ABSTRACT
In September 1944 Victor Cavendish-Bentinck chaired a meeting in the offi ces of the War Cabinet. As Chairman of the JIC he had so far had a good war, helping the Committee to improve its standing in Whitehall. The meeting was a high-level conference of military intelligence directors drawn from Britain and the Commonwealth, designed to co-ordinate intelligence efforts in the Far East. Although the conference was primarily focussed on winning the war, in a rather sombre speech, Major General Charles Lamplough, the Director of Intelligence for South-East Asia Command (SEAC), warned how ‘there was a danger . . . that when Japan was defeated, the British Government might consider that they could economise on Intelligence in the Far East; it should be remembered that there might be other nations who would need watching’.1 The discussions concluded with a clear agreement that there ought to be a British intelligence presence in the Far East, but there was no sense of urgency, no suggestion that a potential threat might emerge in the future, and certainly no consideration of the possibility that British forces might be needed within a few short years. Whilst most of the JIC’s post-war attention was focussed on Europe, the communist presence in the Far East steadily grew, threatening not just British colonial possessions, but also raising broader questions about the future battle lines of the Cold War and the global nature of the ‘threat’.
