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C:\Program Files (x86)\neevia.com\docConverterPro\temp\NVDC\D94976F4-2B8B-44E6-BBBA-6DB0CE97695B\History Notes COVERS.doc H H i i s s t t o o r r y y N N o o t t e e s s Issue 8 [June 1995] FCO Library & Records (1782 1995)

FCO Library & Records, 1782-1995

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This History Note looks at the personalities - as well as the publications - of the FCO’s oldest department: the Library, once described as “the pivot on which the whole machinery of the Foreign Office turned”.

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Page 1: FCO Library & Records, 1782-1995

C:\Program Files (x86)\neevia.com\docConverterPro\temp\NVDC\D94976F4-2B8B-44E6-BBBA-6DB0CE97695B\History Notes COVERS.doc

HHiissttoorryy NNootteess IIssssuuee 88 [[JJuunnee 11999955]]

FCO Library & Records

(1782 – 1995)

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History Notes, an occasional series produced by the Historians.

Already published:

1. Korea: Britain and the Korean War, 1950-51:June 1990 Second edition (revised) January 1995 ISBN 0 903359 53 7

2. The FeO: Policy, People and Places, 1782-1995: April 1991 Fourth edition (revised) February 1995 ISBN 0 903359 54 5

3. Locarno 1925: The Treaty, the Spirit and the Suite: October 1991 ISBN 0 903359 48 0

4. FeO Records: Policy, Practice and Posterity, 1782-1993: August 1992 Second edition (revised) November 1993 ISBN 0 903359 50 2

5. FeO Library: Print, Paper and Publications, 1782-1993: March 1993 ISBN 0 903359 49 9

6. Women in Diplomacy: The FeO, 1782-1994: May 1994 ISBN 0 903359 51 0

7. 'My Purdah Lady'. The Foreign Office and the Secret Vote, 1782-1909: S pt mb r 1994 ISBN 0 903359 52 9

For further information contact the FCO Historians, Library and R ord D p r n Clive House, Petty France, London SW1 9HD, Tel. 0171-270 4215.

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FCO LmRARY AND RECORDS

1782-1995

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FOREWORD

A History Note on the FCO's oldest department, itself particularly concerned

with the history of British foreign policy and the Office and people who have produced it, cannot do anything but skim the surface. Descriptions of the role of the Library in the nineteenth century, or of the management of diplomatic records or of recent developments in the revolution in information technology, have been described in other History Notes but, as bureaucratic histories, they only tell part of the story. A gap which remaIns unfilled is the memoir or biography of major figures in the department's long and varied history which might have gone some way towards describing the department's character or personality as distinct from what it has done as part of the FCO's collective memory.

This Note, a compilation of earlier material produced by the FeO's Historians, marks the return of the Library to its traditional, now refurbished, accommodation in the former Colonial Office

Library. Although the first Librarian and Keeper of the Papers was appointed in 1801, Library functions and collections in support of foreign policy can be traced back to at least the middle of the previous century. Much has changed since then, not least the transformation of the Library from its primarily scholarly and custodial role to its present responsibility for supplying infor­mation, much of it electronic, to departments and posts (in 1994, for example, its regional teams dealt with over twenty thousand enquiries). The contemporary role of the Library is reflected in the recent restructuring of the department into two inter-locking wings responsible for the Library Information Services and Records and Historical Services. This new structure provides sufficient flexi­bility for the department to respond as effectively to future challenges as it has to past changes in the Office and to Britain's role in the world.

Richard Bone Library and Records Department 10 February 1995

Richard Bone, Head of Library and Records Department from November 1989, died from a heart attack on 12 February 1995. When completing the Foreword and approving the main text on 10 February he ugge ted that the traditi nal format of the History Notes be reconsidered in the light of new Office technology. The Hi "torians are grateful to the Electr nic Publishing Unit of Support Services Department at Hanslope Park for creating the pre nt format b th as a tribute to Richard B ne and a a model for the future .

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I

II

ITI

IV

v

VI

CONTENTS

The Library in the Hertslet Era, 1801-1914 Diverse Duties Research and Publications Library Memoranda

The Parker and Gaselee Eras, 1918-1943

Records and Historians, 1905-1940 Publicising Diplomacy Research Departmen t and Library

Library and Records Department, 1968-1995

LRD Collections

Personalities

VII Chronologies i

P

1 3

6

8 10

11

14

17

Development ofLRD and Predecessor Departments, 1801-1995 20 ii Heads of LRD and Predecessor Departments, 1801-1995 21

VIII Quotations 22

~ Publications 24

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I THE UBRARY IN THE HERTSLET ERA, 1801-1914

Lewis Hertskt, Foreign Office Librarian, 1810-1857

Diverse Duties

Lord Granville, Foreign Secretary in Gladstone's second and third administrations, once described the Foreign Office Library as the 'pivot on which the whole machinery of the

Foreign Office turned'. This compliment to the hardworking and underpaid officials of the Office's oldest department was an apt description of an institution whose responsibilities and functions exceeded those usually associated with librarians. Neither Richard Ancell, who became in 1801 the Foreign Office's first Librarian and Keeper of the Papers, nor his nineteenth-century successors, Lewis and Edward Hertslet, ever conceived of their work as limited solely to the care and provision of printed books. The duties of the Librarian, as laid down in 1828, included 'the custody of the

1

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whole of the correspondence of the Office (exclusive of that of the current year) ... and the custody of the original treaties with Foreign Powers.' He was also required to superintend a register and index of correspondence, arrange for its binding, make searches into it, and assist in arranging and preparing parliamen tary papers for printing. He had, at the same time, to oversee and control the accounts of the King's Messengers.

It was this duality of function, the Librarian's role both as archivist and custodian of an ever-growing collection of printed works, which gave the department its peculiar significance. The ingenuity and resourcefulness of the Hertslets, for whom the Library became virtually a family business, ensured its enduring influence on the making and conduct of policy. In an age when Britain's position in Europe was at its greatest and when an expanding imperial frontier called for an accurate and instant grasp of recent developments in Africa and Asia, the Library became, in effect, the Office's collective memory. It provided detailed information, offered guidance on precedents, and acted as a centre for research into the international issues of the day.

Throughout most of the nineteenth century the Librarian's Department comprised four basic elements: the manuscript library, the printed library, the registry and the reference room. At first, however, the very term 'library' was, in the words of Edward Hertslet, a 'misnomer' when applied to the Office 's printed collection of books. There was little space for books in the rickety premises occupied by the old Foreign Office in Downing and Fludyer Streets. Volumes were dispersed throughout the passages of the Office, wherever shelves could be erected, and access to them was further impeded by their usually being stacked in rows th ree deep, one behind the other. The manuscript library, which by 1840

2

amount d to om hardly b tt r m

5,000 volum s, was t large part originally bound

II r of D wning of th 011 tion, volum in damp and d rk Street, was k p in th the ground floor, ut scatter d about h

r ~ r n

wood n pr whi h w r f: from fire proof. Ind d, th Lib ry 10 e to losing a ubstani I porti n of its diplomati r cord wh n in 1 39 an unswept himn y flu I d t a fir in the referenc room. Volum w r qui kly remov d by om Li~ ua d m n II d in from outsid whil a I rk and hou maid kept flame ba k with bu k r. But only th arrival of fir ngin v d the precious record from bing thrown literally out of th window. Th Library'S proximity to the str t al 0 xpo d it to the risk of becoming th Offi ' first line of defence in the v n t of civil un r t. In April 1848, at the h ight of th Chartist troubles, so great wa th £ r th t an unruly mob might atta k gov rnm nt buildings that the Downing Str t windows of the referenc room w re blo k d with books, leaving loophol for ob rvation and discharge of shot. Brown-b mu k ts were brought from th Tow r of London, cutlasses were suppli d to staff, and Edward Hertslet, at that tim a cI rk in the Department, was enroll d in th sp cial constabulary and provid d with a truncheon.

The Library survived Chartism un cathed. It did not escape the disruption attendant upon the demolition of the Downing Street buildings in 1861 and the temporary removal of the Office to Pembroke House in Whitehall Gardens. There it occupied a kitchen, cellars and adjoining rooms where the librarians were able to reorganise their collection of printed works and register the Office's early correspondence. The Office's relocation also revealed the fate of the bookbinder's cat which had starved to death after becoming imprisoned behind one of the heavy bound volumes of The

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Times then kept in the cellars. So bad had been the resultant smell that the Board of Works began excavations in search of a drainage problem, and when the poor creature's mummified remains were eventually discovered they were placed in a large red despatch box and sent for inspection to Lord John Russell, the Secretary of State. Legend has it that he had these circulated to the Cabinet and the skeleton was later conserved by the widow of an Office messenger.

It was not until the completion of the new Foreign Office building in 1868 that the Library was housed in purpose-built accommodation where the full stock could be displayed revealing the remarkable quality and number of the tomes in the Office's possession. By 1871 the Library already contained 30,000 books and this figure was doubled when just three years later the Board of Trade Library was trans­ferred to the Foreign Office. The printed collection consisted largely of works on historical, geographical and international subjects on which the Secretary of State was likely to require information, complemented by an analytical catalogue which filled a volume of 700 pages. Moreover, whereas much of the Foreign Office's correspondence had previously been kept at the State Paper Office, after 1868 the entire correspondence from 1783 onwards was available on the premises. This was of considerable advan tage at a time when the Library was increasingly being called upon for memoranda based on detailed archival research. The advent of electric telegraphy had hastened the pace of diplomacy and placed a premium on the Librarian's being able to respond speedily to queries that could only be answered from the records.

Research and Publications Lewis Hertslet, Librarian from 1810 to 1857, had a clear grasp of the importance of adapting his Department's resources to meet the requirements of the Office.

3

~esearch into the records was facilitated by his introduction of a Library system of registering and indexing manuscript correspondence. He was also responsible for compiling, from 1813 onwards, a Public Documents Book, a newspaper scrapbook which contained cuttings from reputable journals recording important political developments. Of more lasting significance was his work on diplomatic documents. In 1820 he published, as a private undertaking, bu.t with a guaranteed order from the Office, two volumes of Commercial and Slave Trade Treaties. Six years later, appeared the first volume of Hertslet's classic work of reference, British and Foreign Stall! Papers. Originally intended only for distribution to Ambassadors and Ministers, this collection of treaties and other commercial and political documents was put on general sale in 1831 by Lord Palmerston, . wtto observed: 'If I find that I do not lose by the sale, I shall think the advantage of diffusing information a gain, and shall have all the former volumes successively reprinted.' Its publication continued until 1968. As a by-product of work on these volumes, Hertslet began drafting memoranda for the Office on a variety of international issues. In 1823 he prepared the first of these on the origins and evolution of the Anglo-Portuguese alliance, an important subject at a time when George Canning, the then Foreign Secretary, was preparing to defend Portugal against a possible Spanish invasion. Canning rewarded Hertslet with £50 for this work, which was regarded as an addition to his normal duties. The Office's demand for such authoritative papers was to increase steadily and it soon became the Librarian's most important task.

Lewis Hertslet became a great authority on all subjects involving international, historical and geographical matters affecting British interests. He was, in the words of one Foreign Secretary, a 'Walking State Paper', and as Harold Temperley, Canning's biographer, later observed, he

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not seldom, exercised a pow rful influence on policy. Th Library output both before and during the Crim an War provides an excellent example of th extent of its activities. It produced, often at very short notice , numerous pap r covering such topics as the status of th Aland islands, the Russian occupation of Moldavia and Wallachia and the Ottoman firman on the independence of Circassia. Hertslet 's department was r markably small. Until 1826, when a clerk wa appointed to assist them, it consisted of the Librarian and a Sub-Librarian. By 1841 the Library still had only two clerks and three supernumeraries in its employ. Thereafter its establishment grew steadily in size, so that by 1892 it had ten clerks and twelve supernumeraries. In 1810 Lewis Hertslet's brother, James, was appointed Sub-Librarian, and from 1840 onwards Lewis's son, Edward, served as clerk and supernumerary. Edward succeeded his uncle as Sub-Librarian in 1855 and his father as Librarian in 1857.

Even before joining, Edward Hertslet had assisted his father at home in preparing his publications, and after his appointment as Librarian he continued his father's work of ompiling reference work from the Office

record. The modification of frontiers which followed the Crimean War led him to propo e the publication of a eries of documents recording political and territorial changes in Europe between 1814 and 1855, which eventually materialised in the form of a four-volume Map of Eurape IYy Treaty. He also undertook the editing of a parallel series, The Map of Africa fly Treaty, the third and final volume of which eventually appeared in 1909. So great was Edward Hertslet's knowledge of the political geography of Europe and of Mrica that he was included in the British delegations to both the Congress of Berlin in 1878, which was responsible for redrawing the frontiers of the Near East, and the Berlin West Africa Conference of 1884-5, which dealt with the claims of the

4

u p n b in .

w in th

Library Memoranda Li k hi f: h r, d w r d hi tim t

book ,

nd ongo

d mu h of i ing th

bl ms.

to B ni and

print d w offi rs'

nd u ually t from the

In r a ingly during th I tt half of th nineteenth century Libr ry m m r nda dealt with ubj t whi h w Iy related to urr nt pr bl m nd b g n to contain ob rvation on po ibl lutions. Th politi al tran formation of ur p In the years b twe n 1853 and 1 71 , nd h competing laim of th r pow r to territory and influ n in part f th world wh r Britain had on x rid an informal pr min n , ombin d to pIa e new demands on thos r pon ibl for making and impl m nting for ign poli y. In onsequ n H rt I t and hi colleagu s found th m Iv drafting papers that would on e hav origin at d elsewhere in th Offi e , with th line between hi torical and urr nt work becoming in reasingly blurr d. Th r was no generally accept d agr m nt within the Office on what was 'histori at' and what was ' recent'. In 1853 it was ugg st d that the term ' recent' should n ompass the previous twenty years. How ver, as was apparent even at the time, the pr s nt could not be so easily separat d from the past: most current conflicts and ris shad historical antecedents and all att mpts to

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prevent hard-pressed senIor clerks from devolving their research to the Library were to end in failure. Between 1875 and 1887 the Library produced an annual average of 241 memoranda, and in 1889 alone it drafted over 300, many of which were printed for circulation within the Office and the Cabinet. Indeed, Edmund Hammond, the Permanent Under Secretary, confessed in 1870 that without the Library 'no Secretary of State and no

The Foreign Office Library in 1892

Senior Clerk could carryon the business of their respective divisions.' Yet, despite such praise, one persistent cause of complaint on the part of the Librarians was their lowly status within the Office. Their position also puzzled the Royal Commission on Civil Establishments which in 1890 gave serious consideration to amalgamating the Library clerks with those of the main body of the

5

Office. If implemented the move might have eroded the Library as a separate unit by depriving it of individuals with whose experience and expertise it could ill-afford to dispense. Augustus Oakes, who was to succeed Edward Hertslet in 1896, offered his own remedy to this dilemma. In December 1894, when still a Su~Librarian, he proposed renaming the department 'Library and Intelligence Department', and restructuring it in such a way as to give

its clerks equivalent but distinct ranking to that pertaining elsewhere in the Office. 'The existence of a central source of information embracing every subject and covering every quarter of the globe cannot' , he observed, 'fail to be acknowledged to be of importance by those who have the knowledge and the experience to appreciate it.'

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I

I

I

Ii

I

1-

--- --;---;- ---- =------.-=------

II THE PARKER AND GASELEE ERAS, 1918-1943

'A ny individual in the Office with the approval of the Head of his Department can at any moment call upon the Librarian for a memorandum containing the jJa t hi tory - both the precedents and the actual story - of any question arising in the manifold work of the Service. The Librarian and his taff thus form a kind of intelligence bureau, as regards all past events, Jor the rest oj the Office, and produce their results mainly Jrom the recortl\·, and partly from historical and other works in the printed Library. '

Sir J hn Tilley and St ph n as I > I 33

Sir Stephen Caselee, Foreign Office Librarian, 1920-1943, in front of a library safe containing capies of Treaties (1941).

The Oakes approach to the Library was taken further by Alwyn Parker and Stephen Gaselee. These two Librarians of the inter-war years each had their own

distinctive style and to some extent succeeded in moulding the Library to it. The New Year appointment in 1918 of a career diplomat, Alwyn Parker, as Librarian was a political move designed to put the Library at the forefront of planning for the Peace Conference. When making the appointment, Lord Hardinge, then PUS, intended that the Library should not only handle the organisation and

6 ~-----

I r

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accommodation for the British delegation at Paris, but should also provide them with the necessary historical briefing. One of Parker's first acts as Librarian was to transfer the Admiralty's Historical Section to the Foreign Office Library. The new section, which was accommodated in Great College Street, had originally been established in the spring of 1917 under the supervision of George Prothero, the editor of the Qy-arterly Review, to prepare historical background for the peace negotiations. It used some of the country's best historical talent and its transfer to the Foreign Office greatly expanded the Library's traditional function of providing information to diplomats. By February 1918 the Section, which remained under Prothero's direction, had a staff of fifteen and had begun work on the production of its celebrated peace handbooks. These eventually numbered 174, many of which, including Professor Charles Webster's classic work The Congress of Vienna, were subsequently published in an expurgated form.

Parker himself spent the last months of his short tenure of the Library as a delegate at the Peace Conference, where he was heavily involved in organisational matters, the stresses of which may have contributed to his breakdown and premature retiremen t. He was succeeded in 1920 by Stephen Gaselee, a classical scholar and Cambridge Fellow. In some contrast to Parker's regime, the Gaselee era was characterised by attention to internal affairs, notably the Library's collection of printed books, which according to his biographer he increased significantly, 'missing no single publication, in whatever language, which bore usefully upon foreign affairs; he also ensured that diplomatic missions abroad were likewise appropriately provided, not infrequently at his own expense.' Gaselee himself was to describe the Library stock near the end of his twenty-three year term as 'a pretty good collection for its purpose. It consists of

7

some 80,000 volumes, well catalogued under authors and subjects, and is naturally strong in treaties, treaty collections, books on international law, the laws of foreign countries, and a certain number of official journals and parliamentary proceedings of foreign countries. Its few rarities come under a heading of 'Voyages and travels' (old books still valuable for treaty delimitations and arguments as to frontiers): and the collec­tion of modern books on politics and polit­ical history is on the whole adequate.' Gaselee publicised the contents of the new Library stock by circulating notices of recent accessions round the Office. These accession lists not only listed new titles but also briefly surveyed their contents. These abstracts were prepared by Gaselee himself, who reckoned in 1940 that 20 years' work of producing these abstracts added up to about a million words.

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III RECORDS AND HISTORIANS, 1905-1940

'Access to the Foreign Office Records is a vital consideration in all attempts to make foreign policy dependent upon the popular will. '

Publicising Diplomacy

A s custodians of the archives the Hertslets and their successors occupied a particularly sensitive

pOSItIOn where relations between the Office and the general public were concerned. Throughout the nineteenth cen tury the Librarians assisted in the preparation of Blue Books; they alerted the Secretaries and Under-Secretaries of State to impending parliamentary questions; published state papers and responded to outside queries; and acted through the courts to prevent the sale and sometimes examination of documents belonging to the Crown. They were paradoxically both publicists and censors. In these respects their duties were very similar to those of the archivists and librarians of other foreign ministries. But in one important respect the British lagged behind their continental neighbours. Both the French and Pruss ian governments had, very large ly wi th a view to promoting patriotic histories and creating an informed public opInIon, embarked upon ambitious programmes of publishing diplomatic documents whose scope was far broader than the volumes of State Papers initiated by Lewis Hertslet. German historians, in co-operation with Prussian archivists, emerged as pacesetters in analysing the recent past, while in 1907 the Quai d'Orsay, whose Commission des Archives Diplomatiques had long since begun to foster close ties between academics and diplomats, decided to sponsor the publication of a series of documents relating to the origins of the Franco-Prussian war.

Comparable British initiatives date from the early years of this century. In March 1905, at a time when Foreign Office reform was under earnest consideration, Eyre Crowe, who was still only an assistant clerk

8

Profe's r K Webster, 1924

in the Western Department, proposed that a 'number of young University men' with historical training should b employed in the Library charged with the duty of compiling histories of certain periods, events, or incidents of importance, not for publication, but for information and guidance of the Secr tary of State and of the Office as a whole.' Crow felt that the Office needed 'the application of a little more historical spirit' in the framing of foreign policy. He was, however, also anxious to educate, the publi in the ways of diplomacy. Evidently concern d at the way in which so much recent diplomatic history had been written on the basis of documents released from continental, and more especially Prussian, archives, Crowe argued in 1908 that Britain had 'nothing to lose as a nation, and a good d al to gain, by the widest possible publicity being given to our transactions with foreign countries.' Crowe regretted that so little original historical work was done in Britain, and he went on to suggest that historians be granted privileged access to the Foreign Office records of a recent era.

Crowe had to await the outbr ak of war in 1914 before anything came of his idea of establishing a 'Research or Historical Section of the Library.' Few events can have stimulated a greater public interest in the history and methods of diplomacy than did the First World War, and it was in response to the propaganda battle over its origins that the Library opened its doors to outside historians. Early in 1915 John Holland Rose of Christ's College, Cambridge, was provided with papers and a desk on the second floor of the Library so that he might start work on a monograph which the former Prime Minister, A J Balfour, hoped would offer the public a 'general conception of the German policy

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which has led up to the present catastrophe.' Then, in July 1916, Professor James Headlam, who had been recruited by the Propaganda Bureau at Wellington House and who, with the assistance of the Library, had already written and published a history of the war crisis of 1914, was requested by the Foreign Secretary, Lord Grey, to prepare a specimen volume of pre­war diplomatic documents on the Bosnian crisis of 1908-9. At the same time, the Library acquired its Historical Section.

Headlam or Headlam-Morley, as he was known from 1918 onwards, was subsequently to become a key figure in persuading the Office to adopt a new approach towards the release and publica­tion of documents. In the spring of 1918 he became deputy director of the newly­formed Political Intelligence Department, a body which later included such scholarly figures as Arnold Toynbee, Lewis Namier and Alfred Zimmern. At a time when David Lloyd George was expounding British war aims along radical-populist lines and when President Woodrow Wilson was appealing for 'Open covenants of peace, openly arrived at', Headlam-Morley urged on his colleagues the need for the Office to do all that it could to educate the public on foreign policy. The so-called 'New Diplomacy' required new responses from British diplomats. The public, Headlam­Morley insisted, had come to regard the Foreign Office as aloof, and that aloofness 'must tend to diminish the weight and authority of the Office.' Headlam-Morley's arguments were strongly supported by the new Librarian, Alwyn Parker, who initiated a lively debate within the Office on how best to make more of its records available to modern historians. In 1919 the Foreign Office archives were opened to the public up to 1860 and scholars were able to secure permission to see documents beyond that date for specific projects. In 1924 the open period was extended to 1875 and the decision taken to publish records after that date in the official series British

9

Documents on the Origins of the War, 1898-1914.

These developments were a direct response to the German diplomatic offensive on the origins of the war. Hardly had signatures been appended to the Versailles treaty before German historians began their assault on the treaty's over-confident assertion that the war had been 'imposed' upon the allied and associated powers 'by the aggression of Germany and her allies': a claim which was of more than mere historical significance since it was intended to serve as the legal basis for allied demands for the payment of reparations. Vital documents from the archives in Berlin, Petrograd and Vienna had already been released in the immediate aftermath of the war, and these and those published in the Wilhelmstrasse's own series, Die GrojJe Politik der europiiischen Kabinette, 1871-1914, the first volume of which, published in 1922, seemed to add credence to the German case. By 1926 when the first British volume appeared, the German interpreta­tion of events was well-established and was to have a considerable impact on the writing of recent history in Europe and the United States. The German view that the real cause of the war had been the Russian mobilisation, which the British had done nothing to halt, soon passed into the text­books of the period. This, in turn, did much to create a climate of opinion in the United States which was sympathetic to Germany and subsequently susceptible to German propaganda that played upon the 'injustice' of the Versailles Diktat.

The continuing debate on the origins of the First World War and its relevance to Britain's relations with other powers meant that during the 1920s the staff of the Library were involved to a much larger extent than before in dealings with the general public. In an age when there was much talk of the democratic control of diplomacy the Library was active in promoting policies of greater openness

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both as regards access and publication. Headlam-Morley, who became the Office's first Historical Adviser in 1920, encouraged the Office to respond generously to access req uests, particularly from American scholars. 'On general grounds', he noted in August 1920, 'it is certainly desirable, and I think very important, that we should encourage younger American historians who are taking up European History to come to London and thereby get them to approach these questions from a point of view sympathetic to this country.' At the same time he sought through his own writings and contacts with other historians to promote a scholarly interest in Britain's pre-war diplomacy, and was only too keen to ensure that the recollections of former ministers and diplomats were factually accurate.

The Office was usually prepared to heed Headlam-Morley's advice on access to the archives. It was, however, capable of assuming a different attitude when it came to handling requests from former ministers to the Library for assistance in preparing their memoirs or in regard to the Library's vetting of diplomatic recollections and reminiscences. As Foreign Secretary, Lord Curzon was willing to make an example of any minor delinquen t. When in 1921 Captain Peter Wright, a secretary and interpreter of the Supreme War Council, published his memoirs, Curzon swept aside objections that more significant military figures had already revealed official secrets. 'If we cannot cut off the head of a poppy', he protested, 'that is no reason why we cannot decapitate a daisy.'

Research Department and Library The merger of the Library with the Foreign Office Research Department (FORD) in 1946 was partly driven by the unrelenting demand for specialists to advise on post-war policy and the arrival in the Foreign Office

10

of captured German Foreign Ministry documents which needed expert treatment. On 1 April 1946 the offices ofDirector of Research and Librarian and Keeper of the Papers were combined in the person of Mr E J Passant, a distinguished Cambridge scholar and former Head of the German section of FORD. The new Department was call d Research Department and Library. Th ar hives were hived off into a s parate department, but all elements were unit d under M Passant as the singl had.

The Research element was divid d into geographical sections, corresponding to the geographical departm nts of the Foreign Office. Its main purpose was to study the historical background of urrent problems of foreign policy and to provide the geographical departments with memoranda and notes r quired for formulating foreign policy. Meanwhile a reconstituted Historical Section contributed to the Four-Power programme for the publication of the captured German records, in tandem with a new programme for the publication of Documents on British Foreign Policy, J 919-39, whereby it was decided to pro d with the publication of the Muni h r ord less than 10 years after the v nt.

In parallel with these developm nts the informat.ion services of the printed Library were maintained so that in addition to the custody and supply of printed books, maps and periodicals, registered correspondence, confidential print and official papers, the Library continued to provide basic information on questions of fact or procedure drawing on the resources of the whole of the Department to form in the words of Ernest Passant 'a kind of information bureau, as regards all past events and matters of proc dure, for the rest of the Office.'

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IV LIBRARY AND RECORDS DEPARTMENT, 1968-1995

E telior iew if the Edward Watts Building at Hanslope Park

p tm ot mo d to ornwall House at Waterloo, which had the of pIa in all departm ntal resources under one roof but the g of di t ncing the R sear hers from th ir corresponding

politi al d p rtm n in th Main Building, and of discouraging members of the

pro mor in 1 and

from dropping in to u ibrary resour es at first hand. Nonetheless the a h D rtm nt od Library continued to develop apace. In 1954 a

paratin th growing lements wa upported by Passant. It was fi e for th fi t t ps toward di iding functions ook place, cemen ted

b thppointments of a Director of Research and a Librarian p p r. The m rger of the For ign Office with th

in 196 , and ons quent m rging of the Library Buildi g, b gan a n w era in the hi tory of th Library. info mation r ie , underpinned b the reabsorb d hi to . al r ar h , b arne th main pring of th n w

ibrar and Re ord D partment in 1968.

t d n up urg in r ord manag m nt a part of th core d p r nt who h ad had become the D partmental R ord

. ) ditionall the F 0 always maintain d its records to the , r a kno\ 1 dg d to b the best organised and be t kept pap rs

it hall d partrn nt and the rno tcon ulted by s holars. The origin of tion lie in h reforming work of Lewis Hertslet whose registry and

t m introdu d at th start of the nineteenth century has formed the ba i of i r pr ti for th last two hundred years. he records have been re ula d b Pub!i R ord ts sin e th first Act of 1838, but the modern

o~ ional r ord management to prescrib d riteria and tanda ds on th Publi R ord t of 1958 a am nded in 1967, when th 30 Y

h 195 rigg prin ipl s of custody, r view and trans:D r t b gan th transformation of the relativ ly mod t

Librar s bran h into th op ration p rformed today by th Records and s.

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Arguably it was the introduction of the 30 year rule in 1967 which, in reducing the release date from 50 to 30 years after creation, made the most significant impact on the requirement for a professional records service; not least because it coincided with the doubling of Office generated paper (one million papers in 1967 compared with half a million in 1945 compared with five hundred in 1821). One consequence of the 30 year rule, which raised the sensitivity threshold, was the establishment in the early 1970s of a Sensitivity Review Unit working alongside the Custody, Reference and Retrieval Sections now responsible for processing and requisitioning from more than 13 miles of records.

By the end of the 1980s the five components of the department (Library, Records, Historians, Translators and Interpreters and the Registrar) were, from their accommodation mostly in the Main Building and Cornwall House, pursuing their roles in acquiring, organising, distributing and disseminating information for the FCO and posts overseas. Each had its distinct field of activity, working styles and professional cultures. Nominally some 130 staff were involved, drawn from different HCS and DS grades. Despite being scattered in six buildings, and the poor working conditions in Cornwall House, the department seemed set to remain much as it had been since it had been recreated in the late 1960s. However, 1989, from the Spring decision to relocate the whole department out of central London to the appointment of Richard Bone as Head of LRD in November, initiated a revolutionary period for LRD.

By early 1990 the relocation package was untied after the Board of Management decided to restrict LRD's occupancy of the planned new building 71 at Hanslope Park (subsequently to be named the Edward Watts Building) to two floors, to cut the size of the Library and to reduce the

12

departmental staff complement by twenty-five. As a result, only the records operation transferred to Hanslope Park in 1992, with the Historians and Sensitivity Review staff remaining in London with the Library. A FCO Library Trust Deed was created to transfer non-essential Library stock to British and overseas universities and research institutes. Despite the turbulence caused by this first round of restructuring the early 1990s saw a rapid increase in demand for the department's services, growing sophistication in the range and utility of Library computer systems, a review of the FCO's registry system and a quickening tempo of historical publishing. By the beginning of 1992 the outline of what was effectively a new department was beginning to take shape, partly influenced by sharply increased Ministerial and public interest in open government and related records questions as well as continuing resource pressures.

At the outset, 1993 was intended to be a year of consolidation and steady growth after the transfer of the records operation to Hanslope Park and the Historians to Clive House, the creation of regional teams of Librarians operating 'one-stop' services from temporary accommodation alongside the Durbar Court, replacement of the ageing and costly main Library computer system and the growing realisation that ARAMIS (Automated Registry and Multiuser Information Software) was going to change the way the FCO handled its information, now and in the future. In the event 1993 heralded future change with a major Cabinet Office Efficiency Scrutiny into the department (along with Research and Analysis Department) and, following the publication of a White Paper on Open Government, significant steps being taken by the department to release increasingly more (and more interesting) hitherto withheld papers, partly as a result of new archival policies which foreshadowed the provisions of the White Paper. The

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Efficienc cr tin effecti el ga e the department a cl an bill of health, ackno I dging the changes alread in hand and aloin recognition of the fact that he demand from th Offi e for LRD s support was continuin to g ow.

Following c rtain erutin recommenda­tions a major r tructuring erci e began in 199 which cr dad partment more el gantl di id d i to t 0 in erlocking wings re pon ibl for Librar Information Ser ice and Re ord and Hi torical work. The latt r united for he fi t tim all the stag in the r ord ice chain from cre tio eu tod re lew and

13

declassification to release and publication. Increasingly significant for the custody, retrieval and transfer of records was the growing importance and development of electronic records with the consequential need to establish a central data base (MINERVA) alongside the traditional archive at Hanslope Park. The return of the downsized Library to its refurbished former accommodation in Downing Street East was also accompanied by the rapid development of unclassified electronic data sources and the increasing use of external networks for the retrieval and transfer of information to FCO departments and posts.

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V LRD COLLECTIONS

Librar and Records Department' modern file storage in the Edward VV£ltts Building at the FeO, Hanslope Park, Buckinghamshire

Main Archive

A th holding d partment for th ffi' r rd, LRD manage an archive of mor than 13 mil d ting b k t 19 rno t of whi h i tored at Han .lop P rk. R rd mol' th n

30 y ar old are normally to b found at th Publi R ord ffi . 11 r ords can be ac d for ffic u on r qu t to h R or R tri val ction at Han lop Park (GTN 3905 5987).

Confidential Print AI 0 a Han lop Park i th mast rtf C nfid n ial Print whi h og th r with i ucc or ri iplomati R port (1 70-1 ) nd

Diplomati Do urn nt (19 4-) provid a on p tu f riti h ~ r ign poli da ·ng ba k to 1 29.

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be een d il

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15

Library Memoranda

view of Toronto taken in 1856, the views of ydney and its harbour dating from 1870

and the panorama of Singapore taken from St Andrew's Church spire in 1863.

The old Foreign Office Library had no comparable collection of photographs, save for odd items such as albums of the Boxer rebellion in China, sent to the Foreign Office for safe-keeping by the Briti h Legation in Peking in 1900. Following the merger of the Foreign and Commonwealth Offices in 1968, the scope of the collection widened to include for­eign as well as Commonwealth countries, and the acqui ition of material from the Central Office of Information provided portrait photographs of senior diplomats as well as prints of international conferences and meetings in the post-war era.

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Memorabilia The photographic and rare book collections were matched at one time by a unique stamp collection and mi cellaneous memorabilia which, being deemed unsuitable to adorn the offices or corridors of the FO building, found their way into the Library. Thi featured various exotic items, uch as carved tatue drums, and a orted weaponry, including flintlock muskets sp ars and what appeared to be a mall cannon de igned to be mounted on

th deck-rail of a Man 0 War. Under Tru t Deed arrangements mo t of thi collection ha now been tran ferred to the new Mu eum of Commonwealth and Empire at

Bristol, while the stamp collection now forms part of the publicly ac essible British Library philatelic collection.

Pride of place is still accorded to the tuff d and mounted Anaconda, which for

many years hung below the gall ry in the old eRO Library in Downing Str t Ea t. It is said to have be n pres nt d to the Colonial S cretary by the Bishop of what i now Guyana, at some point in the nin teenth century. Ov r th year it became a familiar and popular, jf slightly ini ter f; ature, and has b n r tor d to

plac in th new Downing tr e Library.

The tuffed anaconda hanging below th gallery in the FeD Library

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VI PERSONAUTIES

A Librarian ', declared the President of the Librarians' Conference in 1877 'should not be a mere guardian of books. He must be an educato. The e hortation was particularly applicable to the work of th Foreign Offic Librarians and Keepers of the Papers, some of whom ar d rib d b 10 :

Lewis Hertslet (1810-57) Few officials did more to inform

I torian England about the achievements of its diplomacy and non e rei ed a more consistent influence on any single

d partIn nt of the nineteenth-century Foreign Office than did the father and on partn rship of Lewis and Edward Hertslet. Their family was of Swi origin Lewis being the eldest son of Jean Louis Pierre Hertzl tt (formed Hiertzelet), who had become a King's Messenger at th tim of the French Revolutionary wars. A mere boy of fourteen wh n , in 1801 he was appointed sub-librarian to Richard Ancell, Lewis r main d in the For ign Office until his retirement over 56 years later. It as his long e perience in the Library and his devotion to publishing departm ntal r ords which made him a vital source of information on int rnational affairs and an authority on the history of almost all matt rs p rtaining to the making and conduct of foreign policy.

Edward Hertslet (1857-96) resembled Lewis in many respects. He was ixt en hen h re eived his fIrst temporary appointment in the

Librar and prior to that he had already helped his father with his diting of tate pap rs. He too was to become, as Sir Philip Currie

ob r d , wond rfull conversant with every treaty and every past qu tion. Lat r in retirement, he wrote his Recollections of the OM Foreign Ofji , a ork which r mains one of the most amusing and informative a oun of th functioning of a Victorian Department of State.

Augustus Oakes (1896-1905) was an altogether less colourful figure than hi immediat predecessor. An authority on international law and tr atie his career in the Library spanned some 46 years. He was noted for hi a uracy good judgement and ease of expression and, after his rerir ment in 1905 he co-authored with the Oxford historian, R B Mowat, a work on nineteenth-century European treaties. He was also, by in tinct a r former, and his efforts to restructure his department and secure greater recognition for its services played a small but significant part in initiating reforms which transformed the Foreign Office in the earl ears of this century.

Alwyn Parker (1918-19) was nota librarian by profession. He had begun his car r as a diplomat and was appointed Librarian in 1918 at the b h st of the Permanent Under-Secretary, Lord Hardinge, who was anxious to have someone in charge of the Library who would take r pon ibility for planning and preparing for a peace conference. The

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II i I! I

task was a formidable one and Parker devoted a good deal of his time to producing elaborate charts setting out the Office's proposals for the organization of the British delegation. One of these depicted Britain's representatives in various colours with prime ministers and dominion delegates whirling, in the words of Harold Nicolson, 'each in his proper orbit, coloured green, or red, or blue', with Parker himself 'revolving as a moon, attendant upon Jupiter, Lord Hardinge of Penshurst.'

Sir Stephen Gaselee (1920-43) was a star in his own galaxy. He was one of the most significant twentieth century successors to the Hertslets, and an unmistakable figure in his cutaway tailcoat, spats, red socks and Old Etonian bow tie (with silk top hat for outdoor wear). A classical scholar, an expert on Coptic studies and a formidable personality, Gaselee had little interest in anything that he could not treat in scholar­ly fashion. This he applied to all points from obscure points of philology to the suggestion that ice should be dropped into champagne: 'A thesis' he remarked, 'which will hardly commend itself to a serious drinker.' Within the Foreign Office, Gaselee raised both the profile and status of the Library in the inter-war years. He became an expert on the Office's history and administration, and the small volume which, in 1933, he co-authored with a for­mer Chief Clerk, John Tilley, on the Foreign Office is still an indispensable source of information.

Ernest Passant (1946-55) was the first to hold jointly the posts of Director of Research and Librarian and Keeper of the Papers in the Foreign Office. Passant developed Gaselee's policy of 'Current Awareness' by adding a periodicals abstracting service to the accessions list. He broke with tradition by restricting the hitherto unlimited period allowed for the borrowing of books, and forbade the taking of library books out of the country -

18

whilst the rules were doubtless more honoured In the breach than the undertaking, it was a positive step towards a closer control over Library resources.

Sir Duncan Wilson (1955-57) was a scholar more in the Gaselee mould than that of Ernest Passant whom he succeeded. Educated at Winchester and Balliol, but debarred on medical grounds from joining the Diplomatic Service, he progressed smoothly from an Oxford fellowship to a post as Assistant Keeper in the Department of Manuscripts at the British Museum. On the outbreak of war in 1939 he was drafted into the Ministry of Economic Warfare, and did wartime service in the Foreign Office and later the Control Commission for Germany. On the basis of this experi­ence he joined the Foreign Service in 1947 and was posted first to Berlin and then to Belgrade. As Director of Research and Acting Librarian, Wilson helped to field radical proposals for the reorganisation of Research Department and of intelligence assessmen t. Having returned to mainstream diplomacy in 1957, he ended his career as British Ambassador at Moscow. Contact with the FCO was renewed when in 1978 he was appoin ted Chairman of the Committee charged with investigating the workings of the Public Records Acts. His Report on Modern Public Records, published in 1980, re-opened the debate on access and served advance notice of the drive towards Open Government of the 1990s.

Sir Cecil Parrott (1957-60) was an educator par excelknce. On leaving Cambridge he was appointed Assistant Master successively at Christ's Hospital and Edinburgh Academy, and he went on to become tutor to King Peter of Yugoslavia until the outbreak of the Second World War. He returned from Belgrade to JOIn the Ministry of Information and was then despatched to Oslo as an assistant Press attache. Further service in Stockholm and Prague followed, and having joined the Foreign

1, I I

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Service in 1946, hi progress up the promotion ladder was wift. He was appoin ted Head of nited ations Political Department in 1950, served as Charge d Affaire at Brussels 1952-4 and was HM Mini ter at Mo cow 1954-57. His linguistic skill, broad knowledge and recent e perience of Communist Europe ga e him impeccable credentials as Director of Re earch and Librarian and Keeper of h Pap r at the height of the Cold War and he held th post with distinction from 1957-60. Hi diplomatic career end dab . ador at Prague, after which he returned to academia as Professor of Ru ian and 0 iet tudies at the ni er it of Lanca ter. Later Profe sor of Central and outh-Ea tern European Studie he wa al 0 a prolific writer and broadca t r on asp c of lavonic culture.

Richard Bone (1989-1995) Few Heads of the Library ha eben more concerned with re ponding to th re earch needs of historians and the international affairs community than Richard Bone. After diplomatic po ting in Gene a and Valetta, he pursued a distingui hed career in Res arch Department Regional Director Asia (197 ) and tlantic (19 1) before his appoin tme t a H ad of Library and Records D partment and Departmental Record Offic r in ovemb r 19 9. He quickly becam the dri ing force behind mor liberal r cord release polici sand, by reconciling th n d to protect with the wi h to inform he ef t d a a-change in FCO reco d-keeping and the Librar role as informatio brok r. Beginning in May 1992 with the p cta ular op ning of the war-time papers on Rudolf He he made acce ible 0 the public more than 3500 pre IOU ly withheld pap r and took a lead in encouraging th relea e of other records at home and abroad particularly in the int lligence fi ld. cultivated and

19

widely read scholar with a strong sense of public service, he readily appreciated the value to researchers of the extensive FeO Library bibliographic collections and, under imaginative Trust Deed arrange­ments of his own devising, made half of them freely available across the country for greater public benefit. From 1994 he became increasingly absorbed by the changes that new information technology was bringing to conventional archive systems and was instrumental in establishing the MINERVA project for an Office-wide consolidation of records in electronic form. With apparently boundless creative energy, he transformed Library and Records Department into a high profile multi-serving body capable of meeting the demands of the fast-moving Office mainstream. A natural Office-man himself, he raised political awareness (and drafting standards) across the board introducing a series of streamlining measures, which he characteristically dubbed 'permanent restructuring.' LRD

emerged strengthened under the leadership of a hard yet fair task-master, whose kindness and sparkling wit were as legendary as his fondness for the brown ink with which he liberally annotated his official papers.

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VII CHRONOLOGIES

i Development of LRD and Predecessor Departments, 1801-1995

1801 Richard Ancell appointed as 1st Librarian and Keeper of the Papers

1810 Lewis Hertslet

1838 Public Record Office Act gave custody of the public records to the Master of the Rolls, who was charged with their safe preservation and proper use

1857 Edward Hertslet

1896 Augustus Oakes

1906 Lansdowne Reforms

1918 Alwyn Parker

1920 Stephen Gaselee

1920 James Headlam-Morley appointed as Historical Adviser

1943 Foreign Office Research Department formed from Political Intelligence Department (revived 1939) and Foreign Research and Press Service of Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House)

1945 Library and Archives Department formed

1946 Ernest Passant appointed as 1st Director of Research and Librarian and Keeper of the Papers, heading newly formed Research Department and Library. Archives Department hived off.

1959 Research Department and the Library become separate departments but still linked at the top under the Director of Research who remains Librarian and Keeper of the Papers

1966 Separate Heads for Library and Research Departments

1967 Public Records Act, which reduced the normal release date from 50 to 30 years

1968 Library and Records Department formed from the FO and Commonwealth Office Libraries and reabsorbed Archives Department

1990 LRD becomes part of Information Systems Division (renamed General Services Command in 1993)

1993 Cabinet Efficiency Scrutiny of LRD and Research and Analysis Department

1993 White Paper on Open Government (Cm 2290) published

1994 Restructuring of LRD into two wings: Library and Information Services and Records and Historical Services

1995 Project MINERVA begins

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1801-1810

1810-1857

1857-1896

1896-1905

1905-1914

1914-1918

1918-1919

1920-1943

1943-1945

1945-1946

1946-1955

1955-1957

1957-1960

1960-1965

1965-1969

1969-1979

1979-1986

1986-1989

1989-1995

1995 -

ii Heads of LRD and Predecessor Departments, 1801-1995

Richard Ancell

Lewis Hertslet

Sir Edward Hertslet

Augustus H Oakes

Richard William Brant

Edward Charles Blech (adopted name of Bleck, 1918)

Alwyn Parker

Sir Stephen Gaselee

Vacant

Dorothy Anne Bigby (Acting)

* Ernest James Passant

Sir Duncan Wilson *

Sir Cecil Parrott *

* Robert Whyte Mason

Clifton James Child

Bernard Cheeseman#

E C (Eily) Blayney

Patricia M Barnes

Richard Bone

Ian Soutar

* Also Director of Research. #Mr Cheeseman was the Librarian of the Colonial Office 1954-66, and of the Commonwealth Office 1966-68.

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VIII QUOTATIONS

'My view of the records of the Foreign Office is that they should contain as full a record as possible of all that passes and of the real motives and grounds of events.'

Lord Palmerston to Lord John Russell, 1849

'A people which knows not from whence it comes, also knows not whither it goes. Its political education will only be effected in a sound manner if it is tied to a living consciousness of its historical development, and this is not imaginable so long as original documents remain inaccessible.'

Heinrich von Sybel, 1873

'A door [on the ground floo ] ... affords access to the Library, with its magnificent collection of books on politics and foreign countries, its treasures of secret political information , and its historical archives stretching back to dim antiquity .. . Everything at the F.O. revolves round the Library. '

Charles Marvin, Our Public Offices, 1879

'Our Archives-it cannot be repeated too often-are a sort of gun powder which can, in certain cases, explode and cause damage, when it ought to be used only to defend ourselves against our enemies.'

Baron de Courcel, 1907

'We have nothing to lose as a nation , and a good deal to gain, by the widest possible publicity being given to our transactions with foreign countries.'

Sir Eyre Crowe, 1908

'If the Foreign Office gave out a little more daylight, they might deserve a little more sunshine.'

Francis Hirst, Editor of The Economist, to the 1914 Royal Commission

'Acc s to the Foreign Office Records is a vital consideration in all attempts to make foreign policy dependent upon the popular will.'

Professor C K Webster, 1924

'We do not always realize the importance acquired during the Middle Ages by the creation and orderly arrangement of archives.'

Harold Nicolson, 1939

'The wretched historian ' faced with miles of archival shelving: 'Won't someone buy him a motor bicycle?'

Sir Keith Hancock

'Although, ideally speaking, everything should be "down on paper" and easily traceable­filed and indexed, that is, with ample cross-references-the actual manipulation of so much paper i no eas task.'

Lord Strang, The Foreign Office, 1955

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A good ar hi i twill ha e a very capacious memory for detail as well as being skilled in those technique that ar intended to make long memories as far as possible unnecessary.'

ditto

•. 'LRD is being transformed' Jeffrey Ling on the 1991 Annual Report, Feb 1992

'At the For ign Offi I am anxious to make changes. I have decided that those records for which I am r pon ible and which have been withheld for more than 30 years should be reviewed to ee whi h can be released to the Public Record Office.'

The Rt Hon Douglas Hurd, extract from a speech to the Knole Club, 14 May 1992

'''Release is th watchword rather than "retain". The new and more exacting criteria for withholding r cords longer than 30 years will release much more information into the public domain.

Extract from the White Paper on Open Government, 1993

'All major nation tr through publishing selected documents from their national archives to ensure that the hi torical record of international affairs reflects their national perspective. We have recei d persuasive evidence that the British approach to this is second to none.

Report of the FCO Efficiency Scrutiny, 1993

'We also r commend that the reopening of the Colonial Office Library, and the stuffed anaconda's return to public life, as well as the inauguration of the [public] reading area ... should be mark d with a public event of some sort. .. Such an event would draw attention to the teps which the FCO was taking towards Open Government.'

ditto

'As part of FCO Information Systems Strategy we have for the past three years, been refining our poli y on the implications of new systems for both records management in the FCO and for our tatutory obligations in respect of FCO records .... We have had to consider how standard m thodologies and working practices developed over many years to support the paper-bas d st ms needed to be adapted to exploit the potential offered by electronic systems without undermining the purposes for which records are kept.'

Richard Bone at CCTA conference, 1994

Each service area [of Records and Historical services] has key interrelationships. For instance the criteria for selection review need to consider the future publication of the official record and need to retain historically significant records. The custody and review service can only operate effectively if individual FeO registries have operated to the policy and standards laid down by the Registry Advisers. The retrieval section needs a sound understanding of records policy and the historical context. Similar interrelationships exist throughout the Library Information Services. Both wings embody the collective memory of the FCO.'

CAPITA report on LRD, 1995

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IX PUBliCATIONS

There is a vast literature on the history and development of Library and R cords practi e in the FCO as set out in the bibliographies at the back of History Notes 4 and 5. Despit its ag , one of the rno t relevant is Sir Edward Hertslet's Recollections of the Old Foreign Office (London, 1901), which is a mine of information on the organisation of re ords, th Library, and the conduct of business in the 19th century Office.

The publication of official do uments is 0 ered in a number of works. Blu Book ar d alt with in Harold Temperley and Lilian M Penson, A Century of Diplomatic Blue Books, 1814-1914 (Cambridge, 1938), while the dev lopment of link b tween the FO and hi torians a co ered in Keith Hamilton 's 'The Pur uit of "Enlightened Patriotism": h Briti h Foreign Office and Historical Researchers during the Great Wa and its Mtermath', Historical Research, vol 61 (1988), pp 316-44, and Erik Goldstein's 'Historians Outsid th ad my: G W Prothero and the Experience of the Foreign Office Historical e tion, 1917-20' , Historical Research, vol 63 (1990), pp 195-211. The inter-war p iod i dis u d in n Bialer, 'Telling the truth to the people: Britain 's decision to publish diplomati pap r of th inter-war p riod', Historical Journal, vol 26 (19 3), pp 349-67.

Margaret Pell co ers the current series in 'Editing Do uments on Briti h Poli Ov rs a , 1945-1955' Diplomacy and Statecraft, vol 1 (1990), pp 90-8. S e also FCO Historical Branch Occasional Papers, 0 1: Valid E idence (1987), No 2: Meeting of Editor of Diplomati Documents (1989), 0 7: Changes in British and Rus ian R ord Policy (1993) and 0 9: Do urn nts on British Policy Over eas: Publi hing Polj y and Pra ti (1995) for DBP and FCO Record practice.

Li of LRD publi ation pa t and present, ar availabl on r qu t from h F 0 Publi ation Officer (0171 270 3602).

Th production of acumen an Briti h Polity r. eas

24