Historical Dictionary of British Intelligence

SIDNEY STREET SIEGE• 487

though the Free Siam Movement formed the basis of a resistance or-

ganization. SOE’s operations includedpritchard,appreciation,

brillig,sequence, andpanicle. Efforts at sabotage, includingbil-

low,blandings,andcleve, were largely unsuccessful.mastiff

andmannawere mounted to support Allied prisoners of the Japa-

nese held in camps in Siam.

SICHERHEITSDIENST (SD).The intelligence branch of the Nazi
party, the Sicherheitsdienst deployed representatives overseas and
conducted espionage operations in parallel with the rivalAbwehr.
British Intelligence encountered the SD in November 1939 when
Walter Schellenberg supervised the abduction of twoSecret Intelli-
gence Serviceofficers, CaptainSigismund Bestand MajorRichard
Stevens, at Venlo. Centrally organized, in contrast to the devolved
structure of the Abwehr, the SD proved ruthless adversaries in occu-
pied territories, and the penetration of the British embassy in Ankara
in 1943 was an SD operation.
Suspicion that the SD might have attempted to develop a parallel
network in Britain, independent of the Abwehr’s spy rings that had
fallen underMI5’s control, were dispelled when Schellenberg was
interrogated atCamp 020in 1945. He confirmed that the SD had not
infiltrated any agents into England and gave a comprehensive ac-
count of the organization’s activities, earning him an early release
from his imprisonment on war crimes charges.

SIDNEY STREET SIEGE.In 1909, a bungled robbery at Tottenham
led to an extraordinary rampage by two Latvian anarchists armed
with semiautomatic pistols, leaving 25 wounded and two dead. At the
end of the following year, five police officers were shot in the City
of London—three fatally—as a result of another robbery by several
Russian immigrants with anarchist sympathies. Two were eventually
traced to a house in Stepney (a third having been accidentally shot by
his comrades during the first confrontation) and so began the Siege of
Sidney Street in January 1911. It led to a five-hour exchange of gun-
fire between the forces of order—contingents of the City of London
andMetropolitan Policesupported by a detachment of Scots Guards
from the Tower of London—and the desperate men armed with two
7.63mm Mauser semiautomatic pistols and a Browning. Some 2,000