DALTON, HUGH• 131copiouscounterintelligenceinformation from former Scotland Yard
colleagues. Dail was a countersurveillance expert and succeeded in
following one of the MI5 watchers deployed to keep Ewer under ob-
servation.DALTON, HUGH.Appointedminister of economic warfareinWin-
ston Churchill’s coalition administration in May 1940, Dr. Hugh
Dalton took Cabinet responsibility forSpecial Operations Execu-
tivewhen it was created in July, with the prime minister’s famous
exhortation to ‘‘set Europe ablaze.’’ For 18 months the Old Etonian
socialist and barrister, who had graduated from King’s College,
Cambridge, and had been elected to the House of Commons as the
Labour MP for Peckham in 1924, supervised the development of
‘‘the racket’’ until he was replaced by theEarl of Selborne.
A future chancellor of the exchequer in Attlee’s postwar govern-
ment, Dalton enthused about what he called ‘‘the secrets of my Black
Life,’’ observing in his memoirsThe Fateful Years:
Some thought that all ‘‘special operations’’ should be under the War Office,
but this idea found little support. I said that it seemed to me that the War
Office had more than enough on their plate already. Branches of M.I. were
proliferating everywhere. What some of us had in mind was not primarily
a military job at all. It concerned Trade Unionists and Socialists in enemy
and enemy-occupied territories, the creation ofFifth Columns, of explo-
sions, chaos and resolution. Some said that hitherto the Foreign Office had
prevented all effective action in this field. One day, in my presence, George
Lloyd said to Halifax with a laugh: ‘‘You should never be consulted, be-
cause you would never consent to anything. You will never make a gang-
ster.’’Dalton established his own office in Berkeley Square House, ap-
pointingChristopher Mayhewas his personal liaison officer andSir
Frank Nelsonas ‘‘CD.’’ Also on his staff at what he quoted Chur-
chill as calling ‘‘the Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare’’ was Hugh
Gaitskell, a future leader of the Labour party. His vision, as he told
Lord Halifax, was to foment subversion on the Continent ‘‘compara-
ble to the Sinn Fein movement in Ireland, to the Chinese guerrillas
now operating against the Japanese, to the Spanish Irregulars who
played a notable part inWellington’s campaign.’’ Dr. Dalton died in
February 1962.