Valentine Vivian

Valentine Vivian was an MI6 officer.

Vivian was born in 1886, son of the portrait painter Comley Vivian, and educated at St Paul's School. He joined the Indian Police in 1904, becoming assistant director fo the criminal intelligence department by 1914. After service with the Indian Army in the Middle East during the First World War, he joined the British intelligence station in Istanbul, initially as a representative of Indian Political Intelligence.

Vivian served as deputy head of station in Istanbul in 1919, and head of station from 1920 to 1923. He then became Regional Inspector for Western Europe (the German Group), based initially in Cologne and then in London.

In late 1925, Vivian became head of the MI6 Section V, with responsibility for counter-intelligence and anti-communist work. It acquired responsibility for running a group of UK-based agents known as 'the casuals' some of which had been acquired by Desmond Morton through contacts such as George Makgill.

Vivian toured the Middle East in 1926 and 1927, and reported that Harry St John Philby was championing the interests of Ibn Saud against those of Britain.

Vivian briefed the Foreign Secretary Austen Chamberlain during the Commons debate on 27 May 1927 that followed a raid on the offices of the Soviet trade organisation ARCOS.

Following a 1931 agreement which gave MI5 responsibility for monitoring communist activity in Britain and the empire, Section V developed a role as a circulating section between the two agencies.

In March 1932, Vivian complained that some SIS reporting from New York was too unselective, stating "some of J..M. Keynes tenets coincide with Communist tenets, but we don't keep a file of his students of economics."

In August 1934, Vivian briefed Sir Paul Dukes, whose touring ballet company was seen as a potential source of intelligence on the Soviet Union.

During the 1930s, Vivian had particularly good coverage of the Lovestoneite movement:

In May 1935 Kathleen 'Jane' Sissmore of MI5 raised with Valentine Vivian 'the poverty of your information with regard to the progress of Communism in the United States', with one notable exception, a network run by Jay Lovestone in New York, which had been comprehensively penetrated by SIS. Lovestone who led the anti-Stalin Communist Party (Opposition), had worldwide contacts, and London was particularly interested in information about those in Britain and the empire. Canadian names were passed on to the Ottawa authorities, while others including the Indian Communist M.N. Roy, the Trinidadian 'rabid Trotskyite' C.L.R. James and the liberal-Marxist British intellectual Harold Laski (who could hardly be described as a 'subversive'), were passed on to Scotland Yard, MI5, and Indian Political Intelligence. Flatteringly for SIS, an October 1935 report quoted Lovestone (who was planning a trip to Europe) as saying 'that the British Intelligence Service was the only thing he had ever been afraid of' and he was fearful of being arrested if he went to England.

In 1938, Vivian informed Guy Liddell that SIS was engaged in air and naval espionage against the United States, complicating Liddell's proposals for increased intelligence liaison. Vivian ordered on 7 June 1938 that espionage against America should stop.

In January 1940, the new MI6 chief Stewart Menzies appointed Claude Dansey as his Assistant Chief of Service (AC/SS) and Vivian as Deputy Chief (DC/SS), setting the scene for a bureaucratic power struggle. A year later, Vivian complained to Menzies that he was being marginalised. As well as retaining overall responsibility for MI6 Section V in this post, Vivian was head of the War Station at Bletchley Park.

In 1943, Vivian was made Deputy Director overseeing security and counterespionage (DD/SP).

In August 1943, Vivian reported to Menzies on Soviet espionage:

Soviet Russia is our friend only while it can obtain benefit from this friendship. It does not trust us and will exert all efforts in espionage activities against us even in years of friendship. When it will obtain everything it can from a friendship, it will inexorably activate all the secret forces against the ideal for which Britain struggles.

On 13 October 1943, Vivian told the Foreign Office's Peter Loxley that he had permission to establish a small unit, MI6 Section IX, to focus on communism.

During the latter years of the war, Soviet mole Kim Philby was able to exploit jealousy between Vivian and Felix Cowgill to advance his position in MI6. In August 1944, Philby was informed that Vivian wanted to make him operation head of MI6's anti-communist work in place of Jack Curry. In February 1945, Vivian and Philby succeeded in imposing their demand for an enlarged anticommunist MI6 Section IX on Foreign Office adviser Robert Cecil.

Vivian was appointed Menzies' Security Policy Advisor (A.S.P) in November 1945. In February 1947, he was given the title Inspector of Security and a staff officer to assist him.

Vivian remained in MI6 until the 1950s, running the Inspectorate of Security (I/S), although no longer a full Deputy Director.