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MI6 and the First World War – The Birth of the Secret State
In this episode of the Explaining History Podcast, we explore the origins of MI6 – the Secret Intelligence Service – during the First World War, drawing on Keith Jeffery's official history of the organisation.
Intelligence history matters, not because of the romantic glamour of espionage, but because of the place secret organisations occupy in the social and political history of the twentieth century. Britain's secret state did not emerge fully formed. It was improvised, contested, and shaped by the crises of global war – and by the personal tragedy of the man who built it.
In this episode, we examine the earliest years of the Secret Intelligence Service under Commander Mansfield Cumming – the original "C" of spy fiction fame. When the First World War broke out, the Secret Service was a fledgling organisation, born in a period of anti-German hysteria and fears about spies and infiltration. It had no clear place in the hierarchy of Whitehall. Cumming spent the first months of the war navigating between the War Office, the Admiralty and the Foreign Office – briefing each in turn, seeking approval for spending, and defending his institutional autonomy against successive military attempts to absorb his service.
We trace the chaotic, fluid movements of personnel in the opening months of the war, as the pressures of total war moved men around "like counters." We also examine Cumming's own tragedy – a motor accident in France that killed his only son and cost him part of a leg. The story grew, as stories do, into legend: Compton Mackenzie's embellished account of Cumming hacking off his own foot with a penknife to free himself. The reality was more prosaic – but the consequences were not. Cumming's incapacity brought the Secret Service more closely under War Office control and prompted GHQ in France to establish its own independent intelligence service.
**Topics covered:**
- The origins of MI6 and the Secret Intelligence Service
- Mansfield Cumming, the first "C"
- The interdepartmental battle for control of intelligence
- The War Office, Admiralty and Foreign Office
- The chaos and flux of wartime Whitehall
- Cumming's motor accident and the death of his son
- The growth of the secret state in wartime
- The mythology of intelligence work
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*Keith Jeffery's official history of MI6 is available from all good bookshops. Please consider buying from an independent retailer.*
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