Hello and welcome to the blog of the Margaret Thatcher Foundation website. Here we will be discussing the work of the Foundation, highlighting items of interest that we come across, and generally exploring the history of the Thatcher period.
For starters, we're going to give you a look behind the scenes at the Foundation. In this two part post I will describe what we do and how the website works, all with the aim of making our editorial processes more transparent and giving you a better sense of what our goals are. This first part will focus on the history of the Foundation and the background to the website. In the second part I'll go into greater detail regarding our editorial processes, and seek to deal with possible worries about the trustworthiness of our site as a historical resource.
The Margaret Thatcher Foundation was founded in 1991 by Baroness Thatcher (hereafter referred to as ‘MT’), with the aim of helping to promote the values for which she stood. The Foundation's first major project was the compilation of The Complete Public Statements of Margaret Thatcher 1945-2000, a CD-ROM featuring the full text of every public statement Lady Thatcher ever made. Copies can be found at some 1,600 university libraries around the world, and a large proportion of the content of the disc can be found on our website.
Following the completion of the
CD-ROM a new project began to take shape. In 2003, MT deposited her archive of
private papers at the Churchill College Archives Centre. These personal and party political documents are rich in fascinating biographical and
historical detail, and, given their personal and private nature, contain information that is not available from any other source. Documents from this archive are made available to the public on a rolling
basis: in 2010 all documents from 1979 were opened for viewing, in 2011
those from 1980 followed, and so on. It was decided that the Foundation should make the best of these documents available online, and the archive section of our website was born. The most recent release from the Churchill Archives took place in March 2013, with documents from 1982 being made available for the first time. You can read an introductory essay about the documents contained in this release here.
The development of this archive is
now the key ongoing project for the Foundation. The task is massive. After all, MT’s private papers provide just one, albeit very important, source of historical documents for us. The
other is MT’s official Prime Ministerial files, originally held by
the Cabinet Office and then released to The National Archives at Kew under the
thirty year rule. MT’s official Prime Ministerial files (the so-called PREM19s) contain most of the documents that passed across her desk during her time as PM. These include correspondence between Ministers, minutes to MT,
notes from her private secretaries to government departments, records of
meetings, official reports and diplomatic telegrams, as well as correspondence
between MT and MPs, business figures, world leaders, members of the public…and
much else besides. The PREM19's are therefore a treasure trove of information to anyone
with an interest in the history of the Thatcher period. They can be viewed in hard copy at the National Archives at Kew, but by putting these documents online in
digital form we have made them far more accessible to academics, researchers,
journalists, and the general public.
Like the private papers at Churchill, the PREM19s are released on a rolling basis. Up until 2012, prime ministerial and other official documents from thirty years prior were released in bulk in December of each year. For example, all of the documents from 1982 were released in one go in December 2012. That changes this year however, as the government begins its move towards releasing documents under the new twenty year rule instead.This means that in December 2013 official documents from 1983 and 1984 will be released, and this process of releasing two-years'-worth of files at a time will continue until 2022. This may be great news for curious historians, but it is also sure to make December an even more frantic month for us!
[CORRECTION: Since publishing this blog post we have received updated information from The National Archives. Rather than releasing two years' worth of documents each December, documents will instead be released at six-month intervals. This means that documents for 1983 are being released in summer 2013, with documents from 1984 released in December 2013.]
Like the private papers at Churchill, the PREM19s are released on a rolling basis. Up until 2012, prime ministerial and other official documents from thirty years prior were released in bulk in December of each year. For example, all of the documents from 1982 were released in one go in December 2012. That changes this year however, as the government begins its move towards releasing documents under the new twenty year rule instead.
[CORRECTION: Since publishing this blog post we have received updated information from The National Archives. Rather than releasing two years' worth of documents each December, documents will instead be released at six-month intervals. This means that documents for 1983 are being released in summer 2013, with documents from 1984 released in December 2013.]
The private papers from Churchill
and the PREM19s from Kew are the two principal sources of documents for
our website. But there are many others besides. You can also find on our site documents
taken from the Presidential Libraries of Carter, Reagan and George H. W. Bush,
from the US State Department, the CIA, and the diary of Jim Rentschler, a US National Security Council official in the Carter and Reagan Administrations. We have others
from the Archive of European Integration in Pittsburgh and the European Council Archive, from the Bank of England and the Bundesbank. We have many
of Bernard Ingham’s personal papers, some of those belonging to Alan Walters,
and passages from Lord Hailsham’s encoded diary. Other documents come from
the archive of Nigel Lawson, the Conservative Party Archive, the papers of Friedrich Hayek and the archives of the Institute of Economic Affairs. This is an incomplete list, and new
documents from different sources are being added to the website all the time.
Suffice to say, we believe that by seeking out and populating our archive with these documents we are creating a valuable historical resource. But at this point certain questions may reasonably arise. Do we take editorial decisions? And if so, how do we justify them? Given the origins of the Foundation, how can we be trusted to provide you, the reader, with an accurate and comprehensive set of documents? Are we not simply seeking to write a version of history that portrays MT and her legacy in a favourable light?
I will address these questions in the second part of this blog post.
Suffice to say, we believe that by seeking out and populating our archive with these documents we are creating a valuable historical resource. But at this point certain questions may reasonably arise. Do we take editorial decisions? And if so, how do we justify them? Given the origins of the Foundation, how can we be trusted to provide you, the reader, with an accurate and comprehensive set of documents? Are we not simply seeking to write a version of history that portrays MT and her legacy in a favourable light?
I will address these questions in the second part of this blog post.
Matt Hasler, Deputy Editor
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