THE SPECIAL IRISH Branch in its original form comprised a mere twelve officers (two inspectors, three sergeants and seven constables), which was augmented the following year by the addition of ten constables, the majority of whom hailed from Ireland. By the time the Dynamite War was over, the SIB boasted an establishment of twenty-six officers (two inspectors, four sergeants and twenty constables) who, according to the new Commissioner, Charles Warren, were all ‘employed on Fenianism’.1 However, he neglected to mention the calls made on the services of Special Branch to provide personal protection to British royalty and other dignitaries.
After the ‘Jubilee Plot’ of 1887, the Branch enjoyed a few years of comparative calm disturbed only by the constant rumblings of the anarchists and continual demands for the services of protection officers. By the end of 1891, the Commissioner, Edward Bradford, considered that the terrorist situation was sufficiently settled for the strength of Special Branch to be reduced by four officers, a suggestion to which the Home Secretary readily agreed.2 This proposal was never put into effect as the Walsall bomb plot was a stark reminder of the ever-present anarchist threat, but despite this and with the violent activities of the militant suffragettes a continuing drain on their resources, over the next seventeen years the establishment of SB had only increased by eight, to thirty-four.
Patrick Quinn took over as head of the Branch after the retirement of William Melville in 1903 and throughout his tenure of office made strenuous efforts to raise the establishment to realistic proportions. In 1909 he was successful in gaining an augmentation of twenty officers because of the threat posed by Indian nationalists, an increasingly volatile anarchist community, and the escalating scale of suffragette activity. He also restructured the Branch, amalgamating the former sections B, C and D into one unit to be known as the Special Branch, while Section A, now referred to simply as the CID, would continue to deal with serious crimes of a non-political nature.3
By 1914, because of the unwelcome attention of the suffragettes, it was felt necessary ‘to increase the level of personal protection to members of the government … to include all Cabinet ministers’. As a result, fifteen more men joined the Branch, which, after the restructuring mentioned above, brought its strength up to seventy-three, not including those serving at port.4 Just after the outbreak of World War One, a steep rise in naturalisation applications and enquiries regarding ‘alien matters’, including investigation of espionage cases, stretched the resources of the Branch to breaking point and Quinn again appealed to the Commissioner for more men. At that time the authorised establishment of the Branch was 114, although the actual strength was eighty-six, deployed as follows:
Thirty-four – port; five – Aliens Registry; five – called up to serve in the Reserve Force; eleven – temporarily serving with the Intelligence Corps of the British Expeditionary Force in France; twelve – detailed daily to locate suspects from the Continent for interrogation; ten – engaged daily on protection duty with royalty or Cabinet ministers; four – at Victoria Station every day searching baggage and passengers from the Continent; five – performing duty outside the MPD for the Admiralty investigating alleged cases of espionage.
In support of his case, Quinn stated that his whole staff had been working overtime since the outbreak of war in August, with no leave, either annual or weekly. As a result, officers’ health was suffering and two were unable to work because of illness.5 He was given twenty-five more men.6
Quinn’s efforts were largely neutralised by the demands of the war. In addition to the eleven officers conscripted to serve with the Intelligence Corps in the British Expeditionary Force in France,7 some enlisted voluntarily and others were wholly employed by government departments. Fresh demands were continuously being made on the department’s resources, particularly to man south coast ports; promotions were made ‘in the field’ without the normal requirement to pass the promotion examination and staff were constantly being shuffled around to cope with the needs of the moment.
After the war all public bodies, including the police, were required to cut back on expenditure. As a result, a massive reorganisation of the Metropolitan Police took place, although in Special Branch it was only at senior level that any change in establishment took place. From 1 April 1919, Special Branch and the CID were to be under the overall command of one Assistant Commissioner (Colonel Sir Wyndham Childs), a reversion to the pre-war organisation. Each department would have its own Deputy Assistant Commissioner with Lieutenant Colonel J. F. C. Carter appointed as the nominal head of Special Branch, although Detective Superintendent James McBrien continued to be responsible for the day-to-day running of the section. It was recognised that the work of Special Branch, ‘for reasons which are obvious, has greatly increased in volume’ (since 1914). It was therefore proposed to transfer to the Foreign Office a ‘portion of work relating to foreign affairs’, although a ‘large volume of work relating to Bolshevist, Communist and Revolutionary matters generally’ would remain with the Branch. It was accepted that this ‘will involve a large reduction in the number of senior police officers now performing duty in the Special Branch and their absorption … will be an extremely difficult matter owing to the numbers involved’.
The Commissioner cynically noted that ‘there are several senior officers in the Special Branch above the numbers authorised for that Department’. To rectify the error it was intended that a number of senior officers should be transferred into the Force as a whole as vacancies arose – and yet, over the next ten years, the establishment of the Branch remained virtually unchanged.8
At the beginning of the ’30s the Branch underwent a major transformation. In October 1929, McBrien had retired as head of the Branch, to be replaced by Acting Superintendent Edward ‘Teddy’ Parker,9 who was soon to assume total control when Carter was suddenly transferred. Parker was quickly promoted to superintendent and briefly remained as head of Special Branch until his retirement in 1936. At about the same time the Branch was stripped of its lead role in countering communist subversion, which was taken over by the Security Service, who simultaneously inherited some of SB’s experts on subversion and many of its relevant files. Ironically, the move did not reduce SB’s workload; in fact, the reverse was the case, for MI5, formed in 1909, had no executive powers and no additional staff to cope with the extra work. It was on Special Branch that they relied to carry out their time-consuming enquiries.
When Parker departed, his place was taken by Chief Inspector Albert Canning, who was soon promoted to superintendent and by the time of his retirement in 1946 held the rank of Chief Constable. One of Canning’s chief concerns was his lack of adequate manpower to deal with the increasing work load (in 1933), caused principally by the emergence of fascism as a political threat and the consequent reaction of (mainly) communist and Semitic groups. MI5’s continuing demands for information were also a great drain on resources.10
Three state occasions that occurred between 1934 and 1937 added to these manpower problems. These were the wedding of HRH the Duke of York (1934), the Silver Jubilee of HM King George V and HM Queen Mary (1935) and the coronation of HM King George VI and HM Queen Elizabeth (1937). Two substantial augmentations were approved; in 1934 fifty officers were transferred on a temporary basis (of which number, thirty-five became permanent) and in 1937 a further fifty were drafted in.11 On all such state occasions security considerations are paramount and Canning’s problems were no different from those of his predecessors and are equally applicable today. In applying for these increases, Canning explained to the ACC that:
(i) All political suspects, British and alien, in addition to those already regularly reported on, must be checked.
(ii) A survey to be carried out of 200 or more mentally unstable individuals and those with fixations on royalty or grievances against the state.
(iii) Vetting of lines of route.
(iv) Increased supervision of aliens arriving at ports.
(v) Personal protection for visiting royalty and other VIPs.12
In 1937, to cope with a marked increase in the activities of political extremists, particularly fascists, a further twelve officers were transferred to the Branch, bringing its permanent establishment up to 180.13
1 Letter from Warren to Home Secretary, dated 22 December 1886. TNA HO 144/133/A34848B sub. 12
2 Letters from Bradford to Lushington, and vice versa, dated 17 November 1891 & 31 December 1891. TNA HO 151/5
3 Letter from the Home Secretary to the Commissioner, dated 14 June 1911. TNA HO 148/17 f. 519
4 Letter from the Commissioner to the Home Secretary, dated 16 April 1913. TNA HO 45/10932/163556
5 Memo from Quinn to Henry, dated 20 November 1914. TNA MEPO 2/1643
6 Letter from Henry to Home Secretary Blackwell, dated 2 December 1914, and reply, dated 23 December 1914. TNA MEPO 2/1643
7 Edwin Woodhall in Spies of the Great War (London: John Long, 1936), p. 15, names these officers as Dan McLaughlin, Leo Gough, Martin Clancy, Ernest Hill, Canning, Palmer, Bannon, Frost, Kirchner, Cox, Trevit-Reid, Worth, Smith, Warner, Kite, Geater, Selby, Parkes, Hansen, Phelps, Brattle, Albers and Woodhall himself
8 Letter from Commissioner to Home Secretary, dated 1 March 1922. TNA MEPO 10/3
9 The Times, 30 October 1929
10 Letter from Commissioner to the Home Secretary, dated 12 December 1933. TNA MEPO 2/3826
11 Dealt with on TNA MEPO 2/3827, which shows that the augmentation comprised two DIs, twelve DSs and thirty-six DCs.
12 Memo from Canning to ACC, dated 14 September 1937. TNA MEPO 2/5385. The augmentation was four DIs, eight DSs and thirty-eight DCs.
13 Police Orders, 27 November 1936 and 1 January 1937