POLITICAL PARTIES & PARLIAMENTARY ARCHIVES GROUP
UNITED KINGDOM
MINUTES TO MEETING
14 SEPTEMBER 2001
Present
Stephen Ellison (in Chair), Jill Spellman (Secretary), Stephen Bird, Janette Martin, Nia Williams,
Nigel Cochrane
Note: Nia Williams replaces John Watt Williams.
1. Apologies
Sue Donnelly, Iain MacIver, Gerry Slater
2. Name change and proposed new membership list
JS proposed to change the current name, Political Parties Archive Network, United Kingdom. After discussion, SE suggested that the name of Political Parties and Parliamentary Archives Group, United Kingdom (PPPAG UK) be adopted. Members present agreed.
JS proposed new members list. SB and NW suggested that Sue Healey (PRO) Hannah Lowry (Bristol University), ?? (Liverpool Univeristy) also be included.
SE proposed that our original group becomes a Steering Committee of a larger group which could contain members from institutions/repositories of all sizes containing the papers of politicians, political Parties at the local and national level, as well as parliamentary archives. Listserves and a mail out to JS's proposed membership list could be used to attract potential membership. Members of the PPPAG UK could meet annually, perhaps as part of the Society of Archivists Annual Conference. Relevant lectures could be presented at this time. The Steering Committee would continue to meet twice a year. SB proposed that 2-3 new members of the PPPAG UK could be elected to sit on the Steering Committee.
SE proposed that JS become Chairman and that JM be Secretary. Both agreed.
3. Discuss the mission statement
JS proposed a loose framework for the mission statement of the Group. "Its aim is to:
- Act as a channel through which concerns in the archives field relating to the papers of parliament, political Parties and politicians (such as the Data Protection Act and Freedom of Information) can be shared;
- Pool knowledge;
- Standardize practice between such specialist repositories; and
- Raise the identity of political collections locally, nationally and internationally."
It was agreed that each member of the Group would consider this statement and contact JS with suggestions or comments by 14 Oct. 2001.
4. Publication and / or home page proposal
A copy of the draft home page was circulated. (A hard copy was sent on Monday 17 Sept. to those members not present.) Present members agreed its basic content and style. SB and SE suggest that links to the Society of Archivists Specialist Repositories Group as well as the International Council of Archives be added. JS to add these.
JS (Conservative Party Archive) and NW (Welsh Political Archives) have prepared descriptive paragraphs. All other descriptive paragraphs (max. 350 words) are to be eMailed to JS < > by 14 Oct. 2001. JS to add these.
JS suggested that a pamphlet or A4 page be produced to hand out at the next SoA conference in order to raise the identity of the Group's work and home page. Funding was discussed and NW suggested that this might be possible through membership with the Society of Archivists (SoA) Specialist Repository Group (SRG).
5. Data Protection and Freedom of Information
JM and SB will discuss Data Protection with the two individuals focussing on this at John Rylands Library. They will report back on their findings.
SE sits on a sub-group for Freedom of Information. He stressed the importance of the Lord Chancellor's Code http://www.pro.gov.uk/recordsmanagement/CodeOfPractice.htm on the work of archivists and records managers. It integrates records management, Data Protection and Freedom of Information. He also reports that it is unlikely that this legislation will come into effect before the end of 2002.
6. Society of Archivists/ International Council of Archives
JS is willing to be the official representative on this group. She has sent an eMail to the SoA's SRG's Secretary, Andrew Ledgard, to obtain more details. Ledgard replied that as an individual member of the SoA, JS would be very welcome to join the SRG. JS also asked whether or not the web page could be mounted from this site. Ledgard plans to discuss this with his SRG colleagues at their next meeting on 25 October. He will report back to JS.
http://www.archives.org.uk/index2.html (Specialist Repository Group suite of pages.)
SB is already a member of the ICA group on political and parliamentary papers and is willing to be our official representative on this body. SE is also a member Executive of the ICA group and is prepared to report back on the work of the group on an informal basis only. http://www.spp-ica.org
SB is also a member of the coordinating committee of the International Association of Labour History Institutions (IAHLI). SB feels that this body holds great potential for development..
7. Any Other Business
eMail Group
Ø All members agreed that all information concerning the Group is circulated over eMail.
Local Authority Questionnaires
Ø JS and JM have offered to create either a MS Access database or, most probably, a MS Word document displaying the information received via the Local Authority Questionnaires sent out 1998/9. This will eventually be mounted on-line via the home page.
New Collections
Ø The Albert Sloman Library- private papers of Dr. David Kerr, Lord Alport, Robert McLellan, and Alec McGivern
Ø Conservative Party Archive- Leader's Office papers (1997-2001), Shadow Cabinet papers (1997-2001), Conservative Research Department papers (1997-2001), Candidate Department papers (c.1990-2001), and a microform copy of Sir Michael (later Lord) Fraser's papers (c.1942-75).
Ø Labour Party Archive- Lord Houghton
Ø Parliamentary Archives- Lord Weatherall
Ø Welsh Political Archive- private papers of Ronald Garrett-Jones and Bert Pearce; papers of Welsh Labour Party
A2A
Ø JM and SB reported that the Communist and Labour Party records are part of the North West A2A project, Our Mutual Friends in the North
Ø SE reported on The Political Archives Consortium that the Parliamentary Archives is leading . It has been awarded a grant of £11,300 by the Heritage Lottery Fund for its project to convert archival catalogues for use on the English National Archive Network. (Details of the project follow.)
Collection Guides
Ø JS, NC, NW all distributed guides to their political collections. (Hard copies sent on Monday 17 Sept. to those members not present.)
Links with similar repositories world-wide
Ø JS to set up with Canadian repositories
Ø JM to set up with Australian repositories
Ø SB to set up links with other Democratic Parties in Europe (through his connections with IALHI)
Next Meeting
Ø It was agreed that the next meeting should be held at 2pm on Friday, 15 March 2002 at the Labour History Archives & Study Centre, 103 Princess Street, Manchester, M1 6DD. Tel 0161 228 7212.
Ø It was agreed that a different member institution would act as host to subsequent meetings.
The Political Archives Consortium (PAC)
The Political Archives Consortium (PAC) is seeking a grant from the HLF to help fund an Access to Archives (A2A) project to convert into electronic form 10,402 pages of paper catalogues relating to archives of outstanding political and historical importance. The data will be included in the Access to Archives online catalogue, the English component of the National Archive Network, and will be available over the web for searching by anyone in the world, by the end of 2001.
The project will convert the paper catalogues to some of the most important political records in England - the personal and political papers of Prime Ministers, politicians, and political thinkers. They include those of the Prime Ministers Robert Walpole, David Lloyd-George, Andrew Bonar-Law, Stanley Baldwin, Anthony Eden and Henry Addington; the statesmen Randolph Churchill, Hugh Gaitskell, Ernest Bevin and Richard Crossman; and political thinkers including Jeremy Bentham, George Orwell, Charles Bradlaugh and Arthur Bryant. Other catalogues are included for a number of collections relating to cabinet ministers and MPs, foreign and defence policy advisers and diplomats.
The Political Archives Consortium originated in the London region, reflecting London's national role as a centre of political activity for centuries, and is lead by the Parliamentary Archives, based at Westminster. But the consortium members are based throughout England and comprise the Access to Archives central team (at the Public Record Office) and nine other public sector English Archives: University College London, Cambridge University Library, Devon Record Office, the Churchill Archives Centre, Cambridge, Warwick University Modern Records Centre, Wiltshire and Swindon Record Office, the University of Birmingham Library Special Collections, King's College London, and Hackney Archives Service.
Together, the archival collections concerned cover aspects of almost every major political event and movement in Britain over the last 300 years: the development of radical political thought and atheism in the eighteenth century; the Luddites; the Peterloo Massacre; the 1832 Reform Act; the anti-slavery movement; the fight for a universal franchise; the history of India and Palestine; the Irish question; the First World War; the General Strike; the rise of fascism before, and communism after, the Second World War; post-war socialism; the Suez crisis; and the trade union movement in the twentieth century. In addition, as a biographical source for the lives of the men and women who created the records, these archives are unique and unsurpassed.
By contributing them to the National Archive Network the consortium aims to enhance the public's understanding of the UK's political history, deliver educational benefits, and attract new users of archives, by making these outstanding collections available to anyone with access to the Internet - at home, work, college, school, or at their local library. A2A provides the individual archives involved in this project with a unique opportunity to convert and disseminate their catalogues together. By participating in A2A, PAC participants will solve the problems of identifying common standards, conversion methodologies and a online site location, and will ensure that their catalogues will contribute to the vision of a national archive network serving the whole of the United Kingdom for years to come.
Overall, the project
- will ensure wider access to and greater availability of important catalogues through the A2A web site available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week
- will produce savings in time and money for existing users will reach new user groups
- will incorporate more powerful search capabilities into catalogues
- will develop 'joined-up' archive collections
- will promote a greater understanding of the political history of this country
- will encourage more efficient archive services
- will foster greater co-operation between the archives involved
- will reflect government policy on archives
- will produce a platform-independent set of data capable of reuse and migration
- will conform to the international standard for archival description, ISAD(G)
- will help make the vision of a National Archive Network a reality.
The consortium will use the catalogue conversion methodology developed by the Public Record Office. The project will be coordinated by the Parliamentary Archives using a proven project management methodology and an experienced project manager. The project will comprise the following stages:
- photocopying of papers catalogues in each record office, beginning June 2001
- mark-up of the catalogues using in-house resources at each record office and following the Public Record Office's methodology for denoting catalogue levels and data elements in the catalogues
- dispatch of the catalogues to the Public Record Office for editing
- dispatch to the keying contractors for conversion to encoded archival description format
- return of converted data to record offices for checking
- mounting of data on the A2A web site by December 2001 and on local web sites and in search rooms
- publicity campaign.
This project will cost £47,832 in total. Contributions from consortium partners total £36,450. A grant of £11,382 is sought from the HLF.
This project will draw on resources from throughout the country's archives to make available online catalogues of the records of men and women who have made an outstanding contribution to national life over the past three hundred years. In doing so, it will take archive catalogues to people where access is most convenient, encouraging them to explore England's political heritage, and fostering a greater understanding of the times in which we live.
5