History at the Heart of Diplomacy: Historians in the Foreign Office, 1918-2018

History at the Heart of Diplomacy Historians in the Foreign Office, 1918-2018

gov.uk/fco

History Note No. 22

History at the Heart of Diplomacy Historians in the Foreign Office, 1918-2018

Foreign and Commonwealth Office Historians History Note No. 22

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Contents Page Preface

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The Rt Hon Jeremy Hunt MP Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs Introduction

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Professor Patrick Salmon Chief Historian Prelude: 1908 – 1917

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1918 – 1944

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1945 – 1994

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1995 – 2018

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Conclusion: Centenary Year, 2018

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Annex: Historians in the Foreign Office: People and Publications, 1918-2018

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Notes

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Picture credits

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Preface The Rt Hon Jeremy Hunt MP Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs

When the Foreign Office Historical Section was established in 1918, the First World War had not yet ended. But ministers already understood how important it would be, when that terrible conflict came to an end, for the general public to be able to learn the full facts of how Britain came to be at war, presented by official historians with access to the original documents. In the aftermath of the war, those historians were also able to offer valuable advice and contextual understanding to aid the complex and difficult process of peace-making and rebuilding the post-war world.

A hundred years later, the FCO Historians still publish the story of British foreign policy, and offer advice to ministers and senior officials on the history and context of current issues. This History Note, full of fascinating detail, shows why their role has been so highly valued by my predecessors as Foreign Secretary, and remains relevant and important today.

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Introduction Professor Patrick Salmon, Chief Historian

It gives me great pleasure to introduce this History Note celebrating the centenary of historians in the Foreign Office. It takes the form of a chronology because we feel it is the only way to encapsulate the multifaceted nature of the work carried out by Foreign Office historians over the last hundred years. This runs the risk, however, that readers will not be able to see the wood for the trees. I am therefore taking the opportunity to place our history in perspective (with thanks to Gill Bennett and Heather Yasamee for their advice) and to identify some of the main themes and patterns that emerge.

Historical research of one kind or other had been essential to the making of British foreign policy almost since the foundation of the Foreign Office in 1782. During the 19th century such research had been carried out mainly by the Librarians, but by the turn of the 20th century one far-sighted senior official, Eyre Crowe, had come to recognise the need for greater openness to historians, more unfettered access to the diplomatic record and the creation of a historical section in the Foreign Office itself. Effective foreign policy, he argued, required an informed and educated public. In a democratic age, diplomacy could no longer afford to be the largely secret preserve of a privileged elite. It must make its workings open by encouraging historical research and publishing the documents that would make that research possible. ‘We have nothing to lose as a nation and a good deal to gain’, Crowe wrote in 1908, ‘by the widest possible publicity being given to our transactions with foreign countries.’

However, the immediate origins of the Foreign Office Historical Section in March 1918 lie in the great drive for expertise on post-war problems that had begun when it seemed likely that the war was drawing to a close, and that Britain’s leaders would need detailed guidance on the issues that would arise at a future peace conference. Interestingly, that realisation had dawned first on the Admiralty and the Department of Information, and it was only at the end of 1917 that the Foreign Office began to contemplate capturing experts from those rival departments to form what became the Political Intelligence Department (forerunner of today’s Research Analysts) and the Historical Section early in 7

1918. Having done what was asked of them and produced studies of 174 world issues bound in 26 ‘peace handbooks’, the Historians were wound up in 1920 at Treasury insistence. By that time, however, James Headlam-Morley had been appointed Historical Adviser to the Secretary of State. Between 1920 and his unwilling retirement in 1929, Headlam-Morley (knighted later that year shortly before his untimely death), first lobbied for, and then oversaw the publication of British documents on the origins of the war, believing that it was imperative to tell the British story, which was being overshadowed by the success of the German series Die Grosse Politik der Europäischen Grossmächte. The decision to publish British Documents on the Origins of the War 1890-1914 (BD) was taken in 1924 by Ramsay MacDonald, Prime Minister of Britain’s first Labour government. The task was entrusted to two independent editors, G.P. Gooch and Harold Temperley, assisted by the young Lillian Penson. Carrying out their work in the face of obstacles erected by other government departments and foreign governments, the editors (Temperley in particular) vented their frustration on objects closer to home. ‘I am sorry that you insist on treating me as if I were a foreign power’, Foreign Secretary Austen Chamberlain wrote, ‘but I shall continue my efforts to forward your work.’ The series was completed in eleven volumes in 1938.

Between 1939 and 1945, another independent historian, Sir Llewellyn Woodward worked at the Foreign Office on his five-volume official history of British Foreign Policy during the Second World War. Following the Cabinet decision in 1944 to publish a new series of documents on British policy in the interwar years, Woodward took on the editorship of Documents on British Foreign Policy 1919-1939 (DBFP), with Rohan Butler of All Souls College, Oxford, as co-editor. They were supported by a newly re-founded Historical Section. Work on DBFP continued until the completion of the series in 64 volumes in 1984, with the addition of new editors, notably Norton Medlicott, Roger Bullen (both of LSE), and Douglas Dakin (of Birkbeck College) and a succession of able assistants, including Margaret Lambert, Margaret Pelly (née Lambert), Gill Bennett and Heather Yasamee, all of whom went on to become editors in their own right, either of DBFP or of its successor, Documents on British Policy Overseas (DBPO).

The position of Historical Adviser was revived in 1963, when the Foreign Secretary, Sir Alec Douglas-Home, appointed Rohan Butler to that post, largely on the strength of his magisterial (and highly critical) memorandum on ‘British Policy in the Relinquishment

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of Abadan in 1951’, which had led among other things to the formation of the Planning Staff (predecessor of the present-day Policy Unit). In the mid-1960s, with the prospect of DBFP reaching completion, discussions began on the possibility of a new series dealing with the United Kingdom’s external relations after 1945. Given the enormous expansion of international society after the war, it was decided that ‘policy overseas’ was a more meaningful title than ‘foreign policy’. The new series, Documents on British Policy Overseas, was announced by Sir Alec Douglas-Home (again Foreign Secretary) in 1973; the first volume, devoted to the Potsdam Conference, appeared in 1984, the same year as the last volume of DBFP. Following Rohan Butler’s retirement in 1982, the post of Historical Adviser lapsed. It was revived in 1987 with the appointment of Roger Bullen as Adviser to the then Foreign Secretary, Sir Geoffrey Howe, only to end with Roger’s tragically early death in 1988. By that time Historical Branch had come under the direct control of the Head of Library and Records Department (LRD), and the publication of DBPO had been reaffirmed as its core priority, following a period in which much of its energy had been diverted into important but time-consuming projects such as research into the Katyn Massacre and the repatriation of Soviet prisoners of war to the Soviet Union at the end of the Second World War. There was also a new focus on outreach to the academic community and the wider public with the Historians’ first public seminar, ‘Valid Evidence’, held in November 1987, and Kate Crowe’s tours of the newly restored Fine Rooms at King Charles Street, which began in the same year. In November 1989 Historians took the initiative in building closer relationships with their foreign counterparts by hosting the first International Conference of Editors of Diplomatic Documents, which coincided dramatically with the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Margaret Pelly headed Historical Branch from 1988 until her retirement in 1990, when she was succeeded by Heather Yasamee. In the same year Keith Hamilton was recruited from the University of Aberystwyth to become the first external academic to join the Branch as a full-time editor; while Gill Bennett moved out of Historians to work in the wider FCO and was replaced by Ann Lane and Isabel Warner as Assistant Editors. As the range of their activities expanded to include the publication of long-running series of Occasional Papers and History Notes, the Historians also streamlined the production of DBPO with the introduction in 1990 of a new desk-top publishing system based on the

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Apple Mac, which enabled them to produce camera-ready copy that could be sent straight to the publishers.

In 1995 an important change of policy was marked by a Ministerial announcement that a new Series III of DBPO was to be launched, to publish documents ‘of more contemporary relevance’ that were less than 30 years old and therefore still closed to public access. Later that year, Gill Bennett returned to the branch, now named FCO Historians, with the new title of Chief Historian, while Heather Yasamee became Head of LRD (later Records and Historical Department (RHD) and now Information Management Department (IMD)). In 1998 the first two volumes of Series III, dealing with the diplomacy of the period 1968-75, were launched with a major witness seminar attended by Lord Callaghan, Lord Healey and many retired senior diplomats.

Following the arrival of a new Labour government in 1997, FCO Historians were entrusted with a number of high-profile tasks, including the organisation of an international conference on Nazi Gold in 1997; the publication of Gill Bennett’s definitive report on the origins of the Zinoviev Letter in 1999; and, from 2000 to 2005, membership of an Anglo-Polish Historical Committee (chaired for the UK by Tessa Stirling of the Cabinet Office) to research intelligence cooperation between the two countries during the Second World War. In 1999 the Historians joined their colleagues from the Cabinet Office and the Army, Naval and Air Historical Branches to form the Whitehall History Publishing Group. Under its auspices DBPO was published first by Frank Cass and later by Taylor & Francis (under the Routledge imprint). The new arrangement also saw the publication in 2000 of the first volume of a new Internal Histories series, Sir Con O’Neill’s report on Britain’s Entry into the European Community, edited by Sir David Hannay (the second volume, Keith Hamilton’s history of the Know How Fund, Transformational Diplomacy after the Cold War, was not to appear until 2012).

By the early 2000s the Historians were more closely integrated with the work of the wider FCO than ever before, becoming heavily involved in preparations for the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act and managing the deluge of FOI requests after it came into effect in 2005. They also took on a new role in supporting the Head of RHD in the clearance of Ministerial and diplomatic memoirs, working closely with RHD’s sensitivity reviewer Jim Daly. Exposure to the wider office opened opportunities to some of the junior historians: Greg Quinn and Martin Longden transferred to the Diplomatic

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Service; Richard Bevins became head of a newly formed Open Government unit and later Deputy Head of RHD, while Isabel Warner headed Treaty Section.

Meanwhile, Historians continued to look for ways in which to bring DBPO to a wider audience and published two experimental ‘hybrid’ volumes, combining editorial material in hard copy with colour facsimile documents on CD-ROM/DVD: The Year of Europe (2006) and Berlin in the Cold War (2009). Ultimately, however, it was decided that the attraction of viewing original documents was outweighed by the inconvenience of what was rapidly becoming an outmoded digital medium, and later volumes reverted to their traditional hard-copy format. A much more satisfactory solution was reached in 2008 when Historians signed a contract with ProQuest to digitise all three series – BD, DBFP and DBPO – and make them available to academic institutions by subscription.

Following Keith Hamilton’s retirement, I joined FCO Historians from the University of Newcastle with the new title of Managing Editor in 2003, and succeeded Gill Bennett as Chief Historian on her retirement in 2005. With no senior colleague at first, I relied heavily on the support of my two Assistant Editors, Chris Baxter and Alastair Noble.

This changed in 2006 with the arrival of Stephen Twigge on secondment from the National Archives, succeeded as Senior Historian in 2010 by Richard Smith from DCMS, who became a full member of the FCO in 2012. The appointments of Grant Hibberd from DEFRA in 2007 and Isabelle Tombs from the former FCO Language Centre in 2008 further strengthened the team. Many others have come and gone since then, including Hala Bouguerne, Andrew Plummer-Rodriguez, Elaine Alahendra, Faridah Shaikh, Giles Rose, Jane Crellin, Umar Khan, Ann Herd, Rosalind Pulvermacher, Tara Finn, Martin Jewitt, Paul Bali, Sue Fleming and Luke Gibbon, whose arrival in 2015 marked the first external appointment since my own more than a decade earlier. To these should be added our associate editors, Steve Ashton and Tony Insall, between them responsible for three of the 24 volumes of DBPO that have appeared so far, and our first two research students, Sara Hiorns and James Southern.

The FCO Historians of today are essentially the same as the team that reached its modern form between 1990 and 1995. The publication of DBPO is still our core activity, lending scholarly credibility to everything we do. We remain committed to providing advice to the FCO’s Ministers and officials, both at home and overseas; and committed also to engagement with the wider public and the academic community. We continue to

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work closely with colleagues in the wider FCO, especially Librarians, Archivists and Research Analysts; with our counterparts in other historical branches of government; and with academic partners in organising seminars, conferences and – most recently – supervising research students.

If I were to single out the developments that have given me particular pleasure during my time as Chief Historian, they would include our first venture into the history of the 19th-century Foreign Office, with the Slave Trade bicentenary conference in 2007; the digitisation of DBPO; our two exhibitions on the Duel for Europe and the 1948 Olympics; Herr Hans-Dietrich Genscher dominating the proceedings at the launch of the DBPO volume on German Unification in 2009; our ‘Learning from History’ and witness seminars; our lunchtime talks on FCO and intelligence history; our move into King Charles Street in 2012; our first experiments with social media, including a highly successful Twitter campaign on the centenary of the outbreak of war in 1914; our involvement with the Diplomatic Academy; the relaunch of the British Diplomatic Oral History Programme; our first History Week in 2016; our hosting of the International Conference of Editors of Diplomatic Documents in 2017; and our partnership with Queen Mary University of London in fostering research into the social history of the Foreign Office.

If I can allow myself a couple of reflections about the future, I would think first about DBPO and ask whether, at a time when other countries are making their documentary publications freely available online and in hard copy, we are justified – despite our cordial relations with our publishers, Routledge and ProQuest – in retaining a business model which relies on selling expensive books and expensive subscriptions. This is of course a matter for the Treasury rather than for us, but I don’t think we can afford to stand still. I would think secondly about our relationship with our employers, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. We must continue to make ourselves useful to the Office, but I would guard against trying always to be ‘policy-relevant’, let alone trying to draw specific lessons from the past. We talk a lot about learning from history, but what we mean by that – what we should mean by that – is encouraging people to think historically: to remember that in every problem they are dealing with, there is always a history – one that our opposite numbers abroad may know a great deal better than we do – and to be aware of the history of our own country; the history of the British Isles, or the

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United Kingdom, or Great Britain, and the way it has interacted with the world over the centuries.

FCO Historians occupy a unique position between the official and the public spheres.

However, we are still part of officialdom, and this has the potential to create tensions.

Fortunately, the FCO has never sought to compromise our editorial freedom. It has always understood that our job, in Gill Bennett’s words, is not to defend but to explain government policy. It has been a privilege to lead such a talented, creative and loyal team.

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Prelude: 1908 – 1917 1908 Eyre Crowe, a Senior Clerk in the Foreign Office (FO), 1 recommended the establishment of a ‘Research or Historical Section of the [Foreign Office] library’, claiming in a memorandum of 17 November that ‘We have nothing to lose as a nation and a good deal to gain by the widest possible publicity being given to our transactions with foreign countries.’ 2 Crowe had been instrumental in carrying through a major reorganisation of the Foreign Office in 1906, including establishing a central Registry and a Parliamentary Department, designed to free First Division Clerks from routine duties. Crowe’s proposals for a Historical Section were part of this wider plan to ensure that the Secretary of State and other Government Departments received promptly the information they needed.

An interdepartmental committee was set up to consider relaxing the rules on the opening of public archives, with Crowe as FO representative.

1910 Crowe drew up a plan for the restructuring of non-political departments of the FO, recommending that the Librarian’s function include writing papers ‘recording and elucidating the events of recent contemporary history in foreign countries’. 3 This memorandum laid the ground for the Historical Section’s formation in 1918. But it was the First World War, or rather the prospect of peace, that was to provide the real stimulus. As Keith Hamilton, a future member of Historical Branch, later wrote: ‘Governments were anxious to rally popular support at home and abroad and sought to demonstrate that they were not responsible for the conflagration.’4 1912 Giving evidence to the Royal Commission on Public Records, the historian H.A.L. Fisher said it was his impression that ‘grains of information’ gleaned from FO archives were ‘very few and far between and for the most part unimportant’, while significant information came from memoirs and published state papers.

This attitude was criticised by Charles Webster in The Study of 19th Century Diplomacy, published in 1915, though Fisher’s objective was really to demonstrate the futility of restricted access to official records.5

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1914 As soon as the First World War broke out, Parliamentary and public pressure began for the government to release information on the events leading up to the conflict. On 6 August a Blue Book was published in haste, containing recent diplomatic correspondence (and a number of errors). The Conservative politician, Austen Chamberlain, had become convinced by his dealings with Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey that it was ‘not a good thing to leave the British public in ignorance of the imminence of war and without a conception of what British obligations were or upon what policy decisions or courses of action British safety depended’. He pressed Prime Minister H.H. Asquith in the House of Commons on 23 November to make public material relating to some of the pre-war negotiations with Germany. Grey, however, was reluctant to make public anything that would give Germany an opportunity to misrepresent or attack the British position.6 1915 John Holland Rose, of Christ’s College Cambridge, was given a desk on the second floor of the FO library with access to papers, in order to write a work that the former PM Arthur Balfour hoped would offer the public a ‘general conception of the German policy which has led up to the present catastrophe’. James Headlam,7 a member of the government’s wartime propaganda organisation, the Department of Information based at Wellington House, published The History of Twelve Days, July 24th to August 4th, 1914: Being an account of the negotiations preceding the outbreak of the war, based on the official publications.

1916 When Balfour succeeded Grey as Foreign Secretary in December, Headlam, who had been tasked by Grey with preparing a specimen volume of pre-war diplomatic documents on the Bosnian crisis of 1908-9, immediately tried to persuade Balfour that a ‘full and complete record of what was done during the ten years before the war’ should be issued. Balfour agreed in principle, though stipulating that the FO would have to be consulted before any material could be released.

1917 A number of different elements were taking shape across government and the military that were to form the basis of the FO Historical Section. Admiral Reginald ‘Blinker’ Hall, Director of Naval Intelligence, established a Historical Section called ID 27, and over lunch at the Athenaeum in May recruited the historian and editor of the Quarterly Review, George Prothero, to supervise the

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production of a series of handbooks for use at an eventual Peace Conference.

Meanwhile the Director of the Department of Information (DOI), the novelist John Buchan, 8 urged that the Intelligence Bureau of the Department, where James Headlam was Assistant Director, should be moved into the Foreign Office, in order to improve information flow and coordination.

In December the Permanent Under-Secretary (PUS) Lord Hardinge began the reform of the FO library with the appointment of Alwyn Parker, a diplomat, as librarian, a political move designed to put the Library at the forefront of planning for the peace conference. The creation of the FO Historical Section was to be part of a bid to restore the prestige of the Foreign Office, although Hardinge took a hard line on the release of information, for example resisting a demand from an MP to see an FO document: ‘It would be intolerable if members of Parliament could call for secret memoranda drawn up in the Foreign Office and it would be fatal to create a precedent.’9

1918 – 1944 1918 In February the Naval Intelligence Department Historical Section was transferred to the Foreign Office as part of the Library, and moved to 3 Great College Street.

The War Cabinet also agreed in February to the transfer of the DOI’s Intelligence Bureau into the FO as the Political Intelligence Department (PID), under Sir William Tyrrell (formerly Private Secretary to Grey) with Headlam (known as Headlam-Morley from 1918) as his deputy, working closely with the new Historical Section. When the DOI acquired ministerial status, Minister of Information Lord Beaverbrook objected to the loss of his Intelligence Bureau, and its members had to resign in order to join the FO.10 Among the 10 experts who made the move to PID were Lewis Namier, the two Australian Leeper brothers, Allen and Rex, and Arnold Toynbee (part-time); Stephen Gaselee, the Cambridge classicist, was the liaison officer with the Ministry of Information. At this point the Treasury insisted that PID was temporary.11 On 12 March Headlam-Morley minuted that he hoped a Historical Section could be established in the Foreign Office; and on 19 March a circular was issued

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to other ministries announcing the establishment of such a Section under G.W. Prothero, and asking their help in its work. Also in March, Lord Sanderson, a former PUS, submitted a memorandum recommending that the public should be admitted to the archives up to 1856, and scholars allowed to see them up till 1877: ‘A number of publications have recently appeared containing reviews of our foreign policy, and . . . the majority of them suffer from the fact that the writers, in the absence of authentic English documents, have accepted assertions of somewhat imaginative foreign publicists.’ He was concerned to improve the public image of the FO, and Parker, the FO Librarian, agreed. Others, however, particularly other government departments, were not keen for their own dealings with the FO to be opened to scrutiny.12 The Historical Section was first housed in Great College Street. In April Parker recommended that it be retained permanently after the war, with funding for a Director and assistant. Crowe maintained his earlier support for the idea.13 In May, Lord Hardinge sent out a circular to British representatives overseas announcing the establishment of PID. In July, the FO Committee on Staffs commended the remodelling of the library and foundation of a Historical Section as ‘of the greatest importance for the future of the Foreign Office’. On 26 July Headlam-Morley had commented that the only way for the FO to counter criticism of its actions was to provide information to the public, ‘not inspired guidance as to the political decisions of the government, but the information which the government has before it when it makes its decisions’.14 In October the Historical Section increased its staff to 15, including E.L. Woodward. Some moved to an army hut in the lake of St James’s Park (drained to prevent its use by bombers in targeting Buckingham Palace).

1919 Amalgamation of the Foreign Office and the Diplomatic Service. Sir Warren Fisher, Permanent Secretary to the Treasury, was recognised as Head of the Civil Service, in overall charge of all departments including the FO, though there were considerable differences in recruitment, qualifications and pay between Home and Foreign staff.

Members of both PID and the Historical Section attended the Paris Peace Conference, where Headlam-Morley ‘fulfilled the secret desire of many international historians’ by attending and influencing proceedings; commenting

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that ‘at any rate one sees the raw material of which history is, or rather ought to be, made’.15 During his time at the Conference Headlam-Morley became more and more convinced that the full story of British policy before the war must be published. He even agreed to put forward a suggestion by an American historian to undertake the task, but this was received badly in the FO. In October, Headlam-Morley stressed that the Historical Section must take on the duty of publishing records: ‘There does not seem at present to be any person whose duty it is to advise the heads of the Office . . . Now that the war is over it seems necessary that there should be the most serious consideration of the question to what extent there should be official publication from the records and the conditions as to which those outside the office should be allowed to consult them’. The new Foreign Secretary, Lord Curzon, was not, however, very amenable to these arguments.

Between 1917 and 1919 Historical Section with PID produced 174 studies bound in 26 ‘peace handbooks’: authors included Sir Ernest Satow, C.K. Webster, G.P. Gooch, and Arnold Toynbee, on subjects ranging from Zionism to Easter Island, from Spitsbergen to the Kiel Canal. Other authors were recommended by Headlam-Morley and by H.W.V. Temperley, head of the Historical Section of the Directorate of Military Intelligence (MI2(e)). Copies of most of the handbooks were passed to the Americans.

In March 1919, as the Ministry of Information was wound up, some of its responsibilities were subsumed into a new FO News Department, headed by Tyrrell and including most members of PID. In November Prothero recommended the publication of sanitized versions of the Handbooks, and their preparation was one of the last tasks of the Historical Section before it was abolished.

In 1919 the FO archives were opened to the public up to 1860, with some scholars able to apply for access to documents beyond that date for specific projects.

1920 March: Headlam-Morley was appointed Historical Adviser to the Secretary of State: the achievements of the Historical Section having convinced the Foreign Office that historical knowledge was an important auxiliary to diplomacy. But despite Headlam-Morley’s appointment, and his passionate entreaties, in

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November the Historical Section was dissolved owing to postwar economies (although in compensation, the FO did play a part in the establishment of the Institute of Historical Research). In August, PID had been wound up, with some staff going into News Department.16 Stephen Gaselee succeeded Alwyn Parker as FO Librarian. Sir Eyre Crowe became PUS: ‘Under Crowe it soon became the established practice to allow genuine scholars conditional access to the Foreign Office records up to 1870, and to make available certain specific manuscript collections beyond that date.’17 1922 In a memorandum of 25 October, Headlam-Morley set out the ‘Duties of the Historical Adviser’, beginning with the statement that: ‘It is obviously necessary for the successful handling of diplomatic negotiations that full and reliable information should be speedily available as to the previous history of each matter that comes up.’ He referred to the large number of foreign publications on the origins of the First World War, as well as the memoirs of those involved, observing that it was ‘clearly necessary that there should be someone in the Foreign Office who is watching the whole controversy and is able from time to time to draw the attention of the Office to publications which might appear to impugn the good faith of the British Government and to suggest what action might be taken.’18 Headlam-Morley had an interview with former Foreign Secretary Viscount Grey of Falloden on 6 December, at which Grey said he ‘would have liked to have had a general publication of all the records immediately at the end of the war’, particularly in view of recent accounts of the period published by Asquith and Churchill. (In fact, Headlam-Morley himself helped Churchill with the writing of his history of the First World War, The Great Crisis.19) But while Curzon was in office nothing could be progressed. According to Keith Wilson, HeadlamMorley ‘pushed the twin causes, of the publication of documents and, more subtly, his own editorship of them from within the Foreign Office, until that decision was announced (by Chamberlain) in 1924. In doing so, his background in propaganda was always to be to the fore.’20 1924 A Parliamentary Question from E.D. Morel on 20 February led to HeadlamMorley’s being asked to advise on the best way to take forward the publication of official documents on the run-up to the First World War. Crowe agreed that it

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was ‘important to demonstrate that we have nothing to hide’ (8 April), and on 24 May Headlam-Morley submitted a memorandum containing a plan for a major publication, covering six major topics between 1904 and 1914, and proposing a method of working that ensured control of the project would be retained by the FO. 21 Headlam-Morley clearly wanted to do the job himself, but J. Ramsay MacDonald, PM and Foreign Secretary in the first Labour Government that had taken office in January, had his own ideas. In August MacDonald invited G.P. Gooch (whose judgement Crowe distrusted) 22 to edit a selection of British Documents on the Origins of the First World War; H.W.V. Temperley was appointed co-editor in September. The project was initiated partly in response to the German publication Die Grosse Politik der Europäischen Kabinette 1871-1914, intended to refute the war guilt clause of the Versailles Treaty. In addition, there had been a number of publications arguing in favour of greater openness, and in June Charles Webster had published an article in The Nation and the Athenaeum entitled ‘The Labour government and secret diplomacy’, criticising the government for lack of openness. Webster’s article caused great offence in the FO, as ‘publicly kicking at a door which it was assumed he knew to be already open’, and it put paid to any chance of his being appointed an editor.23 In October 1924 the Labour government fell after a vote of no confidence, and in the ensuing General Election the use as a propaganda tool of the ‘Zinoviev Letter’ began a controversy that still plays a part in British politics—and in the work of the FCO Historians—nearly a century later.24 On 3 December, The Times published an exchange of letters between the academic R.W. Seton-Watson and Austen Chamberlain (Foreign Secretary in the new Conservative Government led by Stanley Baldwin), concerning the proposed publication by the Foreign Office of a collection of official documents ‘bearing on the European situation out of which the war arose’. Chamberlain’s letter confirmed the appointment of Gooch and Temperley, and expressed the hope they would begin work soon: ‘The reputation of the editors offers the best guarantee of the historical accuracy and impartiality of their work.’ He also announced that FO records up to 1878 would be opened to researchers (previously the cut-off had been 1860), despite opposition from HM Treasury, the War Office and Colonial Office. Very soon after beginning work, Gooch and

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Temperley enlisted the services of the young academic Lillian Penson for ‘clerical help’: she was exceptionally well-qualified and soon became part of the editorial triumvirate, deeply involved in all aspects of the project. Penson was given special instruction by the Librarian Gaselee on how to interrogate the FO archives.25 1925 In April Sir Eyre Crowe died, and was succeeded as Permanent Under-Secretary

by Sir William Tyrrell. Gooch and Temperley recommended that the collection of documents compiled by Headlam-Morley on the 1914 crisis should be published as part of their series, in advance of other volumes, to defuse criticism of slow progress. Hubert Montgomery, Chief Clerk, wrote in December that ‘the primary object of the present publication was to clear the Foreign Office of the totally unfounded charge that they had engineered the War’.26 1926 December: publication of the first volume of British Documents on the Origins of the War, Volume XI, consisting of Headlam-Morley’s documentary compilation on the war crisis of 1914. Chamberlain was so fascinated by it that he ‘sat up until 2 a.m. in order to finish reading it’, though it aroused little public comment.27 1928 Submission of a memorandum in August for Sir Austen Chamberlain by Headlam-Morley, with minutes by Gaselee and Hankey, ‘The Publication of British Documents on the origins of the War’.28 In July, the refusal of Gooch and Temperley to compromise when the Japanese government failed to clear documents for publication led Sir Victor Wellesley, of Far Eastern Department, to complain about ‘the difficulty into which we are put by the tender historical conscience (and obstinacy) of the Editors’.29 On 24 December, his 65th birthday, Headlam-Morley was forced to retire, even though he did not wish it and Winston Churchill (then Chancellor of the Exchequer) had lobbied for him to be kept on.

1929 Headlam-Morley was knighted in June; but died on 6 September. The post of Historical Adviser lapsed.

1930 Publication of Studies in Diplomatic History, based on memoranda written by Headlam-Morley in his capacity as Historical Adviser, edited by his daughter Agnes.

1932 Lord Grey wrote to The Times deploring the publication of advice given by officials, both because he feared it would prejudice their freedom of expression, and because it might mislead the public, since minutes were not authoritative and 21

the Secretary of State alone could determine policy. Meanwhile, the insistence of Gooch and Temperley on exercising their editorial independence continued to cause friction with FO officials.30 1938 Publication of the final volume of British Documents on the Origins of the War. 1939 Just as in 1914, it was the outbreak of world war in September 1939 that led to the recreation of a Historical Section and the initiation of the next series of official documentary publications by the FO. In December, Lord Halifax’s request that the FO check and supplement his diary of events leading up to the outbreak of war represented the genesis of the interwar series, Documents on British Foreign Policy 1919-39 (DBFP), when E.L. Woodward, then working in a reconstituted FO Political Intelligence Department, was asked to draw up a calendar of events from the records.31 As Uri Bialer wrote, ‘Thus began the long period of Woodward’s personal involvement with the project, which proved to be of crucial importance for the government’s final decision to publish the diplomatic papers of the interwar period.’ 32 Woodward began to prepare a comprehensive history in one volume, arguing that it should be published.

1940 In May, Winston Churchill replaced Neville Chamberlain as Prime Minister; Anthony Eden became Foreign Secretary in December. Eden was faced immediately with demands (including from Ernest Bevin, one of the Labour ministers serving in the War Cabinet) for a reform of the Foreign Office. Eden commissioned a report from Sir Malcolm Robertson MP, who had retired from the Diplomatic Service in 1930. The eventual result was the far-reaching Eden Reforms of 1943.

1941 Opinion was divided in the FO on the wisdom of publishing Woodward’s account of the interwar period. William Strang and Lord (Robert) Vansittart were in favour, Sir Alexander Cadogan (PUS) against. In July Eden decided against publication, but then changed his mind and decided to push ahead, despite opposition from Sir Horace Wilson who was adamantly against publishing an account of the 1938 Munich episode (in which he had been closely involved as adviser to Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain). On 1 December Eden proposed in Cabinet the publication of diplomatic documents leading up to the war, but the Prime Minister asked for the decision to be deferred pending consultation of various serving and former ministers.

22

1942 7 September: the War Cabinet decided that a collection of documents covering Anglo-German relations between 1925 and 1939 should be prepared, but (under pressure from Sir John Simon who was bitterly opposed) stipulated that further authority would have to be sought before publication.

1943 Publications by the US Government, and Parliamentary pressure led to further consideration of the proposal to publish official documents, and to widen the scope of the collection to the whole spectrum of British policy since 1925. Eden, en route to Moscow in October, asked Churchill to take charge of the matter. But Churchill remained reluctant to upset former ministers, including the South African Field Marshal Jan Smuts. Woodward was in despair.33 He realised the only way to get agreement was to make a convincing case to ministers in favour of the publication of a series of documents, on the lines of the American series Foreign Relations of the United States.

On 1 April PID and the Foreign Research and Press Service of Chatham House were amalgamated to form the FO Research Department (FORD), which moved back to London from Woburn Abbey and Oxford where they had been dispersed during the war. The need for specialists to advise on post-hostilities planning, and to deal with captured German documents, meant FORD was to become a permanent fixture in the FO. After a long tussle with the Treasury, Eden’s ‘Proposals for the Reform of the Foreign Service’ (see 1940) were published (Cmnd 6420). An Order in Council of 20 May amalgamated into one service the Consular, Diplomatic and Commercial Diplomatic Services, together with the Foreign Office. A study of the functioning of the reformed Foreign Service was included in Rohan Butler’s report on the Abadan crisis (see below), which included the comment that the increase in flexibility from the amalgamation of the services had been offset by lack of specialist continuity.

1944 On 24 January, Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden produced a memorandum for the War Cabinet (WP(44)49) on ‘Publication of Documents on British Foreign Policy’. On 27 January he argued in Cabinet (CM(44)12th Conclusions) that it was important to make available to the public material on British policy in the interwar years: ‘It was not desirable that on the Allied side the only authoritative records of international policy during the period preceding the present war should be those from American sources.’34 As a result it was announced on 29 March

23

that the Cabinet authorized publication of Documents on British Foreign Policy 19191939 (DBFP), starting from 1930 (i.e. with the Second Series). Professor E.L. Woodward was to be in charge of the project.

24

1945 – 1994 1945 January: Rohan D’Olier Butler, Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, joined Woodward as co-editor of DBFP, responsible for the First Series while Woodward edited the Second. The Hon Margaret Lambert and Miss A. Norman assisted. The work (designated ‘Special Historical Work’ in the Library Correspondence Section of the 1945 Foreign Office List) began in an attic in the old India Office, formerly occupied by the quill-trimmers. The FO Library and Archives Department was established, of which the new Historical Section formed a part. Dorothy Bigby was appointed Deputy Librarian, the first woman to fulfil such a role.

1946 Publication by HMSO of Volume I of DBFP, Second Series: London Naval Conference and European Affairs 1929-31.

The Historical Section, together with the rest of the Library, moved to the Old Stationery Office in Princes Street, round the corner from Great George Street.

This building had been the royal stables in the time of William IV and Queen Victoria, and the roof leaked, so that members of Historical Section frequently had to work with buckets on their desks. On 1 January, the posts of Director of Research and Librarian were combined in the person of Ernest Passant, formerly head of the German Section of FORD. He headed Research Department and the Library; as well as the newly-constituted Historical Section working on DBFP, there was also a German Historical Section, in accordance with the agreement whereby a tripartite team of British, French and American historians was established in Berlin with a senior historian acting as editor in each of the national capitals, in order to publish captured German documents.35 1947 Publication of Volume I of DBFP, First Series: Proceedings of the Supreme Council July-October 1919. In order that other countries’ publications, including memoirs, should not be the first to tell the story of the period immediately preceding the outbreak of war, there was now discussion of initiating a third series, to cover the years 1938-39. There was still reluctance to include all documents, but as Woodward put it, ‘I incline to think that we have done ourselves harm by the unusual care which we show for other people’s susceptibilities’.36 On 13 January, Rohan Butler argued that omitting disobliging passages about individuals would

25

impair public confidence in the authority and authenticity of the volumes (this was following a complaint by René Massigli, formerly French Ambassador in London). Butler objected again in April to a request by Robin Hankey for the omission of references by Lloyd George in First Series, Volume II. On 12 April, The Times Literary Supplement published on its front page an article by the historian A.J.P. Taylor, reviewing Second Series, Volume I and criticising the DBFP series more generally. Although reviews were supposed to be anonymous, Woodward seems to have had little difficulty in finding out who wrote this one, and Taylor did not conceal his authorship. Taylor, who had strong views on the German Grosse Politik series (‘a decisive weapon in shaking the moral foundations of Versailles’) and on Foreign Relations of the United States (‘the Americans reveal their diplomacy because they have none’), cast doubt on the editorial independence of Woodward and Butler, insisting that they must ‘regard themselves as watchdogs of the public, not as employees of the Foreign Office’. He also criticised both the thematic arrangement of the documents, and the lack of minutes, private letters or Cabinet documents in the collection, which he described as ‘no more than a glorified Blue Book’. Woodward and Butler were enraged by Taylor’s attack, and on 3 May, The Times Literary Supplement published a joint letter insisting that they had ‘full independence and freedom of choice’ in their selection of documents, otherwise they would resign. The editors of The Times and the TLS wrote to apologise, and Woodward demanded that Taylor withdraw the accusation of lack of independence; he did so, but relations between the two men never recovered.37 During 1947, the FO took over the old India Office building, while proposing plans for a new Foreign Office in Carlton House Terrace. The Colonial Office moved to Church House, while the Commonwealth Relations Office took over the former Colonial Office.

1948 March: Sir Orme Sargent (now PUS) made the case to Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin in favour of a third series of DBFP covering 1938-9, arguing that the balance of advantage lay with ‘publishing the complete story rather than in seeking to correct misstatements as they appear or allowing such misstatements to stand uncorrected for a number of years’;38 Bevin agreed, and so did the Cabinet on 22 March. Bialer comments that the FO’s willingness to go ahead, in contrast

26

with its normal secrecy, was due to bitterness and frustration at ‘public attacks on their role in formulating and executing the policy of appeasement’. From the files, however, it is clear that it was the prospect of being put on the back foot by the publication of German captured documents, and by a volume of FRUS, that pushed the Cabinet to agree, particularly since the Soviet Government had published a series of articles called ‘Falsifiers of History’ that made it even more urgent to issue a corrective. But Bialer is right to draw attention to the skill of Woodward, based on his ‘distinct talent for exercising influence on both large questions of policy and minor, though, important issues of implementation, and also the remarkable trust of officials in an “outsider” historian’, in ensuring the project was approved in the end.

There was also some Parliamentary pressure, including a request to the government to issue a White Paper on efforts to avoid war between 1937 and 1939. When junior FO minister Christopher Mayhew replied that DBFP would do the job, he was reminded that Churchill had already published his own account. Mayhew replied: ‘We may have been beaten in time but we shall win on objectivity and accuracy.’39 On 4 September, A.J.P. Taylor published a review in the Times Literary Supplement of DBFP, First Series, Volume II (covering 1919). Though now more favourably inclined towards Butler as an editor, he complained that the lack of documents containing instructions to diplomatic representatives made it hard to work out what was happening and why: ‘the reviewer cannot guess whether to attribute such gaps to an absence of really confidential documents from the archives at the disposal of the editors or to restrictions which the editors may have been moved to impose on themselves.’40 1949 Though Cabinet approval for DBFP Third Series was given only in 1948, the first volume, The German invasion of Austria and the first phase of the Czechoslovak crisis, March-July 1938, was published in 1949, closely followed by Volume II on Munich. A.J.P. Taylor, reviewing the latter in the New Statesman and Nation on 15 October, complained again about the fact that the documentation was only from FO files: ‘Without knowledge from other sources it would be difficult to guess that Munich was Chamberlain’s personal work, which the Foreign Office sometimes assisted, sometimes regretted, but never originated.’ Nevertheless, he

27

and other reviewers were appreciative of coverage of British policy during the Munich crisis, published just over ten years after the event. The historian Herbert Butterfield, who held strong views on historiography, wrote to Taylor that he was vehemently opposed to the idea of historians being employed by the government, regarding it as ‘a threat to independent history concerned only with historical truth’.41 1950 October: The FO building in Princes St was scheduled for demolition, and so Research Department and Library, including the ‘Special Historical Section’, moved into the third floor of Cornwall House in Stamford Street, London SE1.

The building had been a hospital during the war, and with strengthened floors was ideal for archival and book storage. HMSO had its book depository in the basement.

1952 Appointment of a committee on departmental records, chaired by Sir James Grigg, former War Office Permanent Secretary, and including Margaret Gowing, official historian of Britain and Atomic Energy.

1953 In July Margaret Esterel Lambert (no relation to the Hon Margaret Lambert, by then working on Documents on German Foreign Policy 1918-1945 (DGFP)), a history graduate from Somerville College, Oxford, joined Historical Section as a Research Assistant.

1954 The Grigg Committee issued its Report on public records, detailing the kind of material in government files that should be kept for permanent preservation, and rules for its transfer to the Public Record Office (Cmnd 9163).

1955 Publication of the last substantive volume of DBFP, Third Series, Volume IX, Policy in the Far East during the five months preceding the outbreak of war in Europe, April-September 1939 (Volume X, an Index to the Third Series, was published in 1961).

On 20 September Woodward published an article in The Times on ‘Reasons for Publication’ and ‘The Tasks of Selection’, restating the independence of the editors and setting out policy on publishing minutes; he largely stuck to Grey’s line that they should not be included, but reserved the right to print them where necessary. 42 Duncan Wilson (later Sir Duncan, Ambassador in Moscow and elsewhere) was appointed Director of Research and Acting Librarian in 1955.

28

1957 Sir Cecil Parrott appointed Director of Research and Librarian. Margaret Lambert was promoted to Assistant Editor.

The Cabinet Secretary, Sir Norman Brook, wrote to heads of government departments suggesting that they might produce a series of departmental histories of particularly significant episodes of policy or administration, in order to ‘fund experience for government use’.

1958 The Public Records Act was passed to implement the recommendations of the Grigg Committee (see 1954). It provided for the transfer of documents from government departments to the Public Records Office (PRO), and their opening to public inspection when 50 years old. Sections 5(1) and 3(4) set out criteria for the closure or retention of documents. Responsibility for public records and the PRO was given to the Lord Chancellor, whose approval was required for the retention by departments of records under Section 3(4).

On 3 April, A.J.P. Taylor published a review in the Manchester Guardian of DBFP, Second Series, Volume VII, covering Anglo-Soviet relations from 1929-34.

He noted the topicality of the theme: ‘the conversations might have taken place yesterday: the same reports are no doubt still coming from the British ambassador in Moscow. Studying Anglo-Soviet relations is a life-sentence on the treadmill: an endless round of incomprehension.’43 Sir Llewellyn Woodward retired as Editor of DBFP, and Patrick Bury, of Corpus Christi College Cambridge, joined the Section as an Editor on a part-time basis.

1959 Research Department and the Library became separate FO departments, though linked under a single Director of Research/Librarian. In February, at a meeting of the Permanent Under-Secretary’s Steering Committee, chaired by Sir F. Hoyer Millar, it was agreed that in response to the Cabinet Secretary’s 1957 suggestion about internal histories, the Abadan Crisis of 1951, when the Persian government had nationalised the British oil refinery, would provide ‘a particularly constructive case history, since it would represent ‘a complex concentration and critical balance of factors, political, economic, juridical and military’. Rohan Butler was commissioned to write this, and Margaret Lambert helped him.44 In 1959 Butler also submitted a memorandum on ‘Soviet misrepresentation of British policy before the outbreak of World War II’.

29

Clockwise from top left: Sir G.W. Prothero (1848-1922); Frontispiece of a Peace Handbook; Sir J.W. Headlam Morley (1863-1929); Frontispiece of Volume XI of British Documents on the Origins of the War.

30

Sir Eyre Crowe (18641925) in 1918 above, Lord Hardinge of Penshurst (1858-1944) right, St James’s Park during the First World War, with temporary buildings below.

31

Clockwise from top left: G.P. Gooch (1873-1968); H.W.V. Temperley (1879-1939); Dame Lillian Penson (1896-1963), J. Ramsay MacDonald (1866-1937)

32

Cabinet decision on 27 January 1944 to authorise publication of Documents on British Foreign Policy 1919-1939, and Sir Anthony Eden (Lord Avon) (1897-1977).

33

Clockwise from top left: Dr Rohan D’Olier Butler (1917-96), Historical Adviser to the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, 1963-82; Sir Ernest Llewellyn Woodward (18901971); Professor W. Norton Medlicott (1900-87); Professor Douglas Dakin (1907-95).

34

First meeting of the Cabinet Committee on Official Histories, 30 March 1967.

35

First page of ‘A New Perspective for British Diplomacy’ May 1963.

36

Announcement of the Cabinet’s decision to approve Documents on British Policy Overseas, given by the Foreign Secretary in a written answer to a Parliamentary Question, 2 July 1973, and Sir Alec Douglas-Home (1903-95).

37

Wedding of Margaret Lambert and Adrian Pelly, 24 July 1975.

Right: Dr Roger Bullen addressing the Valid Evidence Seminar, 6 November 1987 with Pat Barnes and Margaret Pelly.

Below: Margaret Pelly and Gill Bennett at the seminar.

38

Above: Programme of the First International Editors’ Conference, as published in Occasional Paper 2.

Below: First International Conference of Editors of Diplomatic Documents, held in the Foreign & Commonwealth Office, 9-10 November 1989 (Richard Bone, Head of LRD, is at the front facing the camera)

39

Above: (l-r) Mark Lennox-Boyd (Parliamentary Under-Secretary), Professor Donald Cameron Watt, Richard Bone (Head of LRD), at a reception in the FCO for the LSE conference, 29 June 1993.

Below: Gill Bennett, Chief Historian from June 1995, with Sherard Cowper-Coles, who had conducted the Efficiency Unit Scrutiny of LRD and studied the work of Historians closely.

40

The FCO Historians’ team at the launch of DBPO Series I, Vol. VII, 1 February 1995.

Above: (l-r) Sue Parker, Heather Yasamee, Kate Crowe, Isabel Warner, Richard Bone, Ann Lane, Keith Hamilton, Richard Bevins Right: Kirsty Buckthorp, Nigel Jarvis and Diane Morrish.

Below: Martin Polley and Kate Crowe.

41

Above: UK Delegation to the Washington Conference on Holocaust Era Assets: (l-r) Richard Bevins, Gill Bennett, Julia Painting (Western European Department) and Anthony Layden (Head of WED), outside the British Embassy.

Left: Heather Yasamee (l) at the press viewing of British Servicemen’s papers.

42

‘Negotiating with the Russians’ Seminar, 22 January 1998 Middle left: Lord (Denis) Healey and Sir John Kerr, PUS. Middle right: Lord Callaghan.

Bottom: (l-r) Keith Hamilton, George Walden, Richard Bevins, Lord Healey, Francis Richards, Lord Callaghan, Sir Julian Bullard, Sir John Killick.

43

Below: International Editors’ Conference, Washington, 2001 (Gill Bennett centre front, with State Department Historian Marc Susser on her left, Steve Ashton and Keith Hamilton behind her).

44

Above: International Editors’ Conference, Dublin, 2007 (Patrick Salmon back row, 3rd from left; Stephen Twigge, 2nd row far right).

Below: Keith Hamilton and Patrick Salmon with FCO Minister Kim Howells at the Slave Trade conference, October 2007.

45

In May, working on his study of the Abadan Crisis, Butler submitted a request to be allowed to see secret telegrams exchanged with the Embassy in Tehran, presumably kept either in the Permanent Under-Secretary’s Department (PUSD, responsible for liaison with the intelligence agencies) or in Private Offices. It took several months for Butler to get any response, and then he was shown a few ephemeral documents. He returned to the charge on 21 November, in a long minute addressed through the Librarian to the PUS, in which he argued the importance of his having full access to all relevant material. If he did not get this, he stated that he would have to include in the preface to his memorandum a statement disclaiming responsibility for omissions and errors since he had not been permitted to consult all relevant material.

1961 Butler had received no response to his minute by August 1961, though the PUS had told him the matter was still under consideration. He concluded he would have to proceed on the basis of including a disclaimer.

1962 Butler completed his study of ‘British policy in the relinquishment of Abadan in 1951’. Submitting it on 9 March, he paid tribute to the expert assistance provided

by Margaret Lambert, whose work had been ‘of outstanding merit’. The memorandum was a very long and comprehensive document, critical not just of British diplomacy but of government policy generally. As Butler had promised, he noted that not all documentation had been made available, causing him ‘as a matter of historical principle, to disclaim in advance all responsibility for all errors or omissions of fact or inference due to this cause’.45 The memorandum received a good deal of comment and praise, and it was printed for private circulation to certain heads of mission and of departments, though there was ‘no possibility of publication’. The PUS asked Lord Strang, who had been PUS at the time of the Abadan crisis, to comment on Butler’s memorandum. It was also sent to the Cabinet Office, when it emerged that although the work had been undertaken in response to the Cabinet Secretary’s initiative in 1957, no other department had produced any similar study.

Meanwhile, PM Harold Macmillan had appointed the Plowden Committee to review the purpose, structure and operation of bodies responsible for representing UK interests overseas, with particular focus on the Commonwealth Relations Office and the Commonwealth Service.

46

Commentaries and memoranda

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prompted by the Abadan memorandum fed into this and other reviews. Peter Beck comments that ‘In particular, Butler’s history encouraged a greater official preparedness to consider new directions based upon a more realistic assessment of recent trends.’47 1963 In February Strang produced a long commentary on Butler’s Abadan memorandum, suggesting inter alia major changes in diplomatic policy and practice. He also stressed personal factors that had affected the handling of the Abadan crisis, such as Bevin’s long illness and Herbert Morrison’s inexperience when he took over as Foreign Secretary in 1951, together with the impact of the defection of Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean shortly afterwards. Butler produced a long riposte to Strang on 15 February, defending the length of the Abadan memo by saying it was relatively easy to write about a ‘strong government pursuing a clear and consistent policy’, much harder to write about ‘weak governments with confused and vacillating policies’. But he agreed with Strang on the need for a new kind of diplomacy.48 The PUS, Lord (Harold) Caccia, in his February letter to HM Representatives Overseas, asked for comments on Strang’s ideas. All this happened just at the time when General de Gaulle first rejected the idea of the UK’s joining the EEC, and the concordance led to a flood of comments from HM representatives worldwide, many of them critical of Strang’s ideas but also critical of British diplomacy. The response was so overwhelming that Caccia asked Butler to analyse and synthesise the comments. The result was a paper of 24 May, ‘A new perspective for British diplomacy’, which described Britain as ‘a somewhat impotent middleweight’. This paper provoked a good deal of discussion, including in the Permanent Under-Secretary’s Steering Committee, and though some of Butler’s ideas, e.g. in regard to mobilising public support for British foreign policy, or strengthening representation by ‘High Delegations’, were rejected, they did lead to some changes such as the formation of a separate Planning Staff in the FO. Deputy Under-Secretary Sir John Nicholls commented that the broader policy issues raised by Butler’s papers would need to be taken into account in future policy considerations.49 In May Rohan Butler was appointed Historical Adviser to the Secretary of State for Foreign (and later Commonwealth) Affairs, a position he would hold

47

until 1982. The Office circular announcing his appointment also announced the appointment of Douglas Dakin as Editor of DBFP in place of Patrick Bury, and of Margaret Lambert as a ‘third joint Editor’, to edit a new Series Ia, covering 192530.

1964 In January, Michael Palliser became Head of the new FO Planning Staff, and acknowledged that Butler’s Abadan memorandum and other papers, together with comments from diplomats, were responsible for a ‘new look’ in planning, designed to give it ‘greater punch and precision’.50 Butler submitted a memorandum on ‘The Position of Palestine under the McMahon-Hussein Correspondence’.51 The Historical Branch was also involved in the UK response to the discovery in July 1964 of the so-called ‘Black Lake’ documents, Gestapo records discovered in southern Bohemia.

1965 As a result of the Plowden Report, a unified Diplomatic Service came into being encompassing the duties, personnel and posts of the Foreign, Commonwealth and Trade Commission Services.

Professor W.N. Medlicott, Stevenson Professor of International History at LSE 1953-67, was appointed Senior Editor of DBFP on a part-time basis. Butler said he himself had ‘reluctantly’ decided to stop being an editor of DBFP, to concentrate on planning for the possible postwar documentary series that he now considered essential.

1966 December: Publication of DBFP, Series Ia Volume I: The Aftermath of Locarno 1925-26. The inclusion by Editor Margaret Lambert in the Preface of references to missing papers in the FO archives, in particular relating to the Zinoviev Letter of 1924, led to much press coverage and provoked a furious response from the Labour Foreign Secretary, George Brown.52 1966 The separate appointments of a Director of Research, and a Librarian and Keeper of the Papers, cemented the division of the two parts of the FO department, Research Department and Library. During the year, the newly-created Commonwealth Office moved from Church House to Whitehall.

1967 The decision was taken to publish the full multi-volume version of Sir Llewellyn Woodward’s British Foreign Policy in the Second World War, of which a singlevolume version had been published in 1962. This decision confirmed the judgement in the Foreign Office that any successor documentary series to DBFP

48

should begin its coverage at the end of the Second World War, in 1945. Margaret Lambert contributed significantly to preparing the fuller version of Woodward for publication.

The Public Records Act 1967 reduced the 50-year rule to 30 years for the transfer of documents into the public domain. Announcing the provisions of the Act in Parliament, Prime Minister Harold Wilson also stated that departments other than the Foreign Office would be encouraged to commission histories of important events. A Cabinet Committee on Official Histories was convened and met for the first time on 30 March: its terms of reference to ‘make recommendations on the choice of subjects for official histories of peacetime events and on questions relating to their publication, and on the publication of selected documents by Departments following existing Foreign Office practice’.

There was some question of whether, as part of this initiative, the FO should commission histories of special interest, e.g. on the Malayan emergency, but the FO rejected firmly any idea of the Cabinet Office having a say in their choice of topic. J.H. Peck53 wrote to the Cabinet Office on 28 April: ‘Having since 1943 had a large Research Department staffed largely with trained historians, as well as a sizeable Special Historical Section in the Library which is responsible in the main for the preparation of Documents on British Foreign Policy, we have commissioned a considerable amount of historical work which has varied in proportions from short memoranda to substantial pieces of confidential print which, if published in book form, might run to two or three hundred pages. Such historical research is an important adjunct to the political work of the Office, and it is for this reason that it will be essential for us to retain in the commissioning of any future histories the complete autonomy which we have hitherto enjoyed.’54 In other words, Official Committee: back off!

In November the Lord Chancellor approved the blanket retention of security and intelligence records under Section 3(4) of the 1958 Act, for 25 years.

1968 Historical Branch offered guidance for official statements on the 30th anniversary of the Munich Agreement in September, including on the question of whether the agreement had been concluded under threat of force, West German views of the agreement and Soviet comments on British policy.

49

On 17 October, the Foreign and Commonwealth Offices merged to become the FCO. In September Rohan Butler had submitted a historical appreciation of the office of Secretary of State and the conduct of foreign relations, which formed part of the basis for a more general background paper on the merger. The main FO Library collections were merged at Sanctuary Buildings in Marsham Street, while the Historical Section remained in Cornwall House. The department was renamed Library and Records Department (LRD), comprising the Library and Records, Historical, Translation and Registrar’s Branches.

1969 In July, the Duncan Report recommended fewer FCO overseas Posts and the division of the world into an inner ‘Area of concentration’ and an outer area of lesser concern (Cmnd 4107).

1970 1 July: a memorandum by Butler on ‘Political Advisers with Expeditionary Forces’ traced the custom back to medieval times, when monarchs going on campaign were accompanied by political and secretarial, as well as military aides.

On 20 November Butler submitted a report to the PUS recommending that ‘we should undertake as soon as possible another large-scale publication of documents on British external policy in the postwar period. If we do not take the trouble to tell our story properly it will go by default and is only too likely to be traduced. The publication of recent diplomatic documents is an internationally competitive field of growing importance.’ There should, he said, be two series launched concurrently, beginning in 1945 and 1950.

In November, General Charles de Gaulle died, and in the following months the Historians prepared background papers and analysis on his life and legacy.

1971 January: a memorandum by the Historical Adviser on ‘HMG’s attitude to the Munich Agreement’ was prepared for Western European Department. 18 June: The PUS chaired a meeting (attended by Butler) on whether to proceed with a documentary publication on British foreign policy for the postwar period. It was decided to draft a paper for ministers, together with a recommendation that the series British and Foreign State Papers (BFSP), begun in 1814, should be terminated after the 1968 volume.

1972 28 March: A submission was put up to the PUS and the PS to the Foreign Secretary: ‘To decide future policy on the publication of selected documents on British Foreign Policy post 1945’, covering a paper by the Foreign Secretary, Sir 50

Alec Douglas-Home, for the Defence and Overseas Policy Committee, DOP(72)17 of 7 April. It said there was a ‘strong case for embarking on a postwar series’, and proposed Butler as Editor in Chief with Margaret Lambert as Assistant Editor. In a minute to the Foreign Secretary on 27 November (M 123/72), the Prime Minister, Edward Heath, said that members of the DOP Committee had now agreed generally with the proposals, subject to an assurance that ‘documents which are sensitive for reasons of intelligence, defence or commercial relations will be carefully examined before release’. Butler was pleased, but noted that he reserved the right to ask for papers from closed files to be reviewed separately if necessary. There was a certain amount of correspondence about the proposed ‘square-bracketed calendar’ procedure (a way of indicating redacted or withheld material excised from the published text), which in the end was used rarely.

In May, the Katyn Committee proposed the erection of a memorial to the victims of the wartime massacre, reviving the controversy about responsibility for the death of the Polish officers whose bodies had been discovered in 1943.

Pressure from groups in Parliament and the Polish Government, together with much Whitehall discussion about the stance HMG should take, involved the Historians in a considerable amount of work until the memorial was finally unveiled in September 1976. Even then, controversy revived every year when a Katyn commemoration was held.

During the summer of 1972 there was considerable minuting regarding the possible inclusion of Cabinet material in the proposed new series of documentary history of British foreign policy. Butler raised the point that if the editors of the Transfer of Power series (on the independence of India and Burma) were allowed to use Cabinet papers, so should he. Clive Rose, the Assistant Under-Secretary superintending LRD, suggested that Butler draft a submission to the Cabinet Secretary. The Cabinet Office were taking rather a stern line over this, but as Butler pointed out, the DBFP editors had always had the right to see Cabinet material on FO files and to print FO memoranda for the Cabinet from those files.

(At that time Cabinet material was not removed routinely from FO files at Selection Review.)

In December, Gill Bennett joined the section as Research Assistant.

51

1973 8 January: The Cabinet Secretary, Sir Burke Trend, reopened the squarebracketing issue in a letter to the PUS (Sir Denis Greenhill), clearly unhappy at the idea that any withheld documents might be referred to in calendars: ‘In short, are you satisfied that what you are proposing is both right and inevitable? Or should we pause and ask ourselves once more whether there is some way in which, without injustice to the historians, we can eliminate the more sensitive documents, not merely from the publication but from the process of “calendaring” as well?’55 This led to still more minuting, but Greenhill took the view that ‘we are right to go ahead as planned and that the risks arising from the square bracketing procedure are containable’ (5 February).

In April the Historical Adviser’s memorandum on ‘The Katyn Massacre and Reactions in the Foreign Office’, submitted in late 1972, was printed in the Departmental Series of Eastern European and Soviet Department. Among other issues, the memorandum showed that contrary to what some critics alleged, the FO had never concealed its view that the Russians were the likely perpetrators of the massacre, even though the government had never stated this publicly. Sir Owen O’Malley had said as much in a despatch in 1943, but the exigencies of wartime prevented the Western Allies from venting their suspicion of Soviet responsibility, and Butler concluded that even in 1973, ‘We see no advantage in breaking the silence that we have preserved for nearly 30 years on the Katyn massacre’.

2 July: Foreign Secretary Sir Alec Douglas-Home announced in Parliament the decision to publish a new postwar official documentary history, Documents on British Policy Overseas (DBPO). To cope with the greatly increased volume of documents after the war, those selected for printing were to be followed by ‘printed calendars briefly summarising related documents’, with microcopies available for purchase. In September Heather Fenby joined the Branch as a Research Assistant.

1975 January: memorandum by Butler on Russian repatriation, ‘Revealing the Last Secret’. The reference was to the title of a book by Nicholas (Lord) Bethell about forced repatriation at the end of the Second World War; another controversial issue researched by Historians on a number of occasions. Publication of the final

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volume (VII) of Series IA, DBFP: German, Austrian and Middle East Questions 192930.

In July 1975, to the delight of her colleagues, Margaret Lambert married Adrian Pelly CVO, a former naval officer now responsible for the Queen’s dairy herd. In those days, direct phone lines in Cornwall House went off at 5.15pm, with a single ‘night line’ left open; it is a part of Historical Branch legend that Adrian’s proposal of marriage was truncated by the operator, Mrs Hastings, before Margaret had managed to respond. Happily, the connection was reestablished!

1976 January: a memorandum on ‘British policy towards Berlin and East Germany’ was submitted to Western European Department by the Historical Adviser.

Following the resignation of Harold Wilson, the new Prime Minister, James Callaghan, appointed Anthony Crosland as Foreign Secretary on Thursday, 8 April: on Friday, 9 April, Historical Branch received a request for ‘books on foreign policy the new Foreign Secretary could read over the weekend’; top of the list of recommendations was Professor Medlicott’s British Foreign Policy Since Versailles. The Historians were also involved closely in the bicentennial celebrations of the United States of America, preparing material for the Prime Minister’s address in Westminster Hall on 26 May. August: circulation of a memorandum on the ‘Historical Background to the Eden Reforms of the Foreign Service in 1943’.56 In October, Butler submitted a memorandum on ‘The interdependence of British Trade and Foreign Policy’, intended to be of use in discussion with the Central Policy Review Staff for their study of overseas representation (see 1978). Members of the CPRS consulted the Historians on a number of occasions during their investigations.

1977 In May, in connection with the 600th anniversary of the accession of King Richard II of England and Duke of Aquitaine, Historians prepared material for a visit by the Lord Mayor of London to France, where he presented a number of documents to the French government. August: memorandum submitted to United Nations Department, ‘Notes on Britain and the UN’.

1978 The FO took over the newly-vacated Home Office building in Whitehall. March: memorandum submitted on ‘British repatriation of Russians at the end of the Second World War’.57 In June, the Historical Adviser submitted a paper on the 53

‘Balance between civil and political and economic and social rights’, for United Nations Department. In August the CPRS Report on ‘The United Kingdom’s Overseas Representation’ (Berrill Report) was published, and the Historians were asked to comment on it. Berrill recommended the merger of the Home Civil Service and the Diplomatic Service, but a government reply published in August 1979 rejected this.

Also in 1978, Historical Branch prepared material on the history of the Norwegian intelligence services and the liberation of Norway, in connection with Princess Anne’s visit to Norway. The Lord Chancellor appointed a committee headed by Sir Duncan Wilson, and including Margaret Gowing (official historian of Britain and atomic energy), to study the current arrangements for modern departmental records.

1979 In June, the Historical Adviser submitted a memorandum on fresh evidence in relation to the Katyn Massacre received since 1973. In September, Butler submitted an outline history of the FCO for use by the Prime Minister in a speech at the Guildhall, together with an annotated list of British Secretaries of State 1782-1979.58 On 18 December, in a long but rather unenthusiastic paper to the Librarian and Chief Clerk about possibilities for marking the bicentenary of the FO and Home Office in 1982, Butler reiterated several times that Historical Section resources were limited, although he was ‘naturally glad to help if others took the lead’.

1981 On 8 April the Secretary of State approved proposals for a lecture series with Chatham House to mark the FCO’s Bicentenary. He rejected more grandiose ideas, though encouraged local initiatives. A Ministerial decision was taken to refurbish the FCO (Old Public Offices). On 20 August, Planning Staff circulated an index of important foreign policy papers produced in the FCO since 1970, including a number prepared by the Historical Adviser.

1982 After Rohan Butler’s retirement on 20 January, it was announced on 2 February that his personal appointment as Historical Adviser would not be renewed, but that R.R.A. (Ronnie) Wheatley, who was head of the British division of the German documents project, would also act as head of the Historical Section. The Office circular noted that the Section would be concentrating its activities on the publication of DBFP, DGFP and DBPO, and that ‘the provision of historical 54

memoranda can no longer be undertaken’. This did not seem to affect the range of the Historians’ work, however, and early in 1982 they became involved closely in preparations to mark the bicentenary of the foundation of the Foreign Office (and Home Office) on 27 March. This included contributing to a speech by the Secretary of State, Lord Carrington, at Chatham House on 25 March (as part of a series including Dr Henry Kissinger, David Watt and Professor Michael Howard). On 13-14 July the LSE hosted ‘A Conference to mark the Two Hundredth Anniversary of the Foreign Office’, attended by all members of Historical Section; speakers included the Minister of State, Cranley Onslow, and former senior diplomats Lord Gladwyn, Sir Frank Roberts, Lord Greenhill, Sir James Cable, Sir Con O’Neill and Sir Clive Rose, as well as Professor Medlicott.

A reception was held in the FCO on the evening of the first day.

In March, in the White Paper Modern Public Records, 59 HMG accepted the recommendations of the Wilson Committee, which had concluded that the Grigg Report of 1954 had established a good framework, but that it had not been implemented ‘in the spirit nor in the letter’. It also concluded that the reduction from a 50-year to a 30-year rule, together with the accelerated opening of Second World War records, ‘caused chaos in the reviewing system’.60 The White Paper stipulated more rigorous procedures for the retention of security and intelligence records; henceforth, new records were to be approved for retention in 10-year tranches and each blanket approval was to be reconsidered after not more than 20 years. These provisions were of particular relevance to the FCO as the ‘parent’ of both the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) and GCHQ, and would be of increasing importance to the Historians when they sought to include security and intelligence matters in the documentary history and in advice proffered to ministers.

In August, Dr Roger Bullen (LSE) joined Historical Branch as Senior Editor of DBPO on a part-time basis. On 15 December, HM Queen Elizabeth II visited the FCO to mark its Bicentenary, and looked at a display of historical documents and artefacts put together by the Historians and the Library.

1983 Professor W.N. Medlicott retired as Senior Editor of DBFP.

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1984 First volume of Series I of DBPO published: The Conference at Potsdam, July-August 1945. Final volume of Second Series of DBFP published, Volume XXI: Far Eastern Affairs, November 1936-July 1938.

1985 In January, Roger Bullen became Acting Head of Historical Branch following the sudden death of Ronnie Wheatley. In September, Margaret Pelly gave a presentation to the India Office Library and Records Department on ‘The selection of documents for the FCO series on British foreign policy: A Great Enterprise 1924-85’.

1986 Publication of DBPO, Series II, Volume I: The Schuman Plan, the Council of Europe and Western European Integration, May 1950-December 1952; and of the final volume of DBFP, First Series, Volume XXVII: Germany 1925 and the Locarno Treaty.

The Ministry of Defence published a review of the results of investigations carried out into the fate of British servicemen captured in Greece and the Greek Islands between October 1943 and October 1944, and the possible involvement in those events of Kurt Waldheim, former UN Secretary General and now President of Austria. Historical Section was also involved in research on this issue.

1987 During 1987, the FCO Library was reorganised so that most post-1969 books were housed in Downing Street East, with a separate Legal Library in King Charles Street. The FO, CO and CRO historical collections remained in Cornwall House, where Historical Branch was situated.

In August Dr Roger Bullen was appointed Historical Adviser to the Secretary of State. In September, Volume II of DBPO, Series II was published, The London Conference: Anglo-American Relations and Cold War Strategy January-June 1950.

Professor W.N. Medlicott died on 7 October. On 6 November the Historical Branch hosted a seminar, ‘Valid Evidence’, in Cornwall House. It was the first event of its kind that the Historians had organised, attended by more than 40 external academics and practitioners discussing editorial principles and practice.

The proceedings were published in the first in the series of Historians’ ‘Occasional Papers’.

In 1987 the restoration of Durbar Court and the surrounding areas of the FCO was completed. Kate Crowe of Historical Branch began to conduct tours of the Fine Rooms for officials, visiting dignitaries and other interested groups, as part of the Office’s plan to show what had been achieved with a great deal of public

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money. Later, a small team of FCO guides was formed, often working in their own time, on a tours programme that became very popular.

1988 21 September: Death of Dr Roger Bullen; Margaret Pelly (née Lambert) succeeded him as Head of Historical Branch.

Public, press and Parliamentary interest in the 1943 Katyn massacre was rekindled by the visit of President Gorbachev to Poland, and the work of a joint Polish-Soviet Historical Commission. Historians and Research Analysts both kept a close watch on emerging documentation or evidence about the events of 1943, as questions continued to be asked as to whether HMG would change its line about not commenting publicly on who was responsible.

1989 January: DBPO, Series I, Volume III published, Britain and America: Negotiation of the US Loan, 3 August-6 December 1945. In the spring, the decision was taken to relocate LRD out of London to Hanslope Park; Cornwall House was to be sold.

In April, Historians made a major contribution, including liaising with the Public Records Office on the loan of original documents, to the mounting of an exhibition in Luxembourg on 150 years of their history. In November Richard Bone, formerly head of Research Department, became head of LRD. The Security Service Act 1989 placed the Service (MI5) on a statutory basis, meaning references to the Service in documents need no longer be redacted.

On 9 and 10 November, the Historians hosted in the FCO the first International Conference of Editors of Diplomatic Documents (ICEDD), beginning a biennial series that continues today. The Berlin Wall fell between the first and second days of the conference, adding considerable drama and interest to the proceedings, particularly since day two of the conference focussed on German affairs. The conference proceedings were later published in two Occasional Papers.

Among a wide range of enquiries dealt with in 1989, Historians advised on material for a British Exhibition in Kiev, assisted Lord Brimelow with his work on alleged Nazi-Soviet peace-feelers in 1941-42 and Russian repatriation post1945, and commented on Sir A. Farrar-Hockley’s official history of the Korean War. The year also saw the publication of Volume III of DBPO, Series II, German Rearmament, September-December 1950. Reviewing it in the Financial Times, Professor Donald Cameron Watt wrote that the volume offered ‘a fascinating

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picture of the interplay of personality, institutional fixed minds and the inner workings of the Whitehall machinery’.

1990 A new Desk Top Publishing system, based on an Apple Macintosh local area network, was installed in Historical Branch with technical consultancy from HMSO. The goal was to produce DBPO volumes in camera-ready form, to reduce costs and thereby the price of the books. The new system presented considerable technical challenges for the Historians, which they embraced (mostly) with enthusiasm.

LRD became part of FCO Information Systems Division. In June a new LRD IT Committee was established, for which the Historians produced the newsletter using their new DTP system. The publication in March of Series I, Volume V of DBPO, Britain and Germany, August-December 1945, attracted favourable attention, with our Ambassador in Bonn noting, according to the annual departmental review, that ‘German reviewers of this volume and its immediate predecessor presented British policy towards Germany in so positive a light as to be of operational value in terms of current Anglo-German relations’.

Margaret Pelly retired as Editor and Head of Branch, and was succeeded by Heather Yasamee (née Fenby). Dr Keith Hamilton, of the University of Aberystwyth, was appointed as Editor of DBPO, the first external academic to be recruited into the branch as a full-time editor employed in-house.

In the spring, when the second phase of the refurbishment programme for the FCO was completed, Ministers asked that an illustrated booklet should be prepared for the record and for presentational purposes. This was a major project for Home Estates Department and Historical Branch, with Kate Crowe taking the lead. It is clear that Margaret Pelly had doubts about the amount of time and resource this would take up, but Kate was determined to do it and ministerial insistence meant she got her way; the project occupied all of her time until the booklet was published in December 1991.

In April, during a visit to the Soviet Union by Polish President Jaruzelski, President Gorbachev issued a press statement concluding that the ‘crimes of Katyn’ had been committed by the KGB’s predecessor, the NKVD. This led to further research and advice by the Historians, including a minute by Heather Yasamee for the Director of Research, placing successive positions on Katyn in

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the context of emerging evidence.61 Mrs Yasamee went to Moscow in November together with the Head of Department and Head of Records, to advise the Russians on the publication of diplomatic documents, the release of records and records management.

A review by HM Treasury of the grading structure of the Historical Branch (the Martin Review) concluded in May that ‘the work of the Historical Branch, with its emphasis on academic integrity, rigorous scholarship and research, is qualitatively similar to that undertaken by the Curatorial Group in national museums and record offices’. In view of short staffing, however, the Review recommended concentrating on DBPO and giving up extra things e.g. tours of the FCO. On 9 July Richard Bone submitted a review of DBPO to Jeffrey Ling (AUS). Publication of the first History Note, Korea: Britain and the Korean War, 1950-51 (Second edition (revised) 1995). Gill Bennett moved out of Historians to work in the wider FCO, initially in the Strategic Planning Unit of Information Systems Division, drawing up the FCO’s first Information Systems Strategy. Dr Ann Lane replaced her as an Assistant Editor, and Dr Isabel Warner also joined the Branch as an Assistant Editor.

1991 Despite the Martin Review’s recommendations, Historical Branch broadened its work to include the publication of History Notes, historical advice, tours of the FCO and a new series of in-house international history lectures, primarily as part of the FCO’s training programme for new entrants and others. Richard Bone made the case that the Branch should remain in London, and not relocate to the new Records building at Hanslope Park, on which building work began in February. In April, History Note No. 2, The FCO: Policy, People and Places, 17821995, was published.

In June, Kate Crowe produced a statistical survey of reviews of DBPO published since the series was launched in 1984. 21 reviews of volumes in Series I had been published, and 16 in Series II. She noted that there had been ‘universal praise’, with phrases such as ‘indispensable source’ and ‘treasure trove’, while Professor Zara Steiner had nominated Series II, Volume II as her Book of the Year in the Financial Times, noting that it was a ‘superbly edited publication which amateur strategists will find more gripping than most studies of the British contribution to the cold war’.

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In the summer, the Historians organised a series of three lectures on the Middle East, to provide background to events in the Gulf, plus an autumn series on aspects of British foreign policy during the 20th century. Financial help and advice were provided for conferences organised by the British National Committee for the History of the Second World War, on the German invasion of the USSR, and Anglo-Norwegian wartime relations. In October, History Note No. 3, Locarno 1925: Spirit, Suite and Treaties was published (revised edition 2000).

Also in October, the Historians produced the first of a series of newsletters for Editors of Diplomatic Documents, including updates on a range of international government-sponsored documentary projects.

In November, LRD adopted a new Code of Practice for reviewers of intelligence-related material, leaning towards release rather than retention, by the use of redaction and dummies in files. This development gave the Historians greater flexibility in their choice of material to print. In December, HMSO published the illustrated booklet on the FCO. 1992 On 8 January, Historians hosted a seminar to launch two new DBPO volumes, Series I, Volume VI (Eastern Europe August 1945-April 1946) and Series II, Volume IV, Korea, June 1950-April 1951. January: ICEDD held at The Hague. In February, the Farm Hall papers, transcripts of conversations between German nuclear scientists interned in Britain in 1945, were released by the Ministry of Defence, in a move supported by Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd. Historians played a major part in the handling of this release, and that of papers relating to Rudolf Hess later in the year. On the same day, 14 February, the Lord Chancellor announced the renewal of the Security and Intelligence Blanket. On 6 May the Secret Intelligence Service was avowed, meaning that its existence and the name of its Chief could now be mentioned.

On 14 May a speech by Douglas Hurd at the Knole Club indicated that a new approach was to be taken to the opening of records, and he ordered a re-review of all closed FCO records: ‘The presumption should be that information is released unless there are compelling and substantive reasons of national interest to withhold it.’ (A headline in the Evening Standard on 19 May read ‘Major unlocks secrets cabinet’.) This introduced a new period of emphasis on the opening of

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records, in which Historians were involved closely, leading to the 1993 Open Government White Paper.

Withheld papers on Rudolf Hess were released to the PRO in two batches on 10 June and 2 July, employing the blocking and redaction procedures for the first time. In June on Radio 4, William Waldegrave, then minister responsible for implementing the Citizens’ Charter, invited ‘serious historians’ to write to him concerning blocks of papers that might be considered for release. He also announced that early Joint Intelligence Committee papers would be released. In August a review began of FCO holdings of historical Signals Intelligence (SIGINT) material, and in September the Krupp papers were returned to Germany. Also in August, the Historians published History Note No. 4, FCO Records: Policy, Practice and Posterity 1782-1993. In October a Special Review Team was set up in LRD, alongside the Sensitivity Review Unit, to look at the withheld archive, including papers requested as a result of the Waldegrave initiative. A conference held by the Institute for Contemporary British History (ICBH) focussed on FCO records. Historians, as part of LRD, played a part in preparations for the release of intelligence archives, such as the pre-1909 SIS material and the first release of GCHQ wartime intercepts.

At the beginning of 1992, the Board of Management had confirmed that the Library would not be moving to Hanslope Park, but that LRD would have to reduce its staff by 20% by 1993/4. By the end of the year, all LRD staff, including Historians, had moved out of Cornwall House, the Historians transferring in December into very pleasant and spacious accommodation in Clive House, above the Passport Office in Petty France; the Edward Watts building, housing FCO Records, had opened at Hanslope Park in November. In November, as part of the UK Presidency of the European Community, the Historians took the lead in hosting a meeting of the EC Archivists’ Working Group, and drafted much of a report on the organisation of MFA archives services in the Community.

They also helped mount an International History Lecture series for FCO staff, including on the EC and Russia. The International Section (dealing with IRDrelated material, and monitoring of the residual activities of communist front organisations and other bodies) was transferred from Information Department to LRD under Historians’ management.

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During the year Historians also spent a lot of time, as the annual departmental report put it, ‘dealing with detailed (false) allegations about previous FCO records practice bearing on the Tolstoy-Aldington Libel trial and the Cowgill enquiry into the forcible repatriation of Yugoslavs in 1945’. 62 They also contributed to preparations for the Anglo-German summit held in 1992.

1993 Sherard Cowper-Coles, then in Efficiency Scrutiny Unit, conducted a review of LRD including Historians. His review was essentially positive, describing DBPO as a publication ‘second to none’. The review led to a major restructuring of LRD during the following year, based on two interlocking ‘wings’: Library and Information; and Records and Historical Services (RHS), the latter including Registry

Advisers,

Records

Management

Services,

Treaty,

Section,

Declassification and Historians. In January, Dawson Nightingale joined the branch as a Research Assistant, replacing Dr Martin Polley who had taken up a teaching post at King Alfred’s College, Winchester. March saw the publication of History Note No. 5, FCO Library: Print, Paper and Publications, 1782-1993, together with a revised edition of The FCO: Policy, People and Places 1782-1993.

Two blocks of SOE records for 1940-45 were released in June and September, with input from Historians. In June the International Section, dealing with Information Research Department (IRD and related records, which had been cohoused with Historians, was closed down.

Also in June, a conference was held at the LSE on ‘Historians as Officials: the Development of International History in Britain and the World’, to mark the retirement from the Stevenson Chair of Professor Donald Cameron Watt.

Heather Yasamee, Keith Hamilton and Gill Bennett63 made presentations, as well as many distinguished academics, and Mark Lennox-Boyd, Parliamentary-Under Secretary, hosted a reception for the Conference in the FCO on 29 June. The Editors’ Newsletter described the conference as ‘a happy stocktaking of achievements in International History during Watt’s tenure, so many of them inspired by his work and activities’.

The Open Government White Paper was published on 15 July, bringing Whitehall guidelines on records policy in line with changes the FCO had initiated in 1992; on the same day, pre-1909 SIS material was transferred to the PRO in class HD 1-4.

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In September the German Chancellor, Helmut Kohl, opened the Allied Museum in Berlin, with Historians providing the lead British contribution to the International Committee of Experts. Historians worked with Home Estates Department on the commissioning and unveiling of a bust of Anthony Eden to be placed at the foot of the Grand Staircase.

1994 On 30 March, Sir Alan Campbell, former diplomat, delivered a lecture on Sir Eyre Crowe (PUS 1920-25), organised by the Historical Branch. His lecture was published in the eighth edition of Occasional Papers, together with articles by Dr Keith Hamilton on Sir Francis Bertie, ‘Continuity and Change in Modern Diplomacy’ by the Director of the Wilton Park Conference Centre, Professor Richard Langhorne, and ‘Opening Diplomacy and Open Government’ by Richard Bone, head of LRD. The Code of Practice on Access to Government Information came into force on 4 April. Historians, in LRD, played a part in its drafting and interpretation.

The Chief Clerk, Andrew Wood, argued that as part of the Open Government initiative, the Historians should now move to cover periods of more contemporary relevance in DBPO. Publication of History Notes Nos. 6 and 7, on Women in Diplomacy: The FCO, 1782-1999, and ‘My Purdah Lady’. The Foreign Office and the Secret Vote, 1782-1909, the latter with some input from intelligence agency archives. 11-13 May: ICEDD held in Ottawa, the second day of the programme focussing on the Cold War. On 12 October, Dr Isabel Warner visited Bonn for discussions with the editorial team of the German series, Akten zur Auswärtigen Politik der Bundesrepublik Deutschland. With the passage of the Intelligence Services Act, putting the Secret Intelligence Service on a statutory basis, it became easier for the Historians to access and make use of documents referring to the Service found in FCO archives.

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1995 – 2018 1995 February: formal opening of the new Library in Downing Street East. On 1 February a reception was held to mark the publication of DBPO, Series I, Volume VII, The United Nations: Iran, Cold War and World Organisation, January 1946 January 1947. This coincided with the 50th anniversary of both the San Francisco Conference, at which the UN Charter was finalised, and the meeting in London of the UN Preparatory Commission. At the launch, Mr Tony Baldry, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, announced that as a ‘testimony to the Office’s commitment to open government’ future DBPO volumes would extend beyond 1945-55 to include material from the ‘closed period’, i.e. less than 30 years old.

Everyone was shocked by the sudden death of Richard Bone, Head of LRD, on 12 February following a heart attack. The Historians’ Newsletter for Editors of Diplomatic Documents published in April noted that Richard had been firmly committed to the publication of diplomatic documents. He was also instrumental in introducing a more liberal records release policy in the FCO, making more than 3,500 previously withheld papers accessible, including those on Hess, and took a keen interest in extending the scope and coverage of DBPO. Richard was succeeded as head of LRD by Ian Soutar.

March: the first display of historic communications equipment went on show in the FCO, inspiring a request from the British Council to borrow the Enigma machine for a forthcoming Anglo-Polish exhibition in Warsaw. On 16 March Heather Yasamee and Isabel Warner went to Paris for talks with the editors of the French series Documents Diplomatiques Français. Details were released in the press in the spring of 1995 about military records discovered in Moscow’s ‘Special Archive’ of Allied material liberated from the Germans at the end of the Second World War. These files included personal collections of diaries, letters and photographs belonging to British servicemen, and the Historians, together with MOD, began working with the Russian authorities to return these to their families where possible. May: Sir Michael Howard delivered the FCO annual lecture, organised by Historians, the text of which was published as an

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Occasional Paper, 1945-95: Fifty Years of European Peace. In June Gill Bennett returned to head up the branch, now called FCO Historians, with title of Chief Historian, while Heather Yasamee became overall Head of Records and Historical Services. Dr Ann Lane left the section to take up a post at Queen’s University Belfast. Greg Quinn joined as a Research Assistant.

Historians published History Note No. 8, FCO Library and Records, 1782-1995.

In July Historians contributed to the first in a new series of publications by the Allied Museum Berlin, on whose Expert Commission they are represented.

Professor Douglas Dakin died on 20 July; a memorial meeting on his life and work was held at Birkbeck College on 26 October, at which Gill Bennett spoke about his time as an editor of DBFP. In August the first tranche of IRD files, covering 1948, was released into the public domain, accompanied by History Note No. 9 on the Origins and Establishment of the Foreign Office Information Research Department 1946-48.

Commenting on the LRD departmental report for 1995, the Assistant UnderSecretary minuted to the Chief Clerk that it was an ‘impressive record of a department whose work often goes unnoticed’.

1996 Publication in February of History Note No. 10, in response to a critical reaction to the release in 1995 of SOE files relating to Katyn. The Note confirmed that ‘nothing in recently released papers conflicts with statements made by the British Government on Katyn in 1943 or thereafter. There was no question of a “coverup”.’64 In April, Dr Liz Kane joined the section as a Research Assistant. Also in April, the Historians embarked on a year’s trial as part of the Records and Historical Services’ Business Unit headed by Heather Yasamee, part of a major business strategy in the FCO’s General Services Command. This included a benchmarking exercise, comparing DBPO with the American series Foreign Relations of the United States, for which Gill Bennett and Heather Yasamee visited their counterparts at the State Department in Washington, and with the British Documents on the End of Empire Project in London.

September: publication by Historians of History Note No. 11, Nazi Gold: Information from the British Archives. This was commissioned by Foreign Secretary Malcolm Rifkind in response to allegations from Jewish organisations about HMG’s wartime handling of looted monetary and non-monetary gold, and the 65

availability of British records. It was the beginning of several years’ intense work for the Historians on this and related issues.

19-21 September: ICEDD held in Rome. 30 October: death of Dr Rohan Butler, former Historical Adviser.

1997 On 5 May Margaret Pelly (née Lambert), former head of Historical Branch and editor of both DBFP and DBPO, died. On 25 June Gill Bennett testified, with special permission from the PUS, before the US House of Representatives Banking Committee in Washington on Nazi Gold and related Holocaust-era issues. For the next few years Historians were to be deeply involved in all these issues, in collaboration with Western European Department, with Gill Bennett and Richard Bevins representing HMG at a number of international meetings and conferences.

Publication of The Know-How Fund: The Early Years, an internal history written

by Keith Hamilton. In December, as instructed by Foreign Secretary Robin Cook when he came into office in May, Historians helped organise and contributed to a major International Nazi Gold Conference at Lancaster House. A second History Note (No. 12) on Nazi Gold was published, as well as the proceedings of the Conference.

The Security Service (MI5) transferred the greater part of its surviving First World War archive to the Public Record Office, beginning a comprehensive series of transfers into the KV classes that has provided useful background material for the Historians.

1998 22 January: A witness seminar, on the theme of ‘Negotiating with the Russians’, was held in the Locarno Conference Room, to launch the first two volumes in the new Series III of DBPO: Volume I, Britain and the Soviet Union, 1968-72 (in which Gill Bennett pioneered a new approach combining documents with narrative comment); and Volume II, The Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe, 1972-1975, edited by Keith Hamilton. These were the first to be published from the ‘closed’ period and to include material from the PUSD archives. In a press statement that morning, Foreign Secretary Robin Cook said that publication marked ‘a really significant step towards a more open Foreign Office’.

The seminar was opened by the PUS, Sir John Kerr, and chaired by Francis Richards, Deputy Under-Secretary for Defence and Intelligence; speakers

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included former Prime Minister Lord (James) Callaghan and his Cabinet colleague Lord (Denis) Healey, and former members of the Diplomatic Service Sir John Killick, Sir Julian Bullard, Sir Crispin Tickell and George Walden. The Russian Ambassador, Mr Yuri Fokine, was also present.

The publication of a book by intelligence historian Nigel West and former KGB Colonel Oleg Tsarev, Crown Jewels: The British Secrets at the Heart of the KGB Archives, was the trigger for a major new research project by the Historians in 1998. Following a number of Parliamentary Questions, on 12 February the Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook, endorsed in Parliament the principle that the records of SIS are not transferred to the Public Records Office, stating that when individuals or organisations cooperated with SIS they did so because an unshakeable commitment was given never to reveal their identities. However, in response to Parliamentary and public requests for information on the Zinoviev Letter of 1924, he announced that he had commissioned the FCO Historians to research the issue, with full access to the records of the UK’s intelligence agencies.65 Work on this occupied much of Gill Bennett’s time for the rest of the year, including a visit to Moscow (together with FCO Principal Russian Interpreter Tony Bishop) and Washington to gather material.

In April Gill Bennett spoke at a meeting of the Holocaust Educational Trust held in Stockholm and chaired by the Swedish Prime Minister. History Note No. 13 was published on yet another sensitive wartime issue, British policy towards enemy property during and after the Second World War. The report was commissioned by the Foreign Secretary in response to criticisms that property belonging to foreign nationals, including Jewish refugees, seized under Trading with the Enemy legislation during the Second World War, had not been returned. The Note established that proper restitution had been made, although in some cases foreign governments may not have passed it on to their citizens.

In June Gill Bennett was awarded an OBE in the Birthday Honours. In September, she attended the formal ceremony between French, UK and US delegations in Paris to wind up the Tripartite Gold Commission (established in 1946 to deal with the restitution of gold looted by the Nazis), with which Historians had become involved. Marie-Louise Childs joined Historians as a Research Assistant. October: ICEDD held in Bonn. In December Gill Bennett

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and Richard Bevins formed part of the UK Delegation to the Washington Conference on Holocaust-Era Assets, where Gill spoke.

1999 February: Publication of FCO History Note No. 14, ‘A most extraordinary and mysterious business’: The Zinoviev Letter of 1924, based on full access to UK intelligence archives. There was a good deal of press interest, including a profile of Gill in the Daily Telegraph on 22 February by Boris Johnson, a future Foreign Secretary. In June Dr Stephen Ashton, General Editor of the British Documents on the End of Empire Project (BDEEP), joined the Historians on a part-time basis to edit a DBPO volume on Britain and China, 1945-50. In July, several years of work by RHD in collaboration with the Russian Ministry for Foreign Affairs (see 1995) led to the return of British Servicemen’s papers to their families. A press event to display these papers was held in the FCO on 22 July, the same day that a Memorandum of Understanding on Archival Cooperation between Britain and the Russian Federation was signed by Robin Cook and Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov, as well as by Heather Yasamee with her Russian counterpart.

In September, Gill Bennett represented the FCO at a conference organised by the CIA’s Center for the Study of Intelligence and the Allied Museum in Berlin, ‘On the Front Lines of Cold War: the Intelligence War in Berlin’. It was held at the Teufelsberg, the man-made mountain just outside Berlin that had constituted an Allied listening post during the Cold War. During the conference, a media storm erupted with the publication of the first serialised extract from The Mitrokhin Archive, the account of KGB activities in Britain and Europe based on material brought out from Russia by former KGB archivist Vasili Mitrokhin, who had been exfiltrated by SIS, and written up in collaboration with Professor Christopher Andrew (present at the Teufelsberg). The revelations in this extract, in particular regarding Melita Norwood (the so-called ‘Spy who came in from the Co-op’)66 led to Gill finding herself besieged by the world’s press at the boundary fence; Gill recalls being briefed by News Department in one ear and by the book’s publicist in the other.

During 1999, the FCO, together with the Cabinet Office and Ministry of Defence, formed a Whitehall History Publishing Group and employed consultants to negotiate a co-publishing programme for their historical output.

The initial contract was signed with Frank Cass publishers, subsequently taken

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over by Taylor and Francis. The WHP contract covers volumes in the Cabinet Official History programme, the FCO series DBPO and histories published by the Army, Navy and Air Historical Branches of MOD. Following a review by FCO Management Services, it was recommended that RHS should become Records and Historical Department, with Heather Yasamee as Head. At the end of November RHD was ‘christened’ at a reception in the Grand Locarno Room, with an exhibition mounted by the Historians of all the work done by the various elements of the department.

2000 Following the discovery of asbestos in the Old Admiralty Building, the Historians moved in January to St Christopher House, Southwark Street, SE1. In February they participated in a session based on Edward de Bono’s Introduction to Creative thinking, comprising Six Thinking Hats and Lateral Thinking Alternatives. Dr de Bono and his colleagues ran a number of sessions in the FCO in which teams could bid to participate and try out the methodology. Historians used the methodology subsequently on other occasions in discussing important issues for the branch.

An Anglo-Polish Historical Committee was established, following agreement between the British and Polish Prime Ministers to research the intelligence contribution made by the Poles to Allied victory in the Second World War. Gill Bennett was commissioned to examine the closed archives of the UK intelligence agencies for relevant material. The first meeting of the Steering Committee, which also included on the UK side Mrs Tessa Stirling, head of the Cabinet Office Historical Section, and Professor Christopher Andrew, was held in the Cabinet Office on 19 June. Thereafter meetings were held every six months, alternately in London and Warsaw.

May: Gill Bennett represented HMG at a conference summoned by the then Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, at the Royal Academy in Dublin, to consider the Black Diaries of Sir Roger Casement, which had been transferred into the public domain (with limited access) in 1994. Gill confirmed (a) that the diaries were genuine and (b) there was no foundation to the theory they were forged by British intelligence. The fate of Casement, knighted for services to the Colonial Office but executed in 1916 for treason in his activities in support of Irish nationalism, and of his infamous diaries detailing homosexual activities, had long been a

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source of controversy. The Dublin conference was notable for its political subcontext at a time of negotiations at Hillsborough with the Irish Government in the aftermath of the 1998 Good Friday agreement, and the historical sensitivities were considerable.

June: Foreign Secretary Robin Cook instructed the Historians to revise the existing History Note on Katyn, on the grounds that previous administrations could have been more candid earlier about Soviet guilt for the massacre, and to meet criticism from the Katyn Association (see 2003).

July: Historians were closely involved in preparing briefing for the House of Commons Procedure Committee, in connection with plans for increased parliamentary scrutiny of Treaties. They were also involved in interdepartmental clearance procedures for the official history of the Falklands campaign. During the summer, Dr Buckthorp researched the fate of the SS Struma, sunk on 24 February 1942 while carrying roughly 800 Jewish refugees from Romania to Palestine. Research into this controversial episode was prompted by plans to try and raise the ship from the seabed.

Extract from Gill Bennett’s diary for 27 July 2000: ‘Summer has brought out the lunatic fringe. This week I took delivery of a video sent to the Foreign Secretary by a man who maintains that Hitler was the same person as King George V’s son Prince John; then there was a letter from someone researching the possible dropping of Colorado beetles from aircraft during the Berlin airlift; and one whose grandfather tried thirty years ago to claim for property lost in Russia in 1918, so can the grandson have it immediately, please?’

September: publication of the history, written by Sir Con O’Neill, of Britain's Entry into the Europe Community, Report on the Negotiations of 1970-1972, edited by Sir David Hannay with considerable input from Historians. They mounted an exhibition for the launch, which was attended by the Foreign Secretary (somewhat reluctantly, since he had opposed the terms of entry at the time, but he applauded publication in a spirit of openness). November: meeting held in Warsaw of Anglo-Polish Historical Committee.

2001 During the year, Dr Chris Baxter joined the team. January: the year opened with a media flurry on ‘Romanian jewels’. Newly-released FCO files revealed that in 1950 the British Legation in Bucharest had sent to London by diplomatic bag jewels and other valuables belonging to Romanians who were about to be

70

arrested by the Communist authorities. The file indicated that on arrival, this property had been given into the safekeeping of ‘Mr Reilly’s Friends’ (a euphemism for SIS). In FCO archives the trail went cold, but a search in SIS uncovered a file that showed how the property had been returned to its owners when they were released, or given to relatives if they had died. The BBC reporter Sanchia Berg made a radio programme with Gill Bennett about the episode.

April: ICEDD held in Washington. Publication of the first in the series ‘Documents from the British Archives’, Documents on Relations between Britain and Finland, 1939-56. On the weekend of May 12-13, the Historians moved from St Christopher House back to the Old Admiralty Building. A launch event was held in the Locarno Suite to mark the publication of DBPO, Series III, Volume III, Détente in Europe 1972-76. The volume included coverage of the Mutual and Balanced Force Requirements negotiations, which had occupied some of the diplomatic guests at the event for a long period. One of these was Sir Clive Rose, who provided the words for songs that the UK delegation had sung: members of the FCO Choir gave a rendering during the reception.

2002 Publication of History Note on The Permanent Under-Secretary of State: A Brief History of the Office and its Holders, presented to Sir John Kerr on his retirement as PUS in January. In a letter of thanks, Sir John wrote that ‘supervision of RHD and the Historians has been one of the most enjoyable, and least onerous, parts of my job’. During the spring, Historians worked to help Marcus Binney, the journalist and architectural historian, research the wartime activities of his late stepfather, Sir George Binney, who was involved in a Special Operations Executive (SOE) operation, codenamed PERFORMANCE, to sabotage Swedish iron ore exports to Germany. On 21 March, the new PUS, Sir Michael Jay, hosted a reception organised by Historians to mark the retirement of the last SOE Adviser, Duncan Stuart, now that remaining SOE records had largely been transferred to TNA. The guests included some famous SOE veterans, such as Sir Brooks Richards and Ernest von Maurik, and a wide range of former and current intelligence officers (including ‘C’, Sir Richard Dearlove). There were a number of wartime artefacts on show including an exploding rat borrowed from the Imperial War Museum.

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On 21 May, Historians hosted a seminar on the Embassy in Beijing, to launch the DBPO volume on Britain and China, 1945-50. An exhibition was mounted in the Locarno Room, and Denis McShane (then Europe Minister) hosted the reception. Dr Ashton, having edited this volume, then left Historians and returned to work on the British Documents on the End of Empire Project.

Difficulties continued with the clearance of the official history of the Falklands, and with work on Data Protection and preparations for Freedom of Information implementation. August saw Dr Alastair Noble join the team whilst in October Gill Bennett began a leave of absence for the academic year 2002-3, to take up a Visiting Fellowship at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. She continued to work on the Historians’ proposed publication on the Katyn massacre, and in November spoke at a conference held in Paris organised by the Allied Museum Berlin; Dr Chris Baxter also attended.

2003 In April, to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the discovery of the Katyn Massacre, the Historians published a History Note that reproduced the hitherto unprinted Butler memorandum of 1973, supplementing it with an introduction taking the story of the investigations up to 2003, and including additional documentation. In September, Professor Patrick Salmon joined Historians as a Senior Editor, from the University of Newcastle. During the year Historians did a lot of work on the project to open a ‘Churchill Room’ at the Livadia Palace on the Black Sea, where some sessions of the 1945 Potsdam Conference had been held. This involved research, seeking funding, artefacts and other contributions for exhibits, and preparations for the opening ceremony and accompanying conference. Members of the team, particularly Richard Bevins, were also involved in review and clearance procedures for a number of high-profile memoirs, including that of former Foreign Secretary Robin Cook.

2004 On 6 February, Dr Alastair Noble attended the opening of the Churchill Room in the Livadia Palace, and delivered a paper at the conference. In March, Gill Bennett and Chris Baxter attended the opening at the Allied Museum in Berlin of an exhibition called ‘Mission Fulfilled: Allied Military missions in Berlin, 194690’; Dr Baxter had made a major contribution to putting this together. In May, the Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, signed off on a Historians’ submission proposing the review for release of PUSD files up to 1951, saying it was ‘an 72

excellent idea’. In June, French President Jacques Chirac visited the UK, and the Historians put together a collection of documents for presentation to him. On 26 June, Keith Hamilton and Chris Baxter spoke at a TNA conference to mark the centenary of the Anglo-French Entente.

During the summer, arrangements were made for Sir Stephen Wall, former UK Permanent Representative to the EU and foreign policy adviser in No. 10, to be attached to the Historians, with privileged access, while working on his book A Stranger in Europe. In August, Gill Bennett gave the keynote address at an ICBH conference on ‘Contemporary History, Public Records and Freedom of Information’.

In November, Historians produced a collection of ‘Documents from the Archives’ on Frank Foley, head of the SIS Station in Berlin in the 1930s, for a ceremony to unveil a plaque in the British Embassy in Berlin in honour of Foley for his work in helping Jews to escape from pre-war Germany; Gill Bennett spoke at the ceremony, and the Historians published a collection of documents on Foley, some from SIS. In December, Gill Bennett spoke at a conference held in Washington and organised by the Allied Museum, Berlin. Historians also worked with Whitehall Liaison Department (WLD) on the FCO’s response to recommendations made in the Butler Review of Intelligence on Weapons of Mass Destruction.

During 2004, the Whitehall History Group’s publishing contract was taken over by Routledge Associates (part of Taylor and Francis). At the same time, members of the Group discussed a proposal to form a Whitehall Centre for Official History, based on existing historical expertise in departments including the Cabinet Office, FCO and MOD, producing official histories and providing historical advice to Ministers. Lack of funding and departmental difficulties prevented this initiative from getting off the ground.

Other

time-consuming

activities

included

participation

in

the

interdepartmental clearance for publication of the official history of the Falklands campaign by Professor Sir Lawrence Freedman, and providing briefing for the ministerial MISC 28 Committee on Freedom of Information issues.

2005 In January, the FOI access regime came into force, leading to a major increase in the Historians’ workload. During the run-up to FOI implementation, US State

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Department and CIA representatives had visited the FCO and advised that historical knowledge and expertise was crucial to the handling of requests that, even if relating to recent documentation, might have a controversial historical context that current desk officers could not be expected to know about. This prediction was fulfilled: the volume of requests in the first few months of the access regime was very high, and there was as yet no dedicated team within the Office to deal with them.

In February Patrick Salmon and Ambassador Mariot Leslie presented a collection of British documents to the Norwegian National Library in Oslo to commemorate the centenary of Norwegian independence; Patrick Salmon later gave a public lecture on ‘Earthquakes, Wars and Revolutions: The World in 1905’.

On 1 April, PUSD files were opened at The National Archives for the first time, accompanied by the publication of a set of essays by the FCO Historians, The Records of the Permanent Under-Secretary's Department: Liaison between the Foreign Office and British Secret Intelligence, 1873-1939. Also in April, Historians were involved in cross-Whitehall media handling preparations for the publication of the second volume of The Mitrokhin Archive.

In May, Gill Bennett retired as Chief Historian and was succeeded by Professor Patrick Salmon. Publication of the Report of the Anglo-Polish Historical Committee, in two volumes. In August, Patrick Salmon gave a paper on ‘Current British Foreign Policy in Perspective’ at the Norwegian Nobel Institute in Oslo.

October: ICEDD held in Paris. On 25 October Patrick Salmon attended a reception at Buckingham Palace to mark the 60th anniversary of the Liberation of Norway; in December he spoke at a conference at University College London on ‘Norway and Sweden in 1905–the first velvet divorce?’

During 2005 and early 2006, Dr Alastair Noble made a major contribution to the FCO component of two Northern Ireland inquiries, into Rosemary Nelson and Billy Wright, working with the Northern Ireland Office, MOD, the Cabinet Office and the Intelligence Agencies.

2006 In March, Dr Stephen Twigge joined Historians on secondment from The National Archives. One of his tasks during 2006 was to help coordinate the

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transfer of residual Suez records to TNA. On 29 March Historians supported Foreign Secretary Jack Straw when he gave evidence to the Public Administration Select Committee of the House of Commons for their inquiry into the Publication of Political Memoirs. In June, Patrick Salmon gave a paper on ‘The United Kingdom and German Unification’ at an international conference in Paris.67 In September the publication of DBPO, Series III, Volume IV, The Year of Europe: America, Europe and the Energy Crisis, 1972-74 was marked by a launch event hosted by Sir Peter Ricketts, his first official engagement following his appointment as Permanent Under-Secretary. In November, Patrick Salmon and Jim Daly visited Berne to advise the Swiss Foreign Ministry on the handling of papers relating to Switzerland’s role as the UK’s Protecting Power during the Second World War. 2007 April: ICEDD held in Dublin. Also in April, Alastair Noble represented the FCO and delivered a paper at a conference in Switzerland on the Katyn massacre. Negotiations began for a contract with ProQuest to digitise all BD, DBFP and DBPO volumes. In October, Stephen Twigge attended a State Department conference to deliver a paper on ‘Operation Hullabaloo’ (a secret channel of communication between Henry Kissinger and Sir Burke Trend in the 1970s). October also saw the publication of History Note No. 17, Slavery in Diplomacy: The Foreign Office and the suppression of the transatlantic slave trade, to commemorate the bicentenary of the abolition of the slave trade. This was accompanied by a major seminar on slavery held in the Locarno Room, opened by the Minister of State, the Rt Hon Kim Howells in which Keith Hamilton and Grant Hibberd (who had recently joined Historians on secondment from DEFRA) took a leading part. Papers from the seminar were later published.68 In December, Patrick Salmon visited Slovenia to mark the publication of Slovenes in the Eyes of an Empire – Handbooks of the British Diplomats attending the Paris Peace Conference of 1919. He also gave a lecture on ‘The Baltic and the Balkans in British policy at the end of the First World War’ at the University of Maribor.

2008 Historians took the lead in preparations for the unveiling by Foreign Secretary David Miliband of a plaque in the FCO on 20 November, dedicated to the memory of British diplomats who helped to rescue victims of Nazi persecution, together with the publication of a pamphlet by Sir Martin Gilbert, Beyond the Call 75

Plaque unveiled in the FCO by Foreign Secretary David Miliband in November 2008.

The Historians’ team in 2009: (l-r) Isabelle Tombs, Stephen Twigge, Patrick Salmon, Giles Rose, Elaine Alahendra, Alistair Noble, Grant Hibberd.

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German Unification seminar, Lancaster House, 18 October 2009 Above: (l-r) Sir Michael Wood (former FCO Legal Adviser), Patrick Salmon, Herr HansDietrich Genscher and Herr Georg Boomgarden (German Ambassador).

Right: Chris Bryant, Minister for Europe, and Patrick Salmon.

Below: (l-r) Lord Powell, Hermann von Richthofen, Roger Morgan, Sir Christopher Mallaby, Sir Nigel Broomfield.

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Visits of HM Queen Elizabeth II to the FCO. Left: December 1982, with Eily Blayney, Head of the FCO Library .

Below: 18 December 2012, (l-r) PUS Simon Fraser, Foreign Secretary William Hague, HRH, Patrick Salmon, Isabelle Tombs, Richard Smith.

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Above: International Editors’ Conference, Jerusalem, October 2011 (Richard Smith 2nd row, third from right).

Exhibitions: Poster for ‘The Duel for Europe’ and Patrick Salmon showing Foreign Secretary William Hague the 1948 Olympics and the Cold War Exhibition.

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Above: Keith Hamilton launches Transformational Diplomacy after the Cold War, October 2013.

Right: Jack Straw speaking at the launch of Six Moments of Crisis, February 2013; below panel with (l-r) Lord Hennessy, Lord Butler, Sir Lawrence Freedman and Sir Stephen Wall.

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Some recent DBPO editors.

Clockwise from top left: Richard Smith, Tony Insall, Isabelle Tombs.

Below: Diplomatic Academy Foundation Level courses.

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2014 Centenary of the Outbreak of the First World War: Philip Hammond unveils the restored Grey memorial above, the July Crisis on Twitter right, Grey Conference below.

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Left: International Editors’ Conference, Washington 2015: Isabelle Tombs, Patrick Salmon and Richard Smith.

Below: Witness Seminar on the role and functions of the British Embassy, Moscow, March 2016. (l-r) David Gowan, Sir Brian Fall, Sir Rodric Braithwaite, Dame Ann Pringle, Martin Nicolson, Sir John Scarlett.

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Programme for ‘History Week’ in the FCO, May 2016.

A panel at the launch of DBPO Series I, Volumes X and XI, January 2017: (l-r) Professor George Peden, Sir Nigel Sheinwald, Professor Kathy Burk, Gill Bennett, Dr Piers Ludlow.

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14th International Conference of Editors of Diplomatic Documents, Lancaster House, April 2017.

Above: Luke Gibbon talks about Dame Lillian Penson.

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Launch of Homosexuality at the Foreign Office, 1967-1991, July 2017. (l-r) John Kittmer, Richard Smith, Sir Stephen Wall, Fiona Graph, Sir John Major, Lord Cashman, James Southern, Corin Robertson.

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Above: BDOHP seminar, Cambridge, September 2017 (Abbey Wright and Patrick Salmon centre front).

Below: Panel discussion to launch Women and the Foreign Office, May 2018.

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Former buildings: Above: Cornwall House, Stamford St, London SE1, when in use as a military hospital; right Clive House in Petty France; below Old Admiralty Building.

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Above: Sir John Scarlett and Gill Bennett: How Russia Sees the World, May 2018.

Below: ‘Diplomacy through the Lens’ with Michael Cockerell and Sir Simon Jenkins, October 2018.

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of Duty: British Diplomats and other Britons who helped Jews escape from Nazi tyranny.

On 4 December a reception was held in the Map Room to celebrate the digitisation of all three series – BD, DBFP and DBPO – by ProQuest, so that all Historians’ volumes became available online.

2009 On 13 January Historians hosted with Research Analysts a seminar on Afghanistan, launching a ‘Learning from History’ series, organised by Isabelle Tombs and aimed at providing for the benefit of FCO staff a long-term historical perspective on current policy issues. Subsequent seminars looked at Piracy, the Yemen, and Russia and the West. On 29 January an independent review of the ‘Thirty Year Rule’, chaired by Paul Dacre, the editor of the Daily Mail, was published. Historians had been commissioned to canvass opinion on the proposed change from a number of posts. Most advised caution. One Ambassador wrote that during an earlier posting ‘I reported–often frank– conversations with the young politicians of the day. In some key instances those politicians are now prominent political figures. My credibility would be shot if my reporting of and opinions on the political scene were released while I was still Ambassador

here.’

The

Government

nevertheless

accepted

the

Dacre

Committee’s recommendation to reduce the closed period, although only to twenty years rather than the fifteen favoured by the committee.

In February, Historians gave evidence to Sir Joe Pilling’s inquiry into the Cabinet Official Histories programme. On 31 March a lecture was given by Lord Robertson in the Locarno Room, hosted jointly by the PUS and the MOD Permanent Secretary, to mark the 60th Anniversary of the formation of NATO. Historians arranged this event, and produced an accompanying History Note, Britain in NATO: The First Six Decades. Also published was DBPO Series III, Volume VI, Berlin in the Cold War 1948-90, with documents on DVD and an accompanying historical commentary. In April, Patrick Salmon gave a paper on ‘Ernest Bevin and the Berlin Blockade’ at a symposium organised by the Allied Museum Berlin at Tempelhof Airport.69 In September, he chaired a session at a witness seminar on ‘Berlin: The British Perspective 1945-1990’ organised by the Allied Museum at Cumberland Lodge, Windsor Great Park.

On 17 September, the Historians’ first permanent exhibition was unveiled by Sir Peter Ricketts at the foot of the Muses Staircase in King Charles Street.

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Curated by Isabelle Tombs, ‘The Duel for Europe 1800-1830’ took as its starting point an ornate pistol held by the Foreign Office for many years, and linked it to the famous duel between Castlereagh and Canning in 1807. Through a variety of contemporary artefacts, the exhibition illustrated diplomatic life in the Napoleonic era and traced long-term themes in British foreign policy from the early 19th century to the present day.

In October, just under twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, DBPO Series III, Volume VII, German Unification 1989, was published. The launch was marked by a seminar at Lancaster House, organised in cooperation with the German Embassy, where the speakers included former West German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher. The volume helped to dispel the myth of British opposition to German unification, showing that the UK worked closely with its allies throughout the negotiations. In November, Patrick Salmon delivered the Saki Dockrill Memorial Lecture on ‘Mrs Thatcher and the German Question’, at King’s College London, and the Charles Parish Memorial Lecture on ‘German Unity Twenty Years On’ at the Literary and Philosophical Society of Newcastle upon Tyne. In December, he also took part in a debate at the French Ambassador’s residence to mark the publication of a book on François Mitterrand and German unification.

2010 In February, Patrick Salmon gave a lecture in Copenhagen on ‘The Troubled Origins of the British Importers Union, 1930’, to mark the 80th anniversary of the British Chamber of Commerce in Denmark. In May, Dr Richard Smith joined Historians from DCMS. On 8 June, Historians hosted a lecture by Sir Ivor Roberts on the Evolution of Modern Diplomacy. In July, Patrick Salmon chaired a conference at the Polish Embassy on the 20th anniversary of the German-Polish border and friendship treaty of 1990. On 21 September Historians and Research Analysts held a conference in the Locarno Suite, chaired by Lord Garel-Jones, to commemorate the 200th anniversary of Simon Bolivar’s visit to London and the bicentenary of South American independence. On 26 October Historians and Research Analysts held another seminar in the Learning from History series, examining the impact and importance of Nick Browne’s report, British Policy on Iran 1974-1978, as part of the drive towards diplomatic excellence. The seminar was attended by Iran specialists from the FCO, Cabinet Office, Ministry of 93

Defence, and the US Embassy, as well as by Lord Owen (who had commissioned the Browne report as Foreign Secretary), former diplomats and selected academics. In November, Patrick Salmon gave a lecture on ‘The Uses of History in Whitehall’ at the University of Cambridge.

2011 January: For the first few months of 2011, Historians were engaged in dealing with the ‘migrated archives’—records from former colonial governments sent back to the UK on the eve of decolonisation. Their existence came to light during a court case in which veterans of the Mau Mau uprisings in Kenya were suing the British Government for compensation. Historians were involved in handling the initial response, including setting up an internal review into the issue, conducted

by Anthony Cary, former British High Commissioner to Canada.

On 12 January the Historians hosted a lecture given by Professor Margaret Macmillan on ‘The uses and abuses of history’ to mark the end of the first series of ‘Learning from History’ seminars. On 1 April the Historians launched at Lancaster House DBPO, Series I, Volume IX, The Nordic Countries in the Early Cold War, 1944-1951, edited by Patrick Salmon and Dr Tony Insall. The event was held in collaboration with the governments of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden, who sent representatives. The speakers included Matthew Lodge and Alyson Bailes, current and former Ambassadors to Finland. In September, Patrick Salmon gave a paper on ‘The Changing Role of Diplomacy, 1814-2014’ to an international symposium in St Petersburg.70 October: ICEDD held in Jerusalem. On 19 October Historians and Research Analysts held a seminar on the ‘Arab Spring’ uprisings, in the context of two of the great revolutions of the past: 1848 and 1989. On 10 November, in the run-up to the UK-France Summit, Historians organised with the France Team a Learning from History seminar entitled ‘From entente glaciale to entente formidable: the Franco-British relationship’.

On 17 November the Historians organised the first in a series of witness seminars on the role and functions of British Embassies and High Commissions sponsored by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and the FCO, and part of the Witness Seminar Programme of the ICBH, King’s College London. The first seminar looked at the British High Commission in New Delhi.

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Subsequent seminars in the series covered Beijing, Canberra, UKMIS New York, Pretoria, Paris and Moscow.

On 6 December the Historians’ new exhibition, ‘The 1948 Olympics and the Cold War’, was opened by the Foreign Secretary, William Hague. Curated by Jane Crellin and displaying artefacts and memorabilia from Wembley Stadium and the Allied Museum Berlin, the exhibition explored the conflict between an intensifying Cold War—the Berlin Blockade began shortly before the Olympics opened in London—and the idealism of the Olympic movement. The exhibition also highlighted two key personalities: Philip Noel-Baker (Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations and Minister responsible for the Games) and Ernest Bevin (Foreign Secretary, 1945-51). It remained in place until the end of 2012.

2012 In March, Patrick Salmon chaired an international conference on ‘The RussianSwedish Treaty of 1812 and its Aftermath in Northern Europe’ in St Petersburg.

In April and June, he gave papers on the United Kingdom and German Unification to seminars at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, and the German Historical Institute in London.71 In April, the Historians, along with 780 crates of books and papers, moved from the sub-ground floor of the Old Admiralty Building to new premises in the former Home Office Library in King Charles Street. The Foreign Secretary, William Hague, was later quoted in a Daily Telegraph article: The Historians are an obvious resource and they were not appreciated by the last administration. They were languishing in a basement and now the light is shining on their books. It is intended to be a signal to the whole Foreign Office to use them, and to remember the importance of understanding history.72 On 19 April Keith Hamilton was presented with a collection of essays written in his honour: Diplomacy and Power: Studies in Diplomatic Practice, edited by Thomas Otte. Gill Bennett (now working with Historians again on part-time basis) and Patrick Salmon contributed a biographical sketch; Chris Baxter and Alastair Noble contributed essays. On 9 May the Historians, with LSE Ideas, organised a ‘Learning from History’ seminar on peace initiatives in the Vietnam War. On 31 May Patrick Salmon and Tony Insall took part in a seminar organised by Alyson Bailes at the University of Iceland, Reykjavik, on ‘British

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Foreign and Security Policies towards the Nordic Countries after the Second World War’.

On 17 October Julia Toffolo, Deputy Director of the Government Art Collection, spoke on ‘The Art of Government’, the first in a new series of talks, ‘Our FCO, Our History’, devised by Rosalind Pulvermacher. On 18 December HM The Queen visited the FCO to celebrate her Diamond Jubilee, welcomed by Foreign Secretary William Hague. She met the Historians team, who presented her with a book on Sixty Years of Royal Overseas Visits.

2013 A Learning from History seminar was organised by Historians on 21 February to mark the publication of Gill Bennett’s book Six Moments of Crisis: Inside British Foreign Policy; speakers included the former Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, former Cabinet Secretaries Lord Butler and Lord O’Donnell, Lord Hennessy and Lord Howell. One of the conclusions drawn from the discussion was the relevance and value of historical knowledge to decision-makers in government. Lord Hennessy said: ‘I’ve seen the future and it works, and it’s the Foreign and Commonwealth Office’, while Lord Butler wrote an article calling for each government department to appoint a historical adviser, ‘not to advise on the historical background to every problem which a department has to manage—no single person could have the expertise to do that—but to put the policy-makers in contact with a source of such expertise’.73 In March, Historians organised an open forum on ‘FCO Records: Policy and Practice’. In April, Patrick Salmon was interviewed by Sue Cameron for a Daily Telegraph article on the importance of history to policy making. 74 In May, a second tranche of PUSD archives was opened at TNA, together with the first release of the Cabinet Secretary’s Secret and Personal files, accompanied by a set of essays by the FCO Historians, From World War to Cold War. A seminar was held at TNA, opened by former Cabinet Secretary Sir Richard Wilson, with speakers including Lord Hennessy and Gill Bennett. Also in May, Patrick Salmon gave a public lecture on ‘Thatcher, Europe and the World’ at the University of Maastricht.

In September, Sara Hiorns, the first of two AHRC collaborative doctoral students supervised jointly by Queen Mary University London (QMUL) and the FCO Historians, joined the section to research the Diplomatic Service family at 96

home and abroad since 1945. Historians were engaged in researching the history of language training in the FCO ahead of the opening of the new Language Centre on 19 September. On 30 September, the 75th anniversary of the 1938 Munich agreement, Gill Bennett posted the first in a series of blogs on the History of Government website, on the theme ‘What’s the Context?’; to date (November 2018), over 30 blogs have been posted in this series, designed to explore the wider context of notable historical events. October: ICEDD held in Geneva.

On 30 October a launch was held for Transformational Diplomacy after the Cold War: Britain’s Know How Fund in Post-Communist Europe, 1989-2003, a revised and expanded version of Keith Hamilton’s 1997 internal history. It took the form of a witness seminar bringing together veterans of the Know How Fund and FCO officials currently working with the Arab Partnership. Tim Stew, head of the Arab Partnership Department, said that a copy of Keith’s original history had become ‘bedtime reading for me early in 2011’.75 During 2013 Tara Finn left Historians for Protocol Directorate, where she helped to organise a number of high-profile commemorations of key events during the First World War, including the Battle of the Somme and the Battle of Jutland (Tara rejoined Historians in 2016). Also in 2013, Patrick Salmon became Director of a revived British Diplomatic Oral History Programme (BDOHP), working closely with Abbey Wright, the Programme’s administrator. Transcripts of all interviews can be found on the website of the Churchill Archives Centre, Cambridge.

2014 Publication of the internal history of the renegotiation of the terms of Britain’s membership of the EEC 1974-75, written by the then Head of the FCO’s European Department, Nicholas Spreckley. On 28 January, Sara Hiorns and Patrick Salmon gave presentations on the Kindertransport and British Diplomats and the Holocaust at the FCO, to commemorate Holocaust Memorial Day. To mark the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War Richard Smith tweeted, in real time 100 years on, extracts from Foreign Office telegrams, despatches and letters from the July 1914 Crisis. Over 400 tweets were sent over 37 days from 11 Twitter accounts (reflecting key British diplomatic figures from 1914) to over 10,000 followers, including politicians, journalists, diplomats and members of the public.

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On 24 September the Historians hosted Professor David Reynolds and Kristina Spohr in a seminar on ‘Cold War Summitry: Transcending the Division of Europe 1970-90’, with a panel of speakers including Sir Rodric Braithwaite, Sir Brian Fall and Lord (Charles) Powell. Also in September, James Southern, the second AHRC collaborative doctoral student, joined to research diversity— including gender, race, sexual orientation and class—in the Foreign Office after 1945. On 21 October, a conference was held at the British Embassy in Paris, organised jointly by Historians, HMA Sir Peter Ricketts and the Fondation Napoléon, on ‘Napoleon and Wellington in War and Peace’, to mark the 200th anniversary of the purchase of the Residence.

On 7 November Historians hosted a Conference at Lancaster House on Sir Edward Grey and the Outbreak of the First World War, reappraising Britain’s decision to enter the First World War, with a paper from Richard Smith on the private life of Grey. The papers were subsequently published in a special edition of the International History Review.76 2015 In January Dr Luke Gibbon joined Historians—the team’s first external appointment since 2003. In April Patrick Salmon gave a keynote lecture, ‘Foreign Policy from the Inside: Reflections of an Official Historian’, at the ‘Britain and the World’ conference in Austin, Texas. Later that month, the ICEDD was held in Washington. Among the papers given, that by Dr William McAllister, of the Office of the Historian in the Department of State, compared the historical practices of Britain and the US in the publication of diplomatic documents.77 Sara Hiorns gave a talk on 28 May entitled ‘Home and Away’, about the experience of diplomatic service children.

On 4 June, as part of a series of intelligence history talks organised by Rosalind Pulvermacher and Paul Bali (then of IPD, now with Historians), Lord Evans, former Director General of the Security Service, gave a talk on ‘MI5: facing the Future’. In October the Historians advised on the transfer and media handling of FCO files on Burgess and Maclean to The National Archives. Richard Smith and Isabelle Tombs chaired sessions at a colloquium on Britain and France in World War Two, held at the British Embassy in Paris on 16 October, commemorating the 70th anniversary of the end of the Second World War. On 11 December the memorial to Sir Edward Grey near the Ambassadors’ entrance to the FCO, first 98

unveiled by Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin in 1937, was re-dedicated after restoration, with an illustrated booklet produced by Historians.

During the year, Richard Smith gave talks to mark the FCO moving out of the Old Admiralty Building, and wrote and presented a film on the history of the FCO, ‘In Fox’s Footsteps’. Historians also took a leading part in providing learning material for the new Diplomatic Academy, producing Foundation-level e-learning modules on ‘The UK: Historical Roots’ and ‘Legacy of Empire’.

2016 In February, Patrick Salmon gave a presentation on ‘Constructing a historical narrative from digital records’ to a symposium on ‘Contemporary Political History in the Digital Age’ at the FCO. On 8 March Historians, the Eastern Research Group and the Eastern Europe and Central Asia Directorate at the Foreign & Commonwealth Office hosted a witness seminar to examine the role and function of the British Embassy in Moscow. In April, Patrick Salmon spoke on ‘Choice and necessity in post-war British foreign policy’ at a symposium on ‘Questioning Decline’ at the FCO. The Future FCO Review recommended that the FCO ‘promote a better understanding of the FCO’s history and inheritance,’ and in May the Historians organised a ‘History Week’ featuring a range of events, talks and seminars. In June Richard Smith spoke about the work of John Reeves, the British Consul in Macau during the Second World War, at a conference on ‘Embassies in Crisis’.

Also in June, Patrick Salmon and Dr David Shiels (research assistant to the authorised biographer of Margaret Thatcher) gave a joint presentation on ‘The Foreign Office, Margaret Thatcher and South Africa’ to the ‘Britain and the World’ conference at King’s College London. Following the EU referendum on 23 June 2016, Historians placed their expertise at the disposal of the new Department for International Trade (which moved into the other end of our corridor), producing papers for Secretary of State Liam Fox on the history of the Board of Trade, the role of Trade Commissioners and the Anglo-American Trade Agreement of 1938.

In September, Patrick Salmon gave a talk in the Cabinet War Rooms on ‘Winston Churchill and Norway’. Richard Smith recorded a podcast on the Grand Staircase for Open House weekend. Volume IX of DBPO Series III, The Challenge of Apartheid: UK-South African Relations 1985-86, was published. On 17

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October the Historians held a seminar in the Map Room on ‘Suez 60 years on: lessons for the UK’s global role’. In November Gill Bennett spoke at a platform event at the National Theatre, ‘Staging Suez: the 60th anniversary of the Suez crisis’, together with playwrights Howard Brenton and James Graham. Gill also spoke on ‘Finding the missing dimension and losing it again’, at a special meeting on 25 November of the Study Group on Intelligence held at RUSI, in honour of the late Professor Keith Jeffery, author of the official history of MI6.

2017 At the beginning of 2017, Historians were as busy as ever. An article in the FCO Association’s Password magazine on ‘A week in the life of the FCO’s Chief Historian’ provides a glimpse of one day that was busier than usual: Tuesday 24 January In the morning, a session on ‘leadership’ with a group of Band D officers from across government. What does leadership mean in the FCO: are there historical examples of effective leaders? We discuss Lord Palmerston. He epitomised British assertiveness but bullied his clerks. Did that make him a good leader? In the afternoon, I brief one of our Directors-General who will be chairing a session at our big DBPO launch event on Thursday [see below]. Then I go down to the main entrance to meet a famous author [Robert Harris] and advise him on what life would have been like for a young diplomat in the 1930s, for his next novel [Munich, published later in 2017]. We retrace the route the diplomat would have taken to his office in the old Central Department and consult old copies of the Diplomatic List to establish who the contemporaries of our fictional hero might have been. Finally, a brief encounter on the Tube with a distinguished retired diplomat [Sir Brian Fall] who has just had his first interview with Catherine Manning for the British Diplomatic Oral History Programme, of which I am Director (although all the hard work is done by Abbey Wright and her team of interviewers). It sounds as though it went well. An unusually packed and interesting day.

Two volumes of DBPO, Series I, Volumes X and XI (The Brussels and North Atlantic Treaties, 1947-1949 and Economic Recovery and the Search for Western Security, 1946-1948) were launched at a seminar held in the Locarno Suite on 26 January for both FCO and external guests. The theme, ‘Britain and America: The Foundations of Western Security’, proved highly topical in the light of the recent US Presidential election. Speakers included Lord Hennessy, Professor David Reynolds, Sir Nigel Sheinwald and Lord Ricketts, as well as Patrick Salmon and the editors of the two volumes, Dr Tony Insall and Gill Bennett. In February BBC Radio 4 broadcast a series of programmes entitled ‘Friends and Foes: A Narrative History of Diplomacy’, with contributions from Patrick Salmon (on the history of diplomacy) and Gill Bennett (on Operation FOOT, the mass expulsion

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of Soviet intelligence officers in 1971). In March, another new DBPO volume was published, Series III, Volume X, The Polish Crisis and Relations with Eastern Europe 1979-82. Sara Hiorns, PhD candidate attached to FCO Historians and QMUL, passed the viva for her doctorate.

FCO Historians hosted the 14th biennial International Conference of Editors of Diplomatic Documents at Lancaster House from 26 to 28 April. It was the first time the conference had been held in London since the inaugural meeting in November 1989 (which coincided with the fall of the Berlin Wall). That occasion was attended by 21 people representing 10 countries: this time there were over 70 delegates, representing a total of 25 countries. The conference was opened by Robert Deane, Head of Knowledge Management Department, and the conference dinner, at which Lord Ricketts was the guest speaker, was held in the Locarno Suite. Topics discussed included chronological versus thematic approaches to publishing diplomatic documents; the use made of published documents by academics and students; and the challenges and opportunities of oral history. There was also a session on the history of publishing programmes in various countries, including Poland and Hungary, with a contribution by Luke Gibbon on ‘The unknown editor: Lillian Penson and British Documents on the Origins of the War, 1898-1914’.

On 4 July, the Historians launched a new History Note, Homosexuality at the Foreign Office, 1967-1991, written by James Southern and telling the controversial story of the historic bar on gay men and lesbians from the Diplomatic Service, from the partial decriminalisation of homosexuality in 1967 to the lifting of the bar by Prime Minister John Major in 1991. The event was opened by Sir John Major, followed by a panel discussion chaired by ESD Director Corin Robertson, with Lord Cashman, founder of Stonewall; Fiona Graph, former co-chair of the Foreign Office Lesbian and Gay Group (FLAGG); Sir Stephen Wall, former senior diplomat who came out as gay after leaving the FCO; John Kittmer, openly gay former HMA Athens; and James Southern. In September, Patrick Salmon, Richard Smith and Gill Bennett chaired sessions at a British Diplomatic Oral History Programme workshop at Churchill College, Cambridge on 11 September. Paul Bali led in organising a talk on 27 November by Sir Rodric

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Braithwaite (former HMA Moscow) and Professor Matthew Jones of LSE on British and Russian nuclear perspectives during the Cold War.

Conclusion: Centenary Year, 2018 The FCO Historians’ centenary year began with the excellent news that Professor Patrick Salmon had been awarded an OBE in the New Year Honours. This was a well-deserved tribute to his outstanding work as Chief Historian, but it was also a recognition of the work of the team as a whole and the contribution they continue to make to the work of the Foreign Office. The two core objectives of the Historians, to publish the documentary history of British foreign policy and to offer advice to ministers and senior officials, remain as relevant in 2018 as they were in 1918. Two new volumes of Documents on British Policy Overseas, covering South Africa from 1986 to 1990 and the Eastern European revolutions of 1989, have been submitted to the publisher; and a new series of internal blogs, History Rhymes, covering topics of interest to FCO colleagues and providing historical context for current affairs, reflects the high level of interest in history among FCO staff.

Meanwhile, the Historians continue to meet the Office’s demand for policyrelevant historical analysis with events such as Dr James Ellison’s talk on 24 April on ‘The Suez Crisis of 1956 and the Iraq War 2003: UK legal case studies’, at which former Legal Advisers Sir Michael Wood and Sir Daniel Bethlehem contributed their experiences; and a joint presentation on 2 May by former Chief Historian Gill Bennett and Sir John Scarlett, former SIS Chief and Chair of the Joint Intelligence Committee, on ‘How Russia Sees the World’, a topic highly relevant as relations with Russia have become increasingly tense. A seminar on 28 June examined the Foreign Office and its colonial legacy. Professor Alan Lester of the University of Sussex told the story of how the Foreign Office and its diplomatic expertise played a role in the suppression of the Indian Uprising of 1857-8 and how the King Charles Street building was shaped by the aftermath.

At the same time, however, the Historians have continued to explore some of the more challenging aspects of Foreign Office history. A History Note on Women

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and the Foreign Office, updated by James Southern from an earlier version, was launched on 1 May with a panel discussion that showed how the FCO environment for its women officers has changed and improved since they were first admitted to the workforce. On 4 October a further History Note by James Southern, Black Skin, Whitehall: Race and the Foreign Office 1945-2018, earned the FCO widespread credit for the openness with which it was addressing the discriminatory policies of the past and the difficulties still faced by BAME colleagues.

Finally, the Historians have helped to celebrate other Foreign Office anniversaries falling in 2018. 17 October marked the 50th anniversary of the merger of the Foreign Office and the Commonwealth Office to form the modern FCO. On that date Historians showed a little-known ITV documentary, Inside the Foreign Office, recording the last days of George Brown’s Foreign Office in 1967.

On 23 October, in a session entitled ‘Diplomacy through the Lens’, Sir Simon Jenkins and Michael Cockerell reflected on their investigations into the FCO from the 1980s to the 2000s. Two days later they hosted a talk by the art historian James Stourton, celebrating the 150th anniversary of the completion of Sir George Gilbert Scott’s Foreign Office in 1868.

As they enter their second century, FCO Historians continue to fulfil their core functions of document publishing and providing historical advice while always seeking new challenges.

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Annex Historians in the Foreign Office: People and Publications, 1918 – 2018 Editors British Documents on the Origins of the First World War (BD): G.P. Gooch; H.W.V. Temperley; J.W. Headlam-Morley.

Documents on British Foreign Policy 1919-39 (DBFP): Professor E.L. Woodward; Dr Rohan Butler; Mr J.P.T. Bury; Miss M.E. Lambert; Professor Douglas Dakin; Professor W.N. Medlicott.

Documents on British Policy Overseas (DBPO): Dr Rohan Butler; Mrs Margaret Pelly (nĂŠe Lambert); Dr Roger Bullen; Mrs Heather Yasamee; Ms Gill Bennett; Dr Keith Hamilton; Dr Stephen Ashton; Professor Patrick Salmon; Dr Stephen Twigge; Dr Tony Insall; Dr Richard Smith; Dr Isabelle Tombs.

Other members of the Section, in alphabetical order Ms Akoto Agyeman, Miss Irene Bains, Mr Paul Bali, Dr Christopher Baxter, Mr Richard Bevins, Miss Joan Bradley (Mrs Knapp Fisher), Ms Hala Bougerne, Mr Craig Buchan, Dr Kirsty-Ann Buckthorp (Mrs Hughes), Miss C. Cairns, Miss C. Chandler (Mrs Sigrist), Ms Marie-Louise Childs, Mr Eamon Clifford, Miss V. Coad (Mrs Morris), Miss J. Cooper, Miss S. Court (Mrs Metzger), Ms Jane Crellin, Miss Kate Crowe, Miss Catherine Douglas, Miss Penny Duckham, Mrs Irene Ennis, Ms Tara Finn, Miss Patricia Fleming, Ms Sue Fleming, Miss J. Flower (Mrs Foster), Miss Elaine Flynn (Mrs Alahendra), Miss A. Fraser (Mrs Hillhouse), Miss May Gardiner, Dr Luke Gibbon, Miss Charlotte Gray, Mr Nevil Hagon, Ms Ann Herd, Mr Grant Hibberd, Dr Sara Hiorns, Mr Robin Hodson, Miss K. Hopkinson (Mrs Wentworth), Dr Nigel Jarvis, Mr Martin Jewitt, Miss Catherine Johnston, Miss Kathleen Jones, Dr Liz Kane, Mr Umar Khan, The Hon Margaret Lambert, Dr Ann Lane, Dr Martin Longden, Miss Roberta McWatt, Mrs Diane Morrish, Miss Evelyn Morrison, Mr Dawson Nightingale, Dr Alastair Noble, Miss A. Norman, Miss Anne Orde, Miss Caroline Pinder (Mrs Cracraft), Dr Martin Polley, Mr Andrew Plummer-Rodriguez, Ms Rosalind Pulvermacher, Mr Gregory Quinn, Mr Kewal Rai, Mrs Gillian Reardon, Mr Anthony Rose, Mr Giles Rose, Miss Jane Roskill (Mrs Roberts), Miss Farida Shaikh, Miss Elsie Sharpe, Mr James Southern, Miss H. Sullivan (Mrs Reynolds), Miss A. Talbon (Mrs Saxon), Miss Jackie Till, Miss M. Turner (Mrs Ede), Dr Roberta Warman, Dr Isabel Warner, Miss M. Williams.

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FCO Historical Publications 1918-2018 The entire DBPO back catalogue and both previous series, British Documents on the Origins of War 1898–1914 and Documents on British Foreign Policy, 1919-1939, have been digitised

by ProQuest.

Occasional Papers, History Notes, Documents from the Archives and other publications are available via www.issuu.com/fcohistorians.

Peace Handbooks (published in 1918) Austria-Hungary (1); Austria-Hungary (2); The Balkan States (1); The Balkan States (2); The Netherlands; France, Italy and Spain; Germany; Poland and Finland; The Russian Empire; Mohammedanism: Turkey in Asia (1); Turkey in Asia (2); China, Japan, Siam; Persia: French and Portuguese Possessions; Dutch and British Possessions; Partition of Africa: British Possessions (1); British Possessions (2): The Congo; French Africa Possessions; German African Possessions; Portuguese Possessions; Spanish and Italian Possessions; North, Central and South America: Atlantic Islands; Pacific Islands; International Affairs; Congresses: German Opinion; Indemnities, plebiscites etc; Maritime International Law.

British Documents on the Origins of the War, 1898-1914 (BD) I.

The End of British Isolation (1927)

II.

The Anglo-Japanese Alliance and the Franco-British Entente (1927)

III.

The Testing of the Entente 1904-6 (1928)

IV.

The Anglo-Russian Rapprochement 1903-7 (1929)

V.

The Macedonian Problem and the Annexation of Bosnia 1903-9 (1928)

VI.

Anglo-German Tension 1907-12 (1930)

VII.

The Agadir Crisis (1932)

VIII. Arbitration, Neutrality and Security (1932) IX.

The Balkan Wars: Part I: The Prelude; the Tripoli War (1933); The Balkan Wars: Part II: The League and Turkey (1934)

X.

Part I: The Near and Middle East on the Eve of War (1936); Part II: The Last Years of Peace (1938)

XI.

The Outbreak of War (1926)

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Documents on British Foreign Policy 1919-1939 (DBFP) First Series (1919-1925) I. II.

Proceedings of the Supreme Council July-October 1919 (1947) Proceedings of the Supreme Council October 1919-January 1920. Meetings in London and Paris of Allied Ministers December 1919-January 1920 (1948)

III.

Withdrawal of German forces from the Baltic Provinces July-December 1919.

Policy of HMG with regard to Russia, May 1919-March 1920. Eastern Galicia, June-December 1919 (1949)

IV. V.

Adriatic and the Near East 1919-February 1920 (1952) Western Europe, June 1919-January 1920 and Viscount Grey's mission to Washington, August-December 1919 (1954)

VI.

Central Europe, June 1919-January 1920 and HMG’s Relations with Japan, June 1919-April 1920 (1956)

VII. VIII. IX. X. XI.

First Conference of London, February-April 1920 (1958) Conversations and Conferences, 1920 (1958) German Affairs, 1920 (1960) German Affairs and Plebiscites, 1920 (1960) Plebiscite in Upper Silesia, January 1920-March 1921, and Poland, Danzig and the Baltic States, January 1920-March 1921 (1960)

XII.

Western and Central Europe and the Balkan States, 1920; Transcaucasia and Russia, February 1920-March 1921 (1962)

XIII.

Near East, February 1920-March 1921 (1963)

XIV.

Far Eastern affairs 1920-22 (1966)

XV. XVI.

International Conferences and Conversations 1921 (1967) Upper Silesia 1921-2 and Germany 1921 (1968)

XVII.

Greece and Turkey 1921-22 (1970)

XVIII.

Greece and Turkey 1922-23 (1972)

XIX. XX.

The Conferences of Cannes, Genoa and the Hague 1922 (1974) German Reparations and Allied Military Control 1922 and Russia, March 1921December 1922 (1976)

XXI. XXII. XXIII.

German Reparations and Military Control 1923 (1978) Central Europe and the Balkans 1921, and Albania 1921-2 (1980) Poland and the Balkan states 1921-23 (1981) 106

XXIV.

Anglo-Italian Conversations 1922 and Central Europe and the Balkans 1922-23 (1983)

XXV. XXVI.

Russia 1923-25 and the Baltic States 1924-25 (1984) Central Europe and the Balkans; German Reparation and Allied Military Control, 1924 (1985)

XXVII.

Germany 1925 and the Locarno Treaty (1986)

Series 1a (1925-1930) I. II.

The Aftermath of Locarno 1925-26 (1966) The Termination of Military Control in Germany and Middle East and American Questions 1926-27 (1968)

III.

European and Naval Questions 1922 (1970)

IV.

European and Security Questions 1927-28 (1971)

V. VI. VII.

European and Security Questions 1928 (1973) The Young Report and the Hague Conference: Security Questions 1928-29 (1975) German, Austrian and Middle East Questions 1929-30 (1975)

Second Series (1929-1938) I. II.

London Naval Conference and European affairs 1929-31 (1946) Austrian and German affairs and the world monetary crisis 1931 (1947)

III.

Reparations and disarmament 1931-32 (1948)

IV.

The disarmament conference and the internal situation in Germany 1932-33 (1950)

V. VI. VII. VIII. IX. X. XI. XII.

European affairs and war debts March-October 1933 (1956) European affairs and war debts October 1933-August 1934 (1957) Anglo-Soviet relations 1929-34 (1958) Chinese affairs and Japanese action in Manchuria 1929-31 (1960) The Far Eastern crisis 1931-32 (1965) Far Eastern affairs March-October 1932 (1969) Far Eastern affairs October 1932-June 1933 (1970) European affairs August 1934-April 1935 (1972)

XIII.

Naval policy and defence requirements July 1934-March 1936 (1973)

XIV.

The Italo-Ethiopian dispute March 1934-October 1935 (1976) 107

XV. XVI. XVII.

The Italo-Ethiopian war and German affairs October 1935-February 1936 (1976) The Rhineland crisis and the ending of sanctions March-July 1936 (1977) Western Pact Negotiations: Outbreak of Spanish Civil War, June 1936-January 1937 (1979)

XVIII. XIX.

European Affairs, January-June 1937 (1980) European Affairs, July 1937-August 1938 (1982)

XX.

Far Eastern Affairs, May 1933-November 1936 (1984)

XXI.

Far Eastern Affairs, November 1936-July 1938 (1984)

Third Series (1938-1939) I.

The German invasion of Austria and the first phase of the Czechoslovak crisis, March-July 1938 (1949)

II.

The Development of the Czechoslovak crisis from the Runciman Mission to the Munich Conference, July-September 1938 (1949)

III.

Polish and Hungarian claims on Czechoslovak territory; the enforcement by Germany of the Munich Agreement; Anglo-Italian Relations: September 1938January 1939 (1950)

IV.

Hopes of general European appeasement abandoned; attempts are made to form a ‘common front’ against further German aggression, January-April 1939 (1951)

V.

Increasing German threats to Poland and British efforts to create a common front against further German and Italian aggression, April-June 1939 (1952)

VI.

An important phase in Anglo-Franco-Soviet negotiations; Anglo-Turkish negotiations; and the German menace to Poland, June-August 1939 (1953)

VII.

Unsuccessful attempts to deter Germany from aggression against Poland; diplomatic exchanges immediately preceding the British declaration of war on Germany, August-September 1939 (1954)

VIII.

Policy in the Far East; attitude of HMG towards the Sino-Japanese conflict; interaction of events in the Far East and Western Europe, August 1938-April 1939 (1955)

IX.

Policy in the Far East during the five months preceding the outbreak of war in Europe, April-September 1939 (1955)

X.

Index (1961)

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Documents on British Policy Overseas (DBPO) Series I (1945-1950) I. II. III.

The Conference at Potsdam, July-August 1945 (1984) Conferences and Conversations 1945: London, Washington and Moscow (1985) Britain and America: Negotiation of the United States loan, August-December 1945 (1986)

IV.

Britain and America: Atomic Energy, Bases and Food, December 1945-July 1946 (1987)

V. VI. VII.

Germany and Western Europe, August-December 1945 (1990) Eastern Europe, August 1945-April 1946 (1991) The United Nations: Iran, Cold War and World Organisation, January 1946January 1947 (1995)

VIII. IX. X. XI.

Britain and China, 1945-1950 (2002) The Nordic Countries: From War to Cold War, 1944-1951 (2011) The Brussels and North Atlantic Treaties, 1947-51 (2015) European Recovery and the Search for Western Security, 1946-48 (2016)

Series II (1950-1955) I.

The Schuman Plan, the Council of Europe and Western European Integration, May 1950-December 1952 (1986)

II.

The London Conferences, January-June 1950 (1987)

III.

German Rearmament, September-December 1950 (1989)

IV.

Korea, June 1950-April 1951 (1991)

Series III (1960- ) I. II.

Britain and the Soviet Union, 1968-1972 (1997) The Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe, 1972-1975 (1997)

III.

DĂŠtente in Europe, 1972-1976 (2001)

IV.

The Year of Europe: America, Europe and the Energy Crisis, 1972-1974 (2006)

V. VI. VII.

The Southern Flank in Crisis, 1973-1976 (2006) Berlin in the Cold War, 1948-1990 (2009) German Unification, 1989-1990 (2009)

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VIII. IX. X.

The Invasion of Afghanistan and UK-Soviet Relations, 1979-82 (2012) The Challenge of Apartheid: UK-South Africa Relations, 1985-1986 (2016) The Polish Crisis and Relations with Eastern Europe, 1979-1982 (2017)

Occasional Papers 1.

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

2.

Papers presented at the Seminar for Editors of Diplomatic Documents, held in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office on 9 November 1989 (1989)

3.

Papers presented at the Seminar Germany Rejoins the Club held in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office on 10 November 1989 (1989)

4.

Eastern Europe (1992)

5.

Korea (1992)

6.

Russia: Tsarism to Stalinism (1993)

7.

Changes in British and Russian Records Policy (1993)

8.

Diplomacy and Diplomatists in the 20th Century (1994)

9.

Documents on British Policy Overseas, Publishing Policy and Practice (1995)

10.

United Kingdom, United Nations and divided world (1995)

11.

1945-1950: Fifty Years of European Peace (1995)

12.

Nationality and Nationalism in East-Central Europe since the 18th Century (1996)

13.

The Growth of Multilateral Diplomacy (1996)

14.

Britishness and British Foreign Policy (1997)

15.

Spies, Secrets and Diplomacy (1999)

16.

Journey to an Unknown Destination: The British Arrival in Brussels in 1973 (1999)

17.

DĂŠtente, Diplomacy and MBFR 1972-1976 (2002)

History Notes 1.

Korea: Britain and the Korean War, 1950-51 (1990, 2nd edn revised 1995)

2.

The FCO: Policy, People and Places, 1782-1995 (1991, 5th edn revised 1997)

3.

Locarno 1925: Spirit, Suite, and Treaties (1991, 2nd edn revised 2000)

4.

FCO Records: Policy, Practice and Posterity, 1782-1993 (1992, 2nd edn revised 1993)

5.

FCO Library: Print, Paper and Publications, 1782-1993 (1993)

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6.

Women in Diplomacy: The FCO, 1782-1999 (1994, 2nd edn revised 1999)

7.

‘My Purdah Lady’. The Foreign Office and the Secret Vote, 1782-1909 (1994)

8.

FCO Library & Records, 1782-1995 (1995)

9.

Origins and Establishment of the Foreign Office Information Research Department, 19461948 (1995)

10.

The Katyn Massacre: An SOE Perspective (1996)

11.

Nazi Gold: Information from the British Archives (1996, 2nd edn revised 1997)

12.

Nazi Gold: Information from the British Archives: Part II (1997)

13.

British Policy towards Enemy Property during and after the Second World War (1998)

14.

‘A Most Extraordinary and Mysterious Business’: The Zinoviev Letter of 1924 (1999)

15.

The Permanent Under-Secretary of State: A Brief History of the Office and its Holders (2002)

16.

British Reactions to the Katyn Massacre, 1943-2003 (2003)

17.

Slavery in Diplomacy: The Foreign Office and the Transatlantic Slave Trade (2007)

18.

Britain in NATO: The First Six Decades (2009)

19.

Homosexuality at the Foreign Office 1967-1991 (2017)

20.

Women and the Foreign Office, 1782-2018 (2018)

21.

Black Skin, Whitehall: Race and the Foreign Office, 1945-2018 (2018)

22.

History at the Heart of Diplomacy: Historians in the Foreign Office, 1918-2018 (2018)

Documents from the British Archives 1. Documents on Relations between Britain and Finland, 1939-1956 (2001) 2. Churchill and Stalin: Documents from the British Archives (2002) 3. The Western Pacific Archive: Selected Documents (2002) 4. The Origins and Establishment of Anglo-Mongolian Relations, 1961-1963 (2003) 5. Frank Foley (2004) 6. The Records of the Permanent Under-Secretary's Department: Liaison between the Foreign Office and British Secret Intelligence, 1873-1939 (2005) 7. The CICERO Papers (2005) 8. The Potsdam Conference, 1945 (2005); electronic publication only 9. Operation Hullabaloo: Britain’s role in Kissinger’s nuclear diplomacy. 1972-1973 (2006) 10. The Retreat from Moscow and the British Embassy, 1941 (2006, electronic publication only) 111

11. From World War to Cold War: Records of the Foreign Office Permanent Under-Secretary’s Department, 1939-51 (2013)

Internal Histories Britain’s Entry into the European Community: Report on the Negotiations of 1970-1972 by Sir Con O'Neill, edited by Sir David Hannay (London: Frank Cass, 2000) Transformational Diplomacy after the Cold War: Britain’s Know-How Fund in Post-Communist Europe, 1989-2003, by Keith Hamilton (London: Taylor & Francis, 2013)

Other Publications Nazi Gold: The London Conference (HMSO, 1998) Slavery, Diplomacy and Empire: Britain and the suppression of the Slave Trade, 1807-1975 (Eastbourne: Sussex Academic Press, 2009) Beyond the Call of Duty: British Diplomats and other Britons who helped Jews escape from Nazi tyranny. A pamphlet written by Sir Martin Gilbert to commemorate the unveiling of a plaque in the FCO dedicated to the memory of British diplomats who helped to rescue victims of Nazi persecution (2008) The Slovenes in the Eyes of the Empire: Handbooks of the British Diplomats Attending the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 (Studia Diplomatica Slovenica, Centre for the European Perspective, 2007)

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Notes 1

Eyre Crowe (1864-1925) was born in Germany, to a British father and German mother, and educated in Germany and France. He joined the FO in 1885. In 1907 he wrote an influential memorandum On the Present State of British Relations with France and Germany, warning that Germany planned to dominate Europe and urging rapprochement with France. Knighted in 1911, he was appointed Permanent Under-Secretary in 1920.

2 In a memorandum of 1944 on Foreign Service Reorganisation, Chief Clerk F.T.A. Ashton-Gwatkin commented that Crowe’s reforms were an ‘evident revolution’ that brought into being ‘a body of men who had a view of world events and an influence on them, recognised by the public at large. It was not necessarily identical with that of the Secretary of State’: FO 370/16, L 40126/16761/B, The National Archives (TNA).

3 FO 366/787/AIII(a), TNA. 4 Keith Hamilton, ‘Historical Diplomacy: Foreign ministries and the Management of the Past’, in J. Kurbalija. Knowledge and Diplomacy (online at DiploFoundation, 2002).

5 See K.A. Hamilton, ‘The Pursuit of “Enlightened Patriotism”: the British Foreign Office and Historical researchers during the Great War and its Aftermath’, Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, October 1988, vol. 61, No. 146.

6 See Keith Wilson, ‘Before Gooch and Temperley: The Contributions of Austen Chamberlain and J.W. Headlam-Morley towards ‘instructing the mass of the public’, 1912-26’, in M.L. Dockrill and John Fisher, The Paris Peace Conference 1919: Peace without Victory? (London: Palgrave Publishers, 2001).

7 James Wycliffe Headlam (1863-1928) was Professor of Greek and Ancient History at Queen’s College, London from 1894-1900, and Staff Inspector of Secondary Schools for the Board of Education 1904-20. In 1918, in fulfilment of a family will, he took the additional name of Morley. Headlam-Morley was one of a group invited by the Prime Minister to join a ‘rather high-minded propaganda unit’: see Alan Sharp, ‘James Headlam-Morley: Creating International History’, Diplomacy & Statecraft, 1998, 9:3, pp.

266-83.

8 John Buchan (1875-1940), journalist, novelist and lawyer, had served in a number of governmental and diplomatic roles since 1901, and continued to publish fiction alongside his official duties during the First World War, including the famous spy novel The Thirty-Nine Steps in 1915. In 1935 he became Governor General of Canada, as Lord Tweedsmuir.

9 Minute of 28 March 1917, FO 371/2939/64992, TNA, quoted in Wilson, ‘Before Gooch and Temperley’, p. 182.

10 Erik Goldstein, ‘“A prominent place would have to be taken by history”: The Origins of a Foreign Office Historical Section’, in T.G. Otte (ed.), Diplomacy and Power: Studies in Modern diplomatic Practice (London: Republic of Letters Publishing, 2012), pp. 83-102.

11 For an account of these developments see Alan Sharp, ‘Some Relevant Historians–the Political Intelligence Department of the Foreign Office, 1918-20’, Australian Journal of Politics and History, vol. 34, No. 3, 1989.

12 Sanderson memo of 18 March 1918, quoted in Hamilton, ‘Enlightened Patriotism’, p.

320.

13 FO 370/811, L 50296/5026B, 23 March 1918; FO 370/84, TNA. For details see Erik Goldstein, ‘Historians Outside the Academy: G.W. Prothero and the Experience of the

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Foreign Office Historical Section, 1917-20’, Historical Research, vol. 63, No. 151, June 1990.

14 Memo by Headlam-Morley, FO 371/4366, PID 263/263, TNA. 15 Sharp, ‘James Headlam-Morley’.

16 PID was revived in 1939.

17 Hamilton, ‘Enlightened Patriotism’, p. 329.

18 Memorandum by Headlam-Morley, ‘Note on the duties of the Historical Adviser’, 25 October 1922, FO Library Memoranda, vol. 43, FCO. 19 Goldstein, ‘A prominent place’, p. 99.

20 Wilson, ‘Before Gooch and Temperley’, p. 181.

21 Ibid., pp. 186-87.

22 Hamilton, ‘Enlightened Patriotism’, p. 343. See also Frank Eyck, G.P. Gooch: A Study in History and Politics (London, Palgrave Macmillan, 1982).

23 Ibid., p. 340.

24 See Gill Bennett, The Zinoviev Letter: The Conspiracy that Never Dies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018).

25 Lillian Penson (1896-1963) was appointed Professor of Modern History at Bedford College, University of London in 1930, and Vice-Chancellor of the University in 1945, the first woman to hold such a post in the UK. In 1938, she and Temperley published two major books together, A Century of Blue Books and a volume of edited documents, Foundations of British Foreign Policy. She was created Dame of the British Empire in 1951.

26 Montgomery minute, 10 December 1925, FO 207/209, L 6205/152/402, TNA. 27 Hamilton, ‘Enlightened Patriotism’, p. 343.

28 Printed as an Appendix to Keith M. Wilson (ed.), Forging the Collective Memory: Governments and International Historians through Two World Wars (Oxford and Providence, R.I., 1996).

29 Minute by Wellesley, 18 July 1928, FO 370/290, TNA. 30 See documentation in FO 370/375 and 405, TNA. 31 FO 371/22987, C 20648G, TNA. 32 Uri Bialer, ‘Telling the Truth to the People: Britain’s Decision to Publish the Diplomatic Papers of the Inter-War Period’, in The Historical Journal, vol. 26, No. 2 (June 1983), 349-67. Bialer gives the detail of early discussions leading up to the decision to initiate DBFP. 33 Bialer, p. 363.

34 CAB 65/41, TNA. 35 See General Preface to Documents on German Foreign Policy 1918-45 (DGFP), Series D, Vol. 1 (1950).

36 FO 370/1801, L/6495/1744/402, TNA. 37 Despite his criticisms, over the next fifteen years, as new volumes of DBFP appeared, Taylor published regular detailed reviews. Most of these have been published in Chris Wrigley (ed.), Struggles for Supremacy: Diplomatic Essays by A.J.P. Taylor (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000). In his biography A.J.P. Taylor: Radical Historian of Europe (London: IB Tauris, 2006) Wrigley suggests there ‘may have been an element of pique’ in Taylor’s criticisms, since Butler, younger than Taylor and more obviously ‘an Oxford insider’, had been chosen as Woodward’s co-editor. Nevertheless, Taylor contributed much constructive comment and some of his suggestions were adopted into editorial policy.

38 Minute from Sargent to Bevin, 22 March 1948, FO 370/1704; Bevin’s annotation indicated he did not initially take the point, but in Cabinet there was general agreement to proceed.

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39

Documentation in FO 370/1701, TNA; Bialer, op. cit.

Wrigley (ed.), Struggles for Supremacy, Chapter 20.

41 Ibid., Chapter 23; letter from Butterfield to Taylor, 2 August 1949, quoted in Wrigley, A.J.P. Taylor, p. 191. See also G.R. Elton, ‘Herbert Butterfield and the Study of History’, Historical Journal, 27, 3 (1984), pp. 729-43.

42 The Times, 20 September 1955, p. 9.

43 Wrigley (ed.), Struggles for Supremacy, Chapter Thirty-Seven.

44 Papers in FO 370/2694, TNA. 45 FO 370/2694, LS 18/3, TNA. For an analysis of the memorandum see Peter Beck, ‘The Lessons of Abadan and Suez for British Foreign Policymakers in the 1960s’, Historical Journal, June 2006, Vol. 49, No. 2.

46 The Committee reported in 1963 (Cmnd 2276). The Plowden Report echoed to some extent the criticisms of British diplomacy in Butler’s Abadan memorandum.

47 Peter J. Beck, Using History, Making British Policy: The Treasury and the Foreign Office, 1950-76 (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), Chapter 11, ‘Using Butler’s Abadan History to Reappraise British Foreign Policy’, p. 222.

48 Papers on FO 370/2694, TNA. 49 Memo by Butler of 24 May 1963, FO 370/2694, LS 18/3, TNA; Nicholls minute, 14 October 1963, FO 371/173334, WP 30/8; see Beck, ‘Lessons of Abadan and Suez’, pp.

540-41.

50 Palliser to John Peck (Dakar), 4 February 1964, FO 371/178812, TNA; see Beck, ‘Lessons of Abadan and Suez’, p. 541.

51 FO 371/175635, EE 1051/3, TNA. 52 The minute read: ‘PUS. This is quite intolerable. 1) If we knew—as we must have— that it was about to become public why was I not advised? I should not have to learn these things from the newspapers. 2) It lends considerable point to my present complaint about the lax way files are passed out: the inadequate check on how long they are out & the apparent disinterest in when or how they come back. 3) Even today we wouldn’t know whether papers had been extracted. There’s no evidence on which to blame “weeders”. I would like to talk about this case & on general practice. I shall have a lot of trouble over it.’ On the details of Brown’s complaint and the resulting ‘trouble’ see Gill Bennett, The Zinoviev Letter, Chapter 6.

53 Assistant Under-Secretary of State superintending Information Administration, Information Policy and Information Research Departments.

54 FCO 12/004, TNA. 55 FCO 12/57, LRR 8/1, TNA. 56 FCO 12/198, LRR 334/17, TNA. 57 FCO 28/3528, ENS 243/1, TNA. 58 FCO 49/849-51, RS 021/4, TNA. 59 Cmnd 8531, Modern Public Records: The Government Response to the Report of the Wilson Committee; the report of the Wilson Committee was printed as Cmnd 8204, Modern Public Records: Selection and Access (March 1981).

60 Margaret Gowing, ‘Modern Public records: Selection and Access. The Report of the ‘Wilson Committee’, Social History, vol. 6, No. 3 (Oct 1981), pp. 351-57.

61 ENP 331/1, 24 April 1990.

62 Count Nikolai Tolstoy wrote several works criticising British policy at the end of the Second World War over the repatriation of Prisoners of War. These included Victims of Yalta: The Secret Betrayal of the Allies 1944-47 (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1978) and The Minister and the Massacres (London: Century Hutchinson, 1986). His accusations 40

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against Lord Aldington, who as Brigadier Toby Low had been involved in the repatriation of Cossack, Croat and Serb POWs at the end of the war, led to a prolonged libel trial; Aldington won and was awarded £1.5m, but never received the money.

Historians did a lot of work on this issue.

63 Gill Bennett was at that time working in the Performance Assessment Unit in Personnel Department, but gave a paper on DBFP at the conference.

64 https://issuu.com/fcohistorians/docs/historynotes10 65 Parl. Debs, H. of C., 6th ser, vol. 306, col. 324.

66 This phrase, originally used in a Times headline in 1999, became the title of a book about Norwood by David Burke, published by the Boydell Press in 2008 67 Published in Frédéric Bozo et al. (eds.), Europe and the end of the Cold War: A Reappraisal (Abingdon: Routledge, 2008).

68 Keith Hamilton and Patrick Salmon (eds.), Slavery, Diplomacy and Empire: Britain and the Suppression of the Slave Trade, 1807-1975 (Brighton: Sussex Academic Press, 2009).

69 Published in Helmut Trotnow and Bernd von Kostka (eds.), Die Berliner Luftbrücke.

Ereignis und Erinnerung (Berlin: Frank & Thimme Verlag, 2010).

70 Published in Kari Aga Myklebost and Stian Bones (eds.), Caution and Compliance: Norwegian-Russian Diplomatic Relations 1814-2014 (Stamsund: Orkana, 2012).

71 Published in Frédéric Bozo, Andreas Rödder and Mary Elise Sarotte, German Reunification: A multinational history (Abingdon: Routledge, 2017).

72 Neil Tweedie, ‘We must draw on our historians’, Daily Telegraph, 1 August 2012.

73 ‘Every department should have a historical adviser, says Lord Butler of Brockwell’, Civil Service World, 13 March 2013.

74 Sue Cameron, ‘Whitehall shouldn’t risk losing its memory’, Daily Telegraph, 4 April 2013.

75 Transcript available at https://issuu.com/fcohistorians/docs/know_how_fund (p. 42).

76 Vol. 38 (2016), Issue 2.

77 William B. McAllister, ‘“A Quarry for Brickbats”: the Anglo-American Documentary Traditions in Comparative Perspective, 1910-1980’, 2015, available at paho-nonwebprojects.s3.amazonaws.com.

Picture Credits FCO unless stated.

Page 30: Headlam-Morley and Prothero, National Portrait Gallery (NPG).

Page 31: Eyre Crowe photo courtesy of Sir Brian Crowe; Hardinge, NPG; St James’s Park, Imperial War Museum.

Page 32: MacDonald, Gooch and Temperley, NPG; Lillian Penson, Royal Holloway, University of London.

Page 33: Eden, NPG. Page 34: Dakin, Birkbeck, University of London; Medlicott, Gill Bennett’s collection; Woodward, NPG: Butler, All Souls College Oxford.

Page 37: Douglas-Home, NPG. Page 38: Wedding photo courtesy of Mary Lambert.

Page 90: Cornwall House, King’s College, London; Clive House, Minky69 (CC BY-SA 4.0).

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