GCHQ shares insight

At the East Yorkshire Family History Society’s January meeting members took part in an interactive session about intelligence gathering. The guest speaker was Andy from GCHQ Scarborough.

Intelligence gathering goes back thousands of years, and the reasons why any state would want to indulge in this activity were discussed. We considered different scenarios from around 1920, then the war years and up to 1950, then the present day, considering why certain countries could be seen as threatening - who would they be, why did we perceive them to be threatening, and what would we be looking for? We talked about the development of the methods and equipment we could use to monitor a presumed enemy’s activities.

Each era has its own threats, and methods of intelligence gathering change as new technologies evolve. The early employees would certainly never envisage the equipment today’s people use; just think of the films and TV programmes about Bletchley Park, where everything now seems crude and clumsy compared with today’s high-tech approach.

The society’s next meeting will be on Tuesday February 28 when Andrew Clay of Woodend Creative Space will talk about ‘Art on Transatlantic Liners between 1900 and 1950’. Some of these ships seem to have been like floating art galleries, so this should be a very interesting talk.

Meetings are held at St Andrew’s URC church hall and begin at 2pm. Everyone is welcome, entry is via the Albion Crescent door and is free to members; non-members are asked to pay £2 towards running costs and refreshments. Further details are available from Mrs P McNaughton on 01723 369070.