'Nothing but worry and trouble': Ken Ross outlines the problems experienced by the early Department of External Affairs in dealing with security organisations.

• Author: Ross, Ken

'[Brigadier] Gilbert is of course very excited about all this and I think he already has visions of McIntosh's scalp hanging from his belt!'--Wellington-based MI5 official (1963) (1)

'Everything here is much the same as usual. As an old and rather vinegary aunt of mine used to say "Nothing but worry and trouble".'--Alister McIntosh (1965) (2)

Alister McIntosh's 23 years heading the Department of External Affairs (1943-66) had him recruit just shy of 200 future diplomats. (3) Most were still at External Affairs when he retired in September 1966. About a quarter, however, were not, through retirements, resignations, early deaths, poor performances, greener pastures (principally the universities) and a couple who had fallen foul of the Police Special Branch, whose crude security vetting of External Affairs personnel was the bane of McIntosh's working life in the early 1950s.

McIntosh's career-long parrying with the British Security Service (MI5) is told here through events and personalities associated with diplomat Dick Collins's abrupt departure from External Affairs in July 1954. That event led to the establishment of the New Zealand Security Service (NZSS, later NZSIS) two years later and then through the following decade to an increasingly fraught relationship between McIntosh and the first NZSS director, Bill Gilbert.

McIntosh's late-in-life reflections --with historians Mary Boyd and Fred Wood, and separately Michael King--highlight that losing Collins in July 1954 rankled most of all the departures. (4) Collins's early exit was most determined by a change of leadership at MI5 in August 1953: Sir Percy Sillitoe--a several times chief constable picked by Prime Minister Clement Attlee--who had headed MI5 since May 1946 retired to be succeeded by a long-serving staffer, Dick White.

Through his years at MI5, Sillitoe had been accommodating to McIntosh's refusal to kowtow to MI5, including to its nine-year long agitation about McIntosh's 'most distinguished Diplomat'--Paddy Costello. (5) This was not too surprising. MI5's first foray in New Zealand was an unmitigated disaster for them: in 1943 Major Folkes, an MI5 officer, was seconded to Wellington to head the government's new Security Intelligence Bureau. He was soon outwitted by a fraudster and was made to look a fool along with the government. In 1948, MI5 came to Wellington proposing they establish New Zealand's security service: Sillitoe and Roger Hollis got short shrift from Labour Prime Minister Peter Fraser. Three years on, with National's Sidney Holland settling in as prime minister, MI5 sought to recycle their offer to mentor a new domestic security service. They had not read Holland well: he, as much as his predecessor, had been appalled by the Folkes episode. Holland knew Sillitoe's strong preference for a quiet visit, but made sure it was not. On his departure, Sillitoe was presented with a large scrapbook filled with media coverage his visit had generated. (6) His formal report was buried by Holland. But, the Police Special Branch got an MI5 liaison officer, Derek Hamblyn, embedded.

White, along with his deputy Roger Hollis, had no such indulgence towards McIntosh. Both knew him well and were unwilling to accommodate him as had Sillitoe. Both had hardened their professional vision in the aftermath of MI5's failures over Guy Burgess, Donald McLean and Kim Philby.

For his part, McIntosh was habitually elusive with colleagues, other than his deputy Foss Shanahan, about MI5's intense antipathy to him. McIntosh was acutely aware that his own homosexuality could abruptly end his public service career--that it did not was an extraordinary feat on his part. Until the early 1970s, McIntosh's homosexuality was known at most to a handful of his own colleagues (and seemingly very few others around Wellington). But he had known since 1950 that MI5 knew.

When White and McIntosh met in May 1954, the first time since White had taken over, White said it was now time that Costello and three other officers about whom MI5 had reservations--Doug Zohrab, Doug Lake and Dick Collins --went. (7) Two years later, when White left MI5 to take charge of the British Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), only Zohrab was still with External Affairs.

Collins's departure

Collins's seven years in External Affairs had begun in September 1947, when as a 25-year-old returned serviceman (Divisional Cavalry) he had just graduated with a LLB and was shortly to complete a BA. He was the son of Dick ('Ginger') Collins, who had established the Wellington law firm Rainey Collins in 1920 only to die of his war wounds a year later. The young Dick, the 1938 Wellington College dux, had been employed at his father's old firm from 1939 until he joined External Affairs: he had been a law clerk while studying at Victoria University College, remaining on the firm's payroll when serving overseas in Italy (1943-45). His years in External Affairs have been sketched previously --he was, with Frank Corner, the best of McIntosh's early appointments. (8)

In early 1954 External Affairs' own security official, Reuel Lochore, confronted Collins with the news that the Special Branch had belatedly (by several years) found out that Collins was listed as a member-at-large of the Wellington district branch of the New Zealand Communist Party in 1948. Collins acknowledged to Lochore that in that year he had attended 'three Communist party meetings after which he lost interest'. Lochore recorded that 'in discussion Senior...