Spring Meeting of the Political Parties and Parliamentary

Spring meeting of the Political Parties and Parliamentary

Archives Group UK (PPPAG UK)

The People’s History Museum, Manchester

Tuesday 5th April 2005

Present

David McClay (National Library of Scotland), Janette Martin (LHASC), Stephen Bird (LHASC), Emily Tarrant (Conservative Party Archive) Stephen Ellison (House of Lords Records Office) Stephen Scarth (PRONI), Graham Jones (Welsh Political Archive)

1Apologies

Sue Donnelly (LSE) Nigel Cochrane(University of Essex)

2Chair

Stephen Bird agreed to act as chair. Janette Martin agreed to take minutes

3Matters arising/previous minutes

David MacClay pointed out that his name was spelt wrong on a number of occasions. Otherwise the minutes were agreed.

4PPPAG UK website

Emily Tarrant was congratulated on the superb new website and thanked for all her hard work. Now that it is up and running we can think of ways of expanding it further. It was suggested that in future minutes of the meeting will be available from the website. The meeting felt that future minutes (from April 2005) should be scrutinised carefully by the group before being made available online.

Emily requested that members of the group send her relevant links to add to the website eg. Parliamentary Labour Party Centenary website, the Paradigm project..

5Paradigm project

Janette Martin is now on a secondment to a joint project between The University of Manchester and The University of Oxford. The project, Personal Archives Accessible in Digital Media (Paradigm), will investigate the acquisition, management and long-term preservation of the personal papers of politicians created in digital form. The Manchester team will be working with three Labour Party MPs and a Labour peer. The Oxford team has recruited a Conservative MP and a Liberal Democrat MP. The project URL is A printed introduction to the Paradigm project was circulated to the group.

6Archiving of election websites

Janette summarised a project for archiving political websites in the run up to the General Election. The UK Web Archiving Consortium (whose members include the British Library and the London School of Economics) will take weekly snapshots of key political party sites starting from the day after the election is called. The Paradigm project will also participate in the consortium and will archive the websites of its participants (Hazel Blears MP, Keith Bradley MP, Tony Lloyd MP and Oliver Letwin MP) along with 3 political blogs (Tom Watson, Boris Johnson and Richard Allan).

Graham noted that the National Library of Wales has been archiving political websites since the Welsh General Assembly election of 2003. All 4 major Welsh parties have been very supportive of this initiative.

7Freedom of Information/Data Protection Acts

Stephen Ellison noted that the House of Lords gets 30 or so requests per month? Most are not described as FOI requests by the enquirer but all are treated as such. Stephen felt that intellectual control should rest with the depositor. In practice requests often referred back to the House of Commons. Problems will arise when a request involves 100s of boxes. The House of Lords Record Office has budgeted for this scenario, there is a fund of 20K for temporary staff to review papers. Stephen noted that there is a get out clause under the current legislation ie if a request involves over 40 hours of work or in the case of the House of Lords costs over £600.

David McClay noted that it depends how the enquiry is phrased. Journalists and pressure groups are more likely to make repeated requests as a means of receiving free research information. The picture will be clearer when case law establishes what the extent of what should be done to meet an enquiry. It was felt that the Information Commissioners could give clearer advice.

David McClay reported ona current Freedom of Information case at the National Library of Scotland.David Mcletchie, Leader of the Scottish Conservatives, deposited his papers at the NLS last springand placed a 10 yearwritten permission restrictiononaccess. In the last few months Mcletchie has been under a lot of scrutiny by journalists and theyhave requested access to his papers. After these requests were refused by McLetchie the journalist,under the FOI legislation, asked and was allowedto seeall correspondence and deposit agreements between NLS and McLetchie.

The journalist has subsequently had conversations with NLS on FOI, our acquisitionand access policy etc and has published an article questioning the use of public resources in storing records which the public cannot see. A written Scottish Parliamentary Question has also been asked of the Scottish Executive and the NLS as to the costs involved in the McLetchie papers.Although the original deposit agreement described the collection asMcLetchie's personal papers hehasrequested that the papers be split between personal and political papers, with him controlling access to personal papers and the Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party controlling the political papers. Whilst it is felt that the papers were and are properly arranged, senior management has insisted that the rearrangement according to McLetchie's request is agreed to. David felt that the spirit of FOI could make previously acceptable restrictions unacceptable and that entering into the spirit of FOI could become as important as ensuring legislative compliance.

Janette reported that FOI enquiries at the John Rylands University Library had been few and far between. Stephen Bird gave an example of a request to see embargoed Communist Party of Great Britain files by an academic. The files in question dealt with Party disciplinary matters. The chairman of the CPGB Trust agreed that access should be granted. Stephen noted that from August when the Labour History Archive and Study reverted back to the management of the People’s History Museum it will not fall under FOI legislation as the museum is a registered charity and therefore exempt. David McClay noted that whilst the National Library of Scotland is a Trust because its receives public funding it fall under Scottish FOI.

Stephen Scarth said that PRONI has not received many FOI requests probably as it has not been as well publicised in Northern Ireland.

8Reports

House of Lords Record Office

Stephen Ellison reported the launch of Portcullis: the Parliamentary Archives online catalogue Over 700 electronic and paper finding aids to 200 fonds have been migrated into this system since 2000. The largest groups are those of the House of Lords and House of Commons. The System contains descriptions of around 3 million items and conforms to ISAD(G), the NCA rules and ISAAR(CPF). Stephen requested feed back from the group on the functionality of Portcullis.

The project was held up by DS (the producers of CALM). As when it went to tender the House of Lords specified that they would need a facility for readers to order documents electronically – DS assured them that it would do so however the latest version does not have this facility. Hampshire and other record offices are working with the developers to resolve this problem.

The House of Lords Record Office has written an Acquisition policy although as yet this has not been circulated. In future the private papers of politicians will not be collected unless they were speaker of the house or held another prominent role within parliamentary organisation. Recent acquisitions include the Pusey collection. Pusey was a photographer who for over 20 years worked in the House of Commons. The collection includes lots of images of politicians. The upgrade of the building is now complete and the air cooling system is finished.

PRONI

Stephen noted that there had not been much cataloguing as energy was focused on data capture for the electronic catalogues. His office has also experienced problems with DS the producers of CALM. The electronic mapping project is another way into the portal but funding needs to be found for this.

The Welsh Political Archive

Two important accessions: Archives of CND Wales – 30 large boxes

Papers of Lord Crickhowell – 9 boxes (Crickhowell was Secretary of State for Wales for the first two Thatcher Governments, 1979-87). Lord Crickhowell has also agreed to deliver the 2006 WPA annual lecture. 2004 lecture ‘Women and Politics in 20thC Wales’ on 5th November, capacity turnout DRWM was full, approximately 100 people there. Text of lecture is now available on the NLW website in the section on WPA and will also be published in the NLW Journal. The 2005 lecture will be given by Mr Cynog Dafis, who will look at the relationship of Plaid Cymru to the Green Party.

WPA newsletter 23-35 also available on the NLW web pages – series is up to date. Only one newsletter per year from now on – next one, no. 36 due out in September, but will be more colourful and modern.

Graham has plodded on with cataloguing the papers of Dr Gwynfer Evans – 140 boxes- listing completed and he is now indexing the many names.

The WPA will now apply a 50 year embargo on all constituency files among political papers.

NLW has established a rota of people to handle FOI enquiries – change everyweek – fewer now than in January.

Preparing for collection of material relating to the 2005 General election

National Library of Scotland

Recent accessions include the papers of Lord Russell-Johnston, President of the Council of European Parliamentary Assembly. Johnston was formerly a Liberal MP who has previously deposited papers with the National Library of Scotland.

The papers of the Scottish Trade Union Congress (STUC), which had previously been split between the National Library of Scotland and Glasgow Caledonian University, have now been transferred to Glasgow Caledonian University. There are over 280m of records so they represent quite a cataloguing challenge.

David McClay will soon overhaul the manuscript section of the NLS website. At present the political section is not very good. He is currently working with the web designers and hopefully the revamped site will be up and running by the next meeting of this group. He would welcome feedback from PPPAG UK members. Changes are likely to include digital images and potted biographies of key individuals along with clearer navigational tools.

The Conservative Party Archive

No major accessions to report rather a steady trickle of publications from the Conservative Central Office. Emily Tarrant is still working on completing the electronic catalogue, there are a few tricky sections left. One day she hopes to start new cataloguing! She is currently involved with an oral history project of Conservative Party members. The project was the brain-child of one of the Trustees and it was backed up with funding. Central Office will select the interviewees, decide on the questions to be asked and do the interviews. Emily will be responsible for managing the resulting collection including deciding on what format to store the records in and how to make the interviews accessible over the CPA’s website. Emily is currently reading up on the techniques of oral history, including Donald Richard’s book. She will also attend an oral history course run by the British Library. Stephen Bird recommended several books: --- Seldon and Dan Weinbrand. Janette Martin suggested that Emily contact Hilary Haigh at Huddersfield University who is planning to conduct oral history interviews with Labour Party members as part of the Parliamentary Labour Party centenary celebration, 2006. Janette will give her contact details to Emily.

Labour History Archive and Study Centre

Stephen Bird informed the group of the current funding crisis at the Labour History Archive and Study Centre. Since 2000 the archive has been funded by the University of Manchester who secured an AHRB grant, the funding expires in July 2005 and after that date the collection will revert back to the management of the People’s History Museum. This will result in a reduction in staffing levels and is likely to mean a reduced level of service and, at least in the short term, a freeze on accessions. The Museum is actively pursuing new avenues of funding.

Stephen Bird will continue to work at the archive (after January 2006 possibly on a part-time basis). Janette Martin is currently on a secondment to the University of Manchester as part of the Paradigm project team. At present it is unlikely that there will be a post for her to return too.

9AOB

Janette referred the meeting to an email circulated by Sue Donnelly from the Society of Archivists Specialist Repository Group requesting information on the work of the PPPAG UK and if possible some images. Emily Tarrant kindly agreed to cull some information from the PPPAG UK websites and send to the organisers.

The annual meeting of the International Council of Archives (ICA) is due to meet in Barcelona this summer. Stephen Ellison is planning to attend the ICA SPP (section of archivists of political parties)

Janette told the meeting that as she would no longer be working based at the Labour History Archive and Study Centre from August 2005 she could no longer act as Secretary. David McClay offered to take on the role of secretary of the PPPAG UK. Janette will supply him with a copy of the email distribution list and previous minutes.

10 Date and place of next meeting

House of Lords, 2pm Thursday 20th October 2005

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