Last year the Daily Telegraph reported that a devout Christian was rejected for a job at the Government’s communications headquarters (GCHQ) because his religious beliefs had raised “national security issues”. When Charles Storey told interviewers that his devotion to God outweighed his loyalty to the state he was informed he was “not a suitable candidate”.
In common with most stories relating to the three national security agencies – GCHQ, MI5 and MI6 – the report failed to examine in any detail the issues of personal loyalty that might be involved. It is understandable that a committed Christian working in the moral minefield of modern technology, and the hacking of cyber traffic and social communications, might in some circumstances be troubled by qualms of conscience. And promoting extraordinary rendition for intelligence-gathering purposes would almost certainly seem an unacceptable practice.
But in the 1950s, when I joined M15 and later moved to M16, I experienced few contradictions to my Catholic faith. It was clear that the national good coincided with Christian welfare. Britain and her Western allies in Europe faced the dual threat posed by communism from the East and subversion at home, and the resources of MI5 were concentrated on the fight against an enemy with many clandestine sympathisers in Britain. Reds were known to be hiding under many beds, not always the obvious ones, and it was impressed on MI5 recruits like myself that our job was to find them.
Christians realised that should atheistic communism triumph it would inevitably attempt to destroy the Church as it had in Russia and other countries in Eastern Europe. Catholics in particular were mindful of this danger. Convents in Romania and Hungary of the Sisters who had educated me had been desecrated and their nuns abused, and the papacy was described by Sir Alec Randall, a former member of the British Legation to the Holy See, as the “most consistent and powerful opponent of international communism”. The fact that much of MI5’s information was gleaned from clandestine telephone tapping never caused me any soul-searching.
Working in the MI6 office in Hong Kong in 1958, I encountered communism at first-hand when visiting Catholic refugees who had fled across the border from China to the British colony. They were housed in stinking shanty towns, and their plight, and that of the Maryknoll Sisters who had been expelled from China with them, was heartbreaking.
Unbeknown to my colleagues in the office, I sometimes spent the evening helping the Sisters in their school. These visits to an area close to the communist border might have been questioned had they been discovered, although my boss at that time would probably have understood my motives. Maurice Oldfield, later head of M16, was a man who made no secret of his Christianity.
Communism no longer poses the threat it once did, but 60 years ago those working in MI5 and MI6 in the Middle East were fighting other enemies of Christianity who are even more dangerous today. The preservation of British interests in Egypt was the primary concern of the secret agencies, but their work also acted as a defence against a brutal Islamic extremist organisation hostile to Christians.
In 1951 the Muslim Brotherhood unleashed a terrorist campaign against service personnel and installations in the Canal Zone, where the British had treaty rights. At that time the right to station a large army on the Suez Canal was considered to be of vital strategic importance. The British were unprepared and suffered heavy casualties. Although they were working primarily to preserve territorial interests, M15 and MI6 were, coincidentally, fighting an enemy that hated Christians.
In January 1952 Muslim Brotherhood gunmen stormed the convent of St Vincent de Paul in Ismailia and killed an American nun, Sister Anthony, who had tried to prevent them from firing on British personnel in the street below. A Coptic church was sacked, and the mutilated corpse of its caretaker was dragged through the streets. Sudanese and Egyptian Copts working for the British were either killed or intimidated into leaving the country and losing their livelihoods.
Today the Copts are once again being persecuted, following the re-emergence of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt after the Arab Spring, and another, even more brutal extremist organisation is the principal target of security agencies throughout the Western world.
Historically, Catholics have thrived in the CIA. Although the same cannot be claimed for British agencies, Christian employees of our intelligence services, however zealous, may feel that their work is helping their fellow Christians. For someone of my generation there is a strange irony here. Russia, her Christian heritage restored, appears to be on the side of the angels in the fight against ISIS, although the bombing of civilian targets in Syria must be condemned.
It is also ironic that in countering ISIS’s terrorist attacks, the intelligence resources of the secular and generally post-Christian superpowers of Europe and the United States are working, albeit unwittingly, for the survival of Christianity.
Celia Chard is the pseudonym of an established author and freelance writer
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