I’ve been reading The Sword and the Shield by Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin. Chris mentions that in 1927, in retaliation for the discovery of a large Soviet spying ring, British MPs read aloud cracked Soviet transmissions to embarrass the Soviets. He says that the revelation that their codes had been broken quickly led to the introduction of one time pads by the Soviets, and that almost no high level codes were cracked until WW2.
How did heads not roll for this? To me it seems like a horrible breach of intelligence security to do that on the part of the British. Was there any fallout/punishments for this in Britain?
I don't think that the public's, or even political leaders' understanding of the importance of espionage was as great as it is today.
For example
Henry Stimson served as Secretary of State under President Herbert Hoover from 1929 to 1933. In 1929 he shut down the State Department's cryptanalytic office saying, "Gentlemen don't read each other's mail." (He later reversed this attitude.)