Charles, Viscount Wickersley is a recurring character in my 1930s thrillers. I named him after my home village in South Yorkshire, the place where the first of the Room Z series was written during lockdown. The line of the de Wickersley family that stemmed from Norman owners of the village has died out, giving me free rein to use the name as well as give a nod to my birthplace.
Wickersley is typical of the kind of man the British security services made use of between the world wars. He has money, influence and a position in society. British intelligence services were massively cut back after the end of the Great War, leaving a tiny rump of personnel working with meagre budgets. By the early 1930s the Security Service (MI5) had barely two dozen officers, supported by a similar number of mostly female clerical staff. Field officers, such as Maxwell Knight (‘M’) of B Section, additionally ran small stables of agents and informers. For much of the thirties Knight had only had one or two agents inside the British fascist movement.
While MI5 dealt with domestic security, any activity beyond Britain’s shores fell to the Secret Intelligence Service, which later became known as MI6. During the 1930s SIS did not even officially exist. There was often tension between the two branches as well as with Special Branch who made up the third leg of the security services,.
Intelligence officers were poorly paid and had little cash to pay agents with, so a typically British solution was to recruit men of independent means, including minor aristocracy. The expectation was that they would work chiefly for the love of king, country and empire. Some were inspired simply by the whiff of adventure while others were motivated by deep political convictions. Anti-communist agents would be employed against Stalin’s spies and home-grown agitators, while anti-fascists were recruited once Britain woke up to the threat posed by Nazi Germany. It was a semi-amateur set up that relied heavily on the old boy network.
SIS played a slippery game, co-operating at times with the German Gestapo and with General Franco in Spain. MI5 used British fascists to carry out dirty tricks operations against socialists and also used them to entrap Nazi sympathisers. The amateurish nature of British intelligence and assumption their officers were decent chaps diluted its effectiveness and allowed it to be penetrated by the Soviets; Kim Philby and John Cairncross eventually joined SIS and Anthony Blunt became an officer of MI5.
Which brings us back to Viscount Wickersley. When he recruits Hugh Clifton in Chapter One of Blackshirt Masquerade, Wickersley appears to be working for the government in some arm of the security services. He doesn’t make his role clear, or even whether he holds an official post at all. We learn that he was formerly a captain in the British Army and served on the North West Frontier of India gathering intelligence on anti-imperial dissidents. On paper he’s the perfect asset for British intelligence, but when he returns in Blackshirt Rebellion we have the ask the question; he seems a decent chap, but who exactly is he working for?
Blackshirt Rebellion is now available from Amazon UK and Amazon.Com. It can be ordered from Barnes and Noble, and from your usual book store. Why not discover how Hugh’s adventures began in Blackshirt Masquerade?
The village of Wickersley features in the Domesday book, and you can read more about its history here: https://www.wickersleyparishcouncil.gov.uk/early-history-of-wickersley
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