Vengalil Krishanan Krishna Menon established a reputation as one of the most controversial and divisive figures in Indian and broader Cold War politics. Under Nehru’s patronage, Menon experienced a meteoric rise to political power. In 1947, he was appointed to the prestigious post of Indian High Commissioner to the United Kingdom. However, his abrasive personality and readiness to listen to and, on occasions, publicly endorse, Soviet and Communist Chinese positions on a range of international questions ruffled feathers in London and Washington. In the United States, officials characterised the Indian diplomat as ‘venomous,’ ‘violently anti-American,’ and ‘an unpleasant mischief-maker’. Many British diplomats echoed such sentiments. This chapter examines the British government’s response to Krishna Menon’s appointment. It explores the nature of Menon’s relationship with the CPGB, the risk that communists working for him posed to British security, and the strategy that MI5 developed to meet it. It illustrates the Attlee government’s conviction that India, and more particularly, Krishna Menon, represented a weak link in the Commonwealth security and intelligence chain.

This chapter constructs a picture of the struggle waged by Indian leaders to negotiate the seemingly contradictory demands of national security and upholding popular conceptions of state sovereignty. Attention is given to the strategies adopted by New Delhi to co-opt the assistance of MI5 in containing Cold War threats, in the guise of indigenous communist movements and external pressures from China and the Soviet Union. Britain’s intelligence agencies made an effort to transition from a role centred on subduing nationalism to that of a trusted and valued supporter of the ruling Congress Party. Establishing strong security and intelligence links with India, British governments rationalised, would help to preserve their considerable national interests in South Asia; keep India ostensibly aligned with the West; act as a barrier to communist penetration of the subcontinent; and demonstrate to the United States that Britain remained a useful post-war partner. However, ideological tensions and differences produced uncoordinated bureaucratic responses that allowed the forces of internal and external communism to claim political and geographic space in the region.

Not all prime ministers are equal. Not remotely – which is why books taking one prime minister after the other can only ever tell a partial story. In this chapter, we consider the other seven (after Walpole and Pitt the Younger) who defined the office as ‘agenda changers’. They are the creators of the (still evolving) office of prime minister. All nine – two in the eighteenth century, three in the nineteenth, and four in the twentieth – carved out what the office of prime minister means, and shaped the office in their own image. After these ‘agenda changers’ ceased to be prime minister, their successors over the years that followed either tried to be like them, or tried deliberately to distance themselves from them: but none could escape their long shadow. They took advantage of wide-ranging historical or consensus change and moulded the office and country to their will.