Cabinet Papers Research Articles

The Wilson government, the rise of nationalism and the road to the royal commission on the constitution, 1966-1968

ABSTRACT The Royal Commission on the Constitution was a rare moment when the UK’s territorial governance was considered as a whole. Established as a response to the rise in electoral support for the SNP and Plaid Cymru in the mid to the late 1960s, the Commission was seen by some at the time and others since of being a cynical attempt to kick the constitutional ‘can down the road’. This article is not an analysis of the Royal Commission’s findings, rather it offers an examination of why it came to be established. Drawing on an extensive range of primary and secondary source materials, including Cabinet papers and ministerial correspondence, this paper provides a detailed assessment of the months of debates and deliberations, which preceded the decision to establish a Royal Commission on the Constitution. The by-election successes and unnerving near-misses for Scottish and Welsh nationalist parties at by elections between 1966 and 1968 created a sense within the Cabinet that the Government needed to have a clear response to the electorate. That this response was a Commission only followed an intense process of debate and deliberation within Government that failed to produce a broadly acceptable alternative.

Critical Archival Encounters and the Evolving Historiography of the Dismissal of the Whitlam Government

Gough Whitlam was deeply committed to the preservation of history, and keenly attuned to the importance of the documentary record in the writing of it. For Whitlam, the written record — the contemporaneous documentary record of government activity — was central to the production of historical knowledge and the “verification” of history. As he reflected on the release of his government's 1975 Cabinet papers, “the publication of these records confirms my belief in the contemporary document as the primary source for writing and understanding history”. This paper takes us through the shifting historiography of the dismissal of the Whitlam government by Governor‐General Sir John Kerr. In doing so, it is a reflection also on the role of archives in the writing of history, recognising as Peters does, that the construction of an archival record is “a deeply political act”. This is particularly so for contested, polarised, episodes — of which the dismissal is surely the exemplar — for which archival records have been transformative. In this process of historical correction, revelations from Kerr's papers in the National Archives of Australia have been pivotal. Kerr's papers were also central to my successful legal action against the Archives securing the release of the “Palace letters” between Kerr and the Queen regarding the dismissal. This paper explores some critical “archival encounters” during that research journey — revelations, obstructions, missing archives, and even burnt archives. From the destruction of Whitlam's security file, missing Government House guestbooks, the denial of access to records, to royal letters of support for Kerr's dismissal of Whitlam “accidentally burnt” in the Yarralumla incinerator, these encounters illuminate the critical relationship between archives, access, and history which continue to shape our understanding of the dismissal of the Whitlam government.

Improving Access to Cancer Treatment Services in Australia's Northern Territory-History and Progress.

Cancer is the leading cause of death in the Northern Territory (NT), Australia’s most sparsely populated jurisdiction with the highest proportion of Aboriginal people. Providing cancer care to the NT’s diverse population has significant challenges, particularly related to large distances, limited resources and cultural differences. This paper describes the developments to improve cancer treatment services, screening and end-of-life care in the NT over the past two decades, with a particular focus on what this means for the NT’s Indigenous peoples. This overview of NT cancer services was collated from peer-reviewed literature, government reports, cabinet papers and personal communication with health service providers. The establishment of the Alan Walker Cancer Care Centre (AWCCC), which provides radiotherapy, chemotherapy and other specialist cancer services at Royal Darwin Hospital, and recent investment in a PET Scanner have reduced patients’ need to travel interstate for cancer diagnosis and treatment. The new chemotherapy day units at Alice Springs Hospital and Katherine Hospital and the rapid expansion of tele-oncology have also reduced patient travel within the NT. Access to palliative care facilities has also improved, with end-of-life care now available in Darwin, Alice Springs and Katherine. However, future efforts in the NT should focus on increasing and improving travel assistance and support and increasing the availability of appropriate accommodation; ongoing implementation of strategies to improve recruitment and retention of health professionals working in cancer care, particularly Indigenous health professionals; and expanding the use of telehealth as a means of delivering cancer care and treatment.

ВПЛИВ ЯПОНІЇ НА РОЗВИТОК БРИТАНСЬКО-АМЕРИКАНСЬКИХ ВІДНОСИН НАПЕРЕДОДНІ ТА НА ПОЧАТКУ ДРУГОЇ СВІТОВОЇ ВІЙНИ (1931 – 1940 рр.)

The article examines the relationship between two leading countries – Great Britain and the United States, which had a significant impact on international political situation in the world in 1930s and still have nowadays. As a vector of research, the author takes the factor of the Japanese militaristic regime because of the rather similar current geopolitical situation due to the aggressive actions of Russian Federation. According to this, the author aimed to conduct a comprehensive analysis and his own assessment of the impact of Japan’s behavior in the international arena on the development of British-American relations in various fields. The chronological boundaries of the study are the period from the Mukden incident ‒ the beginning of Japanese invasion in the north-eastern part of China (September, 1931) to the conclusion of Berlin (Tripartite) Pact between Japan, Italy and Germany (September, 1940). Methodology: the article uses a comparative-historical method to compare and analyze the influence of Japan and Germany on the foreign policy of London and Washington, as well as descriptive method ‒ to identify the essence and features of British-American relations during 1931–1940. The use primarily of a wide base of diplomatic documents, archival sources from the F. D. Roosevelt Digital Library, cabinet papers of the British government allowed the author to apply the systematic approach and the principle of objectivity working with only verified facts and their comprehensive assessment. Scientific novelty: for the first time in Ukrainian historiography the author analyzed and rethought the process of how did Japan’s aggressive actions influence on US-British relations on the eve and beginning of World War II regarding the current geopolitical situation. The author concludes that the leadership of the United States and Great Britain did not realize the threat from Japan in time, that their inconsistent actions only contributed to the rapprochement of Tokyo with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, culminating in the formation of a tripartite military alliance («axis»). According to the author, the ambiguity of the position of London and Washington caused primarily by the struggle for spheres of influence in the Pacific area and trade conflicts between them in general. In view of this, the article emphasizes the need for modern leading states, especially Great Britain and the USA, to take into account the mistakes of the past in order to prevent a repeat of the Japanese scenario in the international arena in future.

Performing Welsh Government 1999–2016: how insider narratives illuminate the hidden wiring and emergent cultural practices

ABSTRACT Despite more than 20 years of Welsh democratic devolution, the Welsh Government, and Welsh Ministers particularly, have not generally been an object of academic study. There has been little systematic historical analysis of the new institution of the Welsh Government, its structures, operations and practices. In recent years, a variety of insider accounts by former Welsh Ministers and former First Ministers have started to appear in print, and 1997 Cabinet papers relating to the making of devolution policy have been released. This paper performs two functions. It will explore the learning so far, examining the limited ‘insider accounts’ which have appeared in the context of the documentary evidence, and the light that they shine on everyday life in Welsh Government, its hidden wiring and emergent cultural practices, addressing questions such as internal power structures, the governance innovations of the Welsh Government, and the continuities and contrasts with Westminster and Whitehall traditions. The paper also attempts a contextual, integrated and thematic overview of the making of Welsh Government over this period.

FROM THE PIVOT TO THE HEARTLAND: HALFORD MACKINDER AND WORLD WAR I*

abstract In the Geographical Pivot of History paper (1904), Halford Mackinder suggested that four powers might strive for control of Eurasia: Germany, Russia, China, and Japan. In Democratic Ideals and Reality (1919), Mackinder announced that East Europe would be the key to Heartland control. Only two powers abutted East Europe: Germany and the emerging Soviet Union, Germany being the stronger power. Throughout World War I, Mackinder was a member of Parliament and, via his friend L. S. Amery M.P., of the Cabinet Secretariat, Mackinder was given access to cabinet papers, and discussed territorial issues with Amery. Mackinder’s views anticipated and paralleled British Cabinet strategic views. When Mackinder drafted Democratic Ideals and Reality, he had, through Amery, knowledge of high-level British policy objectives concerning postwar Europe. Research in the Amery papers, Churchill College, Cambridge, documents the evolution of Mackinder’s strategic thinking in World War I. Keywords: Mackinder, pivot, Heartland, World War I.

Fields of battle: UK government and public attitudes to sport in the second world war

ABSTRACTThe Second World War, according to a British Government report, applied a ‘knockout blow’ to sport. This, the same Home Intelligence correspondent wrote, was due to lack of preparation by sports bodies for the conflict – an extraordinary example of buck passing in January 1940 considering the military fiascos that were looming. This paper will look at Government and public attitudes to sport between 1939 and 1945 by examining Cabinet papers and the Mass Observation and Home Intelligence files at the University of Sussex. These trace the journey from where sport was halted in the earliest days of the war – sometimes at the behest of governing bodies, on other occasions due to lack of resources such as blackout material – to it becoming an ‘essential ingredient in bolstering domestic morale’.

In the Firing Line: Censorship, the Civil War in Ireland, and its Aftermath

In the Firing Line:Censorship, the Civil War in Ireland, and its Aftermath John Horgan Correction: Ceartúchán: Correction We wish to correct an error in volume 33, no. 3 (Autumn, 2018) in the article "Redemptive Suffering in the Isenheim Altarpiece and Bernard MacLaverty's Cal,"https://muse.jhu.edu/article/714957 by Lanta Davis. The image on page 82 is mislabeled. The image credit should instead be: The Isenheim Altarpiece (third view). By permission of Musee d'Unterlinden/Art Resource, NY. We regret the misidentification. The online version has been corrected. Much of the research about media in independent Ireland in the first half of the twentieth century has focused, understandably, on the controversies that attended the establishment and convoluted history of the Censorship of Publications Board, especially in relation to work by Irish writers that was thought to impinge on the allegedly pristine and incorrupt nature of Irish sexuality, and on political censorship during the World War II. Less studied—perhaps because it was more chaotic, and also more short-lived—is the military and political censorship instituted in the early years of the Free State by an administration that found the problems of establishing its legitimacy exacerbated by the unexpected but lethal and intense, events of the civil war.1 The challenge of focusing on this brief, but significant period of controversy is made more difficult by the sometimes chaotic condition of the early Free State administration's filing system, and by what appear to be differing (but, at least on paper, unvoiced, views within that administration on the relative values of military activity and of more irenic measures to be taken against their republican opponents. This is particularly true of the period of heightened tension and, eventually, civil war, following the Treaty setting up the Irish Free State administration in January 1922, which was to be ratified by the UK parliament on December 6 of that year. It is impossible to overestimate the climate of fear and suspicion that prevailed in 1922–23 as former comrades-in-arms found themselves first politically, and then militarily, in conflict with each other in the increasingly ruthless civil war that broke out in July, and the heightened tension following Michael Collins's assassination on August 22. The security and [End Page 62] military situation was further exacerbated after November of that year, following the execution of eight republican prisoners, and the retaliatory murder by republicans of the TD Sean Hales in Dublin in December. Clearly, political and administrative responsibility for managing the resultant challenges presented by the institution of media censorship was diffuse and inadequately centralized, involving recurrent tensions between military and civil leaders. The cabinet papers from this period reveal many unresolved tensions, and disputes about areas of responsibility between different government departments, about the role of the military, and regarding the nascent and erratic machinery of censorship itself. The leaders of the Anglo-Irish War had not anticipated this problem; this may, in part explain, their unfocused, often uncertain (and on occasion, despairing) attempts to deal with it. The relatively scant records that remain also reveal that newspaper editors' attitude to the new Free State government did not preclude attempts by both the Irish Independent and the Irish Times to record some of the events of the civil war in ways that sometimes failed fully to heed the new government's hostility to any language that might imply that their military opponents had claims to political legitimacy. The implications of the onset of civil war for newspapers had been considered poorly, if at all, by the new administration. The national daily newspaper with the greatest circulation in Ireland, the Irish Independent, had been hostile to the Rising because of its loyalty to the fast-disappearing Irish Party at Westminster, but by the time of the civil war it had patently shifted its loyalty to the new Free State administration. Its national contemporary, the Protestant-owned and Unionist Irish Times had—albeit for different reasons—been hostile to constitutional Irish nationalism, and opposed post-1921 Irish Republicanism virulently, but rapidly came to a political accommodation with the new Irish Free State—not least because of that newspaper...

Unpacking the initial development of New Zealand’s charter schools

One of the National-led Government’s main educational reforms has been the development of charter schools, which they chose to call Partnership Schools/Kura Hourua. This article concentrates on the initial development of the New Zealand charter school model from December 2011 to September 2013. It looks at the coalition agreement, Cabinet papers, officials’ advice from the Ministry of Education and Treasury and responses to requests under the Official Information Act. The article also looks briefly at the international context and how the international discourses of choice underpinning charter schools have been translated and taken up in New Zealand. Despite being small in number, the development of New Zealand charter schools has been highly contentious, both because of the international experience with charter schools and the questionable ways in which the New Zealand model of charter schools initially took shape and was implemented over subsequent years. Overall, the article questions whether there was any genuine evidence to support the introduction of the charter school concept into the New Zealand school system.

Partition, postal services and Ulster unionist politics 1921–27

This article examines the origins and development of the notion of an “all-red” mail route policy in Northern Ireland in the years 1921–27 and what it reveals about the fractious nature of Ulster Unionism, its attitude to partition, and the construction of a separate Ulster identity. It explores the effects of partition on the notions of space and identity in Ireland, as well as how it affected the notion of a state under siege. Drawing on the largely untapped material in the British Postal Museum Archives, cabinet papers, parliamentary debates and local and national newspapers, it aims to contribute to current historiography of Northern Ireland and Ulster unionism in the 1920s by looking at the ways local and sectional interests affected official policy, its attitudes to the Irish Free State and partition, and the more tangential debate concerning both unionist and nationalist perceptions of Northern Ireland's identity. Finally, it examines the role of post and communications in and its relation to state building in Ireland during this transitional period which has hitherto largely been ignored in Irish history.

The Monetary and Fiscal Policies of Early Thatcherism and the Legacy of the Medium Term Financial Strategy

This contribution re-examines the Medium Term Financial Strategy which the first Conservative government (1979-1983) adopted as a framework for implementing its monetary and fiscal policies. Conceptually monetarist, the MTFS progressively gave way to more traditional considerations of controlling public spending, though the 1981 Budget sought to combine monetarist zeal and a tight grip on finances in the middle of a major recession. Accordingly, the MTFS and this Budget definitively marked the final break with post-war Keynesian demand management. The MTFS was controversial at the time and its legacy is still disputed. The contribution reviews the MTFS in the light of the release of Cabinet papers and other recent accounts of witnesses who shaped policy. It also looks at what the impact of the MTFS was on monetary policy in the following years, and how even today the memory of the 1981 Budget is still shaping Coalition and Conservative government policy.

From practical idealism to the ideology of the market: Whitehall, Westminster and higher education 1963–1983

Drawing predominantly on Cabinet and departmental papers in the National Archives, the article reviews ministers’ and civil servants’ changing perceptions of the objectives of higher education in the decades between the Macmillan and Thatcher administrations. It gives an overview of two major reports, the 1963 Robbins Report on Higher Education and the 1971 Ormrod Report on Legal Education and suggests that some unresolved dichotomies are contained within their predominantly humanistic philosophy. It concludes with an examination of the launch of the Thatcher administration's embrace of an overtly market-based ideology in the early 1980s. A key document is a report prepared in 1983 for Prime Minister Thatcher by the Cabinet Office's Think Tank, the Central Policy Review Staff (CPRS). The Report on Higher Education is in a series of files titled ‘Responsiveness of Higher Education to Market Forces and Employment Needs'. The commissioning of the Report, newly released under the thirty year rule, suggests that Thatcher took a keener personal interest in higher education than historians had hitherto appreciated. Universities and colleges were early targets for the implementation of market-based reforms in public institutions. The article concludes by arguing that official reticence in addressing the theoretical underpinnings of concepts of the public good from the 1960s onwards contributed to making higher education all the more vulnerable to the inroads from the neo-liberal consumerist ideology articulated in the CPRS Report.

Izolacjonizm i appeasement: Waszyngton i Londyn wobec imperium sowieckiego oraz polskiego kryzysu latem 1920 r.

Isolationism and Appeasement: Washington and London vis-à-vis the Soviet Empire and the Polish Crisis in the Summer of 1920The article analyses the attitude of the political elites of the USA and Great Britain towards the question of Russia and the Soviet Union in the summer of 1920. The analysis is based on the B. Colby Papers associated with the US Secretary of State Bainbridge Colby, as well as material concerning President Woodrow Wilson (the Congress Library in Washington), together with heretofore unexamined documents regarding Philipp Kerr, private secretary to the British Prime Minister David Lloyd George and the actual éminence gris of his cabinet (P. Kerr Papers, National Archives of Scotland, Edinburgh) and the Cabinet Papers at the National Archives in London. From January 1920 Lloyd George conducted a consistent policy of maintaining an agreement with Soviet Russia, known as “peace through trade”. Its culmination was an invitation to London issued to a political delegation headed by Lev Kamenev, member of the Political Bureau. At the same time, the United States withdrew from active policy in Europe after the Senate rejected the Versailles Treaty. Within this context the author analysed the reaction of the Wilson Administration and the Lloyd George cabinet towards Soviet aggression in Central Europe, when in August 1920 the Red Army reached Warsaw and Lenin proclaimed the Sovietisation of Poland. The British response to this challenge to the entire Versailles system assumed the form of a decision made by Lloyd George (also on 10 August 1920), urging Poland to capitulate in the face of the demands formulated by Moscow. By relinquishing Poland to the Soviet empire the British prime minister hoped to achieve reconciliation with Lenin at a diplomatic conference that was to take place in London in the autumn of 1920. The Americans responded to Soviet aggression by declaring passivity, announced by Bainbridge Colby in his famous note of 10 August. The author presented the origin of this act as well as the motives for the Lloyd George resolution conceived as an historical prefiguration of the isolationism policy (in the case of the USA) and appeasement (in the case of Great Britain).

The geography of stupidity: From where do all the bad ideas come?

The 30-year rule governing the release of Cabinet papers means that the British people only learned of a covert 1980s policy to manage the decline of northern England in early 2012. We can only guess at what is really being said behind closed doors today. There are some clues in a series of newspaper reports published in 2012 and in the social backgrounds and professed beliefs of the current Cabinet. They point to what might be the real intention behind reforms in education, health, housing and social security.

‘A Little Marshall Plan’: Britain and the formation of the European Payments Union, 1948–50

‘A Little Marshall Plan’: Britain and the formation of the European Payments Union, 1948–50

Freedom of information and its impact in the United Kingdom

Abstract The UK Parliament passed the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) in November 2000 after 3 years of government White Papers, consultation papers, and various Bills. The author served as special adviser to the House of Commons Select Committee on Public Administration which oversaw the Government proposals for legislation and the progress of the Bill into the House of Commons. The FOIA introduced pro-active publication of information via Publication Schemes, which were introduced on a staggered basis across the public sector and on January 1, 2005, rights of individual access were granted to individuals. The Act covers well over 100,000 public authorities in the UK and includes both Houses of Parliament. There is a power to add private bodies to the Act's coverage. The Act covers UK, English, Welsh, and Northern Irish public authorities. Scotland has its own FOIA which was enacted by the Scottish Parliament in 2002. The paper will examine the operation of the UK legislation and the role of the Information Commissioner and the Information Tribunal which deal with complaints of refusal and appeals respectively. The jurisprudence has been voluminous and now the English courts are beginning to hear appeals from the tribunal. The article will examine the major trends of the legislation and the problems presented by the legislation. The Government has already issued vetoes under the Act overriding the Commissioner's decision to grant access to the Cabinet papers relating to the Cabinet discussion on entering into war with Iraq and then on devolution of power to Scotland, Northern Ireland, and Wales. The decisions to open up the files on MPs expenses have caused one of the major constitutional crises in the UK in the last 75 years. As well as examining the way the Act has been interpreted, the author will essay some preliminary analyses of the impact of the Act on the realization of government objectives in passing the Act. The FOIA does sit alongside other legislation allowing access to personal files and access to environmental information and the whole information debate is set in the context of heightened sensitivity and secrecy in time of the war on terror and the state's increasing capacity to demand, store, and share information. The UK experience of the information debate will be examined.

Gun Control: Political Fears Trump Crime Control

As the debate over the 1976 District of Columbia ban demonstrates, gun control often covers for a hidden agenda. British Cabinet papers declassified in 1969-70 demonstrate that contrary to claims made in Parliamentary debates, the intent of the Firearms Act 1920 was not to reduce or prevent crime, but to prevent a feared Bolshevik revolution in Britain. Direct statements by members of the Cabinet demonstrate an intent to mislead the public about their objectives.

The Middle East Online: Series 1: Arab-Israeli Relations, 1917–1970. Edited by Eugene Rogan. Farmington Hills, MI: Thomson Gale

This database represents in excess of 17,000 records from the British Public Records Office (PRO), or more than 137,000 pages, dealing with the British historical connection to the Arab-Israeli conflict. The original documentation represents official perspectives from the Foreign Office (FO), the Colonial Office (CO), the War Office (WO), and Cabinet Papers, with a time period dating from the issuance of the so-called Balfour Declaration (1917) through the activities of the Palestinian group Black September during a period of internal conflict in Jordan in 1970. The actual database is augmented with three essays that serve as guides to the subject matter as well as providing research prompts serving as references with appropriate hot links to relevant documents. The essays are an Introduction by Dr. Eugene Rogan, “Palestine and the Arab-Israeli Conflict: 1948–1970,” by Dr. Charles D. Smith, and “The PLO and the Palestinian Armed Struggle,” by Professor Yezid Sayigh.

The Historian versus the Political Scientist: Works on the Arab–Israeli Conflict and Israel in 2003 (Review Article)

Generally speaking the disciplines of history and political science do not sit well together. Some political scientists charge that historians are mere glorified storytellers; whilst historians argue that political scientists are too journalistic rather than scientific. The truth of course as Alan Dowty from the University of Notre Dame points out is that there is need to combine what he terms as the 'the historians meticulous attention to primary sources with a political scientist's sensitivity to conceptual implications of the evidence'. In other words there is a compelling need to understand the exact context in which a piece of documentary evidence such as Cabinet papers was set. In looking at a new set of publications about the State of Israel and the ArabIsraeli conflict, it is worth noting the various disciplines and the limitations of each one when employed independently of one another. A seeming endless amount of material continues to be published concerning Israel's bi-lateral relations with various countries. These range from standard run-of-the-mill diplomatic memoirs, which are sometimes rather thinly disguised as autobiographies to the more thematically based books that examine the bi-lateral relationship within a given context usually strategic, cultural or domestic politics. Unsurprisingly, Israel's so called special relationship' with the United States still receives the greatest coverage, and if the number of recent PhDs being examined is anything to go by, then this fixation is likely to continue for the foreseeable future. In addition to scholarly works, we see in this arena an attempt by recent diplomatic histories and memoirs to shape current debates by revelation.

Secret Intelligence And Escape Clauses: Australia and the Indonesian Annexation of East Timor, 1963-76

In September 2000 the Australian government declassified thousands of pages of documents concerning the Indonesian invasion and annexation of East Timor in 1975. Some 68,000 pages of documents were released. About 2,600 pages of diplomatic documents were withheld, along with Cabinet papers, intelligence materials, and Defence Department records. The documents cover only the period from early 1974 to mid-1976 and do not document the Indonesian war and its human costs. What they do document is the process whereby Australia acquiesced in the Indonesian annexation of East Timor. Above all, they show that secret briefings by the Indonesians kept the Australian government closely informed of Indonesian intentions and operations at every step. In the light of these secret briefings and related documents, it is clear that Prime Minister Gough Whitlam's claim that he wanted to see a “genuine act of self-determination” by the East Timorese is and always was hollow. This was a fig leaf covering his desire to see East Timor incorporated into Indonesia as West Papua had been in the 1960s. Its patina of moral responsibility and legal respectability were his alibi or, as Richard Woolcott put it in late 1974, “escape clause,” if and when Indonesian actions led to accusations of Australian complicity with Jakarta. Mr. Whitlam was complicit. The record is clear.