FCO HISTORICAL BRANCH

OCCASIONAL PAPERS

No.!

November 1987

O Foreign and Commonwealth Office

Foreign & Commonwealth Office

HISTORICAL BRANCH

Occasional Papers

No. 1 CONTENTS

November 1987

Papers presented at the Seminar'Valid Evidence', held in the FCO Library, Cornwall House, on 6 November 1987

Page No. Foreword

Mr Ian S Winchester, Assistant Under-Secretary of State 2

Introduction

Dr Patricia M Barnes, Head of Library & Records Department 3

Putting the Records Straight Miss Marian Clay, Head of Records Branch 5-9

Editorial Principles and Practice Dr Roger Bullen and Mrs Margaret Pelly, Editors of Documents on British Policy Overseas 11-25

Two case studies in the use of documentary evidence The Roosevelt Peace Plan of January 1938

Mrs Gillian Bennett, Assistant Editor, DBPO 27-38

Anthony Eden and Europe, November 1951 Mrs HJ Yasamee, Assistant Editor, DBPO 39-50

Present-day Records: the prospects for future historians Dr James E Hoare, Head of Far Eastern Section, Research Department 51-58

DBPO: Volumes published and in preparation 59

Copies of this pamphlet will be deposited with the National Libraries

FCO Historical Branch Cornwall House, Stamford Street, London SEI 9NS

Crown Copyright

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FOREWORD

The Historical Branch of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office consists of a team of independent historians engaged in the production of the Series Documents on British Policy Overseas, which is regarded by the historical profession as an essential tool for teaching and research.

On 6 November 1987 a Seminar, 'Valid Evidence', was held in the FCO for historians who might be interested in learning more about the way in which the Series is produced. We were glad to welcome more than forty members of the profession on that occasion, when papers were presented on the work both of Historical Branch and of Records Branch, whose responsibility is the care of some of the archives on which history depends.

The Seminar exemplifies the co-operation with the historical profession which it is FCO policy to pursue. We believe that those present found the Seminar to be of some value, and have therefore decided to make the papers presented more generally available by publishing them.

Ian S Winchester

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INTRODUCTION

Any historians worth their salt must be constantly concerned with the validity of the evidence available to them in their chosen field of inquiry. Medievalists are regularly faced with the problem of what has been lost to them by the passage of time but comparatively rarely, for example in handling chronicle evidence or forged charters, with difficulties created by the interposition, and ingenuity, of the human mind. By contrast, historians of the modern era need a considerably more complex critical apparatus. In the first place, they must steer a course through the minefields of convenient memory, hindsight and self-justification laid for them by diarists, memoir writers and contributors to oral history. In the second, if their work is concerned with public business and public figures, they have to appraise the results of the essential processes of winnowing down recommended by the Grigg Committee and applied by all departments of government under the terms of the Public Records Act 1958. Finally, if government chooses to publish editions of selections from the surviving records, questions of editorial freedom, partiality and propaganda arise.

Our seminar today is concerned with the second and third elements of this critical apparatus, the selection of records for permanent preservation, and the preparation from those records of the series of Documents on British Policy Overseas now in train. We hope to convince you that the evidence presented is both valid and useful, and that it stands the test of critical scrutiny by official and academic users alike.

Patricia M Barnes

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PUTTING THE RECORDS STRAIGHT

We thought it might be helpful to describe what the Records Branch actually does and the criteria we apply and to address some of the problems and criticisms that have been raised with us. Records Branch has two main functions: to produce previous files of the FCO and all its predecessor Departments as they may be required for day to day business and to prepare files for transfer to the Public Record Office no later than 30 years from the date of their creation.

Departments within the Office need to consult previous files fairly regularly. There will be major exercises such as Research Department's paper on the 10,20 or 50 year history of a particular dispute. An overseas government may revert to a matter it raised 5 years ago, and we need to check what happened then. A particular event may lead to a call for precedents or parallel cases. An inward or outward VIP visit might be made after a long interval; what was the programme on the last occasion. Why was a particular Vice-Consulate established in year X, and so on. And an answer may be needed speedily: an overseas visitor is suddenly in London, can we locate the record of a particular conversation the Minister remembers. We also have enquiries from overseas governments whose own files might have been destroyed by some natural disaster, like the fire in Kathmandu in the 70s. And members of the public or previous employees write to see whether we can substantiate registration, dates of employment etc. We not infrequently have to call up our old files from the PRO for the purpose, so our apologies if we prove to be working on files researchers may need.

Turning to the preparation of files for transfer, I think it is worth emphasising some physical points. The volume of paper produced increases year by year. Common use of the telephone has probably reduced routine minuting within and between departments in the FCO, but both the number and the length of telegrams has expanded as has the extent of addressing or repeating them to other posts for action or information. Within the office submissions are widely copied and there is extensive consultation with other government departments. All this can lead to duplication of material and it is Archives policy that only one main run of papers on a subject shall be preserved.

The files of the FCO political departments and those of its predecessor departments and organizations such as the British side of the Control Commission for Germany for which it was responsible enter the 'sausage machine' of review for transfer 27 years afer the date of their creation. (We took longer to process the CCG material because of the quantity that came back - 240 tons - and the sorting that was necessary before we could start reading it. ) The first step is to decide what files are worthy of permanent preservation either for their administrative value or for their historical importance. It is the content of a file, not its title, which counts; one on 'the Prime Minister's visit to Ruritania' may have no more than the revised car plan. And generally it is only the files

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of the lead department which are kept: Western Department may have led on a subject for which Northern Department had a watching brief; if the Northern Department files contained only copies of Western Department's submissions and of their own minutes to Western Department then Northern Department's files would be discarded as they added nothing to those of the lead department. Similarly, if the FO led on a subject material copied to the CRO and CO would be destroyed if it were mere duplication; and the converse applies. Unless the FO file contained papers not available elsewhere we would not keep a file on which, say, the Department of Transport led, unless an international treaty were being negotiated. The lead Department for all treaty negotiations is the FCO. I might add here that other Whitehall departments are not always so meticulous and keep a lot of FO telegrams.

The same principle of duplication applies to the files of posts abroad. Posts have a regular 'weeding' programme. Weeding incidentally is not to be confused with reviewing for sensitivity, which I shall cover later; weeding means the removal of ephemeral, unimportant or duplicate material. Post files are only preserved for return to London if they contain important minuting or papers not already available and preserved here. Do not assume that there must have been substantive minuting abroad: if an event were fast moving and critical coverage could well have been entirely by telegram. In some cases alas post files have had to be destroyed locally whatever their content, for example before a break in relations, on the outbreak of war or in anticipation of severe local disturbances. There is a story of the burning of files in Baghdad in 1941 where the refuge-seeking British community were helping to carry the files from the registry to the incinerators and were discovered to be reading them en route.

Batches of files come to an officer known as a selection reviewer, who reads them and decides what shall be preserved and what shall be scheduled for destruction. Entire jackets or files are preserved not individual papers; to select some papers from a file and to destroy the rest we would regard as tampering with the historical record. There were hiccoughs in the past over destruction of drafts; now drafts are preserved if they were substantially amended by a senior officer. For the moment we are still working with the single white jacket system of the Foreign Office whereby each incoming item or substantive minute was given a separate cover; the Colonial Office and the CRO ran multiple paper files and the FO went over to that system on 1 January 1967. Jackets and files preserved are however weeded of printed matter, since this is available elsewhere, cleared of Cabinet Papers, since these will be preserved on Cabinet Office files, and also cleared of documents of international organisations or agencies since these will be preserved in the Archives of the organisations concerned. There are standard guide-lines, originating from the 1954 Grigg Report, on the type of material to be preserved and our reviewers also work closely with Research, geographical and other departments in the Office who may ask us to watch out for papers on a particularly long running or tricky subject. What a Selection Reviewer puts aside as 'scheduled for destruction' is approved by the PRO Inspecting Officer before it is

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physically destroyed. And we keep a record of the files destroyed. Administration files, eg of Finance Department, have both a First Review, at which many are destroyed under Whitehall-wide guide-lines - accounts, for example, are kept for a fixed span of years - and then a Second Review for the 30-year deadline.

The files preserved go to a 'lister' who gives them a PRO piece number and a title which forms the basis of the PRO shelf lists. I cannot emphasize too strongly that the key to use of the shelf lists is knowledge of the organisation of the FO, and other Departments of State, at the time. Departments within the Office changed their names and functions as the world and administrative needs changed. The printed FO annual lists contain a description of the various departments in the office for that year. You also need to know which was the lead Government department. It need not necessarily be the FO. We had a query recently about the League of Nations Rural Health Conference held in Bandoeng in 1937. The FO Index contained some references to it but the researcher drew a blank when requesting the files. The reason was that the Colonial Office had led, since the subject was of interest primarily to the Colonies, and the papers were preserved on the CO and not FO files. Within the FO 371 political correspondence class files are listed in alphabetical order of departments. Other FO classes contain eg the Chief Clerk's Papers, Embassy and Consular Archives, State Papers, etc. For security reasons classified files in the Colonial Office and the CRO were kept separately. In the PRO those classified files will be found in two main political classes, the CRO ones divided by prefix and the CO by subject, and their unclassified counterparts in the country classes. I have to complicate this account by adding that in the Colonial Office this separation of classified and unclassified material ceased in 1953 and thereafter all Colonial Office papers will be found in country or subject classes. The FO thin white jacket files are grouped and placed in PRO 'piece' folders and then in PRO boxes; the CRO and CO multiple paper files are merely boxed. Careful records are kept at all these stages as under our other hat Records Branch may need to produce these files for departmental reference.

The last stage is the one on which we get most queries. The Public Records Acts provide for certain categories of papers no to open to the public at the 30 year date. The files are therefore read by a team of sensitivity reviewers, composed of retired senior members of the diplomatic service, who read every paper to ensure that anything that requires further protection can be given it. They do not remove any papers; the earlier selection review is unaltered. On particularly tricky points we may need to consult the political departments in the Office and even to refer to our posts abroad. But it is withholding, not release, that we have to defend and justify: we release all we can. There are, as you will know, two sections of the 1958 Act under which documents can be withheld. Section 5.1 provided for closure in excess of 50 years. Shortly after the 1967 Act was brought into force the Lord Chancellor of the day laid down the criteria to be adopted in deciding whether records should remain closed for a longer period than the 30 years laid down in that Act. These criteria were revised in 1970 and again in 1982 and stand at:

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(i) exceptionally sensitive papers, the disclosure of which would be contrary to the public interest whether on security or other grounds (including the need to safeguard the Revenue);

(ii) documents containing information supplied in confidence, the disclosure of which would or might constitute a breach of good faith;

(iii) documents containing information about individuals, the disclosure of which would cause distress or danger to living persons or their immediate descendants.

Embarrassment to UK politicians is very definitely not a ground for closure. We might in fairness warn present Ministers that papers due for release show a decision taken by a previous Minister to have been mistaken but Ministers will not ask us to close for that reason. We are often criticised for closure: but the difficulties are real. As several historians pointed out at the time reduction from the 50 year period was being considered, 30 years is less than a working life. The same personalities or families may still be active in international affairs; many disputes are still unresolved; some countries have acute sensitivities and suspicions about their own history 30 years ago. There are several countries where revelations that an individual had been in contact with a foreign Embassy could still put him in real danger. We know that both Governments and the media overseas read with avidity the papers we release into the public domain; over 40 articles appeared in the Greek press about the 1956 papers.

Section 3.4 of the Act provides for the retention in departments of records required for administrative purposes or for any other special reason. As the Government said in March 1982 in their response to the report of the Wilson Committee the records retained within departments include those of the security and intelligence services and certain defence material, which are selected for permanent preservation on the established criteria. There is an obligation on us to review these retentions at 10 year intervals to see if withholding is still necessary; and closed material is reviewed before its deadline to see if it can be opened or if we need to seek the Lord Chancellor's approval for a further closure.

When a FO jacket has to be closed or retained we put a note in the PRO piece to say under which section of the Public Records Act it is withheld. Since we do not remove items from files, again on the grounds that this would be tampering with the historical record, if one paper on a FO jacket or a CO/CRO multiple paper file needs protection then I am afraid we have to withhold the whole. On the multiple paper files we have handled to date the minutes on the left hand side reveal and comment on the content of the papers on the right hand side, so rendering any attempt to help you by removing single papers and replacing them with a dummy impracticable. It is not our policy to reveal details of what is withheld but we do on occasion agree to answer specific questions posed by historians if we can do so without prejudicing the information that

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requires protection. I can assure you that we hold back very little; upwards of 80% of our political papers are preserved and less than 5% of that will be withheld.

Our procedure differs from that of the Americans in that we do not formally declassify papers. The opening to public access is effectively the act of declassification, but the original classification is preserved on the papers as a matter of historical record.

Marian Clay

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DOCUMENTS ON BRITISH POLICY OVERSEAS

EDITORIAL PRINCIPLES AND PRACTICE

Introduction

Our subject is the latest stage of 60 years of fruitful collaboration between the British Government and the historical profession in the publication of diplomatic documents by independent historians. The Foreign Office has sponsored three separate series. In 1924 it authorized the publication of British Documents on the Origins of the War 1898-1914. This series, consisting of eleven volumes published between 1926 and 1938, was edited by GP Gooch and Harold Temperley. In 1944 the decision was taken by the Cabinet to publish a new series on British diplomacy between the wars, Documents on British Foreign Policy 1919-1939.1 This is now complete in 64 volumes divided into four series. In 1973 it was decided to extend publication into the post-war period and thus Documents on British Policy Overseas was launched. 2

It has taken us a little time to gather momentum but five volumes have now been published, the sixth is here for you to look at. For the future our aim is to try to publish two volumes each year. In the light of this progress we have asked you here to tell you what we do and how we do it. As you will see it is a story of both continuity and change and we shall attempt to explain the reasons for both. It is here perhaps worth recording that unlike its predecessors D. B. P. O. is not focused on the approach of a major war, furthermore you will notice that the title bears no dates, thus allowing for its extension as and when appropriate. Moreover the new series was launched at a time when the archive was already open at the PRO.

2 Historical Background3

Article 231 of the Treaty of Versailles, the so called war guilt clause, was clearly the main reason why in the 1920s so many of the governments which had participated in the First World War authorized the publication of documents from their archives in officially sponsored series. The German government was anxious to refute the claims that Germany and her allies were the aggressors in 1914. The scholarly endeavours of historians were thus caught up in this acute and bitter diplomatic controversy. Many believed that the legitimacy of the peace settlement as a whole was bound up in the inquiries into the truth or falsehood of article 231.

It would, however, be misleading to suggest that the war guilt controversy was solely responsible for these various decisions to publish diplomatic documents. In the half century between 1870 and 1920 there was consistent pressure on governments either to open their archives or to sponsor publications of relevant documents from them. Historians had long since argued that archival research was the only basis of 'scientific'

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and 'definitive' history. The 'truth' was in the archive, hidden and buried. Once the historian had access to these archives he could discover what had happened and reveal it. Governments themselves also believed this to be true. After the war of 1870 both the French and German governments published documents from their diplomatic archives, each intending to suggest that the other had been the aggressor. Other governments, particularly those with revolutionary origins, had ransacked the archives of their predecessors in the search for documents of a discreditable kind. In 1918 the Soviet government embarrassed the British, French and Italian governments by revelations from the Tsarist archives about allied war aims in 1915. Such disclosures appeared to strengthen the already growing movement in the western democracies for 'open diplomacy'. Secrecy, it was alleged, bred mistrust and this was how wars broke out. To the historians' search for truth was thus added 'the people's right to know'. It was this combination of pressures which proved irresistible.

Why Documents

In 1924 Mr Ramsay MacDonald who was both Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary agreed that the Foreign Office should publish a selection of documents from its archives on British foreign policy leading up to the outbreak of war in 1914.4 This decision raised the question: why commission a publication of diplomatic documents rather than a narrative history? In the first instance it must be said that Mr MacDonald, who had favoured a narrative history, accepted the recommendations of the then Historical Adviser, James Headlam-Morley, 5 whose views were endorsed by GP Gooch, that a documentary series was more likely to be well received by the historical profession.

It was his successor as Foreign Secretary, Mr Austen Chamberlain, who made the final arrangements for the launch of the new series. He accepted two principles which have proved of enduring validity. Firstly that independent historians should undertake the selection and editing and secondly that 'the reputation of the editors offers the best guarantee of the historical accuracy and impartiality of their work'. 6 It is to these principles that the conventional phrase used in the preface to each volume, 'the editors have had the customary freedom in the selection and arrangement of documents' looks back. It is a phrase, we can assure you, which means exactly what it says. The attempt by some historians in the early years of D. B. F. P. to impugn editorial integrity was vigorously rebutted and time has shown it to be groundless. It is ironic that those who made these charges themselves based their later work on the Series. The revelation after the second world war that the German series Die Grosse Politik had not observed these principles not only had a devastating effect on its reputation and integrity but also on the political end it was designed to serve.

The undoubted success of British Documents on the Origins of the War clearly vindicated the decision not to commission a narrative history of British diplomacy. The type of arguments then employed remains, in our view, valid. The traditions, the practice and the standards of narrative history are, we believe, less well adapted than a documentary publication to silence controversy and reveal what happened in all its detail and complexity. It is harder for the narrative historian to be impartial in his

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evaluation of the salient facts and in the marshalling of arguments in such a way as to reveal their original weight and balance. Moreover every diplomatic historian has assumptions about the nature of international relations which are bound to be more intrusive in a narrative history. Indeed it is his task to make a critical analysis which editors of diplomatic documents find it proper only to indicate in prefaces.

The publication of diplomatic documents does not necessarily overcome all these difficulties but if it is done according to Chamberlain's precept of historical accuracy and impartiality then many of the defects of narrative history can be mitigated or avoided. It is noteworthy that whereas the official histories of the Second World War carry an endorsement that the individual authors are 'alone responsible for the statements made and the views expressed', no such disclaimer has ever been thought necessary in the publication of British diplomatic documents. Moreover at the end of the day historians and the interested public have at their disposal the various national collections of documents which they can themselves compare and collate, and in the light of the 30 year rule the editorial selection can be assessed against the original files.

The success of British Documents on the Origins of the War was followed, soon after the outbreak of the Second World War, by consideration within the Foreign Office which led to the announcement of Documents on British Foreign Policy by Mr Eden, the Foreign Secretary, on 29 March 1944.7 Earlier Sir L Woodward had been commissioned to write a narrative history of British foreign policy in war time as part of the Cabinet Office official series on the History of the Second World War. After the war some thought was given to a possible documentary series to bridge the gap between Gooch and Temperley and D. B. F. P. but work on this project lapsed.

When Dr Rohan Butler as Historical Adviser came later to plan a post 1945 series similar arguments in favour of documents rather than a narrative still held and were now supported by a general international preference for such a treatment of foreign policy in peacetime. It is worth noting that a number of other Governments, such as the Canadian and Belgian Governments, have adopted styles modelled on ours for their diplomatic publications and that we have recently been consulted by German, Korean and Japanese representatives who are planning to launch similar series. Only the Foreign Relations of the United States is ahead of us in postwar publication, and the good relations we enjoy with their Editors are, we hope, as helpful to them as they are to us.

It was recognised when D. B. P. O. was launched that there could be criticism of the decision to begin in 1945, thus leaving the war time period undocumented but it was accepted that, in the light of the Woodward history and the desirability of not falling too far behind the 30 year rule and the publication of the F. R. U. S., it would be advantageous to take the clear starting point of the conference at Potsdam for the new series. The decision in favour of documents is also in line with the established policy of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office that its function is to make the documents available whether through publication or at the Public Record Office rather than to enter into controversy itself.

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4 The Aims of the Series

The Foreign and Commonwealth Office has three closely related aims in sponsoring D. B. P. O. Firstly to enable the people of the United Kingdom to read for themselves an accurate and impartial documentary record of the conduct of foreign policy under the direction of Parliament. Secondly to provide students of recent history with first hand material for their studies. Thirdly in a competitive world in which other governments also sponsor similar publications the FCO aims to ensure that assessments of British diplomacy are in the first instance based on British records. It would be singularly unfortunate if the history of British policy was written from the archives and publications of either her allies or, worse still, her adversaries. For example it could, as we are sure you know, be argued that many of the ideas of the American Cold War revisionist historians have appeared sadly wanting when viewed in the light of the evidence from British archives. We also believe that the publication of the Schuman Plan volume is now dispelling many of the myths propagated about British policy towards European integration by contemporary continental critics.

As editors we share the three aims of the FCO and it is from these that we derive our instructions. Within these broad aims, however, we seek to fulfil more specific objectives, particulary in relation to the second, that of providing the historical profession with the raw materials of history. Before the introduction of public access to recent government archives under the 30 year rule, the editors were providing the scholarly community with the only available texts. Since then and particularly in view of the immense size of the archives, the editors with their special facilities provide a comprehensive survey of the archives which other scholars could not, without the greatest difficulty, match. In particular we can assemble the scattered pieces of a story told in more than one Foreign Office or Whitehall Department (as Mrs Bennett's and Mrs Yasamee's papers will show). It could be said that we are part of the service sector of the historical profession. What then is the nature of the service we provide?

Firstly we aim to provide historians with collections of documents in which each volume and then the series as a whole tell at first hand a story. We are at all stages of editing very conscious of our story-telling function and examine our work carefully to make sure that we are not, even unconsciously, arguing a case. Our role is to let the documents speak for themselves and never to use them to prove a point. That is for the authors of scholarly monographs, articles and general surveys for whom our documents provide a basis. A good deal of the hard work of research is done for historians of all future generations. Equally the volumes provide indispensable material for special subjects in universities, polytechnics and schools in which the next generation of historians can be trained. These activities of writing and teaching require an accurate and accessible text such as our volumes provide.

In our selection from the archives we start from the assumption that we need to look at as much of the material available as possible and it is no false modesty that leads us to say that we probably see more of the archive than any independent researcher, not least because the files are brought to us here. We do not have the same restrictions and

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difficulties as those who pursue their research at Kew. We also aim to establish criteria of significance and discrimination in the use of evidence which raise the level of historical assessments and debate. In this sense D. B. P. O. is part of the moving frontier of contemporary history.

When we speak of volumes we mean both the printed documents and those on the accompanying microfiches. Later we shall return to the dual nature of the volumes; printed and microfiche documents. Our purpose is to provide as many documents as cheaply as possible. Like the Victorian novel the volumes have a main plot, the printed documents, and the usual variety of sub plots, whose story is told in the notes and the microfiches. For those who want to go even further - and this probably means the research student - our volumes provide, we believe, extremely useful signposts in the search for further detail from the full archive at the PRO.

The Scope of the Series

The Parliamentary announcements defines the scope of the series as a collection of the most important documents in the archives of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office relating to British policy overseas for the decade after the Second World War. It was also decided, in order to speed up publication, that the period would be divided into two series, 1945-1950 and 1950-1955 and that they would be published simultaneously. For a variety of reasons work on the second series did not begin until the end of 1982. Within this mandate the editors are free to decide for themselves how they plan the series. We start from the assumption that we can only cover the most important issues and problems of foreign policy. It is our belief that it gives a better understanding of policy to focus on the major issues and to document them as fully as possible within the limits of what can feasibly be printed. It is already clear to us that secondary and subsidiary issues are drawn forward with and alongside the major ones and that either their resolution or their disappearance can be briefly signposted. It has to be said, however, that minor issues of no great consequence are unrecorded. It is important to bear in mind that civil servants, whatever their rank and function, generate an immense amount of paper. Minor officials engaged in routine work can contribute a surprisingly large amount to the archive.

It is also our experience that rigid long-term plans are as inappropriate for the editors of documents as they are for policy makers. We freely acknowledge that we do not have blueprints for the next decade but we do have a sense of purpose, indeed of urgency, and a clear aim. A rigid framework would prevent us from responding to the archive itself; to the unexpected and as yet unknown twists and turns of policy. There is an important balance to be struck between documenting those issues and events to which historians now accord significance and those to which the policy makers gave their attention and priority.

In view of the thematic and topical approach which we employ in our editing we have found that strict adherence to our base years (1945 and 1950) is not necessarily the

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quickest way forward. We invest an enormous amount of time in acquiring specialist knowledge. For example in Series I we found it appropriate to carry the story of Anglo- American relations in the aftermath of war through the first year of peace and then to turn to the myriad problems of occupation policy in Germany and their implications and in Series II we have had to unravel and explain the enormously complex structure of NATO in its formative years. In view of this investment it can make sense to carry topics and themes forward rather than abandon them for unrelated subjects. We bear in mind, and ask you to do the same, that in the fulness of time the series will add up to a complete whole and when this is achieved the particular sequence of volumes is not of great significance.

6 The Organisation of Volumes

One of the principal features of continuity between the three publications is the way we organise our volumes. There is of course general agreement on an international basis, that any arrangement of diplomatic documents must be ordered in chronological sequence and that the date and time of a document at the place of its composition, irrespective of the difference between time zones, should form the basis of the order within the arrangement. The time and date of the receipt and distribution of a document are universally regarded as valuable additional information but not as a basis on which a collection of documents can be organised.

Beyond this commonsense approach to the problem of chronology, national traditions and style have entered into the different formulae adopted for the organisation of documents within each volume. Briefly three different methods emerged. The French method was to print all documents whatever their subject in strict chronological order. The American way was to take a regional focus for each volume with further sub- divisions within. It has proved necessary to make exceptions to this rule and organise some volumes by topics. The British way was to select either broad themes or individual topics, and sometimes both, and organise the documents within a volume into chapters reflecting these themes and topics. Clearly the difference between the British and American methods is not as great as between them and the French. The historians in the State Department are making increasing use of the topical method and it remains to be seen whether the French will adhere to their orginal formula when they begin their post Second World War series.

It is perhaps useful to point out why in the editing of D. B. P. O. we have continued with the formula established by British Documents on the Origin of the War and subsequently upheld by the editors of D. B. F. P. In the first place the organisation of volumes by topics reflects the organisation of the Foreign Office. The division of the Office into departments is essential for the efficient conduct of business, so much so that the departmental structure is constantly adapting. The flow of correspondence within the Office and between the Office and posts overseas was and is firmly anchored within the departmental structure as anyone who has consulted FO 371 will know. Our progress would be unacceptably slow if we had to start from the assumption that our first task as editors was to unravel the archives and organise our material on a chronological rather than a subject basis.

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Clearly such thematic and topical volumes reflected the way in which policy was made. Very few officials, apart from the Permanent Under-Secretary of State had an overview of policy; their attention was focused on particular geographical areas or problems of policy. In order to understand the origin and development of policy it is necessary to follow its progress upwards; from the department to the superintending under- secretary, then to the PUS and on to the Secretary of State. Consultation with other Whitehall departments frequently takes place at any or indeed all levels in this process. In those instances when the Secretary of State consults the Prime Minister and/or other Cabinet colleagues or a memorandum is presented to the Cabinet, the departmental origins of such initiatives can be seen in the successive drafts. In a very strict sense, therefore, the way we organise our volumes is a mirror of the policy making process.

It is proper that an official series should concentrate on the execution of policy, to show what decisions were taken and how they were implemented. The majority of the documents in the archive are concerned with this process. In D. B. P. O., however, we are able to take a slightly more relaxed view than was possible for our earlier predecessors on the difficult question of documenting policy formulation and the discussion of alternative lines of policy, both within the Foreign Office and at Cabinet level. In the pre-1939 period much of the discussion on the formulation of policy was conducted through minutes. In 1932 Lord Grey of Fallodon wrote to The Times deploring in principle the publication of the advice given by officials, both because he feared this would prejudice their freedom of expression in future, and because it might mislead the public, since minutes were not, in his words, 'authoritative documents'; the actual instructions of Ministers alone determining policy. 9

Lord Grey's intervention was too late to have much influence on Gooch and Temperley, but in his editing of D. B. F. P. Professor Woodward was conscious of the weight of Grey's argument. In the postwar period more decisions are taken, within the context of existing instructions, at a lower level, and the discussion documents are of a more varied nature, for example some minutes, semi-official correspondence both with posts and other government departments, papers of the Permanent Under-Secretary's Committee, briefs for the Secretary of State and the Prime Minister and memoranda for the Cabinet. We are able to use all of these. In practice therefore we are able to illuminate those aspects of policy formulation which take place within an official context or which have an official impact. An example of the latter is the Labour Party pamphlet on European Unity, published in 1950, the story of which is documented in the Schuman Plan volume.

Editing by theme and topic enables us to concentrate upon the major issues of policy. There is of course sometimes a difference between what, after the passage of time, historians consider to be the important landmarks of policy and those problems and crises which at the time greatly preoccupied policy makers but which historians have consigned to a lesser place in their assessments of the past. For example the question of access to Berlin was initially regarded as a matter of low priority: as we all know it dramatically increased in importance and still remains a vital concern. Before the

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summer of 1950 the division of Korea was not regarded as a key issue of Asian diplomacy and was dealt with at a relatively low level in the Foreign Office. On the other hand in 1945-46 there was high level consideration of the American desire for bases in British Commonwealth territories which had to be documented for its effect on Anglo-American relations but was an issue which quickly faded out. On this matter our aim is to strike a balance but in the last resort our documents can only reflect the archive and this in its turn reflects the priorities and preoccupations of the policy makers.

The Problem of the Archive

Miss Clay has given a lively account of the problem of the archive from the administrator's standpoint. Before turning to the historian's angle we should like to pay a tribute to the very high standard to which the FCO Records Administration works. Though there have in the past been occasions when over zealous weeders have exceeded their instructions - the classic example is the loss of Ramsay MacDonald's draft on the Zinoviev Letter - in our view Records Branch does a very difficult job with a patient understanding of the needs of historians.

The basic problem for historians working in the postwar FCO archives is sheer size. For our period of 1945-1955 the number of papers coming into the Foreign Office climbed from just over 540,000 to over 570,000, peaking at 630,000 in 1950 when the Foreign Office's responsibilities for German administration swelled the bulk.

The FCO is the successor department not only of the Foreign Office but also of the Colonial and Commonwealth Relations Offices, and in accordance with the Parliamentary announcement of 1973 documents from these Departments are included where appropriate. There is in fact a good deal of overlapping of papers between these Departments, which can be helpful in filling gaps. Since our Series is focused on foreign policy, we follow our mandate to 'keep the work within manageable proportions' by concentrating on Foreign Office documents.

For our decade the main FO political class, FO 371, contains nearly 75,000 pieces, rising to not far short of 80,000 when other strictly Foreign Office classes such as Private Office Papers, Cultural Relations and Information, FO 800,924 and 953, are included. In addition the archives of the British Element of the Control Commission, listed in the bracket of classes FO 1005-1082, contain over 30,000 pieces, while the Control Office for Germany and Austria contributes a further 6,000 pieces in classes FO 935-46. All this explains at the outset why we have to be selective in our plan for documentation, which has to be restricted to key areas for British policy.

Let me give some idea of the problems for one volume. We hope that Volume V of Series I, covering Western Europe for the last five months of 1945, is something of a special case. The number of jackets for the main relevant Departments is nearly 6,000 for Central, covering Germany and Austria, and over 7,000 for Western, including Italy. Adding a guess for other Departments partially used, such as Economic and

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Northern, brings our figure up to 15,000. Bearing in mind that most jackets contain more than one document we reckon that consideration of 30,000 documents for this one volume is probably an underestimate.

We realise that we are fortunate in having unique facilities for making a systematic search of this vast and intricate archive. We do our best to use it as fully as possible for the benefit of historians, but these figures tell their own story of the pressures of selection. Nevertheless the archive itself inevitably contains many documents where the same facts or views are repeated in different forms. One service which we can provide is to avoid duplication and select the best formulations for our readers.

In addition we have to go to the Cabinet Office archives for a full collection of Cabinet material from 1948 onwards, and in any case a trawl through these archives, and those in the PREM collection of Prime Ministers' papers, is necessary to add both important material not included in the FCO archives and particular items which can add depth to our coverage. A similar trawl is also required in the archives of any other Government department especially concerned in the subject being covered - for example, Treasury and Board of Trade papers for the Schuman Plan volume. Obviously time forbids our scanning all the archives in Whitehall and we have to restrict ourselves to a quick plunge into those of the greatest relevance.

There are also the lesser problems of tracing papers. The main finding aids are the PRO shelf-lists and the Main Index. We are fortunate that there are still some useful registers, especially after 1950 when a more logical filing system was introduced. We reckon that we can usually, if not quite always, find what we are seeking, and that our archives are easier to find one's way through than many others.

8 How we start: the Concept of the Group of Documents

It has long been recognized within Historical Branch that the challenge of the vast bulk of modem archives can only be met by adapting the successful style which the Editors of D. B. F. P. evolved. Experience has shown, as explained in the Introduction to the Second Series of D. B. P. O., printed in Volume I of that Series, that the editorial approach to selection must be to groups of documents rather than to individual documents. The idea of employing calendars, printed below substantive documents and briefly indicating the contents of related documents or runs of documents, together with copies on microfiche of the calendared documents, was the formula proposed by Rohan Butler, who made the first use of them in the Potsdam volume. Since then as work on the Series has proceeded we have had to make new developments.

A further adaptation from D. B. F. P. has also become necessary since it has become apparent that the high cost of printing has made the old style of generous selection unacceptably expensive. We have found that there are not only marketing but also practical advantages in producing slimmer volumes, dealing with a manageable number of documents, thus speeding production. By use of microfiches and extracts or summaries of further documents in footnotes we can cover as many documents as in

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the traditional fat volumes, and can exploit the cheapness of microfiches to keep the overall cost down. Having embarked on these slimmer volumes selection for printing becomes an extremely rigorous process.

The treatment has to be flexible, determined by the nature of the topics covered as well as by the documents which record them. Thus a volume on Conferences, such as Series I, Volume H, does not use many calendars because supporting documents will probably fit better in the subsequent geographical volumes.

The political differences between the period immediately after the war and the latter part of our decade inevitably call for rather different editing techniques, though we keep in close touch to make sure that the editorial principles do not diverge. Thus the early volumes of Series I have to combine treatment of major foreign policy questions, such as peace treaties, with that of issues arising from clearing up after a world war, for example relief and refugees, which involved delicately balanced decisions of politics and humanity in allocation of resources.

By the late 1940s the pattern of world affairs had settled down in the sense that foreign policy dealt with more conventional political and politico-economic issues. The major example here is that the German question had lost the administrative aspect of day-to- day control and was becoming one of relations with Germany as well as diplomatic exchanges about Germany. Nevertheless the outbreak of war in the Far East in June 1950 has presented different documentary problems, with the blurring of the demarcation line between political and military considerations calling for new editorial techniques.

If we try to explain how we tackle a new volume it may clarify our thinking for you. Let us take as an example Series I, Volume V. Having established the foundations of this Series by dealing with the major postwar conferences of 1945 - Potsdam, Foreign Ministers and Attlee-Truman - in Volumes I-II, and relations with the United States in Volumes III-1V, policy on Germany was the obvious next step. It followed that we should include a treatment of other Western European countries since a basic problem for Britain was the allocation of scarce resources as between the British Zone of Germany and the liberated countries. The next decision was that in the light of the many cross connexions it was better to print the documents in a single series than to divide them into topical chapters.

The next question was the time span. Though a final decision need not be taken until a late stage, we try to work towards a clear historical break. In this case the Reparation Plan of March 1946 would be a good target, but looking at two cupboards bulging with photocopies of papers for August to December 1945 we realised that it would be a struggle to get through to the end of the year, even with a ruthless selection, within the new limits which we have set ourselves.

With this plan in mind our procedure is to trawl through our collection of photocopies, from a very full reading of the relevant archives, to eliminate the least important

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documents and begin putting together groups of related documents. We try at this stage to make a provisional assessment as to which to print, with candidates for noting and calendaring attached behind. Groups of documents of secondary interest are collected separately for reconsideration when we have completed our main selection.

The next stage is to reassess our groups. We first look at them from the point of view of estimating whether we are likely to be within our limits of size, and if not, whether we should, in the light of the historical significance of the documents, deliberately go over the top or split the volume into two or whether we could make economies. The next task, which is perhaps the most important and interesting aspect of editing, is taking the final decision as to which documents to print.

The criteria here are many and the choices involved most difficult. This is the point which stimulates the most discussion between Editor and Assistant Editor. Some documents seem to say 'Print me' as they have the kind of quality one instinctively recognizes as especially illuminating. Unfortunately these are not as frequent as we would wish, and at the other end of the spectrum sometimes a choice has to be made from a group of documents, none of which is wholly satisfactory. In some cases documents are selected because they are of such a high level that they cannot be ignored, for example relevant Cabinet minutes or papers, or reports of conversations with important foreign statesmen. Occasionally, if such records are discursive or of inordinate length we print an extract and calendar the remainder. Other documents cover a lot of ground in condensed form; these may be high level - Cabinet minutes are often very good here - or low level as when a junior has written a good brief for his senior. Others are descriptive, setting a scene, and giving the reader a little relief from more technical material. We also like to give a selection of the varied types of documents on which the Foreign Office worked.

In this context Foreign Office minutes are documents which like all others must be treated on their merits. If they contribute something worth while we use them; if they do not we ignore them. The exceptions are the rather rare minutes by the Secretary of State, which we quote in footnotes if they have something to reveal about his thinking.

There is also the question of balance, as for instance on the practical level, between documents coming into and being despatched by the Foreign Office, and between policy decisions and their implementation. Far more important, and indeed basic to our whole concept of impartiality, is the political balance which may be between the good and bad aspects of British policy, or between favourable and unfavourable presentation of foreign Governments, whether regarded as friendly to the United Kingdom or not.

We make no apologies for returning to this point because we know that acceptance of the validity of our evidence depends on the impartiality of our presentation. This informs not only our handling of the broad sweep of policy but also the care we take to ensure that we have fully understood what a summarized document says and have made an accurate precis of its salient arguments. Thus the style of editorial matter tends to be studiously flat, avoiding innuendoes. Jokes come in inverted commas. The only

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exceptions are our prefaces where we permit ourselves the luxury of giving some pointers to conclusions which might be drawn. Ultimately the volumes exist to tell a story and we must select for printing documents which take this along in a way which clarifies for the reader a confusing medley of discussion and events.

Having chosen the documents for printing - and the decision on what not to print is often agonising - the next stage is to decide which of the subsidiary ones in each group will be summarized or quoted in footnotes, which will be calendared for microfiches and which will be rejected. We ask ourselves such questions as how much of the document in question do we need to use; is the information in which we are interested too complicated to be reduced to the bare bones of a calendar, alternatively is it going to be worth the reader's paying for a microfiche when the essence could go into a short footnote; on the other hand is a long footnote going to hold up the flow of the story in the printed document. Broadly speaking we footnote documents when we have to use so much that there is nothing worth leaving for the microfiche.

We are not, however, always thinking in terms of individual subsidiary documents. Very often the decision to calendar is unavoidable when we have a supporting group of documents on an aspect of the subject which we are treating. Here footnoting would probably be long, whereas a calendar, sometimes introduced by a footnote which can include information not appropriate for a calendar, seems to be the convenient way to carry the story forward. On the other hand sometimes we feel that the topic covered in a subsidiary group has ceased to be significant. In this case it may appear appropriate to handle it in what we call a 'write-off note', which may give a brief indication of what happened or may merely state where further correspondence can be found.

Although the reader of the printed volume may not wish to read the calendared documents in full in the microfiches it remains the policy of the Editors that he should be given a sufficient indication of their contents to gain an impression of what they record so that he is not deprived of a significant episode in the story. We feel that it is essential that the reader should be conscious that the printed material is buttressed by an organised substructure of supporting evidence in the microfiches. Inevitably much of this material is of a specialist or technical kind. At the same time the calendars should leave something new for the reader of the microfiches. We strive to achieve the happy mean, especially by choosing key quotations which give the flavour of the documents from which they come. Often we use a chain of calendars or occasionally a very long calendar to bridge the gap between the printed documents. We try to avoid the last calendar on an earlier document overlapping in chronology the first on a later one on the subject.

Such is the complexity of the documentation that we find it necessary from the early stages of editing to begin compiling the chapter summaries and index for our own use. Because we ourselves are using our straightforward index of main subjects and persons as a working tool we hope it is providing our readers as well as ourselves with essential information. It is perhaps worth mentioning that the index for the Potsdam volume is incorporated in the index in Volume II of Series I. We remain convinced that these two aids, one at the beginning and one at the end of each volume, provide the best

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practicable help for readers with different requirements. At some stage we shall have to consider the question whether some finding aid for the Series as a whole may be needed.

9 Sensitive Papers

As set out in the Parliamentary announcement of the Series, and repeated in each volume published, a special procedure has been devised for papers which remain sensitive. By this procedure 'microcopies of these calendared documents will be available for purchase, except in exceptional cases where it is necessary on security grounds to restrict the availability of a particular document, as will be indicated in the text of the calendars'. This procedure was agreed in order to avoid damaging confrontation between the Editors and the FCO and is an insurance to both parties. As Editors we accept this need to protect the national interest and we believe that this is understood by our readers.

As explained in their Prefaces the Editors have the right to see papers retained here under Section 3(4) or closed at the Public Record Office under Section 5(1) of the Public Records Act of 1958. Such access does not, however, give them the right to use such material. Sanction for its use has to be sought from the relevant Political Department or other authority. The Editors have also the right to ask for enquiries to be made on their behalf where they consider that there is a gap in the documentation. Such a case arose in respect of Mr Attlee's talks with Mr Truman in Washington in November 1945, documented in Volume II of Series I. No records of the main conversations on atomic energy were traced.

When the Editors wish to use a withheld document they have to weigh up how to obtain the maximum for their readers without incurring a veto from the FCO, which would bring into operation the special procedure, which both the Editors and the FCO are anxious to avoid.

The first choice is obviously to print the document in full. If the Editors consider that they have a good case and that publication would not be damaging to the national interest, which is the criterion, they request this. If, however, permission to print or calendar is not forthcoming the fall-back positions are either to print the document with omissions accompanied by an acknowledging footnote, as in the Potsdam volume, or to summarize the document in a footnote. Such a footnote, which has to be cleared with the FCO, must give a balanced summary of the document, to take some account of what cannot be revealed in detail. If such a summary is not acceptable then the special procedure cannot be avoided.

In practice the Editors have found that it does not follow that retained documents are of historical significance. For example, many contain trivial but wounding comments on foreign statesmen still in public life. In any case, very few of those that we have seen have contained essential information not already available in an open file. So far editorial requests to use these few have been accepted.

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The FCO has only once exercised its right to refuse an editorial request. This arose in relation to Volume IV of Series I. Documentation on the question of Belize has had to be omitted and the Editors have therefore for the first time had to use the special procedure for a calendar without the accompanying microfiched documents. This has been indicated by square brackets on calendar i to No. 6. The relevant Department of the FCO did, however, accept a wording for the calendar which gave some indication of the scope of the withheld documents.

Such restriction is naturally very disappointing for the Editors. Conscious that their work is incomplete until the documents are released, the Editors will continue to make representations to this end. At the same time they recognise that the procedure preserves them from wrangles with the FCO, which could be as damaging to the Series as were those of Gooch and Temperley, while enabling them to keep faith with their readers by acknowledging the omission and giving at least some indication of what has had to be omitted.

As stated in the preface to each volume we do not have access either to personnel or intelligence material, although the decisions which we document may well have been based on reports which draw on such material. It is interesting to note that in this respect we stand on the same ground as the Editors of F. R. U. S. in the State Department.

The Editors consider that it is only fair to the FCO to record that in every case which has arisen their own appreciation of the political standpoint of the FCO has been matched by a parallel understanding of the historical position by the great majority of the officials concerned.

10 The Future

We began by referring to fruitful collaboration between the Government and the historical profession. We hope that Dr Barnes's introduction and this paper will have given a better understanding of how this collaboration works in respect of the historians here. When this Series was approved the FCO believed that the best way of publishing the British viewpoint was through giving us the customary freedom to print the good and the bad. As we have recorded, they have in only one case in the thousands of documents published in our six volumes and their microfiches laid any restriction on us. The fact that it is only in relation to the few sensitive documents that the FCO has any say confirms what we said earlier about the Editors continuing to enjoy the customary freedom of selection and arrangement. We believe that the mutual trust which today exists between us and the Office is greatly beneficial to the study of history, and the hope for the future is that we can proceed with making the documents available as fast as possible.

Roger Bullen Margaret Pelly

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NOTES

The Editors of D. B. F. P. were Professor EL Woodward, Dr R Butler, Mr JPT Bury, Professor WN Medlicott, Professor D Dakin and Miss ME Lambert (Mrs Pelly).

2 See ME Pelly, 'The selection of documents for the F. C. O. Series on British Foreign Policy: A Great Enterprise 1924-1985' in RB Smith and AJ Stockwell (Eds. ), British Policy and the Transfer of Power in Asia: Documentary Perspectives (London: S. O. A. S. 1987), pp 12-18.

3 See Keith A Hamilton, 'The Pursuit of "Enlightened Patriotism"; the British Foreign Office and Historical Researchers during the Great War and its Aftermath', to be published in Historical Research: the Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research.

4 See Frank Eyck, GP Gooch: A Study in History and Politics (London, 1982), Chapter 10.

5 Headlam-Morley subsequently edited Volume XI, The Outbreak of War, for Gooch and Temperley.

6 Open letter from Austen Chamberlain to RW Seton-Watson published in The Times, 3 December 1924.

7 Parl. Debs., 5th ser., H. of C., vol. 398, cols 1408-9.

8 Sir A Douglas-Home's statement on 2 July 1973 is printed in Parl. Debs., 5th ser., H. of C., vol. 859, cols. 45-6.

9 The Times, 21 November 1932, p. 13.

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26

THE ROOSEVELT PEACE PLAN OF JANUARY 1938

From 1974-1984 I was privileged to work with the then Senior Editor of D. B. F. P., Professor W. N. Medlicott, on the second series of that publication. During those years I assisted with the editing of eight volumes, covering the years 1933-8: apart from (although in some sense including) the final two volumes, which dealt with Far Eastern affairs, our work was dominated by a study of the developing European situation leading up to the war. In the preparation of all eight volumes the relationship between Neville Chamberlain, as Chancellor of the Exchequer and then Prime Minister, and the Foreign Office, and, from December 1935, his relationship more specifically with Anthony Eden as Foreign Secretary, occupied a great many of my waking hours for ten years.

On the Eden/Chamberlain relationship much has been written and I do not intend to go back over this well-trodden ground. I would however like to consider here a particular episode, the abortive initiative by President Roosevelt in January 1938 to call a sort of world peace conference, not so much from the viewpoint of its significance in the deterioration of the Eden/Chamberlain relationship, but to examine to what extent the positions the two men adopted over this episode can be shown by the documentary evidence to have been justified.

To recap briefly the course of events: on 11 January 1938 the U. S. Under-Secretary of State, Sumner Welles, delivered to the British Ambassador in Washington, Sir Ronald Lindsay, a message from President Roosevelt for Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain. The President, impressed by'the danger of general conflagration with all its disastrous results', and by the tendency of smaller states to gravitate towards the dictatorships, had devised a scheme designed to lay 'the practical foundations for peace'. He proposed, if the British response were favourable, to 'warn confidentially' the French, German and Italian Governments of this scheme on 20 January, and to summon the entire diplomatic corps to the White House on 22 January to announce the details: therefore, he required an assurance of the 'cordial approval and whole-hearted support' of H. M. Government by 17 January; in other words, within five days of the receipt of his message in the Foreign Office.!

The text of the President's message was despatched from Washington by Sir Ronald Lindsay in the early hours of 12 January and arrived in London later that morning. Roosevelt spoke of a world where people 'live in constant fear and where physical and economic security for the individual are lacking' (incidentally, Chamberlain underlined this part of the message, commenting: 'Germans & Italians will laugh at this'2), and suggested that all governments should strive to 'reach an unanimous agreement' upon four points: first, on the 'essential and fundamental principles which should be observed in international relations'; secondly, on ways of

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limiting and reducing armaments; thirdly, 'equal and effective' access to raw materials, and, fourthly, the rights and obligations of Governments on land and sea in time of war.

The President concluded his message by acknowledging that agreement on the four principles might not alone be sufficient to ensure the maintenance of peace: certain 'international adjustments' must be found 'through pacification of the universe', in order to remove inequities which may have been caused by the settlements reached after the First World War. He also referred to the well-known 'traditional policy of freedom from political involvement which U. S. Government has maintained and will maintain'. If he received support for his plan, the President, while disclaiming the intention of a world peace conference, proposed to invite certain governments, listed as Sweden, the Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Turkey and three Latin American Governments, to negotiate in Washington on the four principles. 3

The impact of Roosevelt's initiative on the Eden/Chamberlain relationship is well documented: Chamberlain, in charge of the Foreign Office while Eden was on holiday in the South of France, thought that Roosevelt's rather vague if well-intentioned proposals would interfere with his own plans for bilateral and specific negotiations with Italy and Germany. In particular, he was at this point in urgent correspondence with Eden regarding the possibility, under discussion since the summer of 1937, of entering into conversations with Italy. Talks were desirable because of the implications of an improved Anglo-Italian relationship for the peace of the Mediterranean region, but were contemplated in the knowledge that Mussolini was certain to demand de jure recognition of his conquest of Ethiopia as the price of his agreement to negotiate. Both Eden and Chamberlain were well aware of the difficulties such a move would present, particularly with regard to the League of Nations, but Chamberlain, receiving indications from Rome that Mussolini was in an amenable mood, was willing to meet such difficulties head on if it meant talks could start. He explained this to Roosevelt when, ignoring Lindsay's advice to give a 'very quick and very cordial acceptance' to the initiative, 4 he despatched a polite but unenthusiastic reply, asking the President to defer his plans for a whiles

Chamberlain did not consult Eden before sending this reply on 13 January, although he agreed that Eden should be summoned home on 14 January in anticipation of a further communication from the President. I would like to add here that while it is undoubtedly true that Chamberlain could have consulted Eden by telegraph and deliberately did not do so because he knew what the latter's reaction would be, there was a sound diplomatic reason for hesitation in summoning him home: Eden was supposed to be meeting the French Foreign Minister, Yvon Delbos, on 16 January, and to cancel the meeting would certainly beg awkward questions with the French; after all, Roosevelt had been insistent on the 'utmost secrecy' of his initiative and had indeed asked that the matter should only be considered by Chamberlain himself. While this was clearly not practical, hints to the French Minister would have been tantamount to broadcasting the text of the plan from the roof of the Palais des Nations in Geneva. The fall of the French Government on 14 January solved that problem. 6

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In response to a cryptic telephone call from the Permanent Under Secretary, Sir Alexander Cadogan, on the morning of 14 January, Eden left Grasse before the papers sent out to him concerning the initiative arrived, and was back in England on the 15th. On seeing the reply Chamberlain had sent to Roosevelt he expressed dismay, to say the least of it. Before talking to Chamberlain he sent a message to Lindsay at 2.30 a. m. on 16 January to the effect that he hoped the President would not take the British reply as discouraging7, and later that day crossed swords with the Prime Minister at Chequers. 8 Their disagreement led to four meetings of the Cabinet Foreign Policy Committee and a threat to resign by Eden which clearly shook Chamberlain and led him to agree to the despatch of telegrams on 21 January asking Roosevelt to go ahead with his scheme after all. Nothing became of the plan, but the whole episode brought relations between Foreign Secretary and Prime Minister to a point from which they never recovered, and contributed directly to Eden's resignation in February.

Why did Roosevelt's initiative cause such violent disagreement between Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary? It will be clear from the phrases which I have already quoted that the President's scheme, while possessing some grandeur of vision, was both cautious as regards American commitment and general in the extreme, showing all the signs of what Professor Donald Cameron Watt has succintly termed the 'delicious naivete' of Roosevelt's thinking. 9

This is not just the judgment of hindsight: of the small circle in the know about the initiative all were agreed as to its vagueness. Anthony Eden himself summed up the position in his memoirs: 'To Chamberlain Roosevelt's initiative seemed naive and woolly. To me also it might be both of those things but this did not weigh a feather in the scale beside the significance of an American intervention in Europe at this moment. 'lo The latter point was the hub of the disagreement. Chamberlain's views are best represented by his much quoted remark that 'It is always best & safest to count on nothing from the Americans except words. ' i1 Eden's view was that what mattered was not the terms of Roosevelt's scheme but the fact that it was proposed at all, because it indicated a willingness for the United States to depart even slightly from its isolationist standpoint. The European situation was clearly volatile, and Britain was equally clearly unable to contemplate hostilities with all three of her potential enemies, Japan, Germany and Italy. Therefore, he reasoned, to discourage any form of benevolent intervention on the part of the United States was to commit the gravest folly.

In the last fifty years it has on the whole been Eden's view which has carried the day in historiographical terms. The episode is set out at length in his memoirs, and his verdict that Chamberlain's initial reply to the President caused irreparable damage has been repeated in many other works. As recently as last year Robert Rhodes James, Eden's latest biographer, expressed the extreme view that 'there can be few more calamitous documents in modern international politics'. 12 By reference to the documents printed in Volumes XIX and XXI of D. B. F. P., Second Series, I would like to refute that view by demonstrating two points: one, that this episode must be set in the context of a much wider Anglo-American relationship, and cannot be properly understood without reference in particular to the situation in the Far East in January 1938, and to a series of

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very confidential correspondence which was in progress between Foreign Office and State Department regarding the exchange of information on the European situation. The

second point is that Chamberlain's reply to Roosevelt's initiative, while affording the President a degree of personal disappointment, was by no means regarded as a rebuff by him or by the State Department, and that the explanations of his attitude offered by the Prime Minister were regarded as entirely satisfactory on the American side. Within this second point the question of the de jure recognition of the Italian conquest of Ethiopia, which became the focus of the Eden/Chamberlain row, can be put in its proper perspective.

Roosevelt's initiative has usually been discussed in a European context. It was, however, the situation in the Far East which appeared most threatening at the turn of 1938, and the evidence suggests that it was events in the Far East, or rather the point reached in Anglo-American discussions on those events, which prompted the timing of Roosevelt's initiative. On 10 January, the day before Welles delivered Roosevelt's message to Lindsay, a meeting took place between the President, Secretary of State Cordell Hull and Sumner Welles as a result of which Sir Ronald Lindsay was informed of the measures the U. S. Government were prepared to take in response to British requests for some form of joint naval show of force against Japan. Successive acts of aggression against British and American interests in the Far East since July 1937 by Japan, perpetrated in the pursuance of her war against China, had brought the British Government by December to serious consideration of some form of naval action. The Nine Power Conference held at Brussels in November to consider the conflict had produced little positive result - merely an affirmation that 'a prompt suspension of hostilities in the Far East would be in the best interests not only of China and Japan, but of all nations'13 (thereby rather justifying Chamberlain's verdict that the conference had been a 'complete waste of time'14). A number of approaches had been made to the Americans with a view to concerted action, largely prompted by Eden but with the agreement of the Cabinet including Chamberlain, although the latter stressed that it must be made clear 'that we were prepared to send a force to the Far East but that we should not act unless the United States were willing to do so'. 15

Despite the despatch of a U. S. naval officer, Captain Ingersoll, to London in the New Year for staff talks -a visit which Eden, according to his Private Secretary Oliver Harvey, called 'the most important thing that had happened and what he had been working for for years', 16 and which prompted him to curtail his holiday plans - the American response had been uniformly disappointing. Hopes raised by President Roosevelt's famous speech of 5 October 1937 suggesting putting aggressor powers in 'quarantine' 17 -a concept later disclaimed with some embarrassment by Norman Davis, U. S. Delegate at the Brussels Conferencei8 - were not fulfilled in the ensuing three months, despite a series of provocative Japanese actions culminating in the sinking of the U. S. gunboat Panay on the Yangtse on 12 December. This last incident prompted even Chamberlain to speculate whether the Americans might be 'nearer to "doing something" than I have ever known them', 19 but on 13 December Lindsay reported that the incident had not produced the 'violent reaction' in the United States which would be necessary for public opinion to recognise the need for action,

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and by 7 January he reported that the prevailing feeling was one of relief that a prompt apology by Japan had ended the crisis: 'People have over-persuaded themselves that termination of the incident has been satisfactory. '20

The Ingersoll talks also proved disappointing: as Sir Alexander Cadogan put it, the Captain seemed 'nice and his instructions seem to be helpful, but even he seems not clear on the objective'21 of the conversations, except that he was quite clear that the United States 'could not take certain steps unless war was declared'. 22 A telegram was received from Lindsay on 10 January reporting that in response to the question whether, if the British Government were to publicly announce that they were 'completing certain naval preparations' - in other words all but actual mobilisation - they could expect any parallel American action, the answer was that in that case it

would be announced that the U. S. Pacific fleet vessels were to have their bottoms

scraped and the date of manoeuvres advanced by two or three weeks. This answer confirmed Chamberlain in the view which he had voiced four months earlier in relation to the quarantine speech: that Roosevelt had no intention of doing anything that was not 'perfectly safe'. Although on 7 January he had written to his sister Hilda that he wished the Japanese would'beat up an American or two', but that'of course the little d-v-ls are too cunning for that and we may eventually have to act alone & hope the Yanks will follow before it's too late', 23 it seems clear that this sentiment was inspired by news of the beating up of British officers by Japanese soldiers in Shanghai, and Lindsay's

report of 10 January restored him to his customary cautious vein: in a minute of 11 January to Sir A. Cadogan he favoured strong representations to the Japanese Government rather than placing any hopes in Anglo-American cooperation; there was no point in asking the Americans to 'commit themselves to any specific action in hypothetical circumstances'. In the Foreign Office Mr. Charles Orde of the Far Eastern Department also spelt out the implications of the American reply: 'Drydocking will not commit the U. S. Govt. politically as much as a statement by us about naval preparations. '24

At the end of the telephone call in which Sumner Welles informed Lindsay of the verdict on U. S. naval preparations he also asked the Ambassador for a confidential meeting at the British Embassy the following day: this was to deliver the President's 'peace plan'. Reading the Washington telegrams of 10 to 12 January in sequence, both from the Far Eastern and the American files, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that President Roosevelt launched his plan on 11 January at least partly to mitigate the impression created by the negative nature of his response to a direct British appeal for joint action, and also to avoid the necessity for a blunter refusal of any further British requests by distracting international attention with a scheme which would sound impressive while obviating the need for unacceptable U. S. involvement. It is interesting that in his published diaries Oliver Harvey, despite his feeling that'we should never be forgiven' if we turned Roosevelt down, felt bound to record as an argument against the scheme 'the unsatisfactory way in which the Far East seems to be fading out of [Roosevelt's] interest just when we are getting to grips with the Far Eastern problem'. 25

31

American caution in embracing any scheme which might directly engage her interests was also demonstrated in that same week in January in relation to the report by the Belgian Prime Minister, M. van Zeeland, on his mission of enquiry, begun in June 1937, into the possibility of reaching international agreement on economic policies. The draft report, discussed by van Zeeland and Chamberlain on 7 January, recommended a general reduction of tariffs and proposed an international conference to reach agreement on general principles. Chamberlain's reaction was favourable, but he demurred at the suggestion that the United States, United Kingdom and France should invite Germany and Italy to the conference, which he felt would put the dictators' backs up - an objection which he was to repeat in relation to the Roosevelt plan a few days later. His attitude was supported on this occasion by Mr. Butterworth of the U. S. Embassy, who stated on 12 January that his Government would find difficulty in some details of the report, such as the proposal for a Common Fund to maintain exchanges, and must reserve its position on the 'method and extent' of U. S. participation, preferring Chamberlain's idea of a personal visit by van Zeeland to Washington, Berlin and Rome to test the water. 26

It will be seen that the American reaction to the van Zeeland report coincided exactly with Roosevelt's peace plan initiative: indeed, his message to Chamberlain contained the statement that the van Zeeland report appeared to the U. S. Government to 'lack those elements of reality which alone could hold out the promise of successful accomplishment', and offered to democratic States 'insufficient assurance that they will secure their quid pro quo'. Chamberlain could well have used similar terms to describe the President's plan. It is not hard to see why, in the light not only of his own long- held opinions as to the worth of American wordy sentiments, but also of the evidence received that very week to support those opinions, Chamberlain was not inclined to take Roosevelt's approach particularly seriously, or rather, to see in it any hope of constructive action. Since he was himself at that time confident that he had viable schemes in preparation for agreement with both Italy and Germany, he was irritated at the prospect of having them cut across by a plan which he considered had no chance of success.

Eden was also well aware of the shortcomings of Roosevelt's plan but felt that, as he put it in his memoirs, 'at the worst [it] could gain us time and bring the United States a little nearer to a divided Europe'. 27 In January 1938 he also had a particular reason to think that the Americans were taking an increasing interest in European affairs. Since November 1937 the Foreign Office and the State Department had been conducting a very secret correspondence at a high level. Beginning with a request from Cordell Hull to Lindsay on 16 November for information on 'the precise relations now existing between Germany, Italy and Japan'28 (a reference to the adherence on 5 November of Italy to the anti-Comintern Pact), the State Department went on in the next two months to ask for (and receive) a full account of the interview between Hitler and Lord Halifax on 19 November, and information on the position of Roumania, the internal Soviet situation, Soviet aid to China, the Spanish civil war and other subjects. On each occasion the State Department official involved - usually Hull or Welles - stressed the importance of a frank exchange of information between the British and American

32

Governments, an opinion endorsed on each occasion by Lindsay, together with a warning of the need for secrecy: 'please remember that this growing intimacy is a delicate plant which will be blasted by the first breath of publicity'. 29

From the outset the State Department spelt out their appreciation of the interrelation between the British Government's requests for naval support in the Far East and European developments. At an interview on 27 November when Lindsay pressed Welles on the question of opening staff conversations, the latter forced the British Ambassador to admit that 'owing to the situation in Europe His Majesty's Government were unable to concentrate very great Naval forces in the Far East', and said that he was more interested in receiving an answer to the request for information on the anti- Comintern pact than in discussing staff talks. 30 Lindsay handed over a statement prepared by Vansittart and approved by Eden. The Ambassador himself also appreciated the significance of the State Department's requests. In a telegram of 7 January he stated that as Sumner Welles 'always acts deliberately and with his eyes open to implications, I infer that just as we now have naval staff conversations so he would wish to have similar intimate relations between Foreign Office and State Department as regards information'. 31

The requests for information from the State Department culminated in a suggestion from Cordell Hull on 20 January - after Chamberlain's refusal of the Roosevelt peace plan - for what Lindsay considered to be a 'full exchange of diplomatic information between the two governments'. Somewhat ironically, considering the cool response given to the van Zeeland report, Hull expressed anxiety that 'State Department should have the best information on all questions so that they should not lose any opportunity of doing anything possible to help on programme of economic progress which he regarded as constructive element in effort for peace'. 32 Lindsay was clearly embarrassed at being pressed so closely on important issues of policy, but despite an arrangement that the Foreign Office would prepare a number of notes on specific issues to be communicated through the U. S. Embassy in London, Welles returned to the charge with Lindsay on 25 January, questioning him on Franco-Russian relations, the possibility of a Russo-German entente and the possible effects of German economic penetration in S. E. Europe - pertinent questions which indeed showed, as Lindsay reported, that the 'State Department is taking stock closely of political situation in Europe'.

It will be noticed that Chamberlain's response to Roosevelt's initiative did not apparently cause any check in this 'growing intimacy' between State Department and Foreign Office. Eden had naturally welcomed these signs of American interest in European affairs, although as far as can be seen from the documents he had not felt it necessary to draw this series of correspondence to the Prime Minister's attention. Nor, when the telegram reporting Hull's suggestion on 20 January for a full exchange of information was received in the Foreign Office on the morning of 21 January, the day on which Eden was once more to defend his position on the Roosevelt plan against Chamberlain in the Cabinet Foreign Policy Committee, did Eden feel it necessary to tell the Committee about it. Sir Thomas Inskip, however, let the cat out of the bag to

33

Sir Horace Wilson that morning, and a note on the text of the telegram indicates that a copy was sent to 10 Downing Street later that day in response to a telephone request. Wilson, as may be imagined, had not been slow to grasp its significance: as he noted on the copy preserved in the PREM series, the telegram 'hardly suggests that the U. S. Govt. were disposed to cease its cooperation with us as result of our caution on the President's new scheme'. 33

In a minute of 18 January for discussion with Chamberlain Eden stressed the danger that President Roosevelt, 'disappointed by our failure to support his initiative', would 'withdraw more and more into isolation. The results of our patient efforts over the last six months to build up Anglo-American cooperation would then be completely destroyed. Such an event I should regard as the greatest possible disaster to the peace of the world'. 34 Eden wrote this after reading Roosevelt's reply to Chamberlain's telegram asking him to defer his initiative for a while. I can find nothing in that reply, nor in any other of the Washington telegrams dealing with this episode, to justify such a dire prediction. It is true that Roosevelt's reply contained an admonitory paragraph regarding the harmful effect upon American public opinion which would result from British de jure recognition of the Italian position in Ethiopia, which caused Eden, according to Oliver Harvey, immediately to conclude that 'we must... decide to drop any idea of proceeding with de jure recognition in deference to Roosevelt and ... tell him that we would back his initiative in the fullest possible measure'. 35 The question of the possible de jure recognition of Ethiopia became the focus of the Eden/Chamberlain disagreement over the Roosevelt plan and is worth considering in some detail.

Steps had already been taken to ascertain the likely American reaction to such recognition in view of the possibility of an early beginning of Anglo-Italian conversations, for which Chamberlain was pressing, but to which Eden did not attach the same consequence. In a letter of 9 January to Chamberlain he stated: 'it seems to me that the big issues of this year are Anglo-American cooperation, the chances of effectively asserting white race authority in the Far East and relations with Germany. To all this Mussolini is really secondary ...

I feel sure that you will agree'. 36 Chamberlain did not agree, but he was not unmindful of the impact that recognition might have upon public opinion at home and abroad. On 7 January a telegram had been despatched to Sir Ronald Lindsay asking for his opinion as to the effect of such a step on '(a) the American public, (b) the Administration and Congress and (c) Anglo- American relations', and whether he thought that it would be a good idea to indicate to the U. S. Government in advance why we were 'compelled to this course'. Lindsay replied on 8 January that he thought it 'hardly necessary to worry much about effect in America of de jure recognition'. He anticipated some criticism amongst 'high-minded' people, but thought it likely 'that our action would be regarded as an effort to pay the necessary price of peace'. He did advise, however, taking the Administration into confidence beforehand. 37

Chamberlain acted on this advice in his reply to Roosevelt's peace plan, explaining his hopes for talks with Italy, and making it clear that the British Government would only be prepared to accord de jure recognition of Ethiopia as their contribution towards a

34

general settlement aimed at 'restoration of confidence and friendly relations' in the Mediterranean, to which the Italians must contribute in return. He then referred to plans for reaching an agreement with Germany, also on the basis of 'contributions', and asked the President to consider whether his proposed scheme might not be used by the Italians and Germans as an excuse to refuse bilateral negotiations, thereby blocking progress 'which over recent months we have laboriously worked out, and for which we feel the stage has at last been set in not too unfavourable a manner'. 38

Lindsay delivered Chamberlain's reply to Sumner Welles on 14 January. The latter 'indicated approval of various passages in the message by nodding', saying that it 'certainly conveyed just the kind of information that was desired'. With regard to de jure recognition, he explained that the U. S. Government could not alter its position which it also maintained with regard to Japan and Manchuria, but he understood that the British Government 'might be forced to it' and expressed 'no particular concern'. 39 Cordell Hull spoke more strongly to Lindsay on 17 January, suggesting that recognition 'would have a very unfortunate effect indeed in America just in the direction he most wished to prevent', 40 and in his reply to Chamberlain on 18 January the President also warned of the possible effect of recognition on American public opinion, but he envisaged that it could be 'regarded as an accomplished fact' under conditions which differed from Chamberlain's only in referring to 'world', rather than Mediterranean appeasement. 41

Chamberlain felt that American misgivings could be countered by concrete arguments. Eden disagreed, arguing that a close Anglo-American relationship was of paramount importance and would strengthen the British bargaining position. A compromise was reached in Cabinet Committee on 21 January as a result of which four telegrams were despatched to Washington, one of which set out in detail Chamberlain's arguments on de jure recognition, expressing agreement with the President's view that it should 'only be dealt with as an integral measure for world appeasement', but warning that to risk missing an opportunity for relaxing tension in the Mediterranean would seem to be 'incurring a grave responsibility especially at a time when events in the Far East may at any moment make new demands upon our resources'. 42 In view of the recent exchanges on the Far East mentioned earlier, this was a sting in the tail, and, according to Chamberlain's diary, 'had the effect desired by me'. 43 On 22 January Welles offered the opinion that Chamberlain's statement on de jure recognition would make 'a good impression on the President', and expressed 'relief to find that it would only be contemplated 'as part of general settlement with Italy and therefore not in the immediate future ...

President regarded recognition as an unpleasant pill which we should both have to swallow and he wished that we should both swallow it together. His Majesty's Government wished to swallow it in a general settlement with Italy and the President in a general settlement involving world appeasement'. 44

As far as the United States was concerned this was the end of the story. Questioned by Lindsay on the 'functions and objects' of Roosevelt's plan, Welles offered 'nothing but generalities' and the opinion that he 'did not expect the President would launch his plan during the present session of the Council of the League'. Within the British

35

Government, it soon became clear that relations between Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary had been irretrievably damaged. Both had good reasons for taking the standpoints they did over this episode, the relative merits of which cannot be discussed here, although I would like to quote Cadogan's comment on them both written on 15 January: 'I think [Eden] exaggerates as much one way as P. M. does on other. '45 All I hope to have done is to draw attention to some perhaps rather less well-known documentary evidence which illustrates their differing perceptions of the world situation during the first two weeks of 1938.

Gillian Bennett

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NOTES

1 Documents on British Foreign Policy 1919-1939, Second Series, Volume XIX (HMSO, 1982), Nos. 422-3.

2 Ibid., No. 423, note 3. 3 Ibid., No. 424. 4 Ibid., No. 425. 5 Ibid., No. 430. 6 The Diplomatic Diaries of Oliver Harvey 1937-40 (ed. John Harvey, London,

1970), p. 68. 7 D. B. F. P., op. cit., No. 443. 8 See the account of their interview in Lord Avon's memoirs, Facing the Dictators

(London, 1962), pp. 553-5. 9 'Roosevelt and Neville Chamberlain: two appeasers' in International Journal,

vol. xxviii, 1972-3. 10 Facing the Dictators, p. 557. 11 D. B. F. P., Second Series, Volume XXI (HMSO, 1984), No. 431, note 4. 12 Robert Rhodes James, Anthony Eden (London, 1986), p. 188. 13 D. B. F. P., Second Series, Volume XXI, No. 391. 14 Volume XIX, No. 319, note 11. 15 Volume XXI, No. 429. 16 The Diplomatic Diaries of Oliver Harvey, p. 65. 17 D. B. F. P., Second Series, Volume XIX, No. 291 and Volume XXI, No. 222. 18 Volume XXI, No. 383. 19 Ibid., No. 431. 20 Ibid., Nos. 421 and 472. 21 Ibid., No. 460, note 4. 22 Ibid., No. 462. 23 Ibid., No. 471. 24 Ibid., Nos. 478 and 480. 25 The Diplomatic Diaries of Oliver Harvey, p. 69. 26 Volume XIX, No. 440. 27 Facing the Dictators, pp. 552-3. 28 Volume XXI, No. 365. 29 Volume XIX, No. 356. 30 Volume XXI, No. 394. 31 Volume XIX, No. 413. 32 Ibid., No. 451. 33 Ibid., note 2. 34 Ibid., No. 449. 35 Ibid., note 1. 36 Ibid., No. 418. 37 Ibid., Nos. 414 and 416. 38 Ibid., No. 430.

37

39 40 41 42 43 44 45

Ibid., Nos. 435-6. Ibid., No. 444. Ibid., Nos. 446-7. Ibid., No. 458. Printed as Appendix I to Volume XIX, p. Volume XIX, Nos. 460-2. The Diaries of Sir Alexander Cadogan 1971), p. 37.

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1140.

1938-1945 (ed. D. Dilks, London,

ANTHONY EDEN AND EUROPE

NOVEMBER 1951

In November 1951 two statements were made on the same day by British Cabinet Ministers speaking in different capitals of Europe of British intentions towards schemes for European integration. The resentments, deriving from the ensuing controversy over who said what and why, went so deep as to lead to a threatened libel suit some thirteen years later and renewed searches almost twenty years after the event for some piece of paper to set the record straight. The Ministers concerned were Anthony Eden, then Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs in the new Conservative government and Sir David Maxwell Fyfe, newly appointed Home Secretary with later interventions from Harold Macmillan, then Minister of Housing and Local Government, who as he put it himself was apt to stray from his 'rabbit hutches' into the odd 'short expedition into world politics'. '

The immediate point at issue was whether Eden's remarks at a press conference in Rome about British participation in a European Army contradicted or diminished what Maxwell Fyfe had told the Council of Europe a few hours earlier at Strasbourg. Maxwell Fyfe, then Lord Kilmuir, was to claim in his memoirs, published in 1964 that this was 'the single act which, above all others, destroyed our name on the Continent'. 2 This 'single act' is set in the much wider context of the debate, still current today, over British commitment to the European idea. There is scarcely the time today to more than touch on some of the key issues in this debate as viewed from the documents of 1950-1952. For a considered overview taking the story up to 1955, I would commend to you a paper by Dr Bullen which will shortly be published in a collection of essays entitled Power in Europe. 3

My interest in the particular episode of November 1951 was originally sparked by the fact that Eden himself minded so much about it. In his recent biography Robert Rhodes James tells the story of how Eden went to the point of instructing solicitors over the draft of Kilmuir's memoirs. 4 Rhodes James also refers to the detailed account of events later commissioned by Edens as a rebuttal of the line taken in another set of memoirs - this time by Macmillan - which portrayed Eden as leading the 'tepid Europeans, more convinced of the difficulties than of the advantages' - standing in the way of the 'keen supporters of Strasbourg' led by Churchill. 6 Eden was held largely to blame for the failure of the Conservative government to take the lead in Europe which according to Macmillan and Kilmuir 'the whole of Europe was waiting for'. 7 Rhodes James tends to promote this line at the expense of the more balanced view put forward by David Carlton in his earlier biography of Eden. 8 According to his Private Secretary of the period, Evelyn Shuckburgh, these accusations rankled with

39

Eden to the end of his life. Indeed Sir Evelyn recalls in the Introduction to his Diaries how 'The very last time I saw him before his death he asked me whether I could not find, amongst my papers or my memories, material for proving the contrary '. 9

Now more than thirty years on we have the papers - what do they say?

What I have to say comes mainly from Series II ,

Volume I of D. B. P. O. which follows the Schuman Plan from 1950-1952 and draws heavily on the still closed files of Western Organisations department (WU) and the PUSC planning papers on European integration. This volume therefore contains the fullest record so far published of what actually happened.

The documents show that there was no substantive difference between what the two men said. Although less abrupt than Eden's, the Home Secretary's long and detailed statement of why Britain would not join any federal scheme for European integration was by its very nature more damning. And it was this speech which came in for most criticism at the time.

Why then all the fuss?

Mr Churchill's return to office in October 1951 excited hopes among 'Europeanists' at home and abroad for a reversal of the apparently negative attitude taken by Britain towards 'making Europe'. lo In opposition Mr Churchill, a founding father of the Council of Europe, had led Conservatives in pressing for British participation in negotiations for the Schuman Plan both in the House of Commons and at the Council of Europe. The fact that this was on terms as unacceptable to the French as those offered by the Labour government is often overlooked in memoirs of the period. In the same way Churchill's idea for a European Army put forward at Strasbourg in the summer of 1950 was quite different from the Pleven plan for a European Defence Community launched that autumn. When debating these proposals in the House of Commons in February 1951 Eden was careful to confine his support for British participation in a European Army to one based within an Atlantic framework - one which in Churchill's own words would be 'an Atlantic army with ... a European army inside of it. '11

With this Atlantic emphasis Eden and Churchill were continuing the policy of their predecessors. Bevin's 'three main pillars'12 of America, Commonwealth and Europe directly corresponds to Churchill's idea of three concentric circles in which Western Europe was the outer circle. Just as Bevin was to talk of the need to 'get away from talk about Europe. We must think in terms of the West, the Free Nations or the Free World

... The Americans were wrong to think in terms of Europe as a separate and self

contained unit'. 13 So Eden would talk in 1952 of joining a federated Europe as 'something which we know, in our bones, we cannot do'. 14 When referring to Eden 'feeling it in his bones' Evelyn Shuckburgh recounts how 'He used to say to me that if you were to open the personal mail arriving from overseas in any post office in England

40

you would find that 90 per cent of it came from beyond Europe, from Australia, Canada, India, Africa, anywhere, indeed where British soldiers and administrators had served or British families settled. How could we ignore all that? ' Shuckburgh goes on to sum up Eden's view as 'We must see ourselves as an active and enlightened European nation with a world role'. 15

The difficulty was how to take an active part in an increasingly federal-orientated Europe without forfeiting the claim to a world role based on special American and Commonwealth connections. In an economic context, the idea of settling for a world role as leader of a tightly knit European community had been considered and rejected by Labour Ministers some months before the surprise launch in May 1950 of the Schuman Plan. 16 The line of association not participation in supra-national schemes followed logically from this decision and cut across party barriers. In Churchill's own words as regards his Government's intentions towards the Schuman Plan 'They should be with it, though they could not be of it'. 17

Nonetheless Churchill's advocacy of a European Army at Strasbourg - an advocacy that Eden was to assure the Foreign Office was 'not intended to be embarrassing' 18 - and the enthusiasm for Federalism shown by certain Conservative MPs such as Duncan Sandys at the Council of Europe - did arouse expectations of a new policy on Europe when the Conservatives regained office in October 1951.

The first documents in the volume after Eden's return as Foreign Secretary show Eden keen to make a positive showing on Europe and not to seem as he put it to Rab Butler, Chancellor of the Exchequer, 'less forthcoming than our predecessors'. 19 He minuted his personal commitment to the idea of a European army but warned that he was against any supra-national authority. 20

Eden took early opportunities both at home and abroad to reaffirm the Washington Declaration on European Unity issued after Foreign Ministers talks in September. This tripartite declaration though fairly anodyne had been hailed at the time, particularly in France as evidence of a new more positive direction in British policy towards Europe. 21 The key phrase in the declaration for Britain was 'The Government of the United Kingdom desires to establish the closest possible association with the European continental community at all stages in its development'. Labour Cabinet Ministers returning from Washington congratulated themselves on having 'dissipated at last the cloud which our ambiguous attitude towards European integration has recently cast over Anglo-French relations'. 22 It was more realistically observed in the Economic Section of the Cabinet Office that since the Washington Declaration did not really represent any change in Foreign Office thinking 'it may be that the situation is even more muddled than before'. 23

The change of government did not stimulate any fundamental reappraisal of policy amongst busy officials whose first brief on European integration for the incoming Foreign Secretary was simply a recommendation to stick to the established line. 24 This

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was not challenged by incoming Ministers who, amid back bench hopes for a positive British lead at the next Council of Europe meeting in Strasbourg, began to plan the statement to be made there by Maxwell Fyfe on 28 November.

Maxwell Fyfe asked to see Eden to discuss his statement before Eden's imminent departure for tripartite talks in Paris followed by a North Atlantic Council meeting in Rome. Eden was reluctant: 'If the Home Secretary and Mr. Nutting are happy on our agreed line, that would spare me. And I really have no time before I leave Wed. But I cannot refuse if Sir David requires to see me'. 25 In the event Maxwell Fyfe made do with Nutting, the Minister of State, at a meeting on 21 November when 'it was generally agreed that a statement was desirable and that it should be as positive as possible'. 26 The text of a statement, which formed part of a much longer address by Maxwell Fyfe, was approved on the next day by the Cabinet, with Eden absent in Paris. The wording closely followed the Washington Declaration :

'His Majesty's Government recognise that the initiative taken by the French Government concerning the creation of a European coal and steel community and a European defence community is a major step towards European unity. They welcome the Schuman Plan as a means of strengthening the economy of Western Europe and look forward to its early realisation. They desire to establish the closest possible association with the European Continental Community at all stages in its development. If the Schuman Plan is ratified, His Majesty's Government will set up a permanent delegation at the seat of the Authority to enter into relations and to transact business with it'. 27

In his memoirs Macmillan claims that this wording was the result of a compromise in Cabinet between those who would have liked it warmer and those who would have preferred it to be more tepid. Cabinet minutes rarely record these kinds of differences and this case is no exception.

The Consultative Assembly session was preceded at Strasbourg by talks with American congressmen, eager to promote European federation. Their criticisms of Britain's failure to give a lead here prompted Maxwell Fyfe on the eve of his speech, to telegraph to Eden in Rome that 'we shall be under very strong pressure here during the next fortnight to define our attitude to the question of European Unity and to show our willingness to take over the leadership of the movement towards European integration'. 28 Maxwell Fyfe went on to suggest that if Eden himself could come to Strasbourg it'would be enormously appreciated by the Assembly and would be further evidence of our interest in the work of the Council of Europe'.

Eden declined and - with reference to longstanding British objections to empire building by the Council of Europe in the direction of defence - insisted 'I really ought not as Foreign Secretary to get involved in discussions of this kind in the Assembly. In

42

any event I am afraid it is physically impossible for me to go to Strasbourg at present'. 29 Strasbourg of course was not then the easiest of places to get to - there being no convenient airport nearby.

In a separate telegram Maxwell Fyfe asked the Foreign Office to keep him informed of any statement made by Eden in Rome on European integration or the European army. 30 Eden had already been informed in Rome of the statement to be made by Maxwell Fyfe and was reported as being 'favourably disposed to it'. 31

At the morning session of the Consultative Assembly on 28 November, Maxwell Fyfe took the floor. In much the same way as Eden's feeling it in his bones, he explained how in Churchill's phrase of three concentric circles Britain stood in the centre of first the Commonwealth, then America and Canada with Western Europe as the outer circle. He defined the British conception of federation as 'a decision to transfer in advance and finally certain governmental functions to a federal body with a consequent elaborately drawn separation of federal and state powers. We do not believe it is possible for a country in our position, with the responsibilities which I have mentioned, to take such a step. We do not think anyone, realist or idealist, looking at the world today would desire us to take this course. ' Turning to the Schuman Plan he went on to renew the offer of association in the terms agreed by the Cabinet. On the question of a European army he added: 'If a new organisation emerges we shall consider how best to associate ourselves with it in a practical way ...

I cannot promise you that our eventual association with the European defence community will amount to full and unconditional participation, because this, as I have said, is a matter which must, in our view, be left for inter-governmental discussion elsewhere. But I can assure you of our determination that no genuine method shall fail for lack of thorough examination which one gives to the needs of trusted comrades. '32

At a press conference later that day Maxwell Fyfe evidently protested: 'It is quite wrong to suggest that what I said was any closing of the door by Britain

... I made it plain that

there is no refusal on the part of Britain'. 33

While the full text of Maxwell Fyfe's speech to the Consultative Assembly is printed in the Council of Europe Official Report - their equivalent of Hansard - the incomplete quotation of his press remarks which are contained in a letter from Conservative MPs at Strasbourg to Churchill is the closest one can get from the documents and newspaper reports on this point as to what Maxwell Fyfe actually said at the press conference.

Incidentally in his memoirs Maxwell Fyfe runs what he said in the Assembly and what he said to the press afterwards into one statement. Macmillan follows this error in his memoirs.

Meanwhile that afternoon in Rome, Eden prepared to speak himself to the press at the end of the North Atlantic Council Meeting - at which he believed he had got the American green light for Britain to stay out of EDC. The verbatim Foreign Office record of his remarks reads:

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'Question - Does the use of the word "Association" in the September 14th Document rule out any participation of British units? Answer - So far as British units are concerned yes. As far as formations are concerned yes, but there might be some other form of association. ' 'Question - Is the report true, which I have just heard, that Sir David Maxwell Fyfe has just rejected the Schuman Plan. Answer -I haven't seen the text of Sir David's speech, but I imagine that he would have based himself, as I have, on the Declaration of 14th September which did mark a considerable advance in the British attitude towards both the Schuman Plan and the European Army'. 34

Both statements were reported separately in The Times on the following day. No special attention was paid to Eden's remarks other than: 'Mr Eden redefined the British attitude to the European movements towards unity. He recalled the statement issued from Washington last September about "the closest possible association" of Great Britain with the European continental community, and suggested that, while Great Britain would not supply formations to the European army, she might be able to take part in other ways'. No hint of criticism here.

By contrast the much longer Times report from Strasbourg began: 'To the deep disappointment of two thirds of the Assembly of the Council of Europe Britain has declined to alter fundamentally her standpoint towards the political, economic, and military projects afoot on the Continent'. The report continued in this vein with the emphasis on the negative rather than positive aspects of Maxwell Fyfe's statement. Much was made of the sharp criticisms from M. Reynaud who had followed the Home Secretary on to the floor of the Assembly.

The telegraphic report sent to the Foreign Office while acknowledging that Reynaud's criticisms were 'perhaps, unfortunate' painted a rather rosier picture. 35 Maxwell Fyfe's speech was said to have been 'on the whole well received. The Assembly was undoubtedly flattered to have a British Cabinet Minister as one of its members and to hear from its own benches an authoritative statement of Government policy'. It is not entirely clear who drafted this telegram which came nominally from the British Consul General at Strasbourg. Usually in this period Strasbourg reports on the actual proceedings of the Assembly came from the head of the U. K. delegation. Maxwell Fyfe left Strasbourg immediately after his press conference. His place was taken by John Foster, Parliamentary Under-Secretary at the Commonwealth Relations Office. There is however no indication on the telegram, as there often is, to show who the message was actually from. The tone of this telegram suggests to me that it was in fact from the Consul General, Wakefield-Harrey, or one of his officials. Strasbourg telegrams drafted by Parliamentary members of the delegation there - of which there are several examples in the volume - are often characterized by a degree of wit and irreverence which officials rarely allow themselves - on paper at any rate.

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Four days after the official report to the Foreign Office that all was more or less well it comes as some surprise to find at document No. 406 a letter from seven dismayed Conservative MPs at Strasbourg headed by Julian Amery in which Eden is lambasted for his Rome remarks. While they said it was true that Maxwell Fyfe's statement did not quite come up to expectations, nonetheless it 'held out considerable hopes'. Of Eden's remarks in Rome they said 'It is no exaggeration to say that this unexplained and unqualified statement, regarded here as a formal declaration of policy, came as a shattering blow to most members of the Assembly. ' Strong stuff with, on the basis of the evidence, more than just a little poetic licence.

This letter was passed to Eden who, after a meeting in London with John Foster on the evening of 5 December - of which there is unfortunately no record - sent a scathing reply to Churchill: 'This communication bears no resemblance to Mr Foster's report to me and little to Mr Boothby's letter to me. It is infinitely more pessimistic and on many points inaccurate both in detail and in emphasis ...

For instance the impression is given that all was well until my comments to the press in Rome. In fact, the Strasbourg report shows that Mr. Reynaud who spoke immediately after the Home Secretary (that is to say, well before I said anything in Rome) was strongly critical of our attitude ... my remarks in Rome were fully in tune with those I had made without challenge in the House of Commons. '36 Churchill accepted Eden's comments and a soothing reply, drafted by the Foreign Office, was sent to Amery.

Renewed pressure on Eden to retrieve the situation by himself going to Strasbourg, was summarily dealt with. When the Norwegian Foreign Minister suggested on 5 December that Eden might yet go, Eden indignantly replied that 'I really could see no possibility of any such thing. I had only been Foreign Secretary six weeks, and I had hardly been in my country at all. There were on hand the Korean armistice negotiations; the situation in Egypt and in Persia; disarmament talks in Paris; and countless other problems, all of which were constantly before me. I could not possibly handle these from Strasbourg'. 37 Eden took a similar line the next day in a telegram to the new leader of the delegation at Strasbourg, Henry Hopkinson, Secretary for Overseas Trade, who had arrived to take up his duties clad only in pyjamas and a coat borrowed from a railway guard, having lost all his bags and baggage when he accidentally set his sleeping compartment on fire: the victim evidently of a post prandial cigarette.

In this telegram to Hopkinson Eden sets out his thinking on Europe which follows very closely Maxwell Fyfe's own statement. Having rehearsed all the usual arguments about why Britain could not federate with Europe but why this did not mean that Britain was abandoning Europe, Eden turned to the European Army: 'In the case of the European Army, it is impossible to be precise yet about the form of our association, because the European Defence Community itself has not taken final shape. But we shall certainly seek the most effective possible means of association. British forces are already on the Continent under Supreme Commander [Eisenhower], and it goes without saying that we shall wish for the closest association of comradeship between our own forces and

45

those of the European Army, which, together with the forces of other members of N. A. T. O., will be bonded in the same common defence under the North Atlantic Treaty'. 38

Eden's line here, as elsewhere, closely accords with that taken by Churchill in a paper circulated to the Cabinet the day after the debacle in Strasbourg. Of the European Army Mr Churchill remarked 'We help, we dedicate, we play a part, but we are not merged and do not forget our insular or Commonwealth-wide character'. 39 Far from Eden bending Churchill to his will, what little we have of Churchill's own voice in the volume indicates a fair degree of harmony on European policy.

When passing another Conservative letter of criticism to Eden, this time from Boothby, Churchill observed: 'This is a good and carefully thought out letter. I am naturally distressed at the way things have gone at Strasbourg. We seem in fact to have succumbed to the Socialist Party hostility to United Europe. I take the full blame, because I did not feel able either to go there myself or to send a message. You also know my views about the particular kind of European Army into which the French are trying to force us. We must consider very carefully together how to deal with the certainly unfavourable reaction in American opinion. They would like us to fall into the general line of European pensioners which we have no intention of doing. I think Boothby's letter is very good and sober'. 40

Eden's reply to the effect that Boothby's letter was anything but good and sober contains another exposition of his policy. He pointed out to Churchill that 'As you yourself said in the Defence Debate we cannot merge ourselves in schemes like the Pleven Plan for a European Defence Community. We can only associate ourselves with them as closely as possible'. 41 Churchill minuted in reply 'I feel we are in general agreement'. On the day after this exchange Churchill and Eden went to Paris to discuss, among other things, the Schuman Plan with their French opposite numbers. It was there that Churchill was to use the phrase - originally coined by Roger Makins in the Foreign Office and long before the Woolwich Building Society - that as far as the Schuman Plan was concerned his government was 'with it though they could not be of it'. 42

At Eden's suggestion these sentiments were embodied in the communique issued at the end of the talks. 43 Eden drew on this statement in a reply to Harold Macmillan who, in the first of several sallies, had expressed concern at the unduly negative policy pursued by Britain towards Europe. In a postscript Eden referred Macmillan to the Paris communique concluding 'I can do no more'. 44

Although the volume continues the story for another year, including further wrangling between Eden and Macmillan over the direction of British policy in Europe, I must draw the line for today with the following conclusions:

46

1 The passions stirred by the two statements of 28 November 1951 turn out to be a bit of a red herring sending one looking for differences which did not really exist. Both statements correctly expressed a long agreed policy on European federal schemes: association not participation.

2 The only real difference between the two was the window dressing. Maxwell Fyfe went to great lengths to sugar the pill. Eden, who was then taking a good many pills himself for an ulcer attack which had flared up in Rome, was by contrast abrupt: his mind perhaps occupied by what he regarded as more important affairs. The documents show that Eden did not accord European federation schemes a high priority at a time when as he put it he had 'countless other problems... before me'. 37

3A good many of the documents in this volume show Eden in full flight - quite literally since at this time he was hardly off an aeroplane - sweeping aside with indignant impatience attempts from within the Conservative Party to suggest new directions and emphasis for foreign policy. Eden, who operated so well on the international circuit - Evelyn Shuckburgh calls him an 'acutely sensitive and skilful player of the diplomatic game'45 - was much less diplomatic in his handling of colleagues at home and often displayed a surprising lack of political adroitness. He resented the interference of his Cabinet colleagues in the conduct of foreign policy. But his attempts to brush them off only provoked them to return to the charge or to appeal over his head to Churchill. This he found particularly infuriating. How far all this early political manoeuvring concerned the coming succession struggle is perhaps a point to consider.

4 As a case study in the use of evidence the piecing together of this episode shows the interdependence of official documents with other contemporary sources such as newspaper reports and memoirs for a full, or as nearly full as can be, story of what actually happened and why. Unrecorded conversations leave gaps which the documents cannot fill. And reports of the same event can vary according to who is telling the tale. Least of all is there a 'single piece of paper' which can explain everything.

5 Finally it seems to me that the historical significance of this episode lies in the way it reflects how tactics not substance was becoming the real point of difference between those who liked to call themselves pro-Europeanists and those who did not mind so much the charge of 'dragging their feet'. With some exceptions, British politicians and officials alike were against joining any supra-national institutions and were agreed on the superior claims of America and Commonwealth over Europe: even in face of American pressure sometimes for the reverse. Where they were divided - and increasingly so in the years up to Suez - was on the tactics of maintaining this position. Whether to state the British case bluntly, stand aside and let Europe get on with it or whether to help Europe along with fond words of encouragement and promises of association. The shock to Anglo-American relations over Suez at a time when the

47

European Community was just beginning to get off the ground - and with the benefit of hindsight one is apt to forget until reminded by the documents for how long doubt persisted about the viability of European integration - precipitated a long overdue reappraisal of British policy in Europe and the realisation that perhaps to be 'of it' was better than just to be 'with it' after all.

H. J. Yasamee

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NOTES

1 Documents on British Policy Overseas, Series II, Volume I: The Schuman Plan, the Council of Europe and Western European Integration 1950-1952 (H. M. S. O., 1986), No. 437.

2 Political Adventure: The Memoirs of the Earl of Kilmuir (London, 1964), p. 186.

3 Power in Europe 1950-1957, edited by E. di Nolfo (forthcoming). Papers presented at a conference in Florence in September 1987.

4 Robert Rhodes James, Anthony Eden (London, 1986), p. 614. 5 Ibid., p. 350. 6 Harold Macmillan, Tides of Fortune 1945-1955 (London, 1969), pp. 463-4. 7 Ibid., p. 466. 8 David Carlton, Anthony Eden: A Biography (London, 1981), pp. 308-314. 9 Evelyn Shuckburgh, Descent to Suez: Diaries 1951-56 (London, 1986), p. 18. 10 D. B. P. O., Series II, Volume I, No. 98. i. 11 Parl. Debs., 5th ser., H. of C., vo 1.484, col. 49.12 February 1951. 12 D. B. P. O., Series II, Volume 11: The London Conferences, Anglo-American

Relations and Cold War Strategy, 1950 (H. M. S. O., 1987), No. 74. i. 13 Ibid., No. 52. 14 Gabriel Silver lecture at Columbia University, 11 January 1952, quoted in The

Memoirs of Sir Anthony Eden: Full Circle (London, 1960), p. 36. 15 Descent to Suez, p. 18. 16 D. B. P. O., Series II, Volume II, No. 61, for reference to E. P. C. discussions

in July 1949. 17 D. B. P. O., Series II, Volume 1, No. 418. 18 Conversation with Eden as recorded in a letter from Sir W. Strang to Mr Bevin,

12 September 1950 (F. O. 800/456). 19 D. B. P. O., Series II, Volume I, No. 395. 20 Ibid., No. 392, notes 9-10. 21 Ibid., No. 375 for text of declaration and Nos. 376-8 for reactions. 22 Ibid., No. 378, note 2. 23 Ibid., No. 377. 24 Ibid., No. 392. 25 Ibid., No. 400, note 2. 26 Ibid., No. 400. 27 Ibid., No. 401. 28 Ibid., No. 403. 29 Ibid., No. 403, note 6. 30 Ibid., No. 403, note 3. 31 Ibid., No. 400, note 4. 32 Council of Europe, Consultative Assembly, Third Session 1951, Official

Report Volume 4, pp. 512-6. 33 D. B. P. O., Series II, Volume I, No. 406.

49

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34 Ibid., No. 403, note 5. 35 Ibid., No. 404. 36 Ibid., No. 408. 37 Ibid., No. 409, note 3. 38 Ibid., No. 409. 39 Ibid., No. 406. i. 40 Ibid., No. 413, note 3. 41 Ibid., No. 417. 42 Ibid., No. 418. 43 Ibid., No. 418, note 4. 44 Ibid., No. 417, note 4. 45 Descent to Suez, p. 15.

o

.s.. T4

50

PRESENT-DAY RECORDS:

THE PROSPECTS FOR FUTURE HISTORIANS

This is no well thought-out paper, but rather a last minute fill in for somebody who is better qualified than I am to deal with this subject, but who has unfortunately been struck down by illness. In my case, I have just returned from two and a half weeks in China, and I have had twenty-four hours` notice. It is nevertheless, a subject in which I take some interest, and indeed, is one which I have been discussing with my companions in China, all British academics, and with our Chinese hosts. The Chinese are beginning to enjoy a freer atmosphere in matters of scholarship, and one area where there was some interest was the subject of archives, their creation and the question of access.

I come to this subject with varied qualifications. The first is as an historian by training, who has over the years made extensive use of Foreign Office records relating to East Asia, mainly, but not exclusively, from the second half of the nineteenth century, and a rather more limited use of a variety of other records both from Britain and abroad from the same period. The fruits of this work have appeared in a PhD thesis and in numerous papers. While I cannot claim to be a professional historian, I do understand some of the interests and concerns of those who are. As a member of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office Research Department since 1969, I have been both a creator, in a modest way, and a major user of the current records - ie those not yet transferred to the Public Record Office - of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, and those Departments of State from which it descends: the Foreign Office, the Colonial Office, the Commonwealth Relations Office and, sometimes forgotten, the India and Burma Offices. (The records of the latter two, now generally available under the thirty years' rule, were still closed as far as the later years were concerned when I first began working in the FCO. In those days too, the India Office Library and Records, now part of the British Library, still came under the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs. ) As well as using the main archive created in London, I have also used material from posts overseas, mainly China, Japan and Korea.

Over the years, I have worked from time to time in geographical departments of the FCO or on occasional special projects where I have been acting as a regular desk officer, handling papers in the way that such officers do all the time. In addition I was, for just under four years, Head of Chancery and Consul in a medium-sized Embassy, responsible, among many other things, for the good order of the current papers of the Embassy and for decisions on which files should be destroyed as of no further current or historical value, and those which should at least go back to London for, eventually, a second review. This I believe has given me some insight to the real concerns both of those who have to handle current archives here and now, and all that entails in matters of content and questions of storage, and those, like this audience, who will one day be the users of what survives.

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In all these roles in the FCO or abroad, I have used records, or supervised or advised colleagues using them, as part of my regular work. They have been drawn upon in preparing briefs or background papers for political departments, for Under-Secretaries or for Ministers. I and others have surveyed vast collections of papers and prepared summary accounts, with a selection of accompanying documents, so that the FCO Legal Advisers, and sometimes the Law Officers of the Crown, can deliver legal opinions. Like many of my colleagues, I have filleted the records for a straight forward historical account of some past event. Examples include what happened to the Chinese Embassy premises in London between 1950, when the Nationalists withdrew, and 1954, when the People's Republic of China decided to open a mission in London - for those who care, not a lot, and it showed! Another rather esoteric piece was an examination of Afghan claims, revived in 1978-1979, that TE Lawrence -'Lawrence of Arabia' - had been active in Afghanistan as a British agent in 1928 - he wasn't, but there were those in the Air Ministry who seemed to lack all feel for political sensitivities when it came to handling Britain's most famous 'other rank'. I have looked at issues which have been politically sensitive, including questions of recognition, and matters involving British Ministers in decisions which were controversial at home and abroad. As Head of Chancery in Seoul, I was present during two major international crises involving Korea, the shooting down of Korean Airlines flight 007 in September 1983 and the Rangoon bomb attack which killed many of South Korea's leaders the following month. I was there for a number of major visits, including the first ever official royal visit and a visit by the Secretary of State. Since the Falklands conflict took place during my time in Seoul, I have also seen how a major international crisis involving Britain, but largely perceived as peripheral by our host government, affects the work of a post. And also of course, and of most interest today, how it affects the post's creation and retention of records.

I have therefore used a wide variety of records in a variety of circumstances, though almost entirely those of the FCO or its predecessors, apart from direct correspondence from other departments of state, or papers, such as Cabinet Office papers, circulated for information. It is possible sometimes to consult the records of other government departments, but it is not generally an easy process, and in my experience, has not usually been necessary. Some of my colleagues, however, have had to do so, and it is there that good relations between our own archive staff, in Library and Records Department, and their counterparts in other government departments are very important. Those of you who will be consulting the FCO records in the PRO in the future will of course have a somewhat easier task in correlating the FCO record with those of other departments.

As has already been explained, the system of keeping records has changed since the merger of the Foreign Office and the CRO. I joined after the merger and so have no direct experience of day-to-day working with the old FO single jacket system. By 1969, the FCO had moved entirely to the multiple-paper file as used in the Colonial Office and the CRO. Also by 1969, the FCO had given up the CRO practice of allowing files to run on for more than one year. Both systems have their merits. The single jacket system, the departure of which many of my older colleagues still lament, provided a neat encapsulation of one story, easily followed. All the papers derived from one communication, the related correspondence, telegrams, minutes and drafts, were together. It also made clear the absolute necessity of cross-referencing, since few issues

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or incidents are completely self-contained. A group of related jackets, collected together, formed a file. Certain categories of papers were registered in a separate 'green' series, but the basic principle remained the same. I

The CRO system put all the papers of a file together, sometimes in very broad categories. 2 There are merits in this, the most obvious being that it should be possible to follow the whole story from one collection. By the time of the merger, the system of putting correspondence on the right-hand side of the file and related minutes on the left had stopped, and papers are entered on the file on the order in which they were issued. The file covers provide for a comprehensive record of those to whom the file has been issued, plus details of the reference numbers of the immediately preceding and succeeding files, and cross-references to related files. Registry staff also compile file indices which record the broad file titles together with details of some of the main topics covered in a particular file. This is an essential requirement when a file title is likely to be as vague as 'Republic of Korea - Internal'. In a quiet year, such a file may be rather thin, even if it does cover everything from the formation of a new political grouping to changes in the domestic diet. In a busy year, such as 1985, with the return of the dissident politician Kim Dae-jung, elections which produced some very unexpected results and major student troubles, such a file, whether compiled in London or in Seoul, would be very difficult to use without an adequate index.

My own experience has been that the actual files are good. In most cases which I have

examined, the files provide a comprehensive account of a particular story, with all the relevant papers kept - sometimes a few irrelevant ones too. Even if the weeding process has taken place, and material such as newspaper cuttings have been removed, it is very rare to find a file which does not allow the reader to recreate the story. Another point of concern to many is how much the current records contain information about the politics of other countries,, since in the past they have been a major source. I think that it is

possible to be reassuring on this point. The politics of Ruritania are still important to Britain today. Obviously, it is not always possible to cover them in the way that was done in the past. In China, for example, there were up to sixteen consular posts, plus an embassy, before 1941. Today there is one consular post outside Peking, and that has

only recently been reopened. Small one or two man posts are obviously limited in what they can do, but they still try to keep abreast of local developments.

Another concern is about the likely effect of modern communications on the records. This concern has so far, in my experience, proved unfounded. The telephone has not replaced the written record. Even where important business has been transacted on the telephone, as sometimes it clearly has been, all those concerned appear to have seen the value of some written record. Many telegrams begin: 'Ref. telecon Smith to Jones. ' It may not be very elegant, but it should be reassuring to future historians. Crises often lead to considerable use of the telephone, and decisions taken and instructions given are very likely to be recorded nowadays in a telegram, rather than in an elaborate series of minutes. The political consequences which followed on from the Rangoon bombing clearly led us in Seoul to many discussions and exchanges among ourselves, with Koreans and with other diplomats. None of these, as far as I can remember, were recorded in the form of minutes, but the important points and our own conclusions are recorded in a series of telegrams and teleletters sent to London, Washington and Tokyo. Sometimes other means are taken to make sure that crisis details are not forgotten. The

53

most common is the commissioning of an in-house history of a particular crisis, both to make sure that details are not lost and that lessons are learned. The authors of such histories are sometimes members of Research Department, sometimes junior- or middle-ranking participants in the event, or, occasionally, the Ambassador, High Commissioner or another senior member of the FCO who has played a major role in the events. A number of examples spring to mind. There have been such histories of the Icelandic cod wars, of developments in Iran, or negotiations over Gibraltar and over Hong Kong. I can understand that the existence of these histories will not be as satisfying to historians as original material with blow by blow accounts, yet it should help to reassure those who are worried that the FCO does not care about the historical record.

I think that historians can also be assured that there is no general disposition to tamper with the historical record on the part of Ministers or officials. Obviously, it is impossible from one person's experience to give a blanket assurance that such things have not happened, but I have not found any evidence that they have. Neither have I seen any evidence that people pull their punches because what they write now will be available to the public in thirty years' time, while they might still be in public service, in the case of younger people, and are probably still likely to be alive in the case of many of us not quite so young. I can certainly say that such considerations have never, in my own case, ever made me pause in giving an opinion - though since I expressed grave doubts about the likelihood of the Russians invading Afghanistan in 1978 or the Chinese fighting the Vietnamese in 1979, you might think that I had reason to do so! The only evidence I have ever seen of people thinking ahead thirty years is the occasional wry expression of hope that something has been done correctly, or otherwise those concerned will look very silly in years to come. Usually, however, we think in terms of the here and now, of solving this current problem to the best of our abilities. And, after moving on from a particular department or overseas post, people seem to put that job and the issues involved behind them. Maybe some would like to change the record, but I have seen no sign of this.

One area which does concern people about the destruction of records is the question of post files. My own experience is that few of the modern post files I have seen are worth retaining. The papers in them generally consist of those needed at post for short periods, plus copies of correspondence sent to London. Little is created that it is not sent back. Others of course may have different views, but my experience in Seoul bears this out. During the Falklands conflict, for example, we created several feet of bulky files, classified to secret. When at the end of 1982 my very firm registry officer brought these to me, he said that in his view there were no grounds for keeping these files. My first instinct was to disagree, but once I looked at them, I had to concede that he was right. Most of the papers were copies of guidance or information papers sent to us for background. What was original was our views on Korean attitudes to the conflict and our efforts to influence those views. All that had gone back to London, so the files were destroyed. Similarly, when Sir Geoffrey Howe visited us in April 1984, many files were created. When the same registry officer came to me in December that year with those files for review as his parting shot before posting, I had to agree that there was nothing in them which merited further retention at post, never mind despatch to London, sad though it was to destroy the record of the variations in the programme or my efforts at compiling a twenty-four hour telephone roster. Like most posts, we

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maintained a small collection of working papers, which had a limited validity. Space and security considerations meant that we had to be very strict about what we kept; destroying papers takes a great deal of time, which will not always be available in an emergency. We knew that there were no staff in London to do the work of weeding, so we did it ourselves. I think we did it correctly.

Ar Perhaps I can say a little about raw intelligence material, though most people will be aware of the constraints which operate here. There is an understandable tendency to exaggerate the importance of this outside government circles. In some circumstances, especially in military situations, it may be important but in most cases it plays a peripheral role. Even when it has played a part, the general constraints on the holding of such material mean that it will not be available, except as incorporated in working papers, to those of us attempting to write an account of a particular event from the current records. But I have rarely found any problem in working within these limitations, and again it seems to me that a future researcher, able to juxtapose the records of the FCO with those of the Cabinet Office and, say, the Ministry of Defence, will also find that there is enough information available.

On the whole therefore, I am optimistic about the prospects for future historians, at least as far as FCO records are concerned. Generally, the right records are being kept, given the enormous problems of selection and storage. They are in good order, with no attempt to hide mistakes. But it would be misleading to think that there will be no problems. The sheer bulk of the records we are now creating, even after the various weeding processes have taken place, will be a difficulty. I began working on archives on nineteenth century material. For my PhD research I scanned virtually every paper in the FO records and the Embassy and Consular Records relating to Japan between 1868 and 1899, plus some either side. That was a difficult enough task. When I joined Research Department and began to use twentieth century material on China, I was horrified by the volume of material preserved. Now, I can assure you, it has got worse. This is inevitable. The world has become a more complicated place. The FCO is a large department, with many ministers and officials - compare it now with thirty years' ago. With the spread of the photocopier, of 'fax' machines and other modern methods, the volume of paper grows all the time.

The problem of volume is made worse by the lack of efficient finding aids. I do not wish to go back over past indexing issues, about which I know only part of the story. But my own experience is that files being made up now are rarely properly indexed. Despite all the guides to registry staff, and the formal layout of the covering jackets of files, which invite themselves to be filled in, too often nobody bothers much. References to previous papers are omitted, cross-referencing is ignored. Files are allowed to grow too big and are unwieldy to use, while all too often papers are added in any old order. Sometimes this may be the fault of the registry staff, but it can equally be caused by desk officers or more senior staff hanging on to papers - though given the difficulties sometimes experienced in retrieving papers once filed, I can understand this. Frequent changes of the names of FCO departments add to the confusion. Often we in Research Department perform our most valued service to the FCO not by our learned expositions of complicated issues of international relations but because we can find the papers. (Not that this is a new problem. The great Foreign Office Librarian, Sir Edward Hertslet, asked in 1885 whether Britain had ever communicated with the

55

Russians about the Korean islands known as Port Hamilton, which we were on the point of occupying to persuade the Russians not to, said that as far as he could trace, the answer was no. But he added that it might be as well to ask the Admiralty for the Foreign Office registers and indices were 'sadly in arrear ...

'3).

Another area of future problems will be over the question of sensitivity. The procedures used have been described, and they sound efficient. I am less sanguine about them. Even the most experienced Ambassador, High Commissioner or other former senior official will have only covered a limited range of subjects during his or her time in the office. When employed as a reviewer, such people in my experience will sometimes play safe in recommending papers should be closed for longer than thirty years. I suspect that the dreadful disease of over-classification, from which I fear we all suffer, contributes to this. In theory, there is a fail-safe mechanism, in that such decision may be referred to the relevant political department for another opinion. Too often, however, the person giving that opinion will not be an officer with much experience of Ruritanian politics, or a knowledge of what has already become available in the Ruritanian archives or in our records already opened. Rather, the task will fall to a desk officer who also feels the need to play safe. So files are closed unnecessarily. With the practice we follow -I believe correctly - of not tampering with the files once created, and with the new system of filing in use since the merger, this could mean a lot of files will be closed beyond thirty years in the future. Here I think a lot more thought will need to be given to the issues involved.

I have said that on the whole I have found little need to consult the records of other government departments. This is partly because East Asia is an area where the FCO is still very much the lead department. In other areas, the future historian will find that the FCO records will at best give only a partial account, and for the full story, a much wider range of material will need to be consulted. Often this will not even be in this country. The growth of international organisations and of bodies such as the European Community have not caused me much difficulty; I suspect that is not the case for many of my colleagues, and it will certainly not be the case for the research students and scholars of the next century.

Another area which will post new problems is only just beginning to matter to us. That is the electronic revolution. This has come upon us suddenly. When I first joined the FCO, all typing in Research Department was done on manual typewriters. It was rumoured that in some parts of the Office, there were electric typewriters, but it was some years before I saw one. When I went to Seoul in 1981, we had just got electric typewriters for Chancery. Now word processors are everywhere, and anybody can have an electric typewriter for casual drafting. Computers and new ways of transmitting messages are about to hit us. As yet, most of us do not know what these developments will mean for the records, but they will clearly have an effect.

Against this background of imminent change, there can be no conclusion to a paper such as this. Others will have different views on how good or bad our arrangements are. Remember, though, that your problems in using FCO material will be the same ones we have now. A paper destroyed is destroyed for us as well as for future historians, one restricted on grounds of sensitivity can be denied to us as well as to you - assuming any of us can find it in the first place! Perhaps I can end with a story I

56

was told recently in Peking, when I visited the Ming and Qing archives, which contain the Chinese central government records from 1368 to 1911. This was an excellent archive, with good facilities and competent staff. I asked what had happened during the Cultural Revolution, when particular targets of the Red Guards had been all that was bureaucratic and representative of traditional China. The Deputy Director said that the archive had been closed. But at Premier Zhou Enlai's personal instructions, the Red Guards were forbidden access to this and the other state archives, while air conditioning units and other things required to keep the records in good condition continued to function. That showed a proper regard for the historical record. 4

James E. Hoare

57

NOTES

For the Foreign Office records, including the single jacket system, see M Roper, The Records of the Foreign Office 1782-1939; Public Record Office Handbooks No. 13, London, 1969.

RB Pugh, The Records of the Colonial and Dominions Offices; Public Record Office Handbooks No. 3, London, 1964.

3 Memorandum by Sir E Hertslet, 14 May 1885, in reply to an enquiry by Sir P Currie, in Park I1-Keun, editor, Anglo-American Diplomatic Materials relating to Korea, Seoul 1982, p. 497.

4 These events are touched upon in the brief account published to mark the archive's sixtieth anniversary in 1985. See Sixty Years of the China Number One Historical Archive 1925-1985 (in Chinese), Peking, 1985. The Second Archive, which has records of the Nationalist period (1911-1949) is at Nanjing.

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DOCUMENTS ON

BRITISH POLICY OVERSEAS

This collection of documents from the archives of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office is published by authorization of Her Majesty's Government. The Editors have been accorded the customary freedom in the selection and arrangement of documents.

Published SERIES 1 (1945-1950)

Volume I The Conference at Potsdam, July-August 1945.

Volume II Conferences and Conversations 1945: London, Washington and Moscow.

Volume III Britain and America: Negotiation of the United States loan, August December 1945.

Volume IV Britain and America: Atomic Energy, Bases and Food, December 1945-July 1946.

Volume V Germany and Western Europe, August-December 1945 (late 1989).

In preparation

Volume VI The Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, 1945-1946.

(Volumes VII-VIII will cover the United Nations Organisation and Peacemaking 1946).

Published SERIES II (1950-1955)

Volume I The Schuman Plan, the Council of Europe and Western European Integration, 1950-1952.

Volume II The London Conferences, 1950.

Volume III German Rearmament, 1950.

In preparation

Volume IV The Korean War, 1950-1951.

Free lists of titles (state subject/s) are available from Her Majesty's Stationery Office, HMSO Books, 51 Nine Elms Lane, London SW8 5DR.

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