Is the UK About to See SOE Reborn? Think Again

In December 2025, the new Chief of the UK’s Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), Blaise Metreweli, delivered her first public facing speech in the service’s iconic London-based headquarters. Speaking about SIS’s role in a volatile world, ‘C’ echoed her predecessors on the changing role of Human Intelligence (HUMINT) in the digital age, the importance of technology and SIS’s work in combatting threats in a multipolar age.

If Metreweli’s speech covered similar ground as before, there were several lines on SIS’s effects-based roles that were picked up by others. ‘At an operational level’, she said, ‘we will sharpen our edge and impact with audacity, tapping into – if you like – our historical SOE instincts’. The reference to the Special Operations Executive (SOE), Britain’s Second World War wartime sabotage and subversion organisation, led to excitement from some in the same way that Spitfires over white cliffs do. ‘Short of invoking Dunkirk, the Battle of Britain or D Day’, one commentator wrote, ‘Metreweli could scarcely have found a more evocative historical reference’. We should expect, it was suggested, SIS to go toe-to-toe with Russia’s GRU and FSB, responsible for aggressive sabotage and assassination activity. Here was ‘C’ apparently heralding a new era of swashbuckling derring-do, as opposed to the ‘risk-averse, politically correct’ atmosphere around the service.

It’s a fascinating take, shared through social media, but is it a realistic goal for the Service to pursue? Today, SIS can ‘perform other tasks’ to boost HMG. And SIS has enjoyed a long history of special operations (or Special Political Action and a range of other euphemisms) inherited from the demise of SOE as an independent entity at the end of the Second World War. SOE, tasked with supporting and supplying resistance in Axis occupied territory, was an important wartime tool, yet peacetime coordination of intelligence and special operations fell to the post-war SIS. The service then saw the period of the so-called ‘Robber Barons’ – a group of highly influential officers advocating aggressive covert action – seeing a wave of operations across the Middle East and elsewhere in the 1950s. Yet even at the high point, just a fraction of SIS’s work was devoted to special operations and preparations for World War III, with the bulk of its effort dedicated to collecting secret intelligence. In the 1950s SIS’s Deputy Chief, Jack Easton, saw some of his colleagues as too ‘cloak and dagger . . . thinking we’re about to fight another Second World War’.

So, is SIS likely to home in on ‘SOE instincts’ and ‘set Europe ablaze’, the apocryphal phrase echoed by Churchill? The answer is, no. SOE is something of a blessing and a curse. The men and women of SIS today certainly have the instincts of their wartime forbears enshrined in the service’s values – Integrity, Courage, Creativity and Respect. Metreweli herself has spoken of the courage and ingenuity of HUMINT today. Yet SOE leans into that Bond-like activity that the service is so averse to.

A Historic Split

The references to SOE are also intriguing for another reason – history. Metreweli’s predecessor, Sir Richard Moore, has used SOE as a vehicle to highlight the wartime sacrifice of secret agents in his Twitter (now ‘X’) posts. The story of SOE, well known to a wider audience, is not one of cosy relations with SIS. It is, perhaps, safe history for a service to use; SIS oversaw the release of SOE’s papers to The National Archives in the 1990s. By contrast, SIS – in spite of the release of its authorised history in 2010 – does not release its own records, seeking to rightly protect the identities of agents and officers, though it allows other departments to release some information related to its work.

The story of SOE, while safe ground, is a strange one for the modern-day SIS to cover. The origin story, often tied up with infighting and backstabbing, starts with Section D of SIS, formed in 1938. SOE’s was formed in July 1940 against the collapse of Britain’s European allies to wage a secret war, combining Section D with similar organisations. The intense rivalry between SIS and its younger sibling stemmed from personalities, paperwork and remit. SOE was tasked to cause chaos in Axis territory. By contrast, SIS was tasked with the development of agent networks. Both required coordination and competition for resources. For all Metreweli’s reference to ‘SOE instincts’, the wartime SIS frequently complained that its sister service interrupted or, even worse, imperilled SIS collection, even if relations in the field were sometimes harmonious.

Metreweli is not the first ‘C’, not likely the last, to talk about SIS’s work in the ‘effects’ area. Back in 2018, another Chief, (now Sir) Alex Younger, spoke of hybrid threats – activity falling below the threshold of war, including cyber incidents. Beyond intelligence collection, SIS needed, he said, to ‘master covert action in the digital age’ and take steps to change the behaviour of an adversary. In combatting these threats, Younger pointed to SIS’s strengths as a truly global service, tapping into a network of alliances to shape events. Responding to ‘hybrid’ or ‘grey zone’ activity also requires close coordination. If we are to draw on the lessons of SOE, it can be argued that separate secret agencies operating in the same space led to bad blood and bureaucracy. Even if the end of SOE made sense in peacetime, its rapid demise contrasts starkly with today’s rose-tinted view in SIS memory.

Arguments that SIS is somehow ‘risk-averse’ or overfocusing on ‘top-level intelligence’ neglects what the service is there to do – collect secret intelligence from human or technical sources. Gone are the days of Sten guns, parachutes and exploding rats. Equally, SIS is not about to engage in CIA-like paramilitary activity. Since the high point of the 1950s, the service did engage in subtle influence operations, but the focus has been on secret intelligence that can make a real difference. Rather than engage in a new wave of activity, the influence of SIS is realised through the sharing of its CX reporting in the Whitehall ecosystem. HUMINT from a ‘validated, verified source, right in close to the seat of power’ remains ‘uniquely helpful’, Sir Richard Moore has said recently. The sharing of intelligence allows others to do the ‘effects’ part. Additionally, whilst taking on SOE’s mantle seems fun, these days Bond is more likely to be waging deniable activity on the web (admittedly, a naff plotline). The UK’s National Cyber Force, unveiled in 2020, allows SIS to input into effects-based work alongside GCHQ and the Ministry of Defence, adding to the service’s own recruitment work against hard targets in the online space. SIS has also enjoyed a close relationship with UK Special Forces – often for officer insertion, as in the case of Libya.

There may be an aspiration to move more into the ‘effects’ area, but it would be unwise for Vauxhall Cross to emulate Russia’s services or the Ukrainian SBU, or even a modern-day SOE. The tools available in wartime are different today. Equally, the tools available to the authoritarian states we oppose are not available to us – nor should they be. SIS continues to leverage effect through the provision of its intelligence to customer departments, not a new generation of saboteurs through ‘ruthless retaliation’. The fact remains that whilst wartime tales are interesting, we should not read too much into references to SOE. We are not about to see SOE reborn.

© Daniel Lomas, 2026, published by RUSI with permission of the author.

The views expressed in this Commentary are the author's, and do not represent those of RUSI or any other institution.

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