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History and Codebreaking |
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GCHQ has a history of which it is proud. From virtually nothing it has evolved into the organisation we are today. The Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS) was established on 1 November 1919, while the name Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) was officially adopted on 1 April 1946. Nevertheless there was continuity of personnel and operations from the First World War cryptanalytic bureaux into GC&CS, while the change of name in 1946 was purely cosmetic. In 1945 the GC&CS, like all organisations massively expanded for the War effort, had a comparable demobilisation of military and civilian staff. Of nearly 10,000 people at Bletchley in January 1945 only about 2000 moved from there to Eastcote, a wartime Bombe station, in 1946. This, like GC&CS in 1919, had an overt existence (within the Foreign Office) and genuine Communications Security (COMSEC) role, the latter under the successive titles of the London Communications Security Agency (LCSA), the Communications-Electronics Security Department (CESD) and (on its final move to Cheltenham) the Communications-Electronics Security Group. But it also had a covert peacetime Signals Intelligence role (SIGINT), which was not openly avowed until 1983. Most of GCHQ moved from Eastcote to Cheltenham in 1951, followed in 1969 by CESD which then became CESG. GCHQ finally became a fully autonomous Agency under the Intelligence Service Act 1994. Click on the image to enlarge:
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