Colonel Valentine Patrick Terrell Vivian CMG

CBE The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is a British order of chivalry, rewarding contributions to the arts and sciences, work with charitable and welfare organisations, and public service outside the civil service. It was established o ...

(1886–1969) was the vice-chief of the SIS or

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 ...

and the first head of its

counterespionage Counterintelligence is an activity aimed at protecting an agency's intelligence program from an opposition's intelligence service. It includes gathering information and conducting activities to prevent espionage, sabotage, assassinations or ot ...

unit, Section V. Vivian, while he was attempting to introduce new blood into the service, selected

Kim Philby Harold Adrian Russell "Kim" Philby (1 January 191211 May 1988) was a British intelligence officer and a double agent for the Soviet Union. In 1963 he was revealed to be a member of the Cambridge Five, a spy ring which had divulged British secr ...

, who later became notorious as "The Third Man"

double agent In the field of counterintelligence, a double agent is an employee of a secret intelligence service for one country, whose primary purpose is to spy on a target organization of another country, but who is now spying on their own country's organi ...

and defected to the Russians, causing considerable harm to the system he had infiltrated.

Family background

Valentine Vivian was born on 17 March 1886 in

Kensington Kensington is a district in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea in the West End of London, West of Central London. The district's commercial heart is Kensington High Street, running on an east–west axis. The north-east is taken up b ...

, London. He was the youngest of nine children of Tom Comely Vivian, portrait painter, and Elizabeth Baly Farquhar, miniature painter. His brother Sir Sylvanus Percival Vivian (1880–1958) was former

Registrar General General Register Office or General Registry Office (GRO) is the name given to the civil registry in the United Kingdom, many other Commonwealth nations and Ireland. The GRO is the government agency responsible for the recording of vital records ...

of England from 1921 to 1945. In 1911, Vivian married Mary Primrose Warlow, daughter of the Venerable Edmund John Warlow, archdeacon of

Lahore Lahore ( ; pnb, ; ur, ) is the second most populous city in Pakistan after Karachi and 26th most populous city in the world, with a population of over 13 million. It is the capital of the province of Punjab where it is the largest city. ...

, India.

Early career

Vivian joined the Indian Police (Imperial Service) in December 1906 and was posted as assistant district superintendent of police for

Punjab Punjab (; Punjabi: پنجاب ; ਪੰਜਾਬ ; ; also romanised as ''Panjāb'' or ''Panj-Āb'') is a geopolitical, cultural, and historical region in South Asia, specifically in the northern part of the Indian subcontinent, comprising ...

, reaching the rank of assistant superintendent in November 1907, and subsequently superintendent of police for

Ambala Ambala () is a city and a municipal corporation in Ambala district in the state of Haryana, India, located on the border with the Indian state of Punjab and in proximity to both states capital Chandigarh. Politically, Ambala has two sub-area ...

Ludhiana Ludhiana ( ) is the most populous and the largest Cities in India, city in the Indian state of Punjab, India, Punjab. The city has an estimated population of 1,618,879 2011 Indian census, 2011 census and distributed over , making Ludhiana the ...

Jhang Jhang (Punjabi language, Punjabi, ur, ), ) is the capital city of Jhang District, in the central portion of the province of Punjab, Pakistan, Punjab, Pakistan. Situated on the east bank of the Chenab river, it is the List of most populous c ...

, Hissar,

Sialkot Sialkot ( ur, ) is a city located in Punjab, Pakistan. It is the capital of Sialkot District and the 13th most populous city in Pakistan. The boundaries of Sialkot are joined with Jammu (the winter capital of Indian administered Jammu and Ka ...

, and

railway police. He was senior superintendent of police for the

Delhi Delhi, officially the National Capital Territory (NCT) of Delhi, is a city and a union territory of India containing New Delhi, the capital of India. Straddling the Yamuna river, primarily its western or right bank, Delhi shares borders w ...

province and in October 1914 became an assistant director of central intelligence (

Simla Shimla (; ; also known as Simla, the official name until 1972) is the capital and the largest city of the northern Indian state of Himachal Pradesh. In 1864, Shimla was declared as the summer capital of British India. After independence, the ...

). He retired from the Indian Police in 1925. In the mid-1920s, agency director Sir Hugh Sinclair, the second "C", wanted to absorb

MI5 The Security Service, also known as MI5 ( Military Intelligence, Section 5), is the United Kingdom's domestic counter-intelligence and security agency and is part of its intelligence machinery alongside the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), G ...

, the UK's counter-intelligence agency, into the SIS; when his attempt was finally rejected, in 1925, he formed the CE section, later (1939) renamed "Section V". Between 1925 and 1931, organisational rivalries proliferated among Vivian's CE section, the domestic intelligence agency,

, and

Scotland Yard Scotland Yard (officially New Scotland Yard) is the headquarters of the Metropolitan Police, the territorial police force responsible for policing Greater London's 32 boroughs, but not the City of London, the square mile that forms London's ...

. A network of domestic agents known as the 'Casuals' had provided information to CE section. In 1930, after a series of meetings of the Special Services Committee, the Casuals were transferred to

, where they became "M Section"; many still provided the SIS with information. Under Vivian, Section V focused on the activities of the

Comintern The Communist International (Comintern), also known as the Third International, was a Soviet Union, Soviet-controlled international organization founded in 1919 that advocated world communism. The Comintern resolved at its Second Congress to ...

, which Vivian initially "regarded... as a criminal conspiracy rather than a clandestine political movement". Vivian was the author of the 1932 report
FO 1093/92
on the

Hilaire Noulens Jakob Rudnik (24 March 1894–13 March 1963) was a Ukrainian-born agent for the ''Otdel Mezhdunarodny Sviasy'' (OMS), which was the Communist International's clandestine International Liaison Department. Noulens Affair Rudnik rose to notorie ...

case, but his authorship was revealed only in 1994. During the First World War, Vivian served in the

Indian Army The Indian Army is the land-based branch and the largest component of the Indian Armed Forces. The President of India is the Supreme Commander of the Indian Army, and its professional head is the Chief of Army Staff (COAS), who is a four- ...

in Turkey and Palestine. At one point early in his career, he served in the Department of Criminal Intelligence (

) in India.

Later career

In the Summer of 1940 Vivian was one of the organisers of the British Resistance organisation created by SIS. He was particularly responsible for liaison with MI5 to ensure the legality of the body (SIS were not supposed to operate within the UK). In 1941, he became Vice-Chief of SIS but was engaged in a long-running power struggle with

Claude Dansey Lieutenant-Colonel Sir Claude Edward Marjoribanks Dansey, KCMG (10 September 1876 – 11 June 1947), also known as Colonel Z, Haywood, Uncle Claude, and codenamed Z, was the assistant chief of the Secret Intelligence Service known as ACSS, of t ...

for power within the organisation. He retired from SIS in 1951.

References

''The Records of the Permanent Under-Secretary's Department: Liaison between the Foreign Office and British Secret Intelligence, 1873-1939'', UK Foreign & Commonwealth Office, March 2005
:See, in particular, ''"The Secret Service Committee, 1919-1931"'', Gill Bennett, Chief Historian, Foreign & Commonwealth Office; and ''"The Secret Intelligence Service and the Case of Hilaire Noulens"'', Christopher Baxter, Historian, Foreign & Commonwealth Office.

External links

:Discusses SIS director Sir Stewart Menzies's reorganisation of units into "Headquarters" and "Foreign" divisions, including Section V
UK National Archives releases mentioning Vivian (provides abstracts but documents must be requested directly)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Vivian, Valentine 1880 births 1969 deaths Military personnel from London British Indian Army officers Indian Army personnel of World War I Companions of the Order of St Michael and St George Commanders of the Order of the British Empire Secret Intelligence Service personnel Officers of the Legion of Merit Indian Police Service officers in British India People from Kensington World War II spies for the United Kingdom