LONDON RECEPTION CENTRE• 311group fromGCHQthat accompanied thedirector of naval intelli-
gence,Harry Hinsley, and Sir Edward Travis on a world tour of in-
spection to decide how Britain’s cryptographic resources could best
be switched from Europe to fight the Japanese. In 1952, when GCHQ
moved to Oakley Farm, Cheltenham, Loehnis was appointed deputy
director. He retired from GCHQ in 1964 but later spent three years
as deputy chairman of the Civil Service Selection Board and died in
May 1992.LOI TAK.The Russian-trained general-secretary of the Malay Com-
munist Party (MCP), Loi Tak was also on the payroll of the local
Special Branch. In December 1941, he held a secret meeting in Sin-
gapore attended by twoSpecial Branchofficers, G. E. Devonshire
and Innes Tremlett, with Freddie Spencer Chapman representing
Special Operations Executive. This initial contact was followed by
a similar but higher-level rendezvous between John Dalley, the Spe-
cial Branch’s head ofcounterespionageat Kuala Lumpur, Chap-
man, and the Communist leadership on the last day of 1941. The
agreement reached on that occasion committed the British authorities
to release their MCP detainees and send them to theSecret Intelli-
gence Service(SIS)Special Training School, designated STS 102,
in requisitioned premises at the Chunjin Chinese school near Kuala
Lumpur, under the direction of Major Rosher, to train and equip
MCP cadres. Ironically, among SIS’s early recruits was John Davis,
a Chinese-speaking Special Branch officer who found himself deal-
ing with the newly recruited Communists he had himself only re-
cently had imprisoned.See alsoMALAYA EMERGENCY.
LONDON CAGE.Located at 6 –7 Kensington Palace Gardens, the
mansion known as ‘‘the London Cage’’ accommodated theMI19
prisoner of war reception center, where new arrivals underwent inter-
rogation by a staff headed by ColonelAlexander Scotlandbefore
being assigned to a long-term camp or to theAir Intelligencecenter
at Trent Park, Cockfosters.
LONDON RECEPTION CENTRE (LRC).Housed at theRoyal Vic-
toria Patriotic Schoolon Clapham Common, South London, and
staffed byMI5personnel, the London Reception Centre screened