A Whitehall 'Showdown'?: Colonial Office-Joint Intelligence Committee Relations in the Mid-1950s

作者：Cormac Rory^*

来源：Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 2011, 39(2): 249-267.

DOI：10.1080/03086534.2011.568776

This article sheds light on the somewhat hostile relationship between the Colonial Office (CO) and the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) in the mid-1950s. Assessing the reforms recommended following a number of counterinsurgency difficulties, it discusses the role of the CO in the centralised intelligence assessment process. This article argues that relations between the CO and the JIC were underdeveloped and that reforms aimed to allow a greater coordination and a more active JIC input into colonial affairs. However, in doing so, the committee threatened to encroach into CO territory, bringing with it military conceptualisations of the Cold War and an allegedly narrow focus on communist subversion which marginalised more complex colonial problems. This resulted in the threat of a Whitehall 'showdown'.

• 出版日期2011