A Potted History of Communications at the FCO

from telegrams...

...to eGrams

A POTTED HISTORY OF

FCO COMMUNICATIONS

Over the years of my time in Comcen management I became aware that

there was no 'record' written down about the birth and life of the

Comcen, nor yet a reasonably coherent account of how Telegrams

evolved and came to be such an important part of the working life of the

FCO. I have therefore tried to produce a 'first' record - before my time

runs out and I retire in November 2004. It has been an extremely

interesting process, hooking up as much relevant information as possible

and trying to pat it all into a sensible sort of shape. I hope I have

achieved at least some of what I set out to do.

I am indebted to Kate Crowe (PDD) and Records and Historical

Department (RHD) for a wealth of historical notes about FCO telegrams

in general and to Library and Information Services (LIS) for the freedom

to browse through historical photographs and select those for inclusion in

this booklet. I have borrowed lines and paragraphs by the hundredweight in an effort to produce a

document that I hope can inform as well as be 'of some interest'. Without their help and support, this

would be a much less meaningful and interesting document. I am also grateful for input from various

serving and retired members of Cypher and Signal Branch who contributed in many ways, adding their

two penn'orth to a total sum of collected memory.

Any errors contained within are very firmly my own responsibility. I would be grateful for any feedback

that might point out errors or provide deeper understanding so that appropriate updates can be made for

any future reprinting.

W J M Dunningham (Bill)Head of Comcen and Cypher & Signal BranchICT ComcenFCO ServicesForeign and Commonwealth Office16 August 2004

Extracts have been taken from:FCO RECORDS dated August 1991, 1992 and 1993.The Historical Journal dated 1979.From Quills to Computers - Information Technology in the FCO 1782-1992. (LRD)THE FCO - History Notes (Policy, People and Places, 1782-1991) (LRD)Photographs have been provided by FCO Library Services and Comcen records.© Crown copyright. A product of FCO Services. Design and printed byFCO services: Crystal Print.

Foreword

1

Once again in the history of Foreign and

Commonwealth Office communications there is

an inexorable movement towards a period of

fairly major change in the way we do our

business and this has served as a prompt that

perhaps this is one of those moments in time

when we should sit down and record ‘where we

have been’, ‘where we are now’ and perhaps a

short line or two about where the track might

lead for the future. Some facts and figures will

be necessary as building blocks but I will try to

'top off' with something more like a time-lapse

snapshot of the area which the members of

Cypher and Signal Branch will have inhabited

for past couple of decades. Whilst we were not

around for the birth of the Telegram, we were for

part of its heyday – and within a scant few

months, will be there to witness its sad demise

during the Autumn of 2004 as new technology in

the form of eGrams takes over the burden of

conveying FCO instructions, reports and

information via the global email pathways.

With regard to where we have been, Library have

been so kind as to provide us with some

photographs and Kate Crowe of Public

Diplomacy Department (PDD as it was when the

information was requested!) earned our major

thanks by providing some history and

background information we could draw on. One

assumes it was necessary for her to dig around in

those dark and dusty recesses where the history

of much of the office lies quietly sleeping. We

have also spoken to some of our more

‘experienced’ (aged) staff prior to their leaving to

well earned retirement in case they had any

‘historical moments’ of their own to share. Many

of these, whilst being highly entertaining,

actually had little to do with the office – but

could well form a separate book of their own!

Introduction

Cornhill Station where the first telegram arrived

3

4

Where to start? Well, the best place is usually the

beginning, but exactly where was the beginning?

Well, that’s not quite so easy to determine as you

would think; there appears to be no previous

history written of FCO Communications, just the

odd mention here and there in other documents

and the occasional photo. Finding the roots from

whence sprung Cypher & Signal Branch (C &

SB) was never going to be an easy task.

However, deep amongst the roots is evidence that

cyphers were in fairly common usage during the

late 1700’s; we have a copy of one dated 1795

and others during the early and later 1800’s.

Plainly, our roots go pretty deep into the FCO’s

past. It is interesting to note that the office of the

Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs developed

from the royal household of the middle ages. The

first official mention in the context of foreign

affairs of a King’s Secretary (John Maunsell)

came in 1253. On his appointment to Rome in

1479, John Shirwood became the first resident

English Ambassador. In 1505, John Stile,

appointed by Henry VII as ambassador to Spain,

became the first English ambassador resident at a

secular court. By the reign of Elizabeth I, further

resident ambassadors had been appointed to

Vienna, Venice, France and Constantinople and

the outline of a network of foreign embassies

was thereby established. During 1640, the

Northern and Southern Departments were

created. The chronology goes on to state that in

1782, the Northern Department became the

Foreign Office housed at Cleveland Row, St

James’s. There were further moves to the

Cockpit, Whitehall in 1786 and to Downing

Street and Fludyer Street in 1793. Apparently,

Downing Street and its environs in those days

was a much less salubrious place than the present

From the beginning

An en-clair telegram to be decyphered by Book

5

seat of government being full of public houses

such as the Cat and Bagpipes and Rose and

Crown, livery stables, dressmaking

establishments and cheap lodging houses often

used by Irish and Scottish MPs. In 1801,

Colonial Affairs became the responsibility of the

Secretary of State for War and the Colonies and

the name Colonial Office began to come into

common use.

During those times, the Office would have had

the need to communicate with its outposts to

send instructions and briefings and receive the

latest political news and intelligence as to what

was happening in various countries on a number

of different fronts. In those days, written

communications of course would have been

infrequent, having to pass first by ship and then

overland carried in a pouch – possibly through

potential war zones, prey to attack also by

bandits and warlords. All this may still sound

familiar to those of you who may have served in

certain countries fairly recently! This would have

made adherence to the latest Whitehall policy

and guidance extremely difficult and much

reliance would have been placed upon the Heads

of Mission to conduct their affairs in general

accordance with the last known wishes of

ministers in London.

To set the scene a little, by way of background,

perhaps we should look first at communications

during those earlier years, firstly, prior to the

formation of Cypher and Signal Branch. To help

this process it might be interesting to look a bit

closer at the chronology of the office. How did

the present FCO building come into being? Well

– apparently, in 1839, the Foreign Office and

Colonial Office buildings were condemned as

unfit and unsafe in a Report from a Select

Committee on Public Offices. In 1856, there was

an announcement of an Open Competition for

new offices to be built on a site between

Parliament Street and St James’s Park. In 1858,

George Gilbert Scott was appointed as architect

for the new Foreign Office building but Lord

Palmerston objected to his Gothic design and

instead, opted for the Italian Palladian style you

see today. In 1868, the Foreign Office moved

into the new building. A couple of other

interesting dates to note are:

1902 – The India Office Courtyard was the scene

of Coronation celebrations for King Edward VII

and renamed Durbar Court.

1919 saw the amalgamation of the Foreign

Office and Diplomatic Service.

1925 – the FO Reception Suite was renamed the

Locarno Suite following the signing of the

Locarno Treaty in the largest of the three rooms.

1947 – FO take over the India Office part of the

building (including Durbar Court).

1968 – The FCO was established by the merger

of the Foreign Office and Commonwealth Office.

1978 – FCO take over all of the present building

on Home Office removal to Queen Anne’s Gate.

6

So, perhaps we should now take a flavour of

early ‘despatches’, their preparation and how

they were sent, as these would have been the

precursors to telegrams. From its establishment

as a separate ministry in 1782 until the beginning

of the 20th century, the Foreign Office was

indeed ‘a department of scribes’ and the familiar

picture, from Dickensian illustrations, of clerks

standing at tall desks and writing with quill pens

held good until well into the 19th century.

Despatches were frequently dictated by the

Secretary of State to an attendant clerk, who

made a file copy in a large leather-bound register

before sealing and addressing the original for

transmission abroad. Lord Palmerston apparently

made his clerks work very long hours, even on

Sundays, while George Canning was famous for

his ability to dictate to three clerks at once! Quill

pens made by cutting a nib with a ‘pen-knife’

from goose or crow feathers, wore out so quickly

that in 1795 the staff of nine at the Colonial

Office went through 2,000 quills in less than a

year. Metal nibs did not come into common use

until the 1820’s.

Until the middle of the nineteenth century, the

Foreign Office received and sent despatches by

means of the mail and by Foreign Service

(Queen’s) Messengers. Messengers were used

only for the most secret and important

communications. Other material was cyphered,

or even written in invisible ink and trusted to the

general postal system. Until 1830, one man

collected all outgoing mail from three

government offices and took it all to Lombard

Street Post Office for the 8 pm coach and as he

frequently did not arrive until 7.45, the coach

was often held up (it's unclear whether this

meant 'delayed' or 'at gunpoint'!). Overseas mail

was in turn often delayed by weather conditions

which made the length and timing of sea voyages

impossible to determine. Stricter controls on the

timings of collections were introduced in 1830.

The first distinct organisation of King’s

Messengers for overseas use came in 1772 when

the Secretaries of State for the Northern and

Southern Departments were granted 16 of the 40

King’s Messengers. Their trips were expensive

and dangerous. In 1775, a journey from London

to Paris is recorded as costing £48.10.8, while a

Messenger’s journey to St Petersburg in 1780

cost £459.3.4. There were numerous fatalities in

the line of duty: George Sparrow was robbed of

his despatches and stabbed to death in Sicily in

1807, George Lyell was murdered ‘by

desperadoes’ in Madrid in 1815, while Thomas

Brown died of fatigue brought on by a

continuous journey of 23 days and nights when

he arrived at St Petersburg in 1820.

Members of the Corps worked on a rota system,

and one Messenger, returning from a trip to

Russia and seeing his name at the bottom of the

list had obtained permission from the Chief

Clerk to go on leave in Monte Carlo. He then

received a telegram: ‘Your wife says you are fast

and dirty, return at once, Chief Clerk’. On arrival

at the Office, he found that the telegram, sent on

his wife’s behalf by a friend had been garbled on

transmission. The original text read: ‘You are the

first on duty, return at once, Chief Clerk’!

The Office has had an official Printer since 1800

when a salary of £150 was first paid to James

Harrison. The printers carried out classified work

up to the highest category, not only for the FO

but also for the Cabinet Office, Treasury and

other departments.

Other means of copying existed from the late

18th century to early 20th century such as the

Early despatches

7

letter press and hectograph. The hectograph,

which employed copying ink on a gelatine-filled

tray, was capable of producing many copies and

the memoirs of H J Bruce recall its use in the FO

in the early years of the 20th century. He recalled

that ‘The decyphering of telegrams was

accompanied by a physically dirty job called

"bluing". This meant that the decyphers of

telegrams were written out in indelible copying

ink and pressed onto a gelatine pad. Enough

copies were then taken off for the King, the

Secretary of State, the Cabinet etc. The next job

was to decontaminate one’s hands as far as

possible from the stickiness of the gelatine and

the indelibility of the ink’.

In 1886, the Treasury accepted that the

installation of typewriters represented significant

savings in time and money in that a skilful typist

could do the work of two copy-writers at a third

of their wages. Miss Sophia Fulcher was the first

typist appointed by the Foreign Office in 1889

and she and her later colleagues were at first

described as ‘Lady Typewriters’.

It is interesting to note that the Treasury

recommended the use of the photostat machine,

on grounds of economy, to the FO in 1926, and

by 1947, the Foreign Office Guide stated that ‘a

fully equipped photostat department is

established in the Main Foreign Office Building

and should generally be used for the simple

reproduction of documents in order to avoid

placing a strain on the typing staff.

The “Lady Typewriters”

8

Telegrams: The term Telegraph is derived from

two Greek words: tele meaning afar and graphos

meaning writer. Following the invention of

electrical telegraphy in the 1830s, the telegram

system was first used by the Foreign Office in

1852. The first successful Submarine cables were

laid across the Channel in 1850 and the Atlantic

in 1858 (updated between 1866 and 1874 by

Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s revolutionary iron

ship, The Great Eastern). In December of 1852

the Paris Embassy became the first British

mission abroad to send a telegram to the Foreign

Office, forwarding an announcement from the

Governor of Malta on the arrest of a public

figure. Telegraphic communication with

Florence, Berlin and Vienna followed in 1853. At

this early period, the messages came first to

commercial telegraph offices (the Electric

Telegraph Company or the Submarine Telegraph

Company) and were then delivered to the

Foreign Office. By 1859, cables had been laid

connecting Great Britain with Constantinople

and Suez, and in 1862 it was believed that

150,000 miles of telegraphs were in existence

throughout the

world. Messages

which had taken

months to arrive

could be

transmitted in as

many hours, and

by the end of the

century, in just a

few minutes.

By the end of

the century,

telegraphy was

an essential

form of world-

wide

communication,

and had been the

subject of a

series of

international

conventions

attempting to

govern its use in

times of war and

peace.

The first telegram

Early Book Cypher dated 1795

9

Recognised as being the first telegram - 19 December 1852

10

However, telegraph cables were always liable to

be cut during hostilities, and the possible

disruption of British foreign policy and

commerce was a nightmare never far from the

minds of government officials. In 1911,

therefore, the official government response to

Guglielmo Marconi’s proposal for the

establishment of a chain of high-power wireless

telegraphy stations throughout the British Empire

was remarkably positive. On 19 May 1911, a

committee consisting of representatives of the

Admiralty, War Office, Colonial Office, India

Office, Foreign Office, Post Office and the Board

of Trade, signed a report approving Marconi’s

proposals and advising state ownership of the

new system from the outset. These plans were

implemented and were further developed by the

establishment of the Cable and Wireless

Company in 1928, which fused in one

undertaking all the cable and wireless interests

conducting communications between the various

parts of the British Empire.

This new medium was regarded with suspicion

by Edmund Hammond, then Permanent Under

Secretary at the Foreign Office who told a

Parliamentary Committee in 1858 "No, we do

not have the Electric Telegraph in the office;

provision was made to admit of its coming in, [to

the proposed new Foreign Office building]

because it was right and proper to make it, but I

hope it will never come in". Hammond declared

that it would be ‘a very inconvenient and very

expensive arrangement to have the telegraph

brought into the office’, and when asked if he

favoured telegraphic communication between

Government departments, he replied "No, I

dislike the telegraph very much, because you get

nothing on sufficient record which passes by the

telegraph, and you are very much tempted to

The Electric

Telegraph Company

I dislike the telegraphvery much, because youget nothing onsufficient record whichpasses by thetelegraph, and you arevery much tempted toanswer off-hand pointswhich had much betterbe considered. I thinkthe tendency of thetelegraph is to makeevery person in ahurry, and I do notknow that with ourbusiness it is verydesirable that thatshould be so"

“

”Edmund Hammond,Permanent Under Secretaryat the Foreign Office, 1858

11

answer off-hand points which had much better be

considered. I think the tendency of the telegraph

is to make every person in a hurry, and I do not

know that with our business it is very desirable

that that should be so".

Despite Hammond’s misgivings, a branch of the

Electric Telegraph Company was installed in the

Foreign Office soon afterwards, and by 1861

telegrams were an integral part of the

communications systems connecting the Office

with missions abroad. This would have

effectively been the first FCO Comcen. In 1870,

the General Post Office took over responsibility

for telegraphs from the commercial telegraph

companies. Foreign Office Accounts for the year

1871-2 show that over £4900 was spent on

telegraphs, which was close to the original

estimate prepared by the FO, but which the

Treasury had reduced to £3500. (The shortfall

was compensated by ‘economy…in the conduct

of the Messenger Service’, the costs of which

were reduced from £18,000 to below £16,000).

The telegraphic address PRODROME (from the

Greek prodromos meaning precursor) was

registered in 1884, PRODROME LONDON

being used for diplomatic telegrams to the

Office, and PRODROME followed by the name

of the mission for telegrams from the Office.

This convention was also followed for Telex

answerbacks and remains in force today. The

telegraphic address BREASTRAIL was also

registered in 1884 for consular telegrams.

Telegram distribution by Box to other Government Departments

12

In this early period, telegrams arriving during the

day were delivered to departments like ordinary

post and filed alongside letters and despatches.

The first telegram sent from Florence appears in

the same volume as the corresponding despatch

and enclosure, with a time difference of seven

days between them. By 1878, telegrams were so

frequent that they began to be numbered like

despatches, and for some missions amounted to

several hundreds each year. Until 1906,

telegrams which arrived during the day were

delivered direct to individual departments and

their receipt and despatch was recorded in

departmental diaries or registers. Telegrams

received out of office hours were distributed by

the Resident Clerk. After the establishment of the

General Registry in 1906 telegrams were handled

by the Registry (night-time telegrams continued

to be the responsibility of the Resident Clerks).

From 1914 telegrams and despatches were listed

and numbered in separate annual series. This

would have been the beginning of use of

Telegram Numbers as commonly known now. In

1920 the handling of telegrams was divided

between the Registry (receipt and registration)

and the newly-established King’s Messengers

and Communications Department –

‘Communications Department’ from 1923 –

(decyphering and despatch).

All telegrams were copied in the Distribution

Room of Communications Department and

circulated as required. The more important of the

day’s telegrams and despatches were reproduced

on printed sheets known as daily print sections,

and circulated to the Prince of Wales, to

members of the Cabinet and sometimes to

missions abroad. H J Bruce recalled

that the job of ‘sorting the print’ took

several hours each day.

The first telegrams were sent en clair

and received by the Foreign Office on

commercial telegraph forms, but

certain missions were also able to

send telegrams in cypher from a very

early stage. On 12 July 1853 for

instance, Lord Westmoreland reported

from Vienna that he had received the

secret despatch of 2 July ‘transmitting

a Printed Paper being the key of a

Letter Cypher to be used when I have

occasion to send messages of such a

secret nature as it might not be

expedient should be sent in words by

the Telegraph between Vienna and

London. In reply I beg to inform you

that the necessary care and attention

has been taken so as to give effect to

The War Years

A telegram for decyphering by Book

13

the instructions contained in the abovementioned

dispatch’.

Telegrams sent in cypher were originally

followed by duplicates known as recorders which

were sent through normal channels of

communication, or by extenders, longer

despatches providing more detail on the

instructions sent by telegram. In 1890, recorders

were replaced by paraphrases, so that if

telegrams were intercepted, the cypher would not

be compromised.

The outbreak of war in 1939 imposed enormous

pressure on Communications Department, and

although it was recognised that the standard of

proficiency was high and its cyphering speed far

ahead of any other government department, there

were complaints of congestion and delay, and of

carelessness in the checking and distribution of

telegrams. While the greatly increased volume of

telegrams was a major contributory factor,

management, equipment and accommodation

were also to blame. Although the cyphering

branch had taken over two rooms of the Locarno

Suite, it was so far from the rest of

Communications Department that delays ensued

and supervision was limited. Major reforms,

including the introduction of ‘modern

installations and appliances, on an appropriate

but not extravagant scale’ were recommended

and carried out during the war.

Duplicating copies of Telegrams

14

During the post-war austerity period, there were

frequent requests for economy in the use of

telegrams. In 1950, 225 staff (examiners,

cypherers, teleprinter operators etc) were

engaged in outward despatch procedures at the

Foreign Office, and another 1-200 abroad. A

one-page telegram of 350-400 words then took

between 40 minutes to 2 hours to encypher and

cost £25 to transmit to Lima, and just over £3 to

Cairo. In view of all this (and the expense and

danger of transcontinental telephone lines)

greater use of the Bag Service was encouraged.

A wide range of posts also had fast non-

confidential bags for material graded Restricted

and below. Brevity was also encouraged.

Despite the reservations of such conservative

officials as Edmund Hammond, the telegraph

became a standard means of diplomatic

communications.

Telephones: The first telephone was installed in

the Foreign Office between 1898 and 1899 by

the National Telephone Company, the number

being 415 on the Westminster exchange. In 1902

this changed to Westminster 211 for the Office,

with a separate line on Westminster 210 for the

Private Office. In January 1906 the Treasury

sanctioned the ‘installation of a system of

telephonic

communications in the

Foreign Office’ at an

estimated cost of £390.

The employment of ‘a

female Switch Clerk’ at

the usual rate of wages

was also approved in

return for the abolition

of a Home Service

Messenger slot as soon

as a vacancy occurred.

The installation was

carried out by the Post

Office and was further

extended in 1907 so

that the FO had its own

private branch

exchange (PBX) which

by July 1909 could be

accessed through

calling Victoria 22 or

490.

Telex: In 1932, Post

Office Telephones

Post war years

Decyphering telegrams in Book cypher

15

informed the FO of a newly introduced service

called ‘Telex’ which was a form of ‘typewriting

over telephone wires’. A demonstration was

offered, but the Chief Clerk refused it in a

manner reminiscent of Edmund Hammond,

saying ‘that it does not appear that this service

would be suitable for introduction into the

Foreign Office’. On 14 May 1940, however, the

BBC Teleprinter Distribution system linked the

Foreign Office with the Ministry of Information,

and four years later, internal communications in

the Office were boosted by the installation of a

Pneumatic Tube system some parts of which

remain in use today.

Facsimile made its debut in the Office during the

1980s – both unclassified and classified. During

the mid-eighties, room WH124 housed the

Teleletter operation, the first Communications

Operations Department (COD) unclassified fax

and the classified Mufax (wet paper!) operation

to posts abroad. At UKREP Brussels, during

1989, Comms section were handling about 200

pages of unclassified fax material per day. Two

years later, this had grown to 2,000 pages per

day! This rapid growth was reflected in many

other areas of the Office.

COMCEN - when sited in the Locarno Suite

16

HF radio: After the occupation of France in

1940, the Government asked the armed forces to

establish communications with remaining allies

and agents in Europe. This gave rise to a global,

military communications network using High

Frequency (HF) radio and morse code, which

operated from Hanslope Park. Following the

takeover of this network by the newly

established Diplomatic Wireless Service in 1947,

it was expanded, and the flow of classified traffic

was considerably increased by the introduction

of a basic machine cypher in the 1950s.

PICCOLO: Foreign Office communications were

revolutionised by the development in 1963 of a

teleprinter-based HF radio system called

PICCOLO (to replace labour-intensive morse

code), and by the provision in 1964 of on-line

cypher protection for plain text during

transmission (which speeded up the process of

encryption and decryption). The Diplomatic

Wireless Service was absorbed by the Foreign

and Commonwealth Office in 1973, as part of its

new Communications Division.

Computer based messaging system: The first

major computer-based

communications systems

were installed in 1986-7

(the Comcen Message

Switch) to provide a fully

operational Message

Handling System from

August 1987.

Communications and

Information Technology

functions of the FCO were

brought together in

January 1990 to form

Information Systems

Division. The latest re-

brigading sees the

Comcen operation as part

of Information

Communications

Technology Group, one of

the groups forming FCO

Services, the service

provider portion of the

office.

Thanks to the Library, I

have been able to put my

hands on some early

Cypher & Signal Branch

1950 onwards

Noreen cypher machine

17

photos (most from April 1941), which clearly

show ‘communications department’ at work,

much of it being work we all would clearly

remember as doing during our tenure.

Cypher and Signal Branch was actually born in

1951. The grades were established roughly

alongside the HCS grades, with Cypher Officers

(now TCOs) midway between AO and EO,

Cypher Supervisors at EO, Cypher

Superintendents at HEO and Senior Cypher

Superintendents at SEO. Those in higher grades

conformed to HCS grades. The Fifties were a

time of moving more and more into the use of

Telex and teleprinter links via the occasional

private wire. Extensive use of Book Cypher and

the earlier machine systems such as

ROCKEX/ERIC/NOREEN. All systems were

offline and manual intensive relying much on the

skill of the communications staff for the speed in

which telegrams passed from originator to

recipients.

The nineteen fifties and sixties were an

extremely formative time for the Comcen with a

huge influx of staff, mostly during the sixties,

predominately from the military, comprising such

well known names as Eddie Jarman, Laurie

Walters, Harry Ashton, Derek Carroll, Dickie

Larcombe, Derek Hardy, Pete James, Alf

Shackleford, Pete Shaw, Den Glassett, Dave

Eaton, Phil Wade, Ron Froud, Johnnie Crossland,

Ian Sutton, Dickie Dawson and Chris Webb –

and many more - we could easily fill a page

rather than a paragraph! Some such as Ken Stride

arrived following the closure of the LTS (London

Telecommunications Service).

The following is an interesting narrativeinsight from Denis Glassett:

"In 1962 I was based at the NATO base at

Northwood in Middlesex. I had made up my

mind not to renew my engagement and was

leaving the Royal Navy to get married.

I wrote to several prospective employers and

eventually, after two intimidating interviews

(what books do you read? what newspaper do

you read? what are your views on so and so? I

was offered employment by the Foreign Office

starting on 31 December 1962 as a Cypher

Officer, (based in London) administered by the

Diplomatic Wireless Service(DWS)which was

based at Hanslope Park in those days.

I can remember thinking to myself after I had got

the job ‘the Foreign Office is going to be very

grand’ and although it seemed so during my

interviews I was later to learn otherwise over the

coming months.

The winter of 1962 was pretty grim; lots of snow

and ice and we new recruits gathered in the

office to be shuttled over to Queen Anne’s

Mansions in Petty France to begin our Book

Cypher courses (3 weeks)- the site of the present

Home Office.

Rockex cypher machine

18

The head of the training school was Pat Leslie avery able and talented lady who used tonominate one or other of us as ‘A Noddy’ if wedid not understand what she was saying. Anywayall 4 of us passed the course and went across toRoom 8 in the FO to be integrated into a shiftdealing with the day to day work of the Office.We worked in pairs and the new boys were put towork with the more experienced CypherOfficers.

I couldn’t believe what a filthy place The Officewas. Room 8 was exceptionally grimy because itwas occupied around the clock. Furthermore itwas all so formal; Mr this and Mr that. The Headof Shift (DS Grade 7) would walk round saying‘Please do not wear that tie again in the office or‘ a roll neck is acceptable on night duty but noton the day duties between Monday andSaturday’!

I hated it at first, but I felt I had to stick to it andit grew on me. I enjoyed the work and I knewthat I had come into the FO at a time when itmust expand and improve its communications.

In those days there was a Telex Room in Room7. We encrypted the telegrams in Room 8 and theTelex Operators sent them. The main routes wereCable and Wireless/Telex and the London TrafficCentre(LTC) based in Stamford Street.

All Embassies were required to register thetelegraphic address Prodrome and ConsulatesBritain. If we had to revert to C&W those werethe recognised cable addresses. The last post Iinstructed to register the Britain address was theConsulate in Shanghai when it opened in I thinkthe early 90’s.

In the early 60’s Book Cypher (M55 Basic Book)was the primary system to most posts overseas.A telegram was encrypted in the basic book and

then subtracted (without carrying) in a one timepad. It was slow and labour intensive but fullysecure. We also used ‘R Code’ and ‘GTC’(Government Telegraph Code) which gavelimited telegraphic protection to e.gPeoples/companies names. We also used amachine system called ROCKEX to a handful ofposts.

I can remember being in Doha to install a systemcalled NOREEN and train the staff in 1968 andthe Deputy Political Advisor rushing in with atelex message which had an encryption in themiddle of it. The Grade 10 didn’t understand itbut I recognised it as GTC. When I asked himwhere his GTC was he didn’t know but I found itkeeping the Registry door open!

In the late 1960s NOREEN replaced BookCypher as the main line cypher. It wascompatible with ROCKEX but was not the mostuser friendly piece of equipment. It ran onbatteries and there was always the prevailingsmell of sulphuric acid when we arrived in theMission in the morning. I used to get so manyholes in my shirts those days!

The FO amalgamated with the CommonwealthRelations Office in about 1965 and we inheritedtheir crypto system called TYPEX which wecontinued to use to Commonwealth Posts untilthe last TYPEX was dumped offshore in theearly 70s in Port Stanley. I had used the systemin the RN in the early 50’s so it was really anantiquated system (there is one on show adjacentto the Comcen door in the main building).

The Office also amalgamated with the ColonialOffice in the late 60’s and they brought theirBasic Book Cypher (Col E) with them! However,we eventually reduced the number of differentcyphers that we were using and put everyone onthe same system: NOREEN.

Recollections

19

Over a very long number of years we eventually

came to ‘EDUCATOR’ in the mid 1990s and

everything changed for the better. I suppose by

now it is just a question of encrypted email.

Looking back I like to think that me and my

mostly ex-RN colleagues shaped the FCO

communications and got it to the way it is now, a

very efficient system and second to none.

Denis Glassett FCO 1962-1998

From the mid-60’s to 1970, the importance of

creating a secure communications network was

seen as extremely important and a great deal of

resources were put into expanding the use of

professional communicators both at home and

abroad. The Communications functions were

built into various offices such as K7 (Telex

Room) and K8 (Machine Room) and the Locarno

Suite Upper Rooms 7 and 8 housing the

ROCKEX and Book Cypher operations, with

Telegram Distribution Section (TDS) taking up

Portacabin space in Durbar Court.

Outgoing telegrams were received in handwritten

blue draft form and processed by Telegram

Enumerators, offline encyphered where

necessary and despatched via appropriate means

– often as telegrams (or cables) via Cable and

Wireless. A copy would be passed to Telegram

Distribution Selectors for retyping, copying and

internal distribution. Incoming telegrams would

be decyphered, copies prepared for all other

addressees in the appropriate cypher system and

despatched over the correct system, and a copy

passed to TDS for distribution. The principles of

how the section functioned then were pretty

much the same as now – except the work was all

achieved with a far higher element of manual

input than now and the cypher processes were

very much slower. Apparently, a huge wheel

linking lower and upper rooms 8 constantly

rotated carrying messages up and down.

Whenever the wheel jammed, it was necessary

for someone fairly agile to climb up and retrieve

whatever messages were en-route at the time,

and I understand Harry Ashton was one of the

best at this. Being aware of how high the ceilings

are in the office I imagine it would take a fair

amount of courage as well as climbing expertise

to tackle such a task! But being of Welsh

heritage, perhaps Harry had lots of climbing

practice on the Black Mountains or thereabouts

as a youngster!

Telegram Enumerators

20

About that time, the use of specialist

communicators was expanded abroad so that the

radio network spanning out from the aerial farm

at the Central Receiving Station (CRS) Hanslope

Park was able to join many other posts to the

FCO communications network. At the other

major posts with whom we had dedicated links

via BT such as Washington, New York, Brussels,

Hong Kong, Paris etc communications staff was

boosted to deal with the high input/output of

telegram traffic. At the radio posts, DSC

communicators received and sent their telegrams

using a range of systems including PICCOLO

and associated cypher devices. John Mitchell

tells some good stories from those days - such as

-"In days of yore when telegram traffic was

passed between Diplomatic Posts and Hanslope

Park CRS using morse code, the night watch

made ‘long playing two unit tapes’ so they could

call stations in the morning, switch on and leave

running, as there were more stations to work than

operators. Every so often a tape would be

stopped and the distant operator asked if all was

OK. On one occasion, the Hanslope operator

asked the distant station if all was ‘OK’ and

received the answer: "Am only getting dots".

Quick as a flash, the reply was made "OK – will

send dashes later" and the machine was switched

back on!

About the same period, Moscow was considered

to be the busiest Post and demanded that two

morse circuits be operated simultaneously to

alleviate traffic build up. These circuits which

were situated side by side were known as first

operator and second operator. One afternoon, the

second operator at the Hanslope end lit his pipe

and threw, what he thought was an extinguished

A new home for Comcen

HM The Queen’s visit to the FCO, December 1982

21

match, into the wastepaper bin containing carbon

paper, and it caught fire. The Hanslope first

operator spotted this and sent a ditty to the first

operator Moscow saying "Please ask your second

operator to inform my second operator that his

trousers are on fire". When this message was

passed to the Hanslope second operator a very

stunned and surprised young man quickly sprung

into action to douse the flames!

The early 1980’s saw the completion of the

purpose built Comcen (WH135) with all of the

Communications Operations Department

functions being brought into the Whitehall

Ground floor area. Shortly after the re-

organisation, on Wednesday 15 December 1982,

HM The Queen visited the FCO and as part of

the visit toured the new Comcen and Telegram

Distribution areas. We were fortunate that Alan

Harney who was present on the day, had retained

his copy of the visit itinerary so have been able

to add the pertinent pages for your interest. HM

The Queen was accompanied by Francis Pym the

Foreign Secretary. At this stage, the Message

Handling System computer was not completely

built – all systems were manual. The

Unclassified Area was dominated by Telex

machines and staff will all remember the sheer

noise of working there, along with always being

up to your knees in tape and paper! F and G arms

were constantly on the go sending and receiving

telegrams to and from Hanslope Park for the

radio posts. Long Player tapes were compiled for

the larger posts ready for when they came in at

the beginning of their working day. The top end

of the Comcen housed the Classified Telex

systems (Alvis) which was also very noisy

(T100s and T1000s) and constantly busy – and

the pain of sticking hundreds of little pins into

holes to make up the cypher ‘boxes’ will last in

our memories forever.

For outgoing telegrams, we had the Telegram

Enumerators applying telegram numbers. Some

telegrams followed the official draft form and

were input to an early Optical Character Reader

which also produced the necessary paper tapes.

Some were in blue draft form and had to be

typed up to produce a page copy and tape. The

Telegram (Distribution) Selectors led by a grade

7 diplomatic officer plus a couple of grade 9s

and some Comcen staff were responsible for

HM The Queen’s visit to the FCO, December 1982

22

applying distributions to telegrams on an ad-hoc

basis but following laid down and well practised

guidelines.

Telegrams were passed from Comcen to the

Boxroom for distribution. The Boxroom had

been sited in Durbar Court in Portacabins

through the war years and beyond conveniently

sited close to the Comcen offices of that time,

rooms W7 and W8 and other offices in the old

India Office area plus the Locarno Suite. When

the Comcen operation moved into its (new)

purpose built building during the early 80's,

Telegram Distribution Section (TDS) were

moved into a new Boxroom in WH112, again

close to the Comcen operation. Telegram Copiers

were sited in the room next to the Boxroom, with

access through a hatchway. Telegram Copiers

later became Crystal Print with a much wider

remit for printing than just telegrams. The

Boxroom consisted mainly of 3 very long tables

on which were assembled racks of Black

lockable boxes for each department and senior

user. Copies of printed telegrams would be

placed in the boxes throughout the day and night

- the work never stopped. Three times a day, the

boxes would be locked and passed up the

internal lift system to the appropriate floors

where Porters would wheel them around on

trolleys to the appropriate offices. Once we

moved over fully to electronic telegrams

distribution, the Boxroom became the FCO

créche; it can be slightly disconcerting walking

past there and listening to the sounds of

youngsters at play! Not exactly the sounds

visitors to the Office might expect to hear when

walking the 'corridors of power'!

Also the early ‘eighties’ saw the putting together

of the computer systems (Message Handling

System - MHS) that would see FCO

communications right through until 2004. During

The first electronic

Message Handling System

Distribution Ferranti Computer

Craning in Telegram System Computers

23

1983, Rod Fry, Dave Eaton, Ian Sutton and Betty

Edwards commenced training to be Trainers –

which involved their going to Manchester to

actually get to grips with the kit and produce the

necessary workpractices etc. The Ferranti MHS

comprised of a suite of computers to handle the

reception and onward routing of telegrams -

linked to another suite of computers (Message

Distribution System – MDS and Message

Introduction System – MIS) to handle

distribution of telegrams in paper copy form

around the office and to Other Government

Departments (OGDs) – and to process outgoing

telegrams prior to forwarding them on for

transmission to addressees and for internal

distribution. Each suite had the computing power

of just 64 megs and although the disk systems

were eventually upgraded from the old spinning

disk systems to solid state emulation technology,

there were few changes necessary to the MHS

simply because the software was so well thought

out and specific to what it was required to do.

Most importantly, the system was built to allow

add-ons to be fairly simple – flexibility in the

future would be important to take onboard

certain leaps in technology as they occurred. The

MHS actually went live during 1986.

Training on using the MHS took place between

1986/7 before it was possible to actually use the

equipment. We therefore learned the operational

commands by verbal instructions with pieces of

paper with a computer screen and various

commands on it, as a training aid! It sounds

archaic, but it definitely worked since I don’t

remember having any problems with the

commands once installed in front of a ‘real’

terminal screen.

Those early years of the MHS were quite

difficult. The links to post were generally

speaking leased lines and data was being

transmitted over them at 50 or 75 bauds. In the

Message Distribution System (MDS), there were

problems with the computer memory allocation

tables and it was possible to ‘send’ a message

from your screen, go and make a cup of coffee

Placing MHS Computers - Alan Ward (Firecrest) in foreground

24

and it would return to your screen shortly after

you returned to your seat! However, like all

other problems, this was eventually sorted and

after passing the Barrier Examination for

distribution, we all gradually became used to our

new duties and the systems settled down. The

majority of work in the Unclassified Area (UCA)

was handled by two small computers called

Ferranti Telex Managers which were connected

directly to the MHS. Whilst the Classified Telex

systems continued to be used, at least it was

possible to produce the paper tapes of their

queuing traffic automatically from the Message

Switch (MS) and input any messages from post.

The MHS had actually subsumed a number of

what had previously been ‘outside’ functions

such as Telegram Enumerators and Distribution

Selectors. There was room on the MDS system

for standard Collective Distribution Lists and

within the first couple of years at least 30 were in

use. Seven years later, this had grown to about

300.

Outgoing telegrams passed through astandardised procedure whereby they were typedonto a pink OCR form and input into the OCRwhich relayed the telegram into the MessageIntroduction System (MIS). It could then beprocessed quickly with one copy being sentautomatically to the MS for transmission to postsand another copy sent to the MDS for

Douglas Hurd, Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, visiting Comcen

The first electronic

Message Handling System

25

distribution around the FCO and WhitehallOGDs.

The lifeblood of the FCO is information -

flowing through the telecommunications veins to

and from its many posts worldwide. At the heart

of it, the MHS, pumping merrily away day and

night, seven days a week (including public

holidays!). From the mid-eighties, for perhaps

the first time, the communications operation had

been pulled into a really cohesive and

standardised effort enabling the office and wider

Whitehall to be properly ‘informed’ whenever

they attended meetings with their counterparts

either at home or abroad. The now fairly ancient

MHS still sits there as of early 2004, still doing

the job for which it was designed, efficiently and

with very few technical problems. Its continuing

presence remains as a tribute to those involved in

configuring it to do the work required of it by the

FCO – and ensuring the flexibility of being able

to upgrade it as new demands were placed on the

Comcen. It will be decommissioned once the

new eGram system takes over from telegrams as

the new 'carrier' of corporate reporting

documents - during Autumn 2004.

During the sixties, TCO specialist

communicators (then known as Cypher Officers),

apart from working in the Comcen environment,

were eligible to take up certain postings abroad

such as UKREP EC Brussels, NATO Brussels,

Paris, Bonn, Washington, New York and Hong

Kong on approximately 3 year tours. DSCs

working out of the CRS Hanslope Park went on

postings to wherever there was a requirement for

a radio link – and this could be large posts like

Moscow or the many small posts in for example

Africa. All of these communicators were forming

important links in the chain required for

dissemination of FCO foreign policy worldwide.

Almost all of these postings were recalled as

excellent experiences both professionally and

socially; personal links were forged with

individuals and families of both diplomatic and

communications staff, many of which have lasted

for the better part of a lifetime.

The prime systems used to attain secure

transmission of telegrams around this time

involved very wide use of Book Cypher and

One-time pads. The mechanics of these systems

were somewhat complex as many will remember

and not best carried out in the middle of the

night! However, staff both at home and abroad

became so proficient that they found themselves

actually remembering many of the book groups

in common usage. The problems tended to come

with digits becoming transposed during the

encryption process - leaving the decipherers to

figure out what may have occurred in the original

process so they could achieve a decrypt! Great

fun! Other systems in use were the early

machines, Alvis, Noreen and Rockex/Eric - then

Topic, used mainly in the off-line mode.

Pete James and Frank Francis, DSO days

26

This is probably a good time to fit in some

'memories' from the other side of the desk

provided by John Rice, Head of Personnel

Security (SSU):

"John Emerson was certainly a stalwart of theearly Cypher school. He was my best man at ourwedding in the Caribbean. Us Grade 10scertainly remember the infamous Pat Leslie(Head of Cypher Training School). We feared herand it would be made very clear to us if we werea minute late or talked in class. However,looking back her schoolmarm tactics did help usto remember the dreaded one time pad.

I remember 10 years on from my book trainingmy last attempt at book cypher was in theCaribbean trying to remember whether to add orsubtract when the Governor's wife (of the

Territory) came into the office and asked if Icould zip up her dress, which did not have a lotunderneath. It fair ruined the mental arithmatic!

Earlier in this booklet, Denis Glassett mentionsinstalling and training staff in Doha on Noreen. Iwas Chargé in 1991 during the first Gulf war andprobably the last one to use the machine Denisinstalled. Our Topic broke down with all of theflash traffic and the back-up was Noreen. TheGrade 10 hadn't got a clue and I was the onlyone in the mission who could get the thingworking (20 years after the Cypher Schooltraining). I persevered for two telegrams and thatwas it. Two months later the TMO dismantledthe machine and after stripping out some gearsand bearings, I dumped the chassis way out inthe Gulf from my little Mirror sailing dinghy. Inever did get to use the 4 pound hammer in the

The move to electronicdistribution

Telegram Distribution Section, John Needham

27

destruction kit. Now that could make anotherstory of how many did get to use the destructionkit!

Whilst we're dealing with 'memories', somethings you can never forget. Kathleen Wain(SSU) tells me that after spending years ofwinding Murray code tape round her little fingerand thumb, her sewing box is full of ribbons andthread - all folded in the recommended way fortelegram tapes!

Small changes were made from time to time toupgrade the Comcen Message Handling systemsbut perhaps the most significant change of allinvolved the way in which the Comcen contactedposts to carry out their scheduled contacts. Priorto the first Gulf war, the limitation had been setby the equipment in use – 50 or 75 bauds. Workhad however been underway to develop animproved interface for post, the MK1Aworkstation, which would replace telex machinesand allow telegrams to be sent much faster, at1200 bauds per minute (or later, at twice thisspeed for certain posts). This equipment washurried into certain embassies abroad to facilitatepassing the large amounts of telegram traffic thatwe knew would be generated by what was seenas the inevitable (first) Gulf War, now loomingvery close on the horizon. It functionedextremely well and was an obvious improvementthat could be provided to all major posts – and arollout quickly got under way. This also brought

major improvements in line charges as the cost toComcen was only for a short ‘burst’ two or threetimes a day instead of the charge for a leased lineon a 24 hours basis.

Other major changes followed shortly after as the

Comcen moved to distribution of telegrams by

electronic means. The first, early efforts towards

electronic telegram distribution were in 1992 led

by Johnny Crossland involved the use of

DiskFax. It was fairly cumbersome, involving

sending a department's telegrams to them via

telephone, uploaded from a floppy disk – but it

worked, and enabled them to upload them into

their Secure Unix systems for internal

distribution and filing etc. While this was going

on, the early Secure Office Administration

systems (SOAP) were being upgraded by the

introduction of Aramis and a new telegram

distribution media initially called Secure Unix

Distribution System (SUDS) – later changed to

SWIFT, which doesn’t stand for anything

particular at all other than perhaps an aspiration!

SWIFT completely revolutionised telegram

distribution. Telegrams were now being delivered

direct to departments in accordance with the

distribution appended by the MDS staff as they

were processed, i.e. all day and all night. It was

no longer necessary to wait for paper copies to

appear distributed three times a day (except for

Advance copies of urgent telegrams). Gradually,

DSO at work, John Crossland

28

paper copies disappeared from the Boxroom.

OGDs took on SWIFT and copied our

technology of connecting their node direct to

their own OA system. To get a full idea of the

effect this had, we should remember that the

Comcen process about a thousand telegrams a

day. The (conservative) average distribution of

each telegram was to about fifteen departments.

The (conservative) average number of paper

copies to each department was about 6. Boxroom

were therefore going through a minimum of

90,000 sheets of paper a day – not a forest, but

definitely a respectable sized spinney! Paper

copies are now reduced to just a few a day, to the

European Union embassies in London and a

couple of senior members of staff who receive

paper copies of overnight traffic so they can start

work without having to wait until their PA’s

arrive.

Along with the ‘good’ times in the working

environment, over the years, Comcen staff have

also had to endure some dark times, and since it

also is part of our history, they should be

mentioned. Comcen has always had some

excellent managers – some super whizzkids and

some real characters. Comcen also from time to

time had to put up with some very unfortunate

management decisions from senior staff (outside

of the Comcen) – some situations were very

badly handled. In 1993 for instance, a decision

was made to close one of the Comcens, either

London or Hanslope Park. Eventually, it was

decided that Hanslope Park would get the chop

and the radio operation running at Hanslope Park

CRS would cease as of then, with all traffic

being routed over PSTN/DEL lines. Granted this

was before IiP etc, but staff were not consulted

or warned – they were simply told on a certain

day that the CRS would close and staff would

either transfer to London or take other jobs at

Hanslope Park. Some staff only received 24

hours notice to change to working in London and

remain somewhat bitter to this day for the bad

Good times, bad times

Part of the Comcen Main Traffic Hall

29

way they were treated. Later on, as work

practices drastically changed the Registry set up

in Washington, staff were told they would be

short toured even though many had made certain

arrangements to cover the length of their tour

such as letting their homes. Fortunately, Roger

French, Counsellor Management arrived on the

scene at this time and worked hard to change the

ruling into something more pragmatic. Roger

was later to become the Head of Information

Management Group based at Hanslope Park –

the umbrella sheltering the Comcen at that time –

a really super guy, aware of the particular needs

of the specialist staff and a constant crusader on

Comcen’s behalf. He is remembered with

affection. From about 1995, Comcen staff have

effectively been living under the sword of

Damocles. There has always been an awareness

that technological changes in IT would make at

least some parts of Comcen work redundant.

Some staff read the writing on the wall – and

moved into other work or joined other

departments – sometimes outside of the Civil

Service. Those who stayed have always had a

somewhat worried eye on the future.

Whilst we have looked at what has been

happening in London and Hanslope Park, it is

worth noting that since the inception of the

Cypher and Signals Branch, Comcen staff have

also been active in assisting managing situations

that have arisen abroad. The earliest we can

recall is Yom Kippur in 1967 where

communications staff backed up a number of

missions in the area involved as the work rate

rose through the roof. I understand some were

also employed in other tasks such as aircraft

spotting and reporting their activities. More

lately, we have supplied rapid deployment staff

and portable equipment to assist Kabul (Dave

Harvey), to Baghdad at the end of the second

Gulf war (Dave Harvey) and to Istanbul

following the bombing of the Consulate (Glenn

Smith relieved by Stuart McCarthy). We have

also on numerous occasions supported other

missions around the world suffering with

Comms/Registry staff droughts and no floater

cover available.

The latest major changes to the way Comcen do

business revolve around the new officewide

Confidential Firecrest IT systems. Firecrest in

Telegram Distribution Section, Joan Fenn supervising

30

one form or another is already in almost every

post abroad, including the smaller Consulates.

The gradual but inexorable shift to Confidential

email appeared likely to cause a (premature) cut-

back of Comcen staff when Comcen were told by

senior management that staff would be

drastically cut in October 2000 as Firecrest and

the Global Telecommunications Project (GTP)

took over the work currently carried out by

telegrams (this was locally nicknamed ‘Red

October’). This was an attempt to reduce

Comcen staffing numbers from 98 to about 31 to

help pay for GTP. In fact, Confidential Firecrest

was not ready to take over from telegrams at that

point - and this evolution could not take place

until the arrival of eGrams during October 2004.

However, the incident caused a great deal of

concern to Comcen staff at the time leaving them

even further unsettled with regard to their future

employment.

Nevertheless, improvements continued apace

with regard to further automation enabling steady

reductions in staff. One of these was called

'eTelegrams' where instead of receiving their

telegrams via a scheduled contact, posts already

on Confidential Firecrest were able to receive

their telegrams via Firecrest. This involved Ciber

UK putting in place various gateways that took

telegrams direct from posts' queues on the

Message Switch and passed them to the Firecrest

servers for delivery in email form. Malcolm

Daniels, Paul Brailsford and Pete Weedon

(Comcen Operations Manager) worked doggedly

away for over a year until to date, all bar six

posts are currently enjoying the fruits of their

labour. This process also took away a great deal

of the manual intervention required in the

Comcen. ETelegrams can be considered a direct

forerunner of eGrams, giving posts at least the

feel of receiving their telegrams via email

systems and having the flexibility of being able

to process them much more easily and quickly.

In May 2003, following the need for ITSU to

severely limit the scope of 'Focus' the

Knowledge Management programme, Comcen

were tasked with implementing eGrams to the

office. Chris Webb, who retired from the Head of

Comcen position in July 2003, volunteered to

stay on as a ‘fee paid’ officer to act as Project

Manager for Comcen change through the

migration to eGrams. The software experts

preparing the hardware and writing the software

are Ciber UK some of whose staff, particularly

Dave Atkinson and Mike Keehan have been

providing us with computer based tools for over

a decade now and are well tried and trusted - and

all of their work is of an excellent standard. It is

expected that the migration from telegrams to

eGrams will take place during October 2004.

There has been slippage regarding migration

dates but this has been to take on suggested

improvements from staff both at home and

abroad in response to various presentations and

display of eGrams information about the product.

It was considered more important that the

product should be in the best possible shape for

the users rather than rushed out to meet a

particular date and not be perhaps quite ready for

use.

eGrams will be produced through an FCO

produced Outlook form, complete with FCO

logo. They will take over from Telegrams as the

corporate reporting document. eGrams will run

(in theory) entirely through the Firecrest mail

hubs and gsi/x.gsi gateways. Telegram

originators at home and abroad will create their

own address section, including the Collective

eGrams

31

32

Address Groups we currently use in the Comcen,

their text, and then apply an FCO distribution,

either ad-hoc or by choosing one of the 300+

Collective Distribution Lists from the email

Global Address List (GAL). This will enable a

system much closer to desk-to-desk than has

been achieved before. Connections to OGDs as

addressees or as distribution recipients will be

made where possible through the Gsi and x.Gsi

inter-governmental IT links.

This should leave less traffic for the Comcen to

manually process. The eGrams gateways and

other related equipments are sited in the Comcen

as part of the Comcen infrastructure rather than

an IT operation - so it will be essentially business

as before but under a different name. The future

from October 2004 will certainly be different,

but we hope will be just as interesting as the past

proved to be. Preparing for the migration to

eGrams has been a huge task, almost as big as

the move to our first MHS Ferranti computer

suite 20 years ago. Chris Webb, on retiring from

the Head of Comcen post, took on the mantle of

Project Manager for eGrams (preferring to retire

gradually) and as ever, has done an excellent job.

All of Comcen management have been involved

to a high degree and helped the project through

to the present stage of readiness. IT Strategy Unit

have led on the project as it is their policy area -

and Jill Bennett and Anne McCarthy (ITSU)

have done a super job of polishing the project,

advertising it and presenting the package to the

Office. Well done both of you.

Stop Press on eGrams - we have just completed

the eGrams Pilot. The brave souls who

volunteered for this were AD(E), the PUS's

Private Office and Accra. All involved really

applied themselves to finding the best way to

make use of the new technology - and the

rewards were quickly plain: a more user friendly

telegram medium, faster, enhanced viewing and

printing, internal distribution via Summariser and

ability to use a wide range of attachments. Initial

feedback has been excellent. Thanks are due to

all involved - some of whom were: Julia

Edwards (AD(E)), Matthew Lodge, Nicola Friel,

Esther and Claire from PUS's Private Office -

and of course Sir Michael Jay who was keen for

his Office to be involved from the very

beginning - and all of those in Accra who

became the first Post to send and receive

eGrams.

The coming migration to eGrams has causedsome other problems for the Comcen. TheCabinet Office Comcen has been manned byFCO staff for at least the last 40 years; they arethe same grade as FCO Comcen staff and part ofthe same cadre. Primarily, because of staffingissues, it was seen as necessary that all Comcenstaff be drawn back into the FCO Comcen. FCOComcen based staff are generally provingreluctant to work in the Cabinet Officeenvironment so filling vacancies by volunteers isproving impossible. Also, the drawback of staffwould ensure that any staffing decisions made asa result of the migration to eGrams affected themall. It is expected that the migration will createsome redundancies in the workplace. At this time(mid July 2004), it is hoped that the FCOComcen can take on the Cabinet Office and No10 work as a wider markets initiative.

A second blow to be faced (for those who livesouth of the river) is the probability that as acasualty of the Lyons' Review, the (majority ofthe) Comcen operation will move site fromLondon to Hanslope Park during 2007,continuing to serve all of its customers fromthere. With the current level of secure electroniclinkages, this all seems eminently possible. We

Supporting acts

33

appreciate that those members of staff who livesouth of the Thames will have some difficultdecisions to make during the course of 2004-07regarding their futures.

Throughout this article, thus far, little mention

has been made of the Technicians who have

supported all of the various communications

equipments used in the Comcen, and indeed as

TMOs at posts abroad. I know that everyone who

has come into contact with them would agree

that they are a very highly-motivated and

extremely competent bunch of guys. Seldom

happy to just maintain a piece of equipment,

generally they love to 'tinker' - to explore exactly

how things work - to see if they can improve the

performance. They have for many years, and

continue to, support the Message Handling

operation both at home and abroad in exemplary

fashion. Their expertise continues to expand with

each new product that arrives in the workplace.

They have earned both our respect and thanks.

Before closing, perhaps we should provide a

mention of Bletchley Park, whose staff played

such a huge part during WWII deciphering the

enemies signals, thus enabling the British

government War Cabinet to anticipate much of

the German's movements and wider war plans.

Their work would have helped shift the odds on

winning to the allies and it is believed reduced

the duration of the war. To accomplish this,

Bletchley Park produced the very first computer,

Colossus. It is a nice touch that this computer has

been rebuilt for the D-Day celebrations of 2004.

The MK2 version was completed in 1944 and

was capable of reading a message (in telegraphic

tape format) at 5,000 characters per second and

carrying out 100 Boolean calculations at any one

time. It was so powerful it would take current

computers the same amount of time to break

codes. The machines were so successful that by

the end of the war, 63 million characters of

German messages had been decrypted. After the

war, most of the machines were scrapped to

protect their sophisticated secrets. However, this

was the very start of the links between

Some of the COMCEN team

34

communications equipments, cyphers - and

computers. Developing on from that start we

now have systems that enable us to communicate

freely and securely between all of our posts

abroad and the FCO buildings at home.

As computer technology improved and

improved, and Bill Gates arrived on the scene

with his bag of goodies, the Microsoft products

that we are now running on Firecrest have

produced some strange results for some of us

during the drafting process. Tim Jones of ITSU,

sent me a copy of a telegram addressed to All

Diplomatic Posts. The originator had

unfortunately not checked the results of the

Spellcheck of his telegram which changed

'Chechenya to TechNet' and even more

hilariously, 'MFA to Mafiosi'. The context of the

paragraph was with regard to Human Rights

work! That particular paragraph must have

produced some puzzled faces on being read

around the bazaars.

So, that is where we rest today, during the

Summer of 2004. Some of the future is just

beginning to appear in a hazy fashion in the

crystal ball - but much of it still remains

shrouded in mystery and will only be revealed a

bit at a time, like peeling an onion skin - one

shred at a time. Many big decisions cannot be

made until more of the future has been revealed

to us - much of the future of the Comcen will be

shaped as we move along. We have seen many

changes in the past - and know there are many

more to come in the future as we update and

perhaps carry out some changes of direction. It

will be a fascinating process in many ways, not

just from a technological point of view but also,

now that Comcen is part of FCO Services, to

observe how the need for good commercial

business practices affects the development of

messaging within the FCO and around Whitehall

and environs. More and more, we are being

constrained in how we 'tool up' and work by the

Conclusion

Last three Heads - Bill Dunningham, Alf Shackleford and Chris Webb

35

amount of funding available, and the need to

compromise in all areas to keep down costs.

Looking back, particularly over the last 20 years,

has been a fascinating process for me personally,

noting the huge steps 'communications' has taken

over a relatively very short time. This has been

possible primarily because of the high calibre of

technical staff we have had and still have

working in the background to identify the

business need and translate it into 'pieces of kit'.

Currently, these boffins now mostly reside in

ICT Group and People and Best Practice at

Hanslope Park. They will all know who they are

so I will just mention a couple of names: Roger

Castle-Smith, Dave Smith, Peter Martin, for IT -

Pat Cullen, Malcolm Daniels and many others.

They must have a great sense of pride in their

accomplishments over the years towards

improving the way the Office communicates.

Without all of the tools they have provided

Comcen, perhaps we would all still be labouring

away at Book cipher and one-time pad!

Many other changes to the Comcen infrastructure

have been identified by those who actually work

there and understand the business best.

Throughout the Comcen's existence, we have

always sought to polish and improve either

through updating systems or work practices.

Ideas have been suggested and taken up. The

work force are Specialists, focused on what they

do and fully understanding the very wide range

of procedures and skills necessary to complete

their tasks both efficiently and with the absolute

security necessary when handling such sensitive

material. Like all departments, we are fully

furnished with our own complement of

eccentrics (thank goodness!) - they have always

helped to make the Comcen such an interesting,

at times absorbing place in which to work. A

better group of guys to work with would be hard

to find.

Throughout the existence of the Comcen, we

have been very ably supported by our own,

dedicated Technical Engineers, originally

Engineering Services Department (ESD) and

currently part of ICT Group - also assisting the

IT sections where necessary as their skill set

widens and moves more and more towards IT

based systems. They made it their business to

become extremely familiar with all elements of

the Comcen Message Handling Systems so that

no matter what problem they were faced with,

they would be able to get the computer suites

back on line in the shortest possible time. Their

dedication and expertise is underlined by the

computer time 'on-line' figures over the lifetime

of the current message switch (almost 20 years)

of 99.999%. This is little short of incredible. We

have always valued their support - and

friendship. Recent heads of sections have been

Alf Shackleford (who went on to become Head

of Comcen), Ken Jacobs, Jeff Dyson and

currently Barry Weaver (ex-TCO who went back

to school to learn about the letters I and T).

Well, I feel the reader has now been brought as

up to date as can be accomplished at this time. I

hope the baton will be picked up by someone

else at a future date, to bring the record once

more up to date - to record just how the Comcen

continued to evolve after the Summer of 2004.

The past has been an interesting place to work -

and I'm sure the future offers its own brand of

interest, in a different way. I hope it gets written

down by somebody with a feeling for the history

of the branch and Office!

I am conscious that in the past, we have probably

not 'sold' ourselves as well as we could have

36

done. Part of the reason for this is that because of

the sensitive and often very highly classified

material we handle, the whole communications

organisation has always resided in out-of-the-

way, secret recesses inaccessible to everybody

else. Nowadays, we are much more visible and

positively encourage other members of staff to

know and understand more about us and what we

do as an organisation. As part of our work we

have always done our best to make the various

links with posts abroad and departments at home

work as efficiently as possible and this often

takes the form of 'talking' new staff abroad

through the processes needed to make contact

with Comcen and send and receive traffic. I well

remember one young lady returning from a post

abroad who came to see me because as she put it,

"I was so impressed with the help and support

given me by Comcen staff - particularly when

things got really tricky - that I just had to come

and say 'thank you' ". We often receive similar

notes and messages of thanks - and whilst we

inform Comcen staff, we have never quite got

the hang of telling everyone else - blowing our

own bugle! With the coming changes and

financial squeezes there will be more automation

and less 'people'. My hope is that we manage to

get the balance right so that we can still support

our posts when they need our help and maintain

a good level of friendly interaction along with an

efficient and forward looking operation. We have

always had a good rapport with the 'sharp end'

and hope this will continue well into the future.

In finishing, current Comcen management, Dave

Harvey, Dave Chalke, Pete Weedon, Ailsa Miller

and the two Custodians: Shahida Hafizi and Paul

McIlroy, not to mention our previous Head of

Comcen, Chris Webb (in his Consultancy

capacity of project manager for the eGrams

project) and myself, would like to send our very

best wishes to all members of Cypher and Signal

Branch both serving, on SUPL and retired – and

a special thought for some very special people,

among them Harry Ashton, Derek Hardy, Pete

James and Ron Froud, who have passed on over

the last few years. You have all provided a ‘part

of a very rich and complex fabric’.

For completeness, the very first 'live' eGram is

also attached. This is numbered 80/04 but the

first 79 were only test data.