Background
Valentine Vivian was born on 17 March 1886 in Kensington, London.
Valentine Vivian was born on 17 March 1886 in Kensington, London.
He was the youngest of nine children of Tom Comely, portrait painter, and Elizabeth Baly Farquhar, miniature painter. In 1911, Vivian married Mary Primrose Warlow, daughter of the Venerable Edmund John Warlow, archdeacon of Lahore, India. Vivian joined the Indian Police (Imperial Service) in December 1906 and was posted as assistant district superintendent of police for Punjab, reaching the rank of assistant superintendent in November 1907, and subsequently superintendent of police for Ambala, Ludhiana, Jhang, Hissar, Sialkot, and Lahore railway police.
He was senior superintendent of police for the Delhi province and in October 1914 became an assistant director of central intelligence (Simla).
He retired from the Indian Police in 1925. In the mid-1920s, agency director Sir Hugh Sinclair, the second "C", wanted to absorb MI5, the United Kingdom"s counter-intelligence agency, into the SIS.
When his attempt was finally rejected, in 1925, he formed the Civil Engineering section, later (1939) renamed "Section V". Between 1925 and 1931, organisational rivalries proliferated among Vivian"s Civil Engineering section, the domestic intelligence agency, MI5, and Scotland Yard.
A network of domestic agents known as the "Casuals" had provided information to Civil Engineering section.
In 1930, after a series of meetings of the Special Services Committee, the Casuals were transferred to MI5, where they became "M Section". Many still provided the SIS with information. Under Vivian, Section V focused on the activities of the Communist International, which Vivian initially "regarded.. as a criminal conspiracy rather than a clandestine political movement".
Vivian was the author of the 1932 report (FO 1093/92) on the Hilaire Noulens case, though his authorship was only revealed in 1994.
During the First World War Vivian served in the Indian Army in Turkey and Palestine. At one point early in his career, he served in the Department of Criminal Intelligence (Simla) in India.
In the Summer of 1940 Vivian was one of the organisers of the British Resistance organisation created by SIS. He was particularly responsible for liaison with MI5 to ensure the legality of the body (SIS were not supposed to operate within the United Kingdom). In 1941 he became Vice-Chief of SIS but was engaged in a long-running power struggle with Claude Dansey for power within the organisation.
He retired from SIS in 1951.
