MoD holding files
 

Ministry of Defence holds 66,000 files in breach of 30-year rule | UK news | The Guardian

Interesting article.

Some time ago, a Polish historian told me that he was researching in the UK about the Napoleonic wars, and some files from that period are still secret and "not in the inventory". He had the idea that some surnames could be affected by the "real story".

How many secrets are in those docs?

Regards,

Tell the Guardian 'if you hand over the files that Snowden gave you....'

What. you mean maybe the Duke of Wellington did not win the Battle of Waterloo........................

.... Well, the same banker loaned money to both sides of the war.

Then the banker's courier beat everyone back to London with news of Wellingtons victory. He knew 24hours before the British government did. The banker, pretended Napoleon won and that the UK was doomed and started selling stocks. Soon the stock market went into a selling frenzy. The banker waited until the price of stocks to fell to pennies, then he bought the UK for next to nothing. Nathan Rothschild had bought control of the British economy and overnight, his already vast fortune was multiplied twenty times over.
When the English leaders found out they had no choice but to give themselves over to the banker, their money was gone and they were slaves to the war debt. Since that time the English have been paying their national taxes to the private bankers (such as Rothschild?).

The "story" is presented as critiscism of MoD, but where is MoD to get the knowledgeable staff to assess the documents if it is being hammered by politically motivated cutbacks?

Dervish is spot on.
I used to take my responsibilities as a Reviewing Officer seriously and would often note on files for equipment out of service (where the practice was to destroy the file) "Retain as historically significant" or put a suitable review date.

big problem was that file registers merged and files renumbered as formations merged making recovery of files from Swadlingcote difficult.

I know when the Pavilions at Wyton closed several staff from the RDP were assigned to archive stuff. Most just went in a big box with little indexing.

When trying to recall a file you got a whole box back to wade through.

I'm not surprised.

I'm afraid this isn't passing the "so what?" test for me.

If it would cost the MOD X million pounds to review the files and dispose of accordingly, I would rather the files spent eternity in the cabinet and the money be spent on training, morale or dare I say it, equipment.

Roadster

In part this requirement is imposed on MoD by other government departments. The DTI and Home Office for a start, or whatever they're called today. They dictate these things but resources are conveniently ignored.

Stuff 'em.

Change the policy, mark it TS and tell them they can't read it. That's all they need to know.

What's the point in spending millions reviewing files, when most of it will be nonsense these days. Who cares what the detailed timings were for a Royal visit, or a VIP move? These will have been at least SECRET.

If the other departments can make a case to see a specific file, then review those, and release where appropriate. Don't review all of them "just because".

Or, if the other departments insist, have them fund the review.

Files
 

Some years ago and many years after I sold my No 1 uniform I was in a helicopter crash up on the Kola peninsular

After a week in Murmansk hospital intensive care a nice man from the KGB/FSB came to see me. Some fuss about being in a naughty area near a submarine base

He had a file with my photo on it, the staples were very rusty but he wouldn't let me see the phot or the files contents, it was thick

Maybe the other side kept files for long time as well, at least he could find it quickly

Tin, indeed. I was searching Ancestry's WW1 Army records when I stumbled across records for my son in law's ancestors, not for WW1 but for middle 19th Century; they were in the WW1 record sets even though he had been discharged even before the turn of the century.

Fascinating reading. I think he had more time in the Army without pay than with pay. Another, from the same family branch, was recruited in September 1914 and discharged in December 1914 the charge sheet was interesting. Yet another had a slightly longer period in the Army before being discharged to the care of HMP Wandsworth.

The withholding of files end up with people assumming there is something to hide rather than anything else.

So was this before of after they married ;)
Grandkids will have something to live up to.

Must admit to liking colourful ancestors as shows they didn't follow the system and survived...............

Try getting the Jaguar RTS or effectiveness of the AN/ALQ119 on the aircraft. Logged in the National Archives but not released..:O

The tone of the original article is one of 'conspiracy'. Sadly it is one of incompetence and lack of resources. It won't be that long before the F540 (Unit Histories) of Op Granby units will available from the National Archives.

Don't get too excited. Many units (and almost all flying units) have few, if any, entries.

Some years ago I was asked to review files held in the Station S&C Registry. My precedessor had shredded hundreds of Cold-War era files on fallback procedures, hosting regional air squadrons, guarding strategic KPs and foodstocks (including a detachment to guard some elderly former Great Weston waggons configured as an emergency telephone network, post execution reference time) etc. These were/are of immense historical importance; I did, however, managed to save the Secret Stn catering plan, in part because it was written on the day I was born!.

WUH, quite.

One hopes that the OpOrd authors had remembered to send one copy to F540.

Remember also those files, perhaps 200 enclosures, the front and back covers separate? Officers not getting filing done properly, clerks 'too busy' etc.

On your files, and mine, there was the underlying assumption that the HQ files would be the ones that contained everything. This of course overlooked the obvious minutiae that fleshes out the bare bones.

Also too - the practice of weeding out the minute sheet on the inside of the folder on the basis that this is comment, not policy. Similarly, another common practice has been the removal/erasure of marginal comments - 'marginalia' as it is known in the trade. This is critical information for researchers as it reveals how official documents were received at the time - and also to whom they were distributed and by whom they were read.

My work reviewing intelligence files from the1940s and 1950s (including Security Service and CIA material - the latter in the US National Archives) was immeasurably enrichened by the often sardonic comments senior intelligence staff had written on the edges of documents. Sadly with the introduction of electronic medja will deprive many future researchers of the goldmine of information that marginalia provides.

Like you, I have yet to find any OpO on file for COIN operations in the 1950s - probably because 'someone else' was supposed to file it!

When I did my tour in MoD(PE) many years ago, they had long gotten rid of "registries" and "registry clerks" so no one was employed to do filing. I worked with one civvy project manager who never filed a thing, but kept the papers in a cabinet for 2 years. If he didn't look at them in that time, they went in the bin. Funnily enough, he worked on Jaguar avionics. :oh:

I can only echo what Roadster280 and dragartist said. I know it can be irritating when you are trying to find the background to a particular Store or Equipment to find;

a. The original Section had been split into other merged ones and the File Reference you have is now meaningless. In a 5 year period, Sections can be re-labelled 3 or 4 times.

b. In a previous "weeding" exercise, some records vital to you were gashed because it was niff naff and trivia to them.

c. the File is available but, to save duplication, it cross refers to Files buggered up by a. and/or b. above.

Additionally, for around the last 20 years, we've been required to only do essential tasks. Storage space has also been cut to the bone so the 2 year and 5 year retention periods were applied with a vengeance. The routine "weeding" was usually done by as far down the food chain as was possible. These CO/E1s and, more usually, CA/E2s didn't have the knowledge (or sometimes the wit) to know the important from the bulk of not important. Passing it up the line for a decision wasn't always effective because the poor sod up the line had a shed load of "real" work to keep moving. Even some of those up the line wouldn't have recognised historical importance if it had bit them in the bum. I remember one of my EO/Ds changed an entire Naval Stores Class Group (DSN) without realising the historical significance of the one he'd changed it from. Anyway, those files that made it to Hayes were so hacked around and cross referenced that they would have been practically useless to anyone looking at them now.

PS

I started writing this at 0715Z

GBZ, on file renumbering, two things.

Our 'new' sqn cdr want me to re-organise the filing system. I argued (successfully) that our very long serving and hugely dependable Sgt Adjt could be relied upon to retrieve any document from any file given only the vaguest reference. To re-organise might have streamlined the system but totally destroy the document retrieval system :)

The other, when I took over a TS registry was very interesting too. The pair of us, HO/TO did a meticulous page by page, document by document check of everything in the vault. Everything apart from a large metal stationery box, a box very similar to an ammunition box.

Whenever I asked about it he said don't worry, it isn't on charge.

After he left and I settled in to a routine cleaning, polishing, and generally sorting out the job, I opened Pandora's box.

Now this was 1967 and Operation Vantage was only 6 years previous. In the box was the operation order, duly copy numbered, and a couple of draft operation orders. I still remember the reference, WIT/TS7, from the days when the classification was in the reference. The operation order pertained to potential Valiant operations in support of the operation.

I rang my opposite number at Wittering and the answer was a lemon. They had no trace of the file reference in their system and used a wholly different numbering system.

As a very junior flt lt I did the only sensible thing at the time, as agreed by the chap at Wittering, and shredded them :) Shame really.