Special Branch

What We Don't Know...

Official Statement

The official website has a nice -- if rather brief -- description:

History: The MetropolitanPolice Special Irish Branch was formed in March 1883, initially as a small section of the CriminalInvestigationDepartment (CID) of the MetropolitanPolice. It's [sic] purpose was to combat, on a national basis, a 'Fenian' (Irish) campaign of terrorism which was prevalent on the United Kingdom mainland at the time. Subsequently, the term 'Irish' was dropped from the Branch's title, as over time it took on responsibility for countering a wide range of extremist and terrorist activity.

But that doesn't tell us much, now does it?

Wikipedia

The Wikipedia entry isn't much more extensive....

The official police history website says this:

Special Branch started life as the "Special Irish Branch" and contains a unique national record of subversive activity directed against the State, terrorism and espionage, much of which can be made available for public view. The history of the Fenians has many echoes of topical matters relating to IRA terrorism, and is clearly divided into distinct campaigns from the 1860s onwards.

Starting to get the impression there are a lot of secrets here?

Casebook: Jack the Ripper

Casebook Jack the Ripper just says:

In 1883 the Special Irish Branch was formed in the wake of a number of dynamitings of public buildings by Fenian terrorists. It later became known as just Special Branch.

But as SpecialBranch wasn't much involved in the JackTheRipper investigations, that's certainly forgivable.

FAS Intelligence Resource Program

And finally, The FAS Intelligence Resource Program notes:

The Special Irish Branch was formed in 1883 to combat the threat from the Fenian movement, whose aim was independence in Ireland and who had been responsible for a series of explosions in London. The Special Irish Branch later became known as the Special Branch and extended its work into Royalty protection with Queen Victoria's Jubilee.

This at least tells us that SpecialBranch went into the protection business in 1887. Of course, FAS is mostly interested in the Cold War, which is quite a bit later than the Victorian era.

So What Do We Know?

Well, not a hell of a lot. SpecialBranch was in the Victorian period extremely secret, perhaps necessarily so, but like many branches of the British government it remains almost entirely closed to outside examination. Indeed, the Guardian has made a point of periodically indicating that SpecialBranch remains largely outside of the various government watchdog perspectives, while MI5 (a much more recently-founded organization) has, partly as a result of several scandals, become relatively open. (Relative to their past, that is -- they're still much more secretive than, say, the FBI or CIA.)

Christopher Andrew on the Origins of the SpecialBranch

Since copyright rules permit the use of quotations under 10% of a published work, and since I don't charge a dime for this website, and since the total chapter from which this is drawn is 33 pages and I reproduce 4.5 (out of a 619-page book), the following quotation should be legal. Any editorial insertion from me are marked "--ed."

• Andrew, Christopher. Her Majesty's Secret Service: The Making of the British Intelligence Community. New York: Viking Penguin, 1986. 15-20.

Andrew writes:

Like MID [Military Intelligence Department –ed.] and NID [Naval Intelligence Department –ed.], domestic intelligence gathering was slow to become institutionalised. Informers and spies had regularly preyed on pre-Victorian radical and working-class movements, “debilitating their strength and distorting their image in the eyes of successive governments”.{38} The authorities in early Victorian England also used informers when dealing with the agitation by the Chartists, but they established no organised system of political surveillance. “We have no political police, no police over opinion”, boasted Charles Dickens’s Household Words in the 1850s: “The most rabid demagogue can say in this free country what he chooses ... He speaks not under the terror of an organised spy system”. The MetropolitanPolice Force, founded by Sir RobertPeel in 1829, originally contained no plainclothes officers at all. The detective department, established in 1842, still had only fifteen men a quarter of a century later. Despite the founding of the CriminalInvestigationDepartment (CID) in 1877, Superintendent Adolphus “Dolly” Williamson complained in 1880 that detective work remained unpopular within the Met:

... The uncertainty and irregularity of the duties ... are ... no doubt in many cases very distasteful and repugnant to the better class of men in the service, as their duties constantly bring them into contact with the worst classes, frequently cause unnecessary drinking, and compel them at times to resort to trickey [ sic ] practices which they dislike.{39}

Both undercover detectives and political surveillance developed more rapidly in Dublin than in London, spurred on by the growth of a republican underground from mid-century onwards. 1858 saw the foundation of the FenianBrotherhood^? among Irish emigrants in the United States and of the Irish Revolutionary (later Republican) Brotherhood^? in Dublin. Both the FBI and the IRB, collectively known as the Fenians, planned the violent overthrow of British rule. The IRB, however, was quickly penetrated by undercover agents of the government in DublinCastle. In 1865 the Dublin Metropolitan Police (DMP) swooped on the IRB headquarters and arrested most of its leaders who were convicted of treason felony and sentenced to penal servitude. Forewarned by its spies and informers, DublinCastle was able to crush a Fenian rising in March 1867 without difficulty.{40}

During the autumn and winter of 1867 Fenian violence spilled over into England. In September a police van carrying Fenian prisoners in Manchester was ambushed and a police sergeant killed. In December a bomb explosion at Clerkenwell House of Detention, where RichardBurke^?, leader of the Manchester ambush, was imprisoned, killed twelve people and injured 120 {see ClerkenwellBombing^?}. The following day, fearing that the Clerkenwell explosion was only the beginning of a Fenian bombing campaign, the cabinet set up a " SecretServiceDepartment" independent of the Met under a law officer from DublinCastle, RobertAnderson (later knighted), who was charged with masterminding the defense of London. But the bombing campaign never materialised and the new department was wound up only four months later. Anderson, however, stayed on at the HomeOffice for the next fifteen years to liaise with DublinCastle on the Fenian threat. He found life in London more leisurely than in Dublin, working in the HomeOffice from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. “It was”, he later recalled, “a nominal 11 and a punctual 5”. Anderson also recruited a remarkable agent, Thomas Billis Beach, alias HenriLeCaron, who successfully penetrated the Fenian movement in America and was commissioned in August 1868 as “Major and Military Organizer in the Service of the Irish Republic”. Le Caron provided regular intelligence on Fenian activities, mostly in the United States, for over twenty years. When he died in 1894, five years after revealing himself in his “true colours, as an Englishman, proud of his country”, the American-Fenian leader John Devoy called him, with some exaggeration, “the champion spy of the century”, and complained that, with the Irish nation “thirsting for his blood”, he had been allowed to die peacefully in his bed.{41}

The short-lived Fenian scare of 1867-8 which led to Le Caron’s recruitment did little to accustom the MetropolitanPolice to political surveillance. When the HomeOffice was faced with urgent requests from foreign governments to investigate the activities of French “Communist” refugees after the bloodthirsty suppression of the Paris Commune in 1871, it had little idea how to go about it. Its first, remarkably naive, reaction was to write to Britain’s most celebrated political exile, KarlMarx^?, who obligingly provided information on the activities of the Workingmen’s International^?. In May 1872 a sergeant from ScotlandYard was sent to investigate a meeting of French “Communist refugees” at the Canonbury Arms in Islington. On his way into the meeting the sergeant was asked if he was a Communist himself, replied that he was not, but insisted on his right to stay:

Upon that a person (whom I can identify) caught hold of me and assisted by others carried me forcibly out of the room and intimated that if I returned they would break my head. I did not return in order that no breach of the peace should take place.

A month later the sergeant tried again. This time he was allowed to stay but all the Communists departed.{42}

Representations from foreign governments at the activities of political refugees were one of the pressures which led during the 1880s to the founding of Britain’s first “political police”. A German socialist refugee in London, JohannMost^?, who wrote an article applauding the assassination of Tsar Alexander II by a Russian nihilist in March 1881, was arrested after complaints by the German government, and convicted of incitement to murder. As a result of the Most case, Gladstone’s HomeSecretary, Sir WilliamVernonHarcourt, ordered the Met to keep a regular watch henceforth on all “Communist” meetings. But the main stimulus to the creation of a political police came from the resurgence of Fenian terrorism. A bombing campaign in England during the first six months of 1881 killed a boy of seven outside SalfordBarracks^? but otherwise did little damage and collapsed after the capture of two Fenian bombers and the discovery of an arms cache. Though the CID set up a Fenian Office to liaise with the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) and QueenVictoria enquired what was being done to protect BuckinghamPalace^?, Harcourt dismissed the London bombs as “a Fenian scare of the old clumsy kind”. The government reacted with much greater urgency to the assassination of Lord Frederick Cavendish, chief secretary for Ireland, and Thomas Burke, the permanent under-secretary, as they were walking through Dublin’s Phoenix Park in May 1882. An emergency cabinet meeting in London set up a special anti-Fenian detective force in Dublin under the command of the former IB [Intelligence Branch (War Office) –ed.] officer, Colonel (later Major-General) HenryBrackenbury^?, who became “spymaster general” with the official title of Chief Special Commissioner. Though a firm believer in military intelligence, Brackenbury was dismayed by his Irish appointment and quickly began trying to arrange a transfer. He was succeeded as “spymaster general” in August by EdwardGeorgeJenkinson, a former divisional commissioner in India whose experience of the Mutiny was thought to equip him for the struggle against Fenian terror. Early in 1883 that terror entered its most acute phase with the beginning of a " DynamiteWar" against British cities. In London alone Fenian bombs exploded at the Local Government Board in Whitehall^?, the offices of TheTimes, the HousesOfParliament^?, the TowerOfLondon^?, several main railway stations, the London underground and ScotlandYard itself – all in the space of under two years. “The Houses of Parliament,” said TheTimes in March 1883, “are searched as if continually on the eve of a GUY FAWKES plot ...” Harcourt complained in April that the Fenian menace was demanding “every available moment of my time”. He wrote to Gladstone a month later:

This is not a temporary emergency requiring a momentary remedy. Fenianism is a permanent conspiracy against English rule which will last far beyond the term of my life and must be met by a permanent organisation to detect and to control it.

The “permanent organisation” which Harcourt had in mind was centred on the “ SpecialIrishBranch” which he set up at ScotlandYard in March 1883 under the veteran detective Superintendent “Dolly” Williamson. At the same time Jenkinson was summoned from Dublin to co-ordinate anti-Fenian operations in the capital. At its peak in the mid-80s these operations involved the SpecialIrishBranch; 79 policemen drawn from ScotlandYard and the RIC [Royal Irish Constabulary –ed.] watching the ports; hundreds of uniformed and plain-clothes men (some drafted in from Ireland) protecting London buildings; a network of informants in mainland Britain run by a provincial “spymaster”, Major NicholasGosselin^?, appointed by Jenkinson; Jenkinson’s own network in Ireland, the United States, and the Continent; and seven ScotlandYard men in continental cities. The anti-Fenian campaign enjoyed the active patronage of the royal family which rightly feared that it was one of the Fenians’ targets. QueenVictoria was “in a great state of fuss about the situation in general”, fearful that the royal train might be bombed on its way to Balmoral^?, and the Prince of Wales personally recommended a secret agent who was taken on by Jenkinson. Harcourt, who had frequently to reassure the Queen, complained to his son in February 1884: “I have sunk now into a mere Head Detective and go nowhere and see nothing”.{43}

The SpecialIrishBranch was more vulnerable to Fenian attack than it realised. Its offices were imprudently situated on the first floor of a small building in the centre of Great ScotlandYard, immediately above a public urinal. Though a police constable on duty in front of the building “observed nothing suspicious in any persons who entered the urinal”, the Fenians succeeded in planting a large bomb which demolished the SpecialIrishBranch offices on the evening of 30 May 1884. Jenkinson was outraged at the laxness of ScotlandYard security:

If the Constable had been properly posted I do not see how men could have approached and put anything in the urinal unobserved ... Fancy them allowing the public to go there at night, or indeed at any time after the warnings they had received.{44}

A search was quickly mounted for other strategically-placed urinals. A public lavatory near WindsorCastle^? was closed down, and there was a flurry of alarm when it was discovered that the entire sanitation of the HousesOfParliament^? was being overhauled by Irish workmen.{45}

In the event the dynamite war in the capital came to an end early in 1885 without further damage either to public urinals or to ScotlandYard. An attempt to arrange a Fenian “firework display” during QueenVictoria’s golden jubilee in 1887 with explosions during the thanksgiving service at WestminsterAbbey^? and in parliament ended in fiasco. ScotlandYard was forewarned of the bomb plot by informers and had the Irish-American bombers under surveillance from the moment they left the United States. Two of the bombers were arrested soon after they reached Britain; a third died before the police arrived. The Fenian dynamite war was at an end.{46}

From late 1885 the anti-Fenian surveillance system was rapidly run down. In 1886 RIC men were withdrawn from London and the ports. In January 1887 Jenkinson, who had long complained of the “stupidity of some so-called [English] detectives”, “the greatest jealousy of me and my Irish staff”, and his own “anomalous”, “undefined” position as security coordinator, handed in his resignation. Simultaneously the remnants of the anti-Fenian forces – some from the Irish Special Branch [ sic, presumably SpecialIrishBranch --ed.], more from the port police – were drawn together into a new body, the SpecialBranch of the MetropolitanPolice, which was given responsibility for all political crime. Its first head was the assistant commissioner in charge of the CID, James Monroe [ sic --ed.], who was made accountable for the SpecialBranch not to the chief commissioner of the Met but to the home secretary direct. A year later, Monroe was succeeded by RobertAnderson, head of the short-lived SecretServiceDepartment of 1867-8.{47}

The early SpecialBranch was on a smaller scale than the anti-Fenian operations of the mid-80s. During the 1890s it had only about twenty-five men, many – if not most – of Irish origin. Some of its energies were turned against the anarchists whose continental victims at the end of the century included the President of France, the King of Italy, the Queen of Austria-Hungary and the Prime Minister of Spain. Anarchist terrorism in Britain was feeble by comparison, though a few inexpert bomb-makers were arrested in Walsall in 1892 (one of their bombs is still in the possession of the Walsall police), and the French anarchist MartialBourdin^?, who blew himself up while attempting to demolish Greenwich RoyalObservatory^? in 1894, provided Joseph Conrad with the inspiration for the novel The Secret Agent. Some of the SpecialBranch’s energies were also expended on vaguer forms of subversion. It began, for example, to suspect a sinister purpose behind the harmless activities of the LegitimationLeague^?, founded to remove the stigma of bastardy from illegitimate children. Inspector JohnSweeney^? became convinced that the League was being used by anarchists to subvert the social order by promoting free love. Sweeney purchased a volume of HavelockEllis^?’s Psychology of Sex from the League’s secretary, GeorgeBedborough^?, then promptly arrested him for selling it. Following Bedborough’s conviction for obscene libel in 1898 and a police raid on its office, the League was wound up.{48} At the end of the nineteenth century the twenty-five officers of the SpecialBranch had little of importance left to do. Not till the German spy scares which preceded the First World War did the Branch return to something like the prominence achieved by the SpecialIrishBranch during the Fenian bombings of the 1880s.

Notes 38. E. Royle and J. Walvin, English Radicals and Reformers (Brighton, 1984), 72.

39. Memo by Williamson, 22 Oct. 1880, PRO MEPO 2/134. Bernard Porter, “The Origins of Britain’s Political Police,” The Historical Journal (n.d.).

40. K.R.M. Short, The Dynamite War (Dublin, 1979), ch. 1.

41. Ibid. J.A. Cole, The Prince of Spies: Henri Le Caron (London, 1984).

42. Porter, “Origins of Britain’s Political Police.” Police reports of 24 May, 15 June 1872, PRO HO 45/9303/11335.

43. Short, Dynamite War, chs. 3-7. Porter, “Origins of Britain’s Political Police.”

44. Short, Dynamite War, 184-6.

45. Porter, “Origins of Britain’s Political Police.”

46. Short, Dynamite War, 232-3.

47. Short, Dynamite War, 231, 234. Porter, “Origins of Britain’s Political Police.”

48. Porter, “Origins of Britain’s Political Police.” My [Christopher Andrew’s] account of the origins of the SpecialBranch also draws on my filmed report for “Timewatch,” BBC 2, 6 Feb. 1985 (producer Paul Lee), based chiefly on research by Dr. Bernard Porter.

The source (to repeat) is:

• Andrew, Christopher. Her Majesty's Secret Service: The Making of the British Intelligence Community. New York: Viking Penguin, 1986. 15-20.

Other Resources

Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

-- ChrisLehrich^? - 20 Jan 2005