Intelligence
Sir Michael Howard, an official historian of WW2 intelligence, wrote in 1985: ‘So far as official government policy is concerned, the British security and intelligence services do not exist. Enemy agents are found under gooseberry bushes and intelligence is brought by the storks.’
Even the existence of SIS (MI6) was not officially admitted until 1992. Intelligence is still missing from much modern historiography. Even when present, the interpretation often suffers from Historical Attention-Span Deficit Disorder (HASDD). Edward Snowden’s sensational revelations of UKUSA signals intelligence SIGINT operations had a far smaller impact on 21st-century British government policy and public opinion than mid-19th-century revelations of the official interception of Mazzini’s correspondence.
Twitter: @CamIntelligence
The Seminar will convene this year through a mixture of online and hybrid events.
In order to attend those events available online, you must be subscribed to our mailing list. To be signed up for the mailing list, or on any technical queries, please contact Dr Dan Larsen (Daniel.Larsen@glasgow.ac.uk). The Zoom link will be distributed in advance of the session.
Except where specifically indicated, seminars are not recorded.
Michaelmas 2024
5-30pm BST, Friday 11 October, McCrum Theatre, Bene’t St, Corpus Christi College (Hybrid)
Dr John Ranelagh, ‘The Irish Republican Brotherhood, 1914-1924’
In The Irish Republican Brotherhood 1914–1924, John O’Beirne Ranelagh lifts the veil on the fascinating story of the IRB during the most critical phase of its campaign for Irish independence. With a father who was a member of the IRB and took part in the Easter Rising, War of Independence and the Civil War as an anti-Treaty officer, he had unique access to the generation of men and women who populated its ranks, many of whom refused to be interviewed by anyone else. Using personal testimonies from almost 100 key figures he interviewed, such as Éamon de Valera, Sheila Humphries, Emmet Dalton, Todd Andrews, Vinnie Byrne and Moss Twomey, as well as new archival material, Ranelagh unravels the true influence of the organisation to which Michael Collins pledged his foremost loyalty.
An enthralling exploration of secret societies, political manoeuvres and personal sacrifices, this book casts new light on a pivotal chapter in Ireland’s quest for independence. This is the hitherto unpublished chapter in modern Irish history.
You can find the McCrum Theatre here.
John Ranelagh is the author of A Short History of Ireland (1983) and CIA: A History (1992). From 1974 to 1979 he was at the Conservative Research Department where he first had responsibility for Education policy, and then for Foreign policy. He worked at TV2 in Norway, and he was created a Knight First Class by King Harald V of Norway in 2013 in the Royal Norwegian Order of Merit, for outstanding service in the interest of Norway.
5-30pm BST, Friday 18 October (Online)
Clare Mulley, ‘Agent Zo: The Untold Story of Fearless WW2 Resistance Fighter Elzbieta Zawacka’
Elzbieta Zawack, better known as Agent Zo, was the only woman to reach London as an emissary of the Polish Home Army command during the Second World War. In Britain she enlisted as the only female member of the Polish elite Special Forces – the ‘Silent Unseen’ – before parachuting back behind enemy lines into Nazi-occupied Poland. There, whilst being hunted by the Gestapo who arrested her entire family, Zo took a leading role in the largest organised act of defiance against Nazi Germany, the Warsaw Uprising.
After the war, Zo was demobbed as one of the most highly decorated women in Polish history. Yet the Soviet-backed post-war Communist regime not only imprisoned her, but also ensured that her remarkable story remained hidden.
Clare Margaret Mulley is an English author and broadcaster. Her first book, The Woman Who Saved the Children: A Biography of Eglantyne Jebb, republished in 2019 to mark the centenary of Save the Children, won the Daily Mail Biographer's Club Prize.
5-30pm BST, Friday 25 October (Online)
Dr Claudia Hillebrand, Managing Extremists: The AfD, German Domestic Intelligence and Parliamentary Intelligence Oversight
Dr Claudia Hillebrand is a Senior Lecturer in International Relations at Cardiff University. Her research focuses on intelligence accountability and oversight, secrecy, intelligence cooperation as well as diversity and equality in intelligence. Her work has been published with Oxford University Press, Routledge, Intelligence and National Security and the Journal of Common Market. Claudia has recently given invited talks about her research at the Federal University of Applied Administrative Sciences, Berlin; at John Cabot University, Rome; and for the Critical Security Studies Section of the German Political Science Association. She is co-editor of the Studies in Intelligence book series. Claudia is also a founding member and board member of the Women’s Intelligence Network (WIN) and the Secrecy, Power and Ignorance Network (SPIN), and she is an editorial board member of Intelligence and National Security and the Journal of Intelligence History. She is School Director of Postgraduate Research Studies at Cardiff’s School of Law and Politics and a member of the Senior Management Team.
5-30pm GMT, Friday 1 November (Online)
Dr Paul McGarr, Spying in South Asia: Recovering India's Secret Cold War
Until very recently, India was conspicuously absent in the historiography of the intelligence Cold War. Conversely, since August 1947, Indian politicians, journalists, and cultural producers have exhaustively documented interventions in South Asia by foreign intelligence services, real and imagined. The first published book on the CIA and its purportedly subversive agenda, appeared in India, in 1952. This paper unpicks connections between secret intelligence and performative statecraft in India’s Cold War relations with the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union. It challenges existing Cold War intelligence scholarship framed predominantly in an East-West context and argues that this clandestine conflict was, paradoxically, truly transformative inside the Global South.
Dr Paul McGarr is a lecturer in intelligence studies at Kings College London. He is an expert on US and UK security and intelligence interventions within the Global South. His work focuses on intelligence liaison, non-Western intelligence cultures, disinformation, and covert action. He has published over a two-dozen peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters on South Asian security and intelligence issues in Intelligence & National Security, The Journal of Strategic Studies, Diplomatic History, The International History Review, The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, Modern Asian Studies, and Diplomacy and Statecraft and with Oxford University Press, Georgetown University Press, Edinburgh University Press and Bloomsbury, amongst others.
5-30pm GMT, Friday 8 November, Jock Colville Hall, Churchill College Archives Centre, Cambridge (Hybrid)
Allen Packwood, ‘Churchill's D-Day: The Inside Story’
D-Day is celebrated as a great triumph and a major turning point in the Second World War. But as Churchill knew, large-scale land and sea operations were fraught with danger and victory was not guaranteed. What would have happened if D-Day had failed? Would the outcome of the war have been different? And how much of its success was down to the leadership of one man?
Allen Packwood’s new book Churchill's D-Day plunges us back in time to this knife-edge moment to witness events as they unfolded. Through documents and letters from the Churchill Archives Centre in Cambridge, we get a vivid sense of the tremendous risks involved in the planning and execution of Operation Overlord, the largest land, sea and air operation ever staged.
Allen Packwood BA, MPhil (Cantab), FRHistS, OBE, is a Fellow of Churchill College, Cambridge, and the Director of the Churchill Archives Centre. He is a qualified archivist and has worked at the Centre since September 1995.
5-30pm GMT, Friday 15 November (Online)
Dr Andrew Harrison, ‘Preventative Diplomacy: Britain, Yugoslavia & the Cold War in Europe’
Occupying a strategically important position amid Nato’s southern flank, Yugoslavia’s Cold War relations with the superpowers was often strained as Tito attempted to play a role between East and West. Despite being a communist country, Western leaders periodically feared Soviet intervention could topple Tito in favour of a more compliant individual thereby threatening the regional status quo. The situation became particularly pronounced during the late 1960s and into the 1970s following the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia, introduction of the Brezhnev Doctrine, and increasing instability in the Mediterranean, all against the backdrop of uncertainty regarding the aging Tito’s succession. Britain’s position as a global power was in economic and military decline, but its diplomats remained experts in their field and were at the forefront of Western efforts to increase influence in Yugoslavia in order to deter the Kremlin from any overt or covert action there. This paper, based on doctoral research and currently being turned into a book, explores British efforts to befriend Tito, often acting effectively when the Americans could not, with the overall objective of maintaining stability and security in Cold War Europe.
Dr Andrew Harrison is the Senior Media Officer at The National Archives in Kew, where he works, among other things, on the release of government records from the Prime Minister’s Office, Cabinet Office, and the Security Service, MI5. He completed his doctoral studies at
King’s College London and is a member of the British International History Group. He is a regular contributor to the International History Seminar held at the Institute of Historical Research, and has reviewed articles for the Britain and the World journal, as well as contributing to an edited collection published by the Palgrave Macmillan Modern Monarchy series. Before joining The National Archives in 2014, he was a journalist and news editor in south Wales and the north-east of England, and also worked as a freelance reporter, sub-editor and news editor for national and regional titles in London.
5-30pm GMT, Friday 22 November (Online)
Dr Itai Shapira, ‘Israeli National Intelligence Culture’
Different nations have different national intelligence cultures, relying on different ideas of intelligence, perceiving and practicing intelligence in different ways. Written by a former senior intelligence officer, this book is the first study dedicated to Israeli intelligence culture and the way it reflects Israeli strategic culture. Relying on more than 30 elite interviews with acting and former Israeli practitioners, Shapira’s new book highlights the Israeli aversion to intelligence theory and scientific methods, as well as to the structured management of the intelligence system at the national level. It describes the intelligence system's emphasis on contrarian thinking and moral courage as the foundations of intelligence professionalism, and the growing inclination of Israeli intelligence toward action and influence. Intelligence is perceived and practiced by Israelis as a tool for problem-solving, addressing unique Israeli challenges. While some traits of the Israeli national intelligence culture have contributed to its high reputation and its 'success story', others might have also contributed to its failure in anticipating the Hamas terrorist attack on October 2023 or have remained aspirational norms rather than realized practice. The October 2023 failure, as that of the Yom Kippur War in 1973, will undoubtfully influence Israeli national intelligence culture for many years to come.
Dr Itai Shapira served for more than 25 years in the Israeli Defence Intelligence on the strategic, operational, and tactical levels, retiring as a colonel. He earned his PhD from the University of Leicester, studying Israeli national intelligence culture.