Thousands of civilians from Allied and neutral countries reached Britain during the Second World War. Nearly all who arrived between 1941 and 1945 were detained for interrogation – an unprecedented course of action by Britain which has nevertheless seldomly been studied. This article focuses on the administrative history of this process and the people it affected. It demonstrates how certain parts of the state treated non-Britons with suspicion throughout the war, long after fears of a ‘fifth column’ had subsided. At the same time, others saw them favourably, not least because many either offered intelligence, intended to volunteer with the Allied Forces, or work for the war industry. Examining how these conflicting views co-existed within a single detention camp, this article thus illustrates the complex relationship that existed between non-Britons and the wartime state, which perceived them simultaneously as suspects, assets, and allies. By making use of the thousands of resulting interrogation reports, the article also offers more detail than currently exists on the gender and nationality background of those who reached Britain, as well as about the journeys they took to escape occupied territory.

This article focuses on the compulsory questioning of over 30,000 refugees who escaped to Britain during the Second World War and who were detained in London's Royal (Victoria) Patriotic School. It answers three questions: how did intelligence come to see non-British civilians as sources; what characteristics did refugees possess and how did these influence the information they shared; and who was interested in their accounts? It argues that, while this site was set up as an MI5 vetting camp for the identification of Axis agents, it quickly evolved into an intelligence-gathering centre, serving the interests of multiple departments and organisations.It was March 1941 when Henry Taymans and Joseph Abts, two young students and cousins, escaped Nazi-occupied Brussels. The ensuing journey to Britain, where they planned to volunteer for the Free Belgian forces, was to last 77 days and saw them drive to Paris, take a train to Bordeaux, cross to Spain on foot, then to Portugal, and sail from Lisbon to Gibraltar.From there they boarded HMS Argus, which took them to England. 1 Upon arrival in mid-June, and before they could join the Allied forces, they had to be interrogated by War Office and Security Service officers, and possibly by Secret Intelligence Service ones as well. Although the report the War Office produced on their interrogation was a page long, it was enough to help photographic intelligence identify an ammunitions dump in Forêt de Soignes. 2Locating an ammunitions dump in a Belgian forest was no major intelligence coup. But consider that Taymans and Abts -whose escape story has been selected at random and was not uncommon -were two of over 30,000 people interrogated in the same way, and the value of such interrogations changes. Indeed, while many of these civilians were eager to share information, doing so was not optional: they were kept for days in London for the purpose, and their formal status was of persons under detention. The place of their detention was the Royal (Victoria) Patriotic School, often called Royal Patriotic School (RPS) or the London Reception Centre. 3 This is nevertheless a place about which we know very little. Any mentions made to it in historical work have been brief and descriptive, 4 and emphasised its counter-espionage functions

What does democracy require for the legislature?(i) Focusing national debate, and scrutinising and controlling major decisions by the executive ✦ The elected legislature should normally maintain full public control of government services and state operations, ensuring public and parliamentary accountability through conditionally supporting the government, and articulating reasoned opposition, via its proceedings.

Among the thousands of camps Britain operated in the twentieth century were some that gained a notorious reputation for how they treated prisoners. Such places were often seen as aberrations within their individual contexts. Their recurrence across different places and times – including in Aden, Cyprus, and Northern Ireland – nonetheless renders it difficult to dismiss them as mere anomalies. This article examines one of the first post-war camps to have attracted such attention in Allied-occupied Germany, which was closed down following an investigation into its appalling conditions. Seeking to understand how an establishment ended up departing so drastically from accepted interrogation norms, which saw torture as unproductive and un-British, it finds that prisoners were subject to a combination of neglect due to difficult circumstances and malevolence. Tracing the camp's successors, the article also finds that political considerations ensured future camps in Germany did not step out of line; nevertheless, there was a failure to ensure the same for other cases more generally and to turn this into a one-off affair for Britain. Overall, while the camp existed within a unique post-war context, its history points to conditions and structures that may serve as units of analysis for investigating similar establishments.