100 Years of GCHQ Honoured at Festival of Remembrance
Tribute was paid to the indispensable role of the intelligence community in warfare at The Royal British Legion’s Festival of Remembrance at the Royal Albert Hall on Saturday 9 November. In honour of their centenary year, the story of how GCHQ has supported the military throughout their 100-year history was explored. A video segment featured two members of our staff, past and present, who have played important roles in ensuring the nation's security. Ruth Bourne served at Bletchley Park during the Second World War and Fiona deployed alongside the military in Afghanistan in more recent years. The video can be seen below.
The military have always been part of our story. We were formed 100 years ago under the original name of the Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS). A result of the merger of military units that had been formed during the First World War, GC&CS became the single organisation responsible for signals intelligence. From GCHQ’s earliest days, its core mission has been to produce intelligence from others' communications, while protecting the UK's own.
In 1939, GC&CS was given the cover name GCHQ to better disguise its secret work when it moved to Bletchley Park to support the Second World War effort. GCHQ’s work to decrypt German messages, especially those encrypted on Enigma machines, made a significant contribution to the Allied victory. The organisation moved its headquarters to Cheltenham in 1950. Today, GCHQ has sites across the country including Bude, Scarborough, and London, including the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) which incorporates GCHQ's security mission. A new facility in Manchester opens soon.
From the lessons learned in World War One that led to the establishment of GC&CS, through to our support in recent conflicts, GCHQ continues to be a key partner of the military today. More than 300 campaign medals have been awarded to GCHQ's civilian workforce for their support in military theatre, most recently Iraq and Afghanistan. Today our mission is much more diverse. We now also tackle the most serious cyber, terrorist, criminal, and state threats. We continue to be shaped by the changing threats and technology around us and strive to protect our way of life.
From our inception, we have valued different perspectives and diversity of skills, and our history if full of ordinary people solving extraordinary problems. The changing threats we face will demand ever more of the ingenuity for which we are renowned. We believe that with the right mix of minds, anything is possible.
Speaking at our centenary celebratory event at the National Memorial Arboretum on 1 November, Director GCHQ Jeremy Fleming said "We're living through a period of accelerated change in terms of technology; that comes with huge advantages and unique challenges for society. It means the way we work is changing. But throughout our history we have always tackled developments in communications to stay one step ahead. We have always risen to the challenge that change brings."
The past century has seen GCHQ at the heart of the nation's security and we will continue to help keep the UK safe for the next 100 years.
