Simon Demissie | The National Archives blog

Posts by Simon Demissie

Hello. I joined the Advice and Records Knowledge department as Contemporary Specialist (Digital) in November 2011. Not often you get that level of punctuation in a job title. I will be looking to improve access to, and knowledge of, our digital holdings, which will only expand as we receive even more digital records from government departments, as well as developing a specialism in contemporary – post-1945 – records.

Mon Apr

2013

The Cabinet Secretary’s Notebook

Posted by Simon Demissie in Records and research

The Cabinet Papers website is a resource where researchers can investigate digitised Cabinet documents, whether they are conclusions from meetings, memoranda, or precedent books, to better understand the decision-making process in government, and the concept of Cabinet collective responsibility. Covering the period from 1916, when the Cabinet Office was established, to when the most recent files released following 30 year closure are added (currently 1982), the Cabinet Papers site allows us to trace high level decisions from Lloyd George’s government during the Great War, Churchill’s War Cabinet, Attlee’s post-war social reforms, through to Thatcher’s ‘wet’ and ‘dry’ dichotomy in the early 1980s.

Another interesting set of documents which can be found on the Cabinet Papers site – which take slightly longer to reach us – is the Cabinet Secretary’s Notebook. This set of documents, which constitutes the series CAB 195, is one of those ‘does-what-it-says-on-the-tin’ series, consisting of hand-written notes of cabinet meetings taken by the Cabinet Secretary. The notebooks offer a very useful – not to mention interesting – addition to studying the conclusions of cabinet meetings. Since 1919 only conclusions from cabinet meetings were collected (as opposed to minutes) reflecting a desire to project collective responsibility and simply record agreement, but the Cabinet Secretary’s notebook provides an extra level of detail. The notebooks unveil the content of cabinet discussions somewhat.

Wed Mar

2013

‘The Spirit of ’45′ or ‘a natural development from the past’?

Posted by Simon Demissie in Records and research

On Monday I visited the beautiful Phoenix cinema and saw the new Ken Loach documentary The Spirit of ’45. Loach depicts the period immediately following the Second World War when a series of welfare reforms – including the establishment of the National Health Service – and the nationalisations of certain industries reshaped British society, as the country attempted to recover from six years of war.

A representation of the genesis of the Beveridge Report and Labour's reforms

Wed Feb

2013

Calculating the destruction of all life

Posted by Simon Demissie in Records and research

My colleague Linda and I have spent the last couple of weeks trying to sketch out the next few iterations of our machinery of government visualisations. We have, perhaps inevitably, come across some difficulties. As we were always aware, the changes in domestic departments over the years are difficult to represent in a simple way, without losing accuracy. Would it make more sense to show changes in a very basic way (health responsibilities go from Ministry of Health, to Department of Health and Social Security, to Department of Health, for example). Or does it make more sense to show individual functions of government, which would surely amount to hundreds of visualisations (i.e. childcare responsibilities, which did for a period lie with the DHSS)? ¹ It’s certainly been a little problematic, but nothing that can’t be solved. It’s not the end of the world.

Wolf Crater, Western Australia (INF 10/29/7)

Notes:

1. We are still happy to hear any suggestions on the best way of doing this. What would you find most useful? ^

Mon Jan

2013

Snow, Slush and…

Posted by Simon Demissie in Records and research

How many words do they say the Inuit have for ‘snow’? Four hundred? ¹ English seems to have far fewer: snow, disruption, carnage. For while safety concerns rightfully grounded aircraft (and even closed archives) last week, the disruption seemed significant. I wondered what kind of considerations lead to such decisions being made. Surely airlines wouldn’t cancel flights and train operators wouldn’t decide to run reduced services – and suffer decreased revenue as a consequence – without sound reasons? Surely every possible technological consideration would be made to keep services running?

'Casual earner but regular saver', Post Office savings campaign poster, 1963 (NSC 25/385)

The winter of 1962-63 (the so-called ‘Big Freeze’) was bitter, long, and exceptionally cold. Snow covered almost the entire country and there was snowfall each month between November and April. Disruption was significant, as schools struggled to open, roads were blocked, and sporting events cancelled (one football match was cancelled 33 times, and Barnsley, Yorkshire played only twice between late December and mid-March). ²

Through files held here at The National Archives we can see how closely government monitored technical operations at that time, and stipulated what constituted safe travel. A circular from the Ministry of Aviation sent in September 1962 (found in Board of Trade records – BT 248/355) demonstrates this, as government scientists specified the acceptable levels of slush/water for take-off, as research showed they negatively affect performance and damage aircraft.

Notes:

1. As with all delightfully simplistic and faintly derogatory claims, this is indeed a myth: www.uaf.edu/anlc/snow/. ^
2. www.guardian.co.uk/football/2010/jan/10/fa-cup-1963-freeze-abandonments. ^

Fri Nov

2012

‘One last thing…the Vietnam thing is going well.’

Posted by Simon Demissie in Records and research

Last week’s presidential elections in the United States were as enthralling as ever. As the polls showed a closing gap between the candidates in the preceding weeks, and media attention sky-rocketed, tensions were high by the time the votes were being counted. The announcement of the victor (it was Barack Obama, by the way) led, the next day, to the expression of many messages of congratulation. One thing has always intrigued me: how do the telephone calls of congratulations between world leaders go? Do these messages really express a desire to reaffirm special relationships, or are they more bland?

Churchill congratulates Eisenhower in 1952 (PREM 11/572)

A couple of Prime Minister’s Office files – PREM 11/572 and PREM 15/1980 – detail two very different communications between the political leaders of the United Kingdom and the United States, even if some of the underlying aims of their ongoing co-operation are remarkably familiar.

Fri Oct

2012

Hobsbawm, UNESCO, and ‘notorious’ Communists

Posted by Simon Demissie in Records and research

The recent passing of the eminent historian Professor Eric Hobsbawm precipitated a flurry of tributes acclaiming his qualities as a scholar and writer, as a literary and academic giant, and as an engaging conversationalist. And these tributes came from across the ideological divide, for it seems as though it is not possible to talk about Hobsbawm’s writing without talking about his Marxism. Indeed, when his own texts form a dialectic – from The Age of Revolution (1962) to The Age of Extremes (1994) – the political dimension of his view of history was never obviously repressed. A selection of files found amongst our records relating to Professor Hobsbawm show that the UK Government of the late 1960s found it difficult to look past his politics too.

'Eric Hobsbawm, the Marxist philosopher and historian - FCO 61/581

April 1970 marked the centenary of the birth of Vladimir Lenin, prime theorist behind the October Revolution in Russia in 1917 and first leader of the USSR in the early 1920s. Accordingly, UNESCO (the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) decided to hold a symposium to celebrate his ‘great contribution to the development of education, science, and culture,’ to be held in Finland in April.

Fri Sep

2012

Not in this school!

Posted by Simon Demissie in Records and research

As young children around the country write and draw about their holiday experiences, with concentrated stares and sticking-out tongues, I too reach to the what-I-did-on-my-holidays September staple.

General Map of Abyssinia - Africa Through a Lens (CO 1069/7/2)

Or, rather, I found inspiration from my recent trip to Ethiopia to take a look in some Foreign Office files relating to the country. My time there – alongside regular rainfall and cool temperatures (just like earlier in the summer here, really) – was dominated by the period of mourning following the passing of the Prime Minister Meles Zenawi.

One piece of information particularly interested me: that Meles attended the British-funded and -inspired General Wingate Secondary School just outside of Addis Ababa (which, incidentally, my father also attended, two years his senior). The school had been in somewhat of a decline but was rescued due to an injection of finances from the British Council in the early 1960s. Consequently, a number of records – mostly relating to the financing of the school – are available here at The National Archives, as a result of discussions between the British Council, the embassy, and the school itself. A quick search in Discovery provided an intriguingly titled record: ‘Wingate School, Addis Ababa: student disturbances following Rhodesian Unilateral Declaration of Independence’ (FO 1043/53).

Fri Aug

2012

Visualising Government: Spaghetti, Sketching, and Compressing Time

Posted by Tom Storrar and Simon Demissie in Records and research, Technology and innovation

TS – Have you ever wondered what happened to those departments that suddenly disappeared years ago? Or perhaps you are trying to find out which department does what Department ‘X’ used to do?

'Foreign Affairs' Visualisation

We have produced the first of a series of visual representations of how government departments change over time to help you access our records and sate your curiosity.

Why is this necessary? Well, The National Archives looks after government departments’ historical records and provides access to them. Departments are created and abolished, and their functions transfer frequently between them. Many of these changes take place at seemingly random points.

Users of our records often need to have an understanding of what changes take place, when, in order to find what they want. We aim to produce accurate representations of this specialist knowledge online.

This information exists in Discovery and colleagues here at The National Archives have unique insights into this specialist area. We hope that visualising this in both a striking and accurate way will open up access to this knowledge still further.

Last year, we gathered data about changes to departments since 1997 to support our Semantic Knowledge Base project. Displaying this graphically is a whole different challenge.

Wed Jun

2012

‘The Importance of Being an Innocent Bystander’

Posted by Simon Demissie in Records and research

And so, England’s football team comes home. Sunday evening’s defeat in a penalty shootout at the European Championships in Ukraine followed a familiar trend where effort and determination were to the fore, but disappointment was the team’s ultimate reward. Out but not down; defeated but not beaten.

Kevin Keegan in the 1976 COI film, 'Children's Heroes'

At least, they were not beaten in the sense alleged by a previous England tour to Eastern Europe 38 years ago. Then, in June 1974, the team arrived in Belgrade from Sofia to play the Yugoslav side in a friendly (following a 1-1 draw with East Germany and a 1-0 victory over Bulgaria) ¹ but events at the airport – in what would become known as ‘the Keegan affair’ – led to some frantic diplomatic manoeuvring, the detail of which is available in a Foreign Office file available here at The National Archives (FCO 28/2657).

Notes:

1. The Guardian’s David Lacey wrote a piece on this subject: www.guardian.co.uk/football/2009/may/21/seven-deadly-sins-football-sloth-keegan-belgrade ^

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