As a result of Russia’s war in Ukraine since 2022, the UK authorities are warning of the threat from Russia; some commentators are talking of a ‘shadow war’ by Russia against Britain, taking in online disinformation, and cyber and real-world sabotage that falls short of an actual war being declared. That begs the question, how to protect sites, if the military has its hands full? The same question cropped up at the outset of the Cold War from the late 1940s, as a file at the National Archives at Kew shows.
The file AIR 20/6555 covers guarding of ‘key points against sabotage’. At a meeting of military chiefs, Sir Nevil Brownjohn, then vice chief of the imperial general staff, ruled out any active Army units for such a task, because ‘on mobilisation all Army personnel would have important tasks and in no circumstances could they be used for static duties in defence of key points’. Although Sir Nevil did not rule out the Army being available in an emergency for what he termed ‘fire brigade operations’. The Air Ministry proposed using its RAF Police.
A Ministry of Defence working party on guarding ‘key points’ dated from November 1950, and reported in September 1951. As background, soon after, wartime prime minister Winston Churchill became peacetime PM and soon ordered into being again the Home Guard on the lines of the Second World War. Meanwhile the working party suggested ‘mechanical and electrical devices should be introduced where worthwhile savings in manpower can be achieved’. It proposed a force of 14,500 for the three armed services, to among other things fight off (Russian) parachutists. The Admiralty could expand its Constabulary. A report (marked ‘top secret’) assumed that the country would have to guard at least as many places as in World War Two. Such guard forces should be mobilised three months before, as a threat of war developed.
Previous war
The example of the 1939-45 war still loomed large. The document recalled guarding of ‘key points’ had been ‘a heavy drain on manpower’, due to ‘uncoordinated allocation’. As of July 1940 (at the height of fears of German invasion as Britain stood alone after the fall of France), some 60,000 troops were doing guarding, that the report described as an ‘alarming total’. A wing of the military police, ‘blue caps’ (that is, not ‘red caps’) dated from 1941, to save soldiers doing guarding. The authorities now sought to classify points and only those of ‘the highest importance to the nation’s war effort which are susceptible to damage from saboteurs’ would get guarded. As a comparison, a list of March 1940 had some 750 key points. Now, the Admiralty had some 125 (such as dockyards), the War Office 380, and the Air Ministry 94 while in the civilian sector (for the police to guard) were 109, such as oil refineries and railway bridges. Factories and the like would have to help themselves. The United States would look after its own establishments in Britain.
Sabotage methods
The security services would advise on how saboteurs might gain illicit entry. Advice to sites included: the fewer entry points the better; and have ‘unclimbable’ fencing. The security services stressed dogs as an ‘aid to security police work’: “Their effectiveness in this role was well established during the last [1939-45] war and we are assured that the use of dogs permits considerable economy in manpower – a dog and its handler being regarded as equivalent to five patrol men.” The War Office and Air Ministry used such dogs extensively; the Admiralty had none. This report suggested the manpower required was 22,950; in post were only 6600. Women, the document said, would be ‘unsuitable …. because of the onerous nature of the duties’. It was also claimed to be ‘undesirable’ to arm women.
As for when the country might need these guards, the report quoted an assurance by the security services, ‘that Russia would not start sabotage in advance’, because that would give warning. The security services noted that enemy agents might be alone, or ‘subversive elements’ (home-grown Communists), and advised that ‘guards who work unobtrusively, whose movements are irregular and whose appearance is nondescript have the best chance of detecting and arresting a saboteur trained to operate covertly’. An armed, uniformed guard would deter; a combination would be ideal.
The security services said there was no such thing as an unscaleable fence, ‘but a reasonable standard for perimeter fencing is seven feet high, wire mesh, mounted either on concrete posts or steel posts set in concrete. The top of the fence should be angled outwards (evidence that this good advice wasn’t always taken is in the file WORK 19/1322 about a security survey of Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle in 1948; the surveyor found a stretch of perimeter wall at Buckingham Palace, repaired after damage in wartime, had its topping of barbed wire bent inwards, as if to make it harder to climb out from the grounds). The security services suggested electrified fencing, either to be lethal or to provide signalling of an attempt to climb or cut through; trip wires; and floodlighting; and burglar alarms on important buildings or rooms, although alarms would not be normally suitable, ‘as they are of a somewhat elaborate nature and as commercial types at any rate are relatively expensive they are not normally suitable as an additional perimeter protection’.
At a chiefs of staff meeting in March 1949, a senior naval man, Sir John Edelsten ‘was convinced that a large Russian organisation was in the process of being built up in the UK for use in war’, for example to immobilise warships or damage aircraft on the ground.
