Catalogue description Middle East Supply Centre: Registered Files

The Middle East Supply Centre was founded in April 1941 and operated, in Cairo, until 1945, regulating the flow of civil imports, as part of the strategy of the Middle East theatre of war.

Its foundation stemmed from the fact that many Middle East ports were becoming choked with supplies of both a civil and military nature, and it became necessary both to ensure the free movement of military supplies and to relieve the Army of the burden of organising and allocating civil imports.

The principal functions of the Middle East Supply Centre may be described as follows:

• (1) To develop local production of essential food and materials in the Middle East through the co-operation of individual Middle Eastern governments and ensure that necessary imports were obtained from the nearest possible source.
• (2) To ensure that the demand for imports of civilian goods to the Middle Eastern countries was restricted to essentials.
• (3) To assist Middle Eastern governments in the control of distribution so that the imports that did arrive were used to the best purpose.
• (4) To provide a Centre for the exchange of information on problems of agriculture and industrial production, distribution and economics generally.

These functions were carried out in Aden, British Somaliland, Cyprus, Cyrenaica, Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, French Somaliland, Iraq, Lebanon, Malta, Palestine, Persia, Saudi Arabia, Sheikhdoms on the Persian Gulf, Sudan, Syria, Trans-Jordan and Tripolitania.

In Cairo the general policy of the Centre was decided by a small executive council; on matters of policy which required co-ordination with other civil and military authorities in the Middle East, the Centre referred to a Sub-committee of the Middle Eastern War Council under the chairmanship of the Minister of State.

Initially it reported to the Ministry of Shipping and from May 1941 to the Ministry of War Transport. At the outset local control was exercised through an intendant general of the British Army in the Middle East, but in November 1941 this responsibility passed to the Office of the Minister of State for the Middle East.

Executive action was directed by the Director-General, Mr. R.G.A. Jackson, in consultation with the principal American representative in the Centre, Mr. James M. Landis (also American Director of Economic Operations in the Middle East).

The Centre was originally a purely British organisation, but after America entered the war it became an Anglo-American body, a combined organisation with a joint policy and with British and American personnel serving side by side in all its divisions.

Although it had been hoped that the work of the centre might be carried over into the post-war period, these plans were not successful and the centre was dissolved on 1 November 1945, certain residual functions passing to the British Middle East Office.