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 * United ...

by Brigadier Richard Gambier-Parry, 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 The Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), commonly known as MI6 ( Military Intelligence, Section 6), is the foreign intelligence service of the United Kingdom, tasked mainly with the covert overseas collection and analysis of human intelligenc ...

during the war. Its original base was at

Whaddon Hall Whaddon Hall is a country house in Whaddon, Buckinghamshire, England. It is a Grade II listed building. History The first manor house was built on the site in the 11th century. The present house was built in 1820, replacing a house which was ...

Buckinghamshire Buckinghamshire (, abbreviated ''Bucks'') is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in South East England and one of the home counties. It is bordered by Northamptonshire to the north, Bedfordshire to the north-east, Hertfordshir ...

, 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, His 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 a British Public broadcasting, public service broadcaster owned and operated by the BBC. It is the world's largest external broadcaster in terms of reception area, language selection and audience reach. It broadcas ...

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

Ashdown Forest Ashdown Forest is an ancient area of open heathland occupying the highest sandy ridge-top of the High Weald National Landscape. It is situated south of London in the county East Sussex, England. Rising to an elevation of above sea level, its ...

near

Crowborough Crowborough is a town and civil parish in East Sussex, England, in the Weald at the edge of Ashdown Forest and the highest town in the High Weald AONB, High Weald Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. It is located south-west of Royal Tunbridge ...

East Sussex East Sussex is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in South East England. It is bordered by Kent to the north-east, West Sussex to the west, Surrey to the north-west, and the English Channel to the south. The largest settlement ...

. The main transmitter was called 'Aspi 1'.

was also the engineering base for the overseas relay stations at Zygi,

Cyprus Cyprus (), officially the Republic of Cyprus, is an island country in the eastern Mediterranean Sea. Situated in West Asia, its cultural identity and geopolitical orientation are overwhelmingly Southeast European. Cyprus is the List of isl ...

known as the British Eastern Mediterranean Relay Station (BEMRS) and

Perim Perim (), also called Mayyun () in Arabic, is a Yemeni volcanic island in the Strait of Mandeb at the south entrance into the Red Sea, off the south-west coast of Yemen. It administratively belongs to Dhubab District or Bab al-Mandab District ...

and later on

Masirah Masirah Island (), also referred to as Mazeira Island, is an island off the east coast of mainland Oman in the Arabian Sea, and the largest island of the country. Administratively, it forms one of the five provinces (''Wilayah'', plural ''Wilay ...

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 the act and field of intelligence-gathering by interception of ''signals'', whether communications between people (communications intelligence—abbreviated to COMINT) or from electronic signals not directly u ...

(SIGINT) for

GCHQ Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) is an intelligence and security organisation responsible for providing signals intelligence (SIGINT) and information assurance (IA) to the government and armed forces of the United Kingdom. Primar ...

, from within the compounds of embassies. The first of these undercover stations was established at

Ankara Ankara is the capital city of Turkey and List of national capitals by area, the largest capital by area in the world. Located in the Central Anatolia Region, central part of Anatolia, the city has a population of 5,290,822 in its urban center ( ...

in 1943; another important station was at

Stockholm Stockholm (; ) is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in Sweden by population, most populous city of Sweden, as well as the List of urban areas in the Nordic countries, largest urban area in the Nordic countries. Approximately ...

, a location ideally suited for the monitoring of radio traffic from the

Soviet Union The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

.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