FLETCHER, REX• 187cret Intelligence Service(SIS). In 1923, as Sinclair took up his post
in SIS’s headquarters, Fletcher stood for Parliament and was elected
the Liberal MP for Basingstoke. He lost his seat a year later and in
1929 joined the Labour party, for whom he won the Nuneaton seat in
- Thereafter he established his reputation as an expert on naval
matters—and certainly he was well informed, for he spent each
morning at his desk in SIS’s headquarters. Fletcher’s role in SIS was
that of aG Officer, one of a small group of senior personnel who
supervised the organization’s overseas operations.
Thus it was as a Labour MP and a senior SIS officer that in 1938
Fletcher contributed to a ‘‘Penguin Special’’ book,The Air Defence
of Britain, which made a savage attack on the Air Ministry and the
aircraft industry. That an MP would make such an attack was itself a
matter of controversy, but the really remarkable fact was that Fletcher
was also a serving SIS officer, although his brief entry inWho’s Who
and theDictionary of National Biographymakes no mention of it
whatever. Indeed, in his book he takes care to deny that he had access
to any intelligence relating to the relative aircraft strengths of differ-
ent countries and was relying upon an article in theNews Chronicle
attributed to Pierre Cot, the French minister of aviation. In reality, of
course, Fletcher had all the relevant data at his fingertips because his
principal preoccupation at SIS was this very topic.
Soon after the outbreak of World War II, Fletcher resigned from
SIS and rejoined the navy. He was initially posted to the East End
docks, supervising the arming of the merchant fleet, and was then
posted to Grimsby as a staff officer planning East Coast convoys.
In May 1940, Fletcher returned to London as parliamentary private
secretary to the first lord of the Admiralty, A. V. Alexander. At the
end of 1941 Fletcher was elevated to a barony, together with three
other Labour MPs, and he took the title of Lord Winster.
When the Labour government was elected in 1945 Winster was
appointed minister of civil aviation, a post he held until October 1946
when he went to Cyprus as governor. During the 28 months he was
in Cyprus, demands from the Greek population forenosisled to po-
litical turmoil and the civil strife that would eventually lead to the
declaration of an emergency. Upon his return to London, Winster re-
sumed his seat in the Lords and took an increasingly independent line
from the increasingly leftist Labour party. He died at his home in
Crowborough, Sussex, in June 1961.