Behind the Enigma by John Ferris

Author:John Ferris [Ferris, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2020-10-19T23:00:00+00:00

The Department

GCHQ faced many of the same problems as GC&CS had done regarding promotion and skilled practitioners. As at Bletchley, high standards and low salaries for clerical personnel crippled recruitment and retention. Initially, GCHQ assumed that women, even university graduates, would fill its substantial number of unestablished clerical positions because they would not expect permanent careers and appreciated the marriage bonus offered by the civil service. By 1946, however, GCHQ told the Treasury: ‘we cannot recruit, or if we recruit, we cannot hold girls of the requisite quality on the [unestablished] Grade II clerk rate’.33 GCHQ trained female clerical staff so well that they could easily find better jobs in London, and paid them so little that they preferred to do so. The move to Cheltenham, and access to staff who wished to stay put, ultimately solved that problem, but other issues remained. As one administrator noted: ‘We cannot offer public fame or great riches, or indeed a career pinnacle as high as the Civil Service proper; we must therefore sell the job on the positive advantages, which I see as:

a. Supremely, the fascination and importance of the work itself – the mix of technical and administrative qualities;

b. The work environment – very much between the strict rigidity of factory production and the airy-fairyness of most University research departments;

c. The pleasant, stable location – and possibility of overseas tours for those who would like them;

d. The opportunity for the best people of becoming a big fish in a not too big pond.34

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.