Chairman's Statement 2004

The Chairman’s Year 2004

Your Council maintained its commitment to the core activities it has identified, and had a successful year in its mission to promote the preservation, use and dissemination of business archives. My function was made easy by the support I received from two very able officers: Fiona Maccoll as Deputy Chair and Executive Secretary, and Edwin Green as Hon. Treasurer. With our finances healthy, we have been able to direct our energies towards campaigning, publishing and policy-making.

1. Campaigning for Business Archives

The Council has continued its important lobbying and advocacy role. At the beginning of the year the first meeting of the Round Table on Business Records was held under the auspices of Chris Kitching of TNA. A further meeting was held in October. This group brought together representatives of archival, academic and business organisations to discuss the problems facing business archives, their custodians and users, and to suggest possible solutions. The first meeting was followed by a wide consultation among the archival community. We hope that the Round Table initiative will be the beginning of a strategic and collaborative approach to the problems, which have been identified, and we shall continue this work in the coming year.

We also responded to important developments in the archives world during the year. We wrote to the Department of Culture, Media and Sport on the publication of the MLA Archives Task Force Report; we lobbied Paul Boateng, the Treasury Chief Secretary, in support of the recommendations of the Goodison Review on proposed legislation to provide tax-relief for businesses maintaining corporate archives. Our thanks are due to Sara Kinsey, who led these initiatives on the Council’s behalf.

We have also endeavoured to intervene with Transco on the future of the National Gas Archive; and of the Warner Textile Archive in Essex (we have since heard that the textile collection and archive are to be kept together in Braintree). We have also maintained a watching brief on the records of Lafarge/Blue Circle in Kent.

2. Dissemination

Our Conference Proceedings for 2003 appear on our Website.

This year’s conference follows the AGM. It has a stimulating and varied programme, and our thanks are due to Karen Sampson and Fiona Maccoll for organising it.

Our Journal saw two substantial issues by our outgoing and incoming editors:

Principles and Practice – where the editor, Lucy Jones, is standing down (we hope temporarily): many thanks to Lucy for all her support and hard work.

Archives and History – the new editor is Dr Michael Anson, from the Bank of England.

Our Newsletter and Website are in the capable care of Jane Waller. Thanks to Jane, our newsletter continues to inform, and we now derive benefits from a wonderful and ever improving website. Many thanks to her for all the hard work she has put in.

Your officers and executive committee members had a busy year campaigning for business archives. To illustrate from my own experience, in December last year I spoke to a conference on ‘European Osmosis’ organised by the Archives of the National Bank of Greece in Athens, then in May this year, with Edwin Green and Sara Kinsey I contributed to an EABH Conference in Athens sponsored by the Alpha Bank on with the theme ‘The Human Factor in Banking’. I also sat on a TNA Advisory Panel convened by Elaine Baldwin, with the aim of drawing up guidelines for retention of a number of classes of business record within TNA’s domain, and in particular dissolved companies. Earlier this month I also attended an important workshop organised jointly by TNA and the Institute of Historical Research to evaluate the implications of the Freedom of Information Act for historians and other social scientists, which comes into force on 1 January.

3. Awards and Prizes

Honorary Membership for Henry Button

Aged 94, Henry is one of our most loyal supporters. He joined the Council some 40 years ago and was reviews editor serving under Lord Twining and others. Your Executive regarded it as most appropriate to offer him honorary membership. He recently wrote to our Treasurer with some reminiscences of the old days. In particular he noted that ‘by courtesy of Lord Denning, the President, the AGM was held in his court when the court’s business had finished for the day’.

Wadsworth Prize

Prof. Martin Fransman won the prize in 2003 for his book Telecoms in the Internet Age: From Boom to Bust to …? (Oxford UP, 2002). This year’s prize will be awarded this evening at the Bank of England. Our thanks are due to Iain Black, for organising the prize before ill-health forced him to resign from the Executive Committee, and to Peter Scott, for helping me sustain it in his absence.

Bursary in Business History

Stefan Swarzkopf, Birkbeck College London. Stefan is researching the history of British advertising agencies.

4. Strengthening the Executive

Your Executive has recently been strengthened by the co-option of two leading business historians: Dr Gerben Bakker, from the University of Essex; and Dr Roy Edwards, from the University of Southampton. I am sure they will play a part in enhancing the work of the Council and trust that you approve of these appointments.

I am also pleased to announce that Judy Faraday, from John Lewis Archives, is willing to stand for the Executive Committee, and we will take the necessary steps to co-opt her.

5. People

I am sorry to have to refer to a sad event. The unexpected death of Michael Cudlipp only a few weeks ago not only deprived us of a speaker for our conference, but took away someone who did much to promote the retention and use of business archives. His work in securing the position of ‘HAT’ - the History of Advertising Trust - in Norfolk, is I am sure well known to you all. It has been one of the success stories of the last decade. He has left a good legacy behind, and it is up to us to make sure it is perpetuated.

The BAC is moving ahead with new initiatives and new personnel, and this is a good point to thank three archivists who are retiring this autumn, and who their various ways served the Council loyally and effectively over many years. They are Jessie Campbell, Vic Gray and John Orbell. All have done much for the cause, but John perhaps deserves special mention as someone who has been continuously involved in BAC operations for nearly 30 years, first as a member of staff, then as a member of the Executive. He has been a major influence on our survey work (notably the two banking surveys) and publications.

They are retiring from their posts, but we do hope they will continue to play a part in our work. We need you!