There was an interesting article in the Guardian newspaper last Friday, accusing the Foreign Office of hoarding more than a million historic files at a facility in Buckinghamshire. Many of the documents apparently date back to the 19th century. According to the article they "document in fine detail British foreign relations throughout two world wars, the cold war, withdrawal from empire and entry into the common market". The article states that under the Public Records Acts, they should have been transferred to the National Archives at Kew and made public after 30 years. The full article is at
www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/oct/18/foreign-office-historic-files-secret-archive.
The Guardian has previously disclosed that over 66,000 Ministry of Defence files are also being held at a warehouse in Derbyshire, some from Northern Ireland - that article is at
www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/oct/06/ministry-of-defence-files-archive.
Amongst the Foreign Office files believed to be held in Buckinghamshire are:
Files on Rhodesia
Files about KGB spies Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean
Files on Hong Kong
Nazi persecution case files
The United States
Cold war files
Papers on The treaty of Paris, which concluded the Crimean War (1856)
The full inventory of Foreign Office files held in Buckinghamshire is listed at
https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/36037/archive-inventory.pdf.
Of specific interest to the family history community will be a vaguely described collection in Bay 22 of the facility: "Birth, death and marriage registers" - a collection taking up 20.88 metres of shelf space.
From where?
Someone at the Foreign Office not only has some explaining to do, but it looks like some kind of plan is in place to get these documents to the National Archives asap, which now has a mammoth task ahead to work out what to do with it all.
Chris
My latest book,
Discover Scottish Civil Registration Records, is now available from
http://www.gould.com.au (print) and
http://www.gen-ebooks.com/unlock-the-past.html (ebook), whilst
Tracing Your Irish Family History on the Internet is available at
http://www.pen-and-sword.co.uk/Tracing-Your-Irish-History-on-the-Internet/p/3889/. My next Pharos Scottish course,
Scotland 1750-1850: Beyond the OPRs, starts Nov 13th - see
http://pharostutors.com.
The UK Government at Westminster has ruled out imposing fees on Freedom of Information requests. The legislation passed in 2000 occasionally comes in handy for genealogical purposes - for example, FOI requests can be used to secure access to the 1939 National Identity Register in Northern Ireland at no cost. For further details on the story see http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-35693236.