different in tone, in setting, and in many plot details

Synopsis

Bob and Jill Lawrence (Leslie Banks and Edna Best), are a British couple on vacation in St. Moritz, Switzerland, with their daughter Betty (Nova Pilbeam). Jill is participating in a clay pigeon shooting contest. They befriend a foreigner, Louis Bernard (Pierre Fresnay), who is staying in their hotel. One evening, as Jill dances with Louis, she witnesses his assassination as a French spy. Before dying, the spy passes on to them some vital information to be delivered to the British consul.

In order to ensure their silence, the assassins, led by a charming and nefarious Abbott (Peter Lorre), kidnap their daughter. Unable therefore to seek help from the police, the couple return to England and, after following a series of leads, discover that the group intends to assassinate a the Ambassador of an unidentified European country, during a concert at the Royal Albert Hall. Jill attends the concert and distracts the gunman with a scream.

The assassins are tracked to their hide-out in a suburban church. Bob enters and is held prisoner, but manages to escape. The police surround the building and a gunfight ensues, the assassins holding out until their ammunition runs low and most of them have been killed. Betty, who has been held there, and one of the criminals, are seen on the roof, and it is Jill’s sharpshooting skills that dispatch the man, who, it emerges, was the man who beat Jill in a shooting contest in Switzerland.

One of the assassins commits suicide rather than be captured, and Betty is returned to her parents.

Production

Peter Lorre was unable to speak English at the time of filming (a Jew, he had only recently fled from Nazi Germany) and learned his lines phonetically.^[1]

The shoot-out at the end of the film was based on the Sidney Street Siege, a real-life incident which took place in London’s East End (where Hitchcock grew up) on 3 January 1911.^[2][3][4] The shoot-out was not included in Hitchcock’s 1956 remake.^[5]

Hitchcock hired Australian composer Arthur Benjamin to write a piece of music especially for the climactic scene at Royal Albert Hall. The music, known as the Storm Clouds cantata, is used in both the 1934 version and the 1956 remake.

Alfred Hitchcock’s cameo appears 33 minutes into the film. He can be seen crossing the street from right to left in a black trench coat before they enter the Chapel.

The siege was the inspiration for the final shootout in Alfred Hitchcock‘s original 1934 version of The Man Who Knew Too Much, although not his own 1956 remake.

The Siege of Sidney Street, popularly known as the “Battle of Stepney”, was a notorious gunfight in London’s East End on the 2nd of January 1911. Preceded by the Houndsditch Murders, it ended with the deaths of two members of a supposedly politically-motivated gang of burglars supposedly led by Peter Piatkow, a.k.a. “Peter the Painter“, and sparked a major political row over the involvement of the then Home Secretary, Winston Churchill.

The siege was the inspiration for the final shootout in Alfred Hitchcock‘s original 1934 version of The Man Who Knew Too Much, although not his own 1956 remake.

The Houndsditch murders

On 16 December 1910, a gang of Latvian thieves attempted to break into the rear of a jeweller’s shop at 119 Houndsditch, EC3, working from 9, 10 and 11 Exchange Buildings in the cul-de-sac behind. An adjacent shopkeeper heard their hammering, informed the City of London Police (in whose area the shop was), and nine unarmed officers — three sergeants and six constables (two in plain clothes) — converged on Exchange Buildings.

Sergeants Bentley and Bryant knocked at the door of No. 11 Exchange Buildings, unaware that the first constable on the scene had already done so, thus alerting the thieves. The gang’s leader, George Gardstein, opened the door, but when he did not answer their questions they assumed he did not understand English and told him to fetch someone who did. Gardstein left the door half-closed and disappeared.

The house consisted of a single ground-floor room, into which the front door directly opened, with a staircase leading to the upper floors on the left, and a door to the open yard at the back on the right. It was later deduced that Gardstein must have moved left towards the staircase, since if he had gone right and out of the yard door he would have been seen by one of the plain-clothed officers standing outside, who had a clear view of that side of the room.

Growing impatient, the two sergeants entered the house to find the room apparently empty, before they became aware of a man standing in the darkness at the top of the stairs. After a short conversation, another man entered through the yard door, rapidly firing a pistol, while the man on the stairs also started shooting.

Both officers were hit, with Bentley collapsing across the doorstep, while Bryant managed to stagger outside. In the street, Constable Woodhams ran to help Bentley, but was himself wounded by one of the gang firing from the cover of the house, as was Sergeant Tucker, who died almost instantly.

The gang then attempted to break out of the cul-de-sac, Gardstein being grabbed by Constable Choate almost at the entrance. In the struggle Choate was wounded several times by Gardstein, before being shot five more times by other members of the gang, who also managed to hit their compatriot in the back. They then dragged Gardstein ¾ of a mile to 59 Grove Street, where he died the next day. Constable Choate and Sergeant Bentley died in separate hospitals the same day. An intense search followed, and a number of the gang or their associates were soon arrested.

The Siege of Sidney Street

On 2 January 1911, an informant told police that two or three of the gang, possibly including Peter the Painter himself, were hiding at 100 Sidney Street, Stepney (in the Metropolitan Police District). Worried that the suspects were about to flee, and expecting heavy resistance to any attempt at capture, on 3 January, two hundred officers cordoned off the area and the siege began. At dawn the battle commenced.

The defenders, though heavily outnumbered, possessed superior weapons and great stores of ammunition. The Tower of London was called for backup, and word got to the Home Secretary, Winston Churchill, who arrived on the spot to observe the incident at first hand, and to offer advice. Churchill authorised calling in a detachment of Scots Guards to assist the police. Six hours into the battle, and just as the field artillery piece that Churchill had authorised arrived, a fire began to consume the building. When the fire brigade arrived, Churchill refused them access to the building. The police stood ready, guns aimed at the front door, waiting for the men inside to attempt their escape. The door never opened. Instead, the remains of two members of the gang, Fritz Svaars and William Sokolow (both were also known by numerous aliases), were later discovered inside the building. No sign of Peter the Painter was found.^[1]

Aftermath

All the fatal shots in what became known as the “Houndsditch Murders” came from the same Dreyse pistol belonging to Jacob Peters, but as he had left it with the mortally wounded Gardstein to be found by the police, it was assumed to be his and that he was the killer. This was despite the fact that Gardstein had completely different calibre ammunition for a Mauser C96 pistol both on him when he died and in his lodgings, but none at all for the Dreyse. Gardstein’s “guilt” was further compounded by the mistaken belief that it was Gardstein who had opened fire at 11 Exchange Buildings from the yard door, on the grounds that it was he who had opened the front door to the police shortly before they were shot.

Of seven supposed members of the gang captured by the police, five men — including Peters — and two women were put on trial, but they all either had their charges dropped, were acquitted, or had their convictions quashed. Peters later returned home, and after the October Revolution served as deputy head of the Cheka. He perished during the Great Purge in 1938.

The role Churchill played in the Sidney Street Siege was highly controversial at the time, and many, including Arthur Balfour, the former prime minister, accused him of having acted improperly. A famous photograph from the time shows Churchill peering around a corner to view events. Balfour asked, “He [Churchill] and a photographer were both risking valuable lives. I understand what the photographer was doing but what was the Right Honourable gentleman doing?”

The gang’s superior firepower led the police to drop the Webley Revolver in favour of the Webley semi-automatic in London.

On film

Much of the siege was captured by newsreel cameras, including the moment a bullet passed through Mr Churchill’s top hat, coming within inches of killing him. This footage was later shown at the Palace Theatre, London, under the billing, “Mr Churchill in the danger zone”

The siege was the inspiration for the final shootout in Alfred Hitchcock‘s original 1934 version of The Man Who Knew Too Much, although not his own 1956 remake. The events were depicted directly in the 1960 film The Siege of Sidney Street.^[2]

In popular culture

The siege was parodied by the Goon Show in the episode The Six Ingots of Leadenhall Street.,^[3][4] A bullet was supposedly fired which passed through Churchill’s hat, though this has been dismissed by historians.

The events were portrayed fictionally in the Sherlock Holmes pastiche Sherlock Holmes and the Railway Maniac by Barrie Roberts.

References

1. 1. Siege of Sidney Street — 1911 (Metropolitan Police history) accessed 4 Feb 2008
2. 2. The Siege of Sidney Street (1960) at the Internet Movie Database
3. 3. http://www.thegoonshow.net/scripts_show.asp?title=s05e23_the_six_ingots_of_leadenhall_street
4. 4. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0072vdz

• The Houndsditch Murders and the Siege of Sidney Street, Donald Rumbelow, ISBN 0-491-03178-5
• The Battle of Stepney, Colin Rogers, ISBN 0-7091-9146-4
• The Siege of Sidney Street on the Internet Movie Database.

The Man Who Knew Too Much Film from 1934:

Churchill, Hitchcock and the 1911 Sidney Street Disturbances

Gandhi and the Second Roundtable Conference 1931

(September – December 1931)

Round Table Conferences (India)

The three Round Table Conferences of 1930–32 were a series of conferences organised by the British government to discuss constitutional reforms in India.

They were conducted as per the recommendation by the report submitted by the Simon Commission in May 1930. Demands for swaraj, or self-rule, in India had been growing increasingly strong. By the 1930s, many British politicians believed that India needed to move towards dominion status. However, there were significant disagreements between the Indian and the British political parties that the Conferences would not resolve.

First Round Table Conference

(November 1930 – January 1931)

The Round Table Conference was opened officially by King George V on November 12, 1930 and chaired by the British Prime Minister, Ramsay MacDonald. The three British political parties were represented by sixteen delegates. There were fifty-seven political leaders from British India and sixteen delegates from the princely states. However, the Indian National Congress, along with Indian business leaders, kept away from the conference. Many of them were in jail for their participation in civil disobedience.

Participants

• Muslim League: Muhammad Ali, Muhammad Shafi, the Aga Khan, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, Muhammad Zafrulla Khan, A.K. Fazlul Huq
• Hindu Mahasabha: B. S. Moonje and M.R. Jayakar
• Liberals: Tej Bahadur Sapru, C. Y. Chintamani and Srinivasa Sastri
• Sikh: Sardar Ujjal Singh
• Depressed Classes : B. R. Ambedkar
• Princely states: Akbar Hydari (Dewan of Hyderabad), Sir Mirza Ismail Diwan of Mysore, Kailas Narain Haksar of Gwalior, Maharaja Bhupinder Singh of Patiala, Maharaja Sayajirao Gaekwad III of Baroda, Maharaja Hari Singh of Jammu and Kashmir, Maharaja Ganga Singh of Bikaner, Nawab Hamidullah Khan of Bhopal, K.S. Ranjitsinhji of Nawanagar, Maharaja Jai Singh Prabhakar of Alwar and the rulers of Indore, Rewa, Dholpur, Koriya, Sangli and Sarila.

The idea of an All-India Federation was moved to the centre of discussion. All the groups attending the conference supported this concept. The responsibility of the Executive to Legislature was discussed, and B. R. Ambedkar demanded a separate electorate for the so-called Untouchables.

Second Round Table Conference

(September – December 1931)

The second session opened on September 7, 1931. There were three major differences between the first and second Round Table Conferences. By the second:

• Congress Representation — The Gandhi-Irwin Pact opened the way for Congress participation in this conference. Mahatma Gandhi was invited from India and attended as the sole official Congress representative accompanied by Sarojini Naidu and also Madan Mohan Malaviya, Ghanshyam Das Birla, Muhammad Iqbal, Sir Mirza Ismail Diwan of Mysore, S K Dutta and Sir Syed Ali Imam. Gandhi claimed that the Congress alone represented political India; that the Untouchables were Hindus and should not be treated as a “minority”; and that there should be no separate electorates or special safeguards for Muslims or other minorities. These claims were rejected by the other Indian participants. According to this pact, Gandhi was asked to call off the Civil Disobedience Movement (CDM) and if he did so the prisoners of the British government would be freed excepting the criminal prisoners, i.e those who had killed British officials. He returned to India, disappointed with the results and empty-handed.

• National Government — two weeks earlier the Labour government in London had fallen. Ramsay MacDonald now headed a National Government dominated by the Conservative Party.

• Financial Crisis – During the conference, Britain went off the Gold Standard further distracting the National Government.
  During the Conference, Gandhi could not reach agreement with the Muslims on Muslim representation and safeguards. At the end of the conference Ramsay MacDonald undertook to produce a Communal Award for minority representation, with the provision that any free agreement between the parties could be substituted for his award.

Gandhi took particular exception to the treatment of untouchables as a minority separate from the rest of the Hindu community. He clashed with the Untouchable leader, B. R. Ambedkar, over this issue: the two eventually resolved the situation with the Poona Pact of 1932.

Third Round Table Conference

(November – December 1932)

The third and last session assembled on November 17, 1932. Only forty-six delegates attended since most of the main political figures of India were not present. The Labour Party from Brtain and the Indian National Congress refused to attend.

In this conference, Chaudhary Rahmat Ali, a college student, coined the name “Pakistan” (which means “land of pureness”) as the name for the Muslim part of partitioned India. He took the “P” from Punjab, the “A” from the Afghanistan, the “K” from Kashmir, the “S” from Sindh and the “TAN” from Balochistan. Jinnah did not attend it.

From September 1931 until March 1933, under the supervision of Samuel Hoare, the proposed reforms took the form reflected in the Government of India Act 1935.

References

• Menon, V.P. (1995). “Integration of the Indian States”,’Orient Longman Ltd’
• Essay on Indian Constitutional Round Table Conferences, London 1931–1933

UK INDEPENDENT COMMISSION ON BANKING

Commission Members

Sir John Vickers

Sir John Vickers has been Warden of All Souls College, Oxford, since October 2008. He was educated at Eastbourne Grammar School and Oriel College, Oxford. After a period working in the oil industry, he taught economics at Oxford University and was Drummond Professor of Political Economy from 1991 to 2008. He was Chief Economist at the Bank of England and a member of the Monetary Policy Committee from 1998-2000; Director General/Chairman of the Office of Fair Trading from 2000-05; and President of the Royal Economic Society from 2007-10.

Letter of Appointment – Sir John Vickers

Clare Spottiswoode

Ms Spottiswoode currently chairs Gas Strategies which has done a recent management buy out from Standard and Poors, and is European Chair and NED of Energy Solutions, a US Nuclear waste company and NED of Tullow Oil, and G4S, both FTSE 100 companies.

Clare is perhaps best known for her role as Director General of Ofgas between 1993 and 1998 where she oversaw the transformation of the gas industry from a monopoly which controlled the whole industry from the time the gas arrived onshore till its use in industry and the home, into an industry where everyone, from large industrial buyers to the smallest domestic customer can choose who to buy their gas from.

In November 2006 she was appointed as the Policyholder Advocate for Aviva, and is responsible for ensuring that around one million With-Profits policyholders receive a fair share of the £5-6bn inherited estate. The deal has now been completed and policyholders received around 70% of the estate, which was more than double the only previous reattribution settlement.

Awarded a CBE for services to industry in 1999, she holds degrees from Cambridge and Yale Universities in Maths and Economics, and has an honorary doctorate from Brunel.

Letter of Appointment – Clare Spottiswoode

Martin Taylor

Martin Taylor has been chairman of Syngenta AG since 2005. He was educated at Eton and Balliol College, Oxford. He worked as a journalist for Reuters and the Financial Times before joining Courtaulds in 1982. He was chief executive of Courtaulds Textiles between 1987 and 1993 (it was demerged from Courtaulds in 1990); chief executive of Barclays plc from 1994 to 1998; chairman of WHSmith plc from 1999 to 2003, and an international adviser to Goldman Sachs from 1999 to 2005.

Letter of Appointment – Martin Taylor

Bill Winters

Bill Winters left JPMorgan in 2010, having been the Co-CEO of the JPMorgan Investment Bank since 2003. He had joint responsibility for the firm’s global businesses across sales, trading, research, capital raising and lending. Having joined JPMorgan in 1983, he held management roles across Markets areas and Corporate Finance. He moved from New York to London in 1992.

Winters received an MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and a Bachelor’s degree in International Relations from Colgate University. He is a member of the Boards of the International Rescue Committee and the Young Vic Theatre. He is a member of the Market Monitoring Group of the Institute of International Finance, having previously served on the board of the IIF and having served as co-Chair of its Committee on Effective Regulation.

Winters is a dual UK / US citizen.

Letter of Appointment – Bill Winters

Martin Wolf

Martin Wolf is Associate Editor and Chief Economics Commentator at the Financial Times, London. He was awarded the CBE (Commander of the British Empire) in 2000 for services to financial journalism. Mr Wolf was educated at University College School, and Corpus Christi College and Nuffield College, Oxford University. He began his career at the World Bank in 1971 and has been at the Financial Times since 1987. He has won many prizes for his journalism, including the Wincott Foundation senior prize for excellence in financial journalism for 1989 and 1997, the RTZ David Watt memorial prize for 1994, the “Accenture Decade of Excellence” at the Business Journalist of the Year Awards of 2003, the “Ludwig-Erhard-Preis für Wirtschaftspublizistik” (“Ludwig Erhard Prize for economic commentary”) from the Ludwig Erhard Stiftung (Foundation) for 2009 and “Commentariat of the Year 2009” at the Comment Awards sponsored by Editorial Intelligence. His most recent publications are Why Globalization Works (Yale University Press, 2004) and Fixing Global Finance (Washington D.C: Johns Hopkins University Press, and London: Yale University Press, 2008 and 2010).

Letter of Appointment – Martin Wolf

Two Elite Groupings:

I. The Other Club

The Other Club is a British political dining society founded in 1911 by Winston Churchill and F. E. Smith. It meets to dine fortnightly while parliament is in session. Its members over the years have included many leading British political and non-political people.

Churchill, who in 1910 was Liberal Home Secretary, and barrister and Conservative MP F. E. Smith had not been invited to join the venerable political dining club known just as The Club. Although both had friends in it, the members thought Churchill and Smith too controversial. So they established their own club, to be called by contrast “The Other Club”.

The initial membership was 12 Liberals, 12 Conservatives, and 12 “distinguished outsiders” who were not in politics. With the help of David Lloyd George (then Chancellor of the Exchequer) another non-member of The Club, they put together such a list and the first dinner was on 18 May 1911. The Chief Whips of the two parties were co-secretaries of the club, so that pairs could be arranged, meaning members dinner would not be interrupted by divisions in the parliament.

Twelve rules were written for the club, mostly by F. E. Smith, and they were, and are still, read aloud at each dinner. Churchill said he had contributed the last,

12. Nothing in the rules or intercourse of the Club shall interfere with the rancour or asperity of party politics.^[1]

The so-called Birkenhead school ascribes this to Smith. In any case debate was indeed vigorous, and Churchill insisted on attending even at the height of The Blitz in 1940/41.

Election to the club depended on Smith and Churchill believing members to be “men with whom it was agreeable to dine”. After Smith’s death in 1930, Churchill became practically the sole arbiter and election was the greatest honour he could confer on those he considered both estimable and entertaining. Both those characteristics were required, so that many he considered estimable, but not entertaining, were not elected. That included Lord Woolton, Clement Attlee, John Anderson and Lord Halifax.

Anthony Eden was invited to join, but declined since he disliked dining clubs.

Charles Wilson, created Lord Moran, was Churchill’s physician for many years and in the late 1950s asked outright to be elected. This was surprisingly forthright, and Churchill couldn’t hurt his feelings by refusing. After Churchill’s death, Moran published a controversial book Winston Churchill, the Struggle for Survival which offended Churchill’s friends for discussing matters normally confidential between a doctor and patient. The members of the club thus asked him to resign, though he himself saw no reason to.

Churchill met Aristotle Onassis in the South of France and became such friends as to elect him to the club, to the astonishment of other members.

The club continued after Churchill’s death, but there has been no Executive Committee since 1970.

Members

The members over the years, as John Colville put it, reads like an index to contemporary English history. They included,

(This list is incomplete.)

• F.E. Smith
• Lord Kitchener
• Lord Jellicoe
• Lord Trenchard
• Lord Alexander
• Lord Montgomery
• Lord Gort
• Lord Alanbrooke
• Charles Portal
• Lord Moyne
• H. G. Wells
• Arnold Bennett
• A. E. W. Mason
• P. G. Wodehouse
• Brendan Bracken
• Walter Elliot
• William Orpen
• Alfred Munnings
• John Lavery
• Edwin Lutyens
• Bob Boothby
• Herbert Beerbohm Tree
• Lawrence Olivier
• Lewis Douglas
• Duff Cooper
• Lloyd George
• Jan Smuts
• Robert Menzies
• R. B. Bennett
• Lord Camrose
• Lord Beaverbrook
• Lord Rothermere
• Edward Marsh
• Leslie Rowan
• Harcourt Johnstone
• Lord Normanbrook
• Aristotle Onassis
• Roy Jenkins^[2]

References

• John Colville, The Churchillians, 1981, ISBN 0-297-77909-5, chapter 1.
• Derek Wilson, “Dark and Light”, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London 1998, ISBN 0-297-81718-3, p.227.

1. 1. Rules of The Other Club at The Churchill Centre
2. 2. Roy Jenkins, Churchill: A Biography, 2001, ISBN 0-374-12354-3, p. xiii.

Further reading

• The Other Club, Colin Coote, Sidgwick & Jackson, 1971. (Quite rare.)

The Other Club

II. Le Cercle

Le Cercle is a foreign policy think-tank specialising in international security. Set up after World War II, the group has members from twenty-five countries and meets at least bi-annually, in Washington, D.C.

The group’s current chairman is Norman Lamont, former British Chancellor of the Exchequer. Lamont worked at Rothschild‘s.

History

At some point in the 1950s, Le Cercle was established by former French prime minister Antoine Pinay and French intelligence agent Jean Violet under the name ‘Cercle Pinay’.

In later years, the British took over the chairmanship of Le Cercle.

Le Cercle has operated in almost complete anonymity since its creation with only a handful of articles having been written about it. As of this writing, no American sources have been identified. The Cercle was mentioned in the early 1980s by Der Spiegel in Germany as a result of the controversy surrounding Franz Josef Strauß, one of the regular attendants of the Cercle. In the late 1990s, the Cercle received some attention after a scandal had broken out involving Jonathan Aitken, at the time chairman of Le Cercle.^[1] Members that were contacted by newspapers refused to answer any questions about the group and sometimes simply put down the phone.

Funding

In 1971, Shell contributed a lump sum of £30,000. The Ford Foundation also donated £20,000 over three years.

References

1. 1. http://www.caat.org.uk/publications/countries/saudi-arabia.php

Two Elite Groupings

The Financial Times 18/03/11
A new article by Samuel Brittan:
Another growth strategy; politics as usual‏

Andrew Heavens (andrew.heavens@gmail.com)
Fri 3/18/1
Another growth strategy; politics as usual
The Financial Times 18/03/11

The UK government is "going for growth", ignoring sage advice that
growth, like happiness, is best achieved by concentrating on more
specific goals (advice given by no less a sage than John Stuart Mill).
But then David Cameron, the prime minister,
has also asked the Office of National Statistics to investigate the
possibility of a "gross national happiness" index
- following the lead of the Himalayan state of Bhutan.
All of which puts me in mind of Karl Marx's saying that
history repeats itself, first as tragedy and then as farce
http://samuelbrittan.us1.list-manage.com/track/click?u=
f3d103dd062d8e2eb1704a4f9&id=6de495f83f&e=66c71111bc 

The Financial Times 18/03/11
A new article by Samuel Brittan:
Another growth strategy; politics as usual‏

Andrew Heavens (andrew.heavens@gmail.com)
Fri 3/18/11