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A Brief History of Record Management at the National Archives

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 June 2016

Paul Rock
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Abstract

Work on the official history of criminal justice prompted Paul Rock's interest in why it was that so many government papers, amounting to some 98% of the files produced, have been destroyed over the years. Successive crises in the accumulation of records, accompanied by only a limited increase in the shelving capacity of the Public Record Office - later The National Archives - led in the 1950s and beyond to a firm emphasis being placed on the destruction rather than the retention of papers. Officials and politicians were adamant that the unforeseeable demands which future historians might make on the archives had to be accorded less importance than the economic practicalities of what was called ‘weeding’.

Keywords

archivesrecords managementThe National Archives
Type
Sources and Methods in Criminology and Criminal Justice Research
Information
Legal Information Management , Volume 16 , Issue 2 , June 2016 , pp. 60 - 64
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2016. Published by British and Irish Association of Law Librarians 

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References

Footnotes

1 There is, to be sure, a very broad history of records management by Elizabeth Shepherd, Archives and archivists in 20th century England ((2009) Farnham: Ashgate), but it contains none of the detail offered in this chapter.

2 ‘Time’, he said, ‘does his weeding through the agency of officials working by rules… . ’ Insufficiently valuable documents were to be destroyed, but ‘Unfortunately, the criteria of value are variable and subjective’. And the task had grown to such proportions that ‘I doubt whether the old procedures of the Public Record Office can cope with it… . Some of the most precious grain of war-historical record never got into the registered files and may therefore never come to the Public Record Office: conversely, in the registered files of the war period there are tares by the million; but good wheat is mingled with the tares. How can they be separated?’ ‘The History of our Times’, The Webb Memorial Lecture, 1950, London: The Athlone Press, pp. 8–9.

3 Note to Edward Playfair, Public Records, 28th December 1951, Treasury file OM68/3/01.

4 Ibid, p. 8.

5 Hoover Commission on the Organization of the Executive Branch of the Government (1949) Report, New York: McGraw-Hill. The Commission reported on pp. 78 and 80 that ‘the maintenance of records costs the Federal Government enormous sums annually. The records now in existence would fill approximately six buildings each the size of the Pentagon. In 1948, some 18 million square feet of space were filled with records. Our task force estimates that, on the basis of rental value alone, the space costs for this volume of records is at least 20 million dollars annually’. And the number of records was increasing alarmingly, from 5m cubic feet in 1933, to 10m in 1938 and over 15m in 1944. Its recommendation was that there should be a new Records Management Bureau in the Office of General Services; a new Federal Records Management Law to provide for the more effective preservation, management, and disposal of Government records; and an ‘adequate records management program in each department and agency’ (p. 80).

6 Indecipherable, note to Mr Simpson, 29th November 1951, Examination of the Workings of Public Records Acts, Treasury file OM68/3/01.

7 Collingridge, J.; ‘Implementing the Grigg Report’, Journal of the Society of Archivists, op. cit., p. 179Google Scholar. The report revealed that the 53 departments consulted housed some 1,100,000 linear feet of records not still in current use but not yet old enough to be reviewed for destruction; and 300,000 linear feet of records awaiting possible destruction, of which it was estimated that 50,000 would be passed to the PRO for preservation. The Treasury inquiry into the PRO was only one of a number conducted at the time. Others included the Tate Gallery, the Wallace Collection, the National Maritime Museum and the British Museum.

8 His Ministry was responsible for the installation and maintenance of services in the various buildings occupied by the PRO.

9 Sir Edward Bridges to Mr Simpson, 21st December 1951, Treasury file OM68/3/01.

10 Note to Sir Edward Bridges, 1 February 1952, Treasury file OM68/3/01.

11 The Times, 28th June 1952.

12 Committee on Departmental Records, Report, op. cit., pp. 5–6.

13 Memorandum, Public Record Office and the Grigg Report, undated, PRO 1445.

14 P. Jones, ‘The Grigg Report’, op. cit., p. 7.

15 The Public Records Act 1958, Chapter 51: An Act to make new provision with respect to public records and the Public Record Office, and for connected purposes.

16 See http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/documents/information-management/best-practice-guide-appraising-and-selecting.pdf which states that ‘For over 50 years public records bodies have followed the system of appraisal established by the Grigg Report in 1954.’

17 Notes for Supplementaries, draft statement for the Prime Minister, 1st July 1955, PREM 11 911. The Master of the Rolls wrote to Sir James on the 29th November 1955 to say that ‘One reason which, I confess, much influenced me (and I think Bridges also) was the position of the Legal Records. It seemed to me that any difficulties of segregation would be best dealt with if the Lord Chancellor were Head of All Records… . ’ PJGG10(2) Churchill Archives Centre, Cambridge. The decision had been taken against Sir James' advice. He told the Master of the Rolls ‘As you know I was not consulted with the Treasury decided to make the Lord Chancellor the Minister responsible for departmental records and I do not agree with the decision’. Note to, 12th March 1957, PJGG10(2) Churchill Archives Centre, Cambridge.

18 See Plucknett, T.; ‘The Public Records Act 1958’, The Modern Law Review, Vol. 22, No. 2 (March 1959), p. 182Google Scholar.

19 Ibid.

20 The prime duty of the Officer was described as being ‘to ensure that his function is as widely known within his department as possible and, in particular, that he is regarded as the authoritative, natural source of advice on any matters connected with records’. Manual of Records Administration, Public Record Office, February 1983, 2.1.3.

21 The first reference in the files to the proposed new system was an anonymous note, dated the 25 October 1952, which made no allusion to the origin of the scheme other than to ‘the various ideas on this subject that have been ventilated in discussion and elsewhere’. Treasury file OM68/6/09.

22 Reproduced in P. Hennessy; ‘Whitehall guidelines on preservation of documents are made public’, The Times, 7th March 1978.