MI5

Fiona Harvey

December 2001

For years its very existence was a matter of the utmost secrecy. These days, MI5 even has its own website. The opening up of MI5 to public scrutiny has been one of the most remarkable developments in the agency's history. But British national security remains its business.

Beginnings

The forerunner of MI5 was created in 1909 when Prime Minister Herbert Asquith set up what became the Secret Service Bureau. He was concerned that German spies might be spying on English naval ports. During the First World War, the bureau increased in importance, then in 1916, it was made part of the new Directorate of Military Intelligence and renamed MI5. By the end of the war the unit comprised more than 850 people.

On 15 October 1931, responsibility for assessing threats to the national security of the UK, apart from those posed by Irish terrorists and anarchists, was passed to MI5. This date marked the formation of the Security Service, although the title MI5 has remained in popular use to this day.

Second World War

By the outbreak of the Second World War the service was short of resources. In 1939, it consisted of a mere 30 officers, with a surveillance section of just 6 men. It seems that ominous developments during the 1930s, in Germany and central Europe, had failed to galvanise the British security services into action. By the start of war they were starting almost from scratch. Then under Prime Minister Winston Churchill in early 1941, Sir David Petrie was appointed the first Director General of the Security Service. He was given the resources to rebuild a substantial organisation.

Given such a slow start, the Security Service managed well during the war. German intelligence records, found after the war, revealed that all the 115 or so German spies working against Britain were caught, bar one who committed suicide. The agency also tried out a new method of espionage during the Second World War. They 'turned' some captured enemy agents against their homeland, so that they fed false information back to their masters. This became known as the 'double cross'.

The Cold War

After the war, in the era that Churchill christened the Cold War, the Security Service really came into its own. Most people's knowledge and image of MI5 comes from this era. This was when the Eastern Bloc closed itself off from western scrutiny. When western governments grew paranoid about the possible strengths and intentions of their eastern counterparts. When real spies and genuine defectors from each side hit the headlines. When the US government conducted a series of 'witch hunts' to root out suspected communists from within its own country. When whispers of nuclear attack threats grew louder and when the possibility of incursions into space grew more real.

Spies became the staple subjects of films and books of the period. Perhaps the most famous exponent of the genre was John le Carre, with his creation, George Smiley. Played on screen by Alec Guinness, the character became many people's image of the archetypal, shadowy MI5 spymaster.

Outside the realm of fiction, this period witnessed real life activity in military intelligence. A number of key figures of the British establishment were unmasked as spies for the Soviet Union, including Kim Philby, Guy Burgess, Donald MacLean, George Blake and John Vassall.

Focus on terrorism

From the 1970s on, an area that drew increasing attention was terrorism. The IRA began bombing campaigns in England, and the first rumblings of Palestinian and Islamic terrorist forces were heard.

With the fall of the Soviet Union, the focus of MI5 changed from the Eastern Bloc to these threats of international terrorism. This included MI5 assuming responsibility, in 1992, for the intelligence effort against Irish republican terrorism.

Opening doors

Throughout the Cold War, it would have been unthinkable to identify top-ranking members of MI5. But that culture of secrecy began to be unravelled with the appointment of Stella Rimington as Director General in 1992, the first to be publicly named. To the annoyance of many senior civil servants and more traditional members of the secret services, Stella Rimington recently published her memoirs of her years as MI5 chief.

The service even started to advertise jobs in UK newspapers. Such a recruitment process seemed ludicrously mundane compared to people's vision of spies enlisting in smoky underground rooms. And for the first time, the government acknowledged the existence of MI6 – a branch of MI5 set up to deal with espionage aimed at overseas targets.

Today, MI5 has 1900 employees. Its remit has broadened to include supporting the police in the prevention of serious crime. It also works with other organisations to prevent the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

The future?

The Afghanistan conflict has thrown the spotlight on the secret services. As a result of the recent events, MI5 is expecting a significant budget increase. It's believed the Treasury has earmarked £15m for the rest of the current financial year, to be split between MI5, MI6 and GCHQ (General Communications Headquarters – the government's communications centre). The government had already agreed £2.8bn funding for the three agencies for the period 2001 to 2004. That figure is now likely to be increased, in order to enable more work on the pressing business of counter-terrorism.

Find out more

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Websites

Triumphs & Disasters of Churchill’s Secret Army
www.channel4.com/history/microsites/H/history/c-d/cross.html
Read about Churchill's Special Operations Executive and the bitter turf war that broke out between them and the Secret Intelligence Service. Click on History Heads, then Opinion, then Robin Cross.

MI5 – The Security Service
www.mi5.gov.uk/
An updated version of the booklet MI5: The Security Service, published by the Stationery Office in 1998. Includes a brief history from 1909 to date, a tongue-in-cheek section and 'Myths and misunderstandings'.

John Le Carre
www.johnlecarre.com
Official website of the well-known author of spy novels, with a biography and title list of almost 20 books.

GCHQ – British Intelligence
www.gchq.gov.uk
Official website with information and a GCHQ Challenge, which explains how cipher works and reveals how to unravel the code in other web pages.

Books

Open Secret: The autobiography of the former Director-General of MI5 by Stella Rimington (Hutchinson, 2001) £10.99
Rimington was seen by many as one of the champions of openness at MI5 – a key issue facing secret services in a democracy.

The Private Life of Kim Philby: The Moscow years by Rufina Philby, Hayden Peake and Mikhail Lyubimov (Little Brown, 1999) £10.99
Recruited by the Soviet KGB at Cambridge in the 1930s, he made his way into the British Secret Intelligence Service where he became head of its anti-Soviet section. He revealed everything he learned to his Moscow bosses. Written by his Russian wife and close former KGB colleagues.

The New Jackals: Osama bin Laden and the future of terrorism by Simon Reeve (Andre Deutche, 2001) £7.99
Investigative journalist, Simon Reeve, presents a history of the lives and terrorist careers of Ramzi Yousef and Osama bin Laden of the notorious Al-Qaeda organisation.

The New Terrorism by Walter Laqueur (Phoenix Press, 2001) £12.99
The increased availability of weapons of mass destruction, cheap and accessible chemical and biological weapons and cyberterrorism are disturbing factors of recent times. The author, a world-renowned expert on terrorism and international strategic affairs, recounts the history of terrorism and examines the future of terrorism worldwide.

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