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66 BLETCHLEY PARK AND BEYOND
was taken to retain them. Quite simply, this came down to cash.
GC&CS had to have the status to secure 'a sufficiently liberal
supply of money to enable it to attract men of first rate ability',
particularly engineers and electronics experts. It was also aware
that it would have to give equal weight to all types of intelligence
about foreign countries, 'including scientific, commercial
and economic matters'. This was a tacit reference to the targeting
of friendly states. 53
In January 1945, the torch of post-war planning passed to
William F. Clarke. Clarke, who had served continuously in codebreaking
from 1916, warned that the 'enormous power wielded
by the Treasury' might soon be brought to bear on GC&CS. As
had happened in 1919, work on military cyphers might cease
in favour of concentration on diplomatic material only. This, he
insisted, could be 'disastrous', because the resulting damage to
ongoing cryptographic research might mean that in the event
of a sudden future conflict, enemy military traffic would prove
inaccessible. Even more problematic was the challenge of
building up the prestige of GC&CS. Its very secrecy was its worst
enemy, ensuring that many in elevated government circles did
not know its true value. There was also the 'potential danger'
of a Labour government coming to power, since the interwar
Labour government had found many aspects of the secret state
to be repellent.
Clarke also paused to consider the emerging United Nations.
Allowing himself some momentary Utopian thoughts, he
observed that if the new organisation took the step of abolishing
all code and cypher communications, this action 'would
contribute more to a permanent peace than any other'. However,
he conceded that this 'is probably the counsel of perfection',
and was highly improbable. Instead, he predicted that energetic
code-making and code-breaking would persist into the post-war
world. On the matter of who would control the British codebreakers,
he felt that in the past neither the Admiralty nor the
Foreign Office had been satisfactory. The current system of
control by SIS also brought with it 'certain disadvantages'. Clarke