The Diplomatic Wireless Service (DWS) was the name of the communications system set up for the British

Foreign Office Foreign may refer to: Government * Foreign policy, how a country interacts with other countries * Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in many countries ** Foreign Office, a department of the UK government ** Foreign office and foreign minister * Unit ...

by Brigadier

Richard Gambier-Parry Brigadier Sir Richard Gambier-Parry, (20 January 1894 – 19 June 1965) was a British military officer who served in both the army and the air force during World War I. He remained in military service post-war, but then entered into civilian lif ...

, the first Foreign Office Director of Communications, in the latter part of 1945. It grew out of the Special Communication Units (SCU) which were responsible for communications for MI6 during the war. Its original base was at Whaddon Hall in

Buckinghamshire Buckinghamshire (), abbreviated Bucks, is a ceremonial county in South East England that borders Greater London to the south-east, Berkshire to the south, Oxfordshire to the west, Northamptonshire to the north, Bedfordshire to the north-ea ...

, but it moved to

Hanslope Park Hanslope Park is located about half a mile south-east of the village of Hanslope in the City of Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire, England. Once the manorial estate of the village, it is now owned by the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Of ...

in the winter of 1946/47. The primary role of the DWS was communications between British embassies and the UK, this part of its operations being based at Hanslope Park, which is still the HQ of its successor, Her Majesty's Government Communications Centre (HMGCC). It also operated and maintained transmitters at home and abroad on behalf of the Foreign Office for the broadcasting of the European Service of the BBC and the BBC Overseas Service, which were combined as the

BBC World Service The BBC World Service is an international broadcasting, international broadcaster owned and operated by the BBC, with funding from the Government of the United Kingdom, British Government through the Foreign Secretary, Foreign Secretary's o ...

in 1988. The main UK broadcast operation was based under the Ashdown Forest near

Crowborough Crowborough is a town and civil parish in East Sussex, England, in the Weald at the edge of Ashdown Forest in the High Weald Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, 7 miles (11 km) south-west of Royal Tunbridge Wells and 33 miles (53 ...

East Sussex East Sussex is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in South East England on the English Channel coast. It is bordered by Kent to the north and east, West Sussex to the west, and Surrey to the north-west. The largest settlement in East Su ...

. The main transmitter was called 'Aspi 1'.

was also the engineering base for the overseas relay stations at

Zygi Zygi ( el, Ζύγι; tr, Terazi) is a small village on the south coast of Cyprus, between Limassol and Larnaca. Before 1974, Zygi had a mixed Greek- and Turkish-Cypriot population. Explosion The Evangelos Florakis Navy Base explosion of 11 Jul ...

, Cyprus known as the British Eastern Mediterranean Relay Station (BEMRS) and Perim and later on Masirah both called the British Middle East Relay Station. This section of the DWS was renamed the Foreign and Commonwealth Office Communications Engineering Division in the mid-1970s and was ultimately transferred to the control of the BBC in 1985. DWS operators were also involved in radio eavesdropping, the gathering of

signals intelligence Signals intelligence (SIGINT) is intelligence-gathering by interception of ''signals'', whether communications between people (communications intelligence—abbreviated to COMINT) or from electronic signals not directly used in communication ( ...

(SIGINT) for GCHQ, from within the compounds of embassies. The first of these undercover stations was established at Ankara in 1943; another important station was at

Stockholm Stockholm () is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in Sweden by population, largest city of Sweden as well as the List of urban areas in the Nordic countries, largest urban area in Scandinavia. Approximately 980,000 people liv ...

, a location ideally suited for the monitoring of radio traffic from the Soviet Union.Aldrich p. 192

References

{{reflist, 2 Defunct United Kingdom intelligence agencies Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office History of Milton Keynes Research institutes in Buckinghamshire Cryptography organizations 1945 establishments in the United Kingdom Foreign Office during World War II