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Gill Bennett: Reflections of a Whitehall Historian
She’s Making History: Reflections of a Whitehall Historian
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Gill Bennett OBE MA FRHistS (1969, History) looks back on a long and eventful career in which she has compiled official histories and provided historical advice to twelve foreign secretaries under six prime ministers – yet her love of the work has never diminished.
In March 2020, I had the honour of giving the keynote address at the annual conference of the Naval Servicewomen’s Network in Yeovilton, Somerset. The topic of my talk was ‘An Intelligence Historian in Whitehall’. However, as I stood there in front of 200 servicewomen and several men, mostly of senior rank, drawn from across the Navy, Army, RAF and MoD, two questions lingered at the back of my mind.
First, would this predominantly military audience find any interest in a talk about my work as a historian? And, second, should I perhaps have amended my title to ‘A Female Intelligence Historian in Whitehall’ in order to consider the role, if any, that gender has played in my career?
Happily, the first question was promptly answered by the very generous reception I was given. As to the second question, my instinctive response was that being a woman certainly hasn’t disadvantaged me professionally. In the Civil Service, after all, one is appointed to the job on merit, not gender, and with equal pay. Furthermore, there have been enormous changes across all Whitehall departments since I first joined the FCO in 1972 that have benefitted women and other minorities – not least the requirement to resign upon marrying, which had only just been dropped when I started.
But perhaps to answer this second question fully, I should go back to the beginning and lay the evidence out before my fellow Somervillians with proper historical care, and let you judge for yourselves.
I joined the FCO Historians as a very junior Research Assistant and worked my way up, but by 1990 was struggling to cope with the demands of both the job and two small children, one of whom was severely disabled. This led to my moving out of Historians to do three quite different jobs: in the Strategic Planning Unit, helping to draw up the FCO’s first Information Systems Strategy; in Research Analysts; and finally in Personnel, in the Performance Assessment Unit. All these experiences contributed to my success at the Assessment Development Centre (ADC), whereafter I joined the FCO’s Senior Management Structure, ultimately rising to the role of Chief Historian in 1995.
I have spent my career working on history of all kinds. For those not familiar with the FCO Historians, they have two principal tasks: to produce the official documentary history of British foreign policy in the series Documents on British Policy Overseas, and to provide ‘historical advice to ministers and senior officials’ on any given period, nation or topic. This might involve anything from recommending a book to undertaking major research. The serendipity of the job always attracted me: researching whatever comes next. Our role is not to defend government policy, but to explain it. Sometimes that can be uncomfortable, but history is an indispensable backdrop to good policy-making.
As official historians, we have privileged access to all government archives, open or closed, which at times has entailed working closely with the UK’s intelligence agencies. This is where the ‘Intelligence Historian’ part of my career comes in. Although secret intelligence is only one element in the formulation of government policy, on some issues it can be crucial. Understanding the intelligence context is particularly important when dealing with conspiracy theories. Dealing with these, some of which are remarkably durable and never laid to rest even when all the evidence is made available, has been a constant thread in my career.
Over the years I have been called upon to research, and then publish reports on many such theories, involving such subjects as the Zinoviev Letter of 1924 (a classic case of political disinformation), the Black Diaries of Sir Roger Casement (linked to Irish nationalism) and the death of Polish General Sikorski in 1943 in an air crash (which really was an accident). In this context it has often proved necessary to explain the work of the intelligence agencies – what they do not do, as much as what they do – since the idea that there is a secret web of influence behind policy-making, assisted by covert forces, is one that many people find attractive. I explain in vain that the very idea of a secret, ‘government-wide conspiracy’ is ridiculous.
When I ‘retired’ (a notional concept some 15 years later), I found myself in demand in a
number of Whitehall departments, including the FCO, in dealing with caches of intelligencerelated material (some of which had been buried for years in the too-difficult-dropit-in-a-deep-hole category). The Cabinet Secretary’s Secret and Personal Archives was one such collection, as well as the records of the FO Permanent Under-Secretary’s Department, responsible for liaison with the intelligence agencies.
I have spent many happy, if dusty, hours going through this material, sometimes having to compile files from stray documents, and then preparing as much as possible for review and transfer to The National Archives. The transfer of the first PUSD tranche in 2005 (FO 1093), and the second in 2013, together with the first tranche of the Cabinet Secretary’s papers (CAB 301), are among my proudest achievements.
Two interesting items from the Cabinet Secretary’s archive included here are a handdrawn map showing plans for the protection of Mrs Wallace Simpson in 1936 (I find the
Gill Bennett with Dame Stella Rimington, former DirectorGeneral of MI5, when both featured as lecturers aboard an espionage-themed cruise in 2014
Monthly accounts for the SIS in World War 2 - Crown Copyright
requirement for an ‘old and experienced constable’ particularly amusing) and the hand-written monthly account prepared by the Finance Officer of the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) during the Second World War to secure funds for operations. Finding documents like these sends a chill up any historian’s spine.
In addition, I was fortunate enough to be part of the research team working from 2006 with the late Professor Keith Jeffery, who wrote the official history of SIS, MI6, published in 2010. Today, in 2020, I still work part-time in the FCO, as well as publishing my own books, usually on intelligence-related topics.
With hindsight, I feel very privileged to have had such a long and interesting career. Like many women, I experienced difficulties arising from personal circumstances during my career, but I also received tremendous professional support during those difficulties. And although this may be an old-fashioned view, I believe that adversity can make you stronger and more creative. In this context being a woman led, however indirectly, to my moving into certain jobs that would never have come my way
otherwise, gaining skills and experience that have been invaluable in my later career.
So, yes, it’s true that I am a woman as well as a historian. But, on reflection, I would suggest that the only differences that has made are positive ones.
