The Diplomatic Wireless Service (DWS) was the name of the communications system set up for the British Foreign Office by Brigadier Richard Gambier-Parry, the first Foreign Office Director of Communications, in the latter part of 1945. It grew out of the Special Communication Units (SCU) which were responsible for communications for

MI6 The Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), commonly known as MI6 ( Military Intelligence, Section 6), is the foreign intelligence service of the United Kingdom, tasked mainly with the covert overseas collection and analysis of human intelligenc ...

during the war. Its original base was at Whaddon Hall in Buckinghamshire, but it moved to

Hanslope Park Hanslope Park is located about half a mile south-east of the village of Hanslope in the City of Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire, England. Once the manorial estate of the village, it is now owned by the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Of ...

in the winter of 1946/47. The primary role of the DWS was communications between British embassies and the UK, this part of its operations being based at Hanslope Park, which is still the HQ of its successor,

Her Majesty's Government Communications Centre His Majesty's Government Communications Centre (HMGCC) is an organisation which provides electronics and software to support the communication needs of the British Government. Based at Hanslope Park, near Milton Keynes in Buckinghamshire, it ...

(HMGCC). It also operated and maintained transmitters at home and abroad on behalf of the Foreign Office for the broadcasting of the European Service of the BBC and the BBC Overseas Service, which were combined as the BBC World Service in 1988. The main UK broadcast operation was based under the

Ashdown Forest Ashdown Forest is an ancient area of open heathland occupying the highest sandy ridge-top of the High Weald Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. It is situated some south of London in the county of East Sussex, England. Rising to an elevation o ...

near Crowborough in East Sussex. The main transmitter was called 'Aspi 1'. Crowborough was also the engineering base for the overseas relay stations at Zygi,

Cyprus Cyprus ; tr, Kıbrıs (), officially the Republic of Cyprus,, , lit: Republic of Cyprus is an island country located south of the Anatolian Peninsula in the eastern Mediterranean Sea. Its continental position is disputed; while it is ge ...

known as the British Eastern Mediterranean Relay Station (BEMRS) and

Perim Perim ( ar, بريم 'Barīm'', also called Mayyun in Arabic, is a volcanic island in the Strait of Mandeb at the south entrance into the Red Sea, off the south-west coast of Yemen and belonging to Yemen. It administratively belongs to Dhub ...

and later on

Masirah Masirah Island ( ar, جَزِيْرَة مَصِيْرَة, Jazīrat Maṣīrah), also referred to as Mazeira Island or ''Wilāyat Maṣīrah'' ( ar, وِلَايَة مَصِيْرَة), is an island off the east coast of mainland Oman in the ...

both called the British Middle East Relay Station. This section of the DWS was renamed the Foreign and Commonwealth Office Communications Engineering Division in the mid-1970s and was ultimately transferred to the control of the BBC in 1985. DWS operators were also involved in radio eavesdropping, the gathering of signals intelligence (SIGINT) for

GCHQ Government Communications Headquarters, commonly known as GCHQ, is an intelligence and security organisation responsible for providing signals intelligence (SIGINT) and information assurance (IA) to the government and armed forces of the Uni ...

, from within the compounds of embassies. The first of these undercover stations was established at

Ankara Ankara ( , ; ), historically known as Ancyra and Angora, is the capital of Turkey. Located in the central part of Anatolia, the city has a population of 5.1 million in its urban center and over 5.7 million in Ankara Province, maki ...

in 1943; another important station was at Stockholm, a location ideally suited for the monitoring of radio traffic from the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...

.Aldrich p. 192

References

{{reflist, 2 Defunct United Kingdom intelligence agencies Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office History of Milton Keynes Research institutes in Buckinghamshire Cryptography organizations 1945 establishments in the United Kingdom Foreign Office during World War II