Case Studies

Security in history: secret espionage notes

by Mark Rowe

A western world feeling under siege, from regional powers that don’t share its values, while the United States shows no leadership. That might have sounded like 2020; but it was also true of the 1930s, and the same nation-state espionage threats were around then, writes Mark Rowe, in the latest of a series that looks at security management in history.

Notes on munitions security, by the War Office – the blunter title of today’s UK Ministry of Defence – 1937, revised edition of a 1933 booklet. As it pointed out, even holding the notes without permission was an offence under the Official Secrets Act.

Handily the Official Secrets Acts of 1911 and 1920 were printed at the back, for example making illegal the passing on of any details of war work. By 1937, after Germany had re-entered the Rhineland militarily and ignored the Treaty of Versailles that ended what was not yet known as the First World War, Britain had to face the prospect of another war with Germany. Hence the notes began with ‘industrial mobilisation’, or as it put it, beating ‘ploughshares into swords’.

It said: ‘It is known in fact that certain Foreign Governments are making intensive and systematic efforts to obtain industrial and commercial information in Great Britain regarding the activities, processes outputs and markets not only of firms actively employed in time of peace in producing munitions for the three Fighting Services but also of those commercial firms whose activities are such owing to the special nature of their products or their capacity to turn over to munitions work if required that they might be engaged in work of importance to national defence should war break out.’

The handbook – a copy now in Staffordshire county council archives once belonged to the police – was giving secret notes not official instructions, ‘because dangers for obvious reasons cannot be publicly discussed without producing grave international difficulties in times of peace’. Only two countries were named; Germany, and Russia, for having laws against espionage. Germany, the enemy in 1914-18 and re-arming under Hitler, was an obvious threat; as was Russia, Communist since 1917 and making propaganda to topple the capitalist world.

The handbook’s advice sounds strikingly modern, relevant and sound. It covered suspicious visitors, staff credentials, the employment of foreigners, and (in an age of paper documents before computers) use of safes. Waste paper should be burned, not put in waste paper baskets. The Royal Arsenal at Woolwich had 130 police. Visitors there had to sign in, and were not allowed to make sketches or take photographs. They had to leave their bags at the gate, and were escorted to and from their business inside.

Britain had been caught out once before. The handbook mentioned ‘the comprehensive tour of British munition works made by a delegation from Krupps of Essen [armament manufacturers] in July 1914 for the express purpose of gauging the capacity in this country to produce munitions on the eve of the great German war [of 1914-18].’

One intriguing line warned: ‘Advertisements in the daily and technical press are sometimes used as a means of bringing together spies and untrustworthy employees of works.’ That is reminiscent of the official UK Centre for the Protection of National Infrastructure’s campaign last year for those with security clearance to ‘think before you link’. It’s also a dilemma for those who have worked in the security services and looking for a job in commerce; how do you explain your working past on your CV, let alone social media? CPNI point out the risk from sharing too much, because (unspecified) ‘hostile actors’ may want to know what you know, or recruit you as an agent, whether you’ve been in sensitive work in government, the defence supply chain, or academic research. Among its anonymous case studies, CPNI tells of an engineer with security clearance who was approached online over a professional networking site. He travelled to a foreign country for meetings with contacts established online; and was asked for detailed technical data on military aircraft. He arranged to travel to a foreign country for a third time before the contact was ‘disrupted’ by the UK Security Services.

For more case studies and advice and publicity materials, visit the CPNI website.

All that does assume that the British worker does not want to betray his country to a foreign power, whether out of ideology or for money. A case in the book London Murders by David Long, published last year by the History Press, is of Ernest Oldham, a cipher clerk at the Foreign Office and a ‘mercenary volunteer to the Communist cause’, presumably because he had drink, drug and money troubles.

In the late 1920s – after the Soviet embassy at first turned his offer down – he took money from the Soviet Russians in return for info. In 1932 he got the sack for being drunk. However, ‘security in Whitehall was so slack that a former employee was somehow still permitted to visit his old office to converse with old colleagues, and even to store personal items in the ‘confidential presses’ or office safe’. Oldham was becoming more unstable and the Security Services were called in and put Oldham under surveillance when he was suspected of making copies of the cipher room keys when a set was returned to Whitehall with traces of wax or soap still clearly visible (leaving aside how he got the keys in the first place). According to the file on Oldham in the National Archives, freely downloadable – KV 2/808 – Oldham committed suicide in September 1933; he was found with his head in the gas oven in the kitchen of his flat at 31 Pembroke Gardens, Kensington, London W8.

British agents who had been tracking him had the opinion that Oldham had been heading for a breakdown. A coroner recorded a verdict of suicide ‘while of unsound mind’. As Long writes: “But just as likely, the MI5 file admits, is that, having outlived his usefulness, Oldham was bumped off by Stalin’s agents who were sensibly covering their tracks.” As evidence for that, MI5 noted that Soviet intelligence had insisted on Oldham providing names of colleagues who they might be able to replace him with.

Photo courtesy of the National Archives; Ernest Oldham passport photo, 1932; from file KV 2/808.

Related News

Newsletter

Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to stay on top of security news and events.

© 2024 Professional Security Magazine. All rights reserved.

Website by MSEC Marketing