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New Catalogue: The Archive of Hilary Bailey

6 February 201820th century, 21st century, Humanities, Modern, Newly available (2018)#SkillsForTheFuture, literaryfowlera

The catalogue of the archive of Hilary Bailey is now available online here.

Hilary Bailey (1936 – 2017), was a writer and editor whose career spanned many decades and genres. Her early output largely focussed on science fiction, with many of her short stories, including The Fall of Frenchy Steiner (1964), published in the science fiction publication New Worlds during the 1960s, and during this time she also co-authored The Black Corridor (1969) with her then husband, the science fiction writer Michael Moorcock; Bailey served as editor of New Worlds from 1974 to 1976 .

Her social circle contained a number of science fiction writers who were fellow contributors to New Worlds, including Graham Hall, another science fiction writer and editor of New Worlds whose papers are also included within the archive.

Hilary Bailey’s post-New Worlds output tended not to fall under the genre of science fiction. Her first solo full length novel, Polly Put The Kettle On (1975), was the first Polly Kops novel she wrote, and the character would later feature in Mrs Mulvaney (1978) and As Time Goes By (1988) – novels focussing on a woman in London through the 1960s to the 1980s.

Indeed, much of Bailey’s work had a focus on women, including her retellings and sequels of classic novels – including Frankenstein’s Bride (1995) – an alternate telling wherein Victor Frankenstein agrees to build the monster a wife rather than spurning the suggestion and Mrs Rochester (1997), which imagines Jane Eyre’s life a number of years into her marriage to Edward Rochester. Women were also the focus of her historical fiction novel, The Cry From Street To Street (1992), which imagined the life of a victim of Jack the Ripper and Cassandra (1993), a retelling of the fall of Troy. She also authored a biography on Vera Brittain.

Draft artwork for the book jacket of As Time Goes By (1988)

Her most recent work ranged from the speculative fiction Fifty-first State (2008), a novel set in the then near-future of 2013, looking at politics within the United Kingdom, to imagining Sherlock Holmes’ sister in The Strange Adventures of Charlotte Holmes (2012).

The archive comprises a large amount of correspondence both personal, with family, friends and other writers and professional, with publishers and literary agents, as well as artwork for book jackets, early draft manuscripts for novels and assorted miscellanea.

Bailey’s archive also includes a small series at the end consisting of correspondence and draft writings belonging to Graham Hall (1947-1980), a friend of Bailey’s and fellow New Worlds contributor, editor, science fiction writer and general science fiction enthusiast. As Hall’s writing career was cut short by his death in 1980, aged just 32, his name is perhaps not as easily recognisable as those of his correspondents. His correspondence contains interesting information regarding science fiction enthusiasts in the 1960s, from Hall’s early involvement with fanzines and hopes to compile bibliographies for the work of more well-known science fiction writers, to his involvement with the scene and time as editor of New Worlds. Hall’s illness and death are chronicled in Michael Moorcock’s novel, Letters from Hollywood (1986).

Web Archiving Week 2017 – “Pages for kids, by kids”

16 June 201720th century, 21st century, Modern, Social Sciences, Web Archives#SkillsForTheFuture, Archives & Modern Manuscripts, Web Archiving Week 2017, webarchivesfowlera

Yesterday I was lucky enough to attend a day of the Web Archiving Week 2017 conferences in Senate House, London along with another graduate trainee digital archivist.

A beautiful staircase in Senate House

Every session I attended throughout the day was fascinating, but Ian Milligan’s ‘Pages by kids, for kids’: unlocking childhood and youth history through the GeoCities web archive stood out for me as truly capturing part of what makes a web archive so important to society today.

Pages by kids, for kids

GeoCities, for those unfamiliar with the name, was a website founded in 1994 from which anyone could build their own free website which would become part of a ‘neighbourhood’. Each neighbourhood was themed for a particular topic, allowing topic clusters to form from created websites. GeoCities was shut down in Europe and the US in 2009, but evidence of it still exists in the Internet Archive.

Milligan’s talk focused particularly on the Enchanted Forest neighbourhood between 1996 and 1999. The Enchanted Forest was dedicated to child-friendliness and was the only age based neighbourhood, and as such had extra rules and community moderation to ensure nothing age inappropriate was present.

“The web was not just made by dot.com companies”

The above image shows what I think was one of the key points from the talk, a quote from the New York Times, March 17th 1997
“The web was not just made by dot.com companies, but that eleven-year-old boys and grandmothers are also busy putting up Web sites. Of course, the quality of these sites varies greatly, but low-cost and even free home page services are a growing part of the on-line world.”

The internet is a democracy, and to show a true record of how and why it has been used it necessarily involves people – not just businesses. By having GeoCities websites within the Internet Archive, it’s possible to access direct evidence of how people were using the internet in the late part of the 20th century, but, as Ian Milligan’s talk explained, it also allows access to direct evidence of childhood and youth culture forming on the internet.

Milligan pointed out that access to evidence of childhood and youth culture is rare, normally historical evidence comes in the form of adults remembering their time as children or from researchers studying children, but something produced by a child for other children would rarely make it into a traditional archive. Within the trove of archived GeoCities websites, however, children producing web content for children is clearly visible. From this, it is possible to examine what constituted popular activities for children on GeoCities in the late 20th century.

Milligan noted one major activity within the Enchanted Forest centred around an awards culture, wherein a popular site would award users based on several web page qualities such as no personal identifiable information, working links and loading times of less than one minute. Some users would create their own awards to present to people, for example an award for finding all the Winnie the Pooh words in a word search. His findings showed that 15% of Enchanted Forest websites had a dedicated awards page.

A darker side of a child-centric portion of the web was also revealed in the Geokidz club. On the surface, the Geokidz Club appeared to be an unofficial online clubhouse where children could share poetry and book reviews, they could chat and take HTML lessons – but these activities came at the price of a survey which contained questions about the lifestyles of the child’s parents (the type of information would appeal to advertisers). This formed part of one of the first internet privacy court cases due to the data being obtained from children and sold on without proper informed consent.

It was among my favourite talks of the day, and showed how much richer our understanding of the recent past can be using web archives, as well as the benefit to researchers of the history of youth and childhood.
It felt particularly relevant to me, as someone who spent her teen years on the internet watching, and being involved in, youth culture happening online in the 2000s to know that online youth culture, which can feel very ephemeral, can be saved for future research in web archives.

A wall hanging in Senate House (made of sisal)

In truth, any talk I attended would have made an interesting topic for this blog – the entire day was filled with informative speakers, interesting presentations and monumental, hair-like wall hangings. But I felt Ian Milligan’s talk gave such a positive example of how the internet, and particularly web archives, can give a voice to those whose experiences might be lost otherwise.

ARA Film Archives Training Day

28 February 201720th century, 21st century, Event, Learning and teaching, Modern#SkillsForTheFuture, Archives & Modern Manuscriptsfowlera

Yesterday I attended the ARA Film Archives Training day in the Wessex Film and Sound Archive in Winchester. The four talks over the course of the day were an excellent introduction to some of the uses of film archives as well as the issues associated with them.

The Wessex Film and Sound Archive is based in the Hampshire Record Office

Moving Collections: the impact of archive films in museum displays

Sarah Wyatt of the National Motor Museum gave a fascinating talk on the use of archive film and video footage in museum displays. She discussed a number of benefits in the use of videos- including acting as a restorative from “museum fatigue” (that familiar sensation of being mentally and physically exhausted after wandering around a museum for too long), helping to bring displays to life and showing the motion of moving objects too delicate to be regularly operated.
One unexpectedly interesting takeaway from her talk was the revelation that videos in museums are not at all a recent idea. The Imperial War Museum used to enhance their displays with mutoscopes in the 1920s and 1930s!

Bringing Our History To Life: promoting the use of archive film in cross curricular learning

Zoe Viney of the Wessex Film and Sound archive followed, with a talk on the use of archive film in teaching, and the resource packs for schools they are currently trialling (and how it can be relevant beyond just history lessons). The positive effects she discussed included giving a greater insight into the past, supporting investigation and enquiry skills and creating a sense of greater empathy when the children view the footage and realise it is showing actual people, rather than an abstract idea of “the past.” Its use became especially clear when she set an exercise to link a very short film clip showing the return of a stolen ship to possible teaching opportunities. Each group managed to provide a wealth of possibilities, from geography lessons based around ship routes and learning ocean names, to English lessons based around children writing applications to join the new ship crew. Any school children who get the opportunity to use the Wessex Film and Sound Archive resource packs will be very lucky.

Providing A Regional Screen Archive Service: preservation, digitisation, and access.

After a short break (including tea and biscuits, of course) Dr Frank Gray began his talk centred mostly on how the Screen Archive South East functions, as well as showing some amazing examples of archive film from their collections. A personal highlight was noticing that their workflow for digitising film followed a very similar structure to ours for digitising cassette tapes – it’s exciting to see the similarities in practice between different media.
But the true highlight of his talk came in the examples of digitised film from their collections, and especially the Kinemacolor film shown in its original colours. Kinemacolor was a film format developed in Brighton during the early 20th century which used alternating red and green filters in projectors produce colour when viewed. Unfortunately those projectors are now lost, so there had been no way to view Kinemacolor film as it was intended to be seen until a way to digitally reconstruct the colour was established recently. Information about the Screen Archive South East’s past exhibitions of Kinemacolor can be found here.

‘The Two Clowns’, a 1906 Kinemacolor film by George Albert Smith, from http://screenarchive.brighton.ac.uk/portfolio/capturing-colour/

Vinegar Syndrome in Film Collections

Sarah Wyatt delivered the final talk, a short informative talk on vinegar syndrome, a condition that affects acetate film and, if left untreated and in the wrong conditions, will entirely degrade it. The titular smell is the most familiar symptom, caused by a release of acetic acid that causes irreparable damage at just 3 – 5 parts per million! Even more worryingly, the familiar smell is generally an advanced stage symptom and the syndrome cannot be reversed – just halted if proper precautions are taken. Earlier symptoms can include cracking, shrinking, warping, buckling, flaking and white powder deposits. It was very enlightening, and showed just how important proper storage is.

The back of Hampshire Record Office

By the end of the training day I had a new appreciation for film archives. I hadn’t before realised just how versatile they are, or how many uses beyond the traditional documentary footage or news clips footage there are.

Parliament Week: Britain and Europe: Britain’s third (and final) attempt to join the EC, 1970-73

17 November 201620th century, Modern, Social Sciences, Spotlight#UKPW16, Archives & Modern Manuscripts, Conservative Party, Edward Heath, Europe, Politicsfowlera

Britain’s two previous attempts to join the European Community – in 1963 and 1967 – had been humiliatingly rejected by the French. Two British prime ministers – Harold Macmillan and Harold Wilson – had both failed. Brought to power in the 1970 elections a new leader, Ted Heath, was determined to have a third try. But Heath faced two massive challenges: negotiating a place for Britain in Europe, and bringing the British public with him.

Like so much related to the history of Britain’s relationship with Europe, the story of Britain’s three attempts to join the EC are largely forgotten by the general public. Yet, as well as fundamentally changing the course of British post-war history, they can clearly inform current discussion of Britain’s place in Europe.

Getting in

So, what had changed between 1967 and 1973? First, and perhaps most important, was the fall from power of General de Gaulle. De Gaulle, who had vetoed both British applications, was a victim of the 1968 student protest which forced him from the office he had held for a decade; in his place, the new president Georges Pompidou was considerably more sympathetic.

Brought to power in the 1970 general election, the Conservative government of Ted Heath decided that the time was right to revive the application that had been left dormant in 1967 after the veto. For Heath, the domestic pressures for Britain to enter the EC were just as powerful as they had been for Wilson. The lack of export markets for British industry was becoming an ever-greater problem and hastened the decline of British living standards. In 1945, Britons had been 90 percent better off than citizens of ‘the Six’; by 1969, they were six percent poorer.

Negotiations opened in June 1970 alongside parallel negotiations with Britain’s traditional allies Ireland and Denmark. In January 1972, Heath finally signed the accession treaty in Brussels.

Party and people

The diplomatic negotiations were just the first obstacle that Heath faced; bringing Britain into Europe would also require the support of his party and the British electorate. This was a challenge that faced the Conservative Whips as they tried to make sure that enough MPs would vote with the government to pass the European Communities Act – the piece of legislation that was finalise the negotiations. It is on this aspect that many of the papers held by the Conservative Party Archives at the Bodleian focus.

CCO 20/32/28: ‘Report and Analysis of the State of the Party’ (c. Jan 1971).

The Conservative Party, which had stood on a pro-European platform since Macmillan, clearly had a parliamentary mandate if only its MPs could be brought on-side. Looking at the Conservative Party’s 326 MPs in January 1971, the Whip’s Office was not entirely happy with what they saw. At least 218 could be counted on to support the government’s position but 75 were ‘in doubt’ and 33 ‘against’. Although comparatively small in number, the 33 (not to mention the large in-doubt contingent) could stop the government getting the votes it needed to pass the bill, especially considering the divided and disorganised state of Labour. The judgement on the 33 was pretty damning: ‘a hard core of right-wingers, backed up by some Powellites, Ulster members, a handful of new Members, and one or two who for specialist reasons oppose entry…[and] 15 of the anti’s come from the old brigade…who have always been against the Market and always will be.’ (CCO 20/32/28) By August 1971, when the terms of the negotiations had become clear, there was a big rallying to the government’s side. Just 21 were estimated to be implacably hostile and almost all of the undecideds had been won over. The Whips were also delighted to note that this rallying ‘has taken place in the House, in the Parliamentary Party; it has also taken place in the Conservative Party outside the House and amongst voters as a whole.’ (CCO 20/32/28)

CCO 20/32/28: ‘Third Report and Analysis on the State of the Party on Common Market Issue. August 1, 1971’.

Some voters writing into the party expressed their concerns whilst others wrote in support. Ultimately, however, the issue remained unsolved and the public divided. With the Labour Party also ambivalent towards Europe (a radical change of direction), confrontation was inevitable. In 1974, new elections brought Labour back to power with the promise that continued British membership of the EC would be decided by referendum. The result – a surprise 60 percent majority in favour of staying – guaranteed Britain’s role as a major player in European integration for almost half a century.

Guy Bud

Parliament Week 2016: Britain and Europe: Britain’s second attempt to join the EC, 1966-67.

16 November 201620th century, Modern, Social Sciences, Spotlight#UKPW16, Archives & Modern Manuscripts, Europe, Harold Wilson, Labour Party, Politicsfowlera

‘Now, the question is asked – will France veto us, and should we be deterred from application for fear that they will? I think the situation in 1967 is markedly different to what it was in 1963.’ (MS.Wilson c. 873)

Speaking here at the Labour Party Conference, the Foreign Secretary George Brown was undoubtedly wrong. Britain’s second attempt to join the European Communities (EC) in 1967 would end, ultimately, in the same ignominious failure as its first – shot down by a French veto, wielded by General de Gaulle. However, Brown was certainly right about one important thing: both Britain and Europe were very different in 1967 to how they had been just four years previously.

Britain’s three painful attempts to join the European Union’s predecessor are, today, almost totally forgotten by the general public. Yet they can serve an important role in informing current discussions, not least as a reminder of why Britain was so keen to join the union in the first place.

MS.Wilson c. 873, iii.3: ‘Britain and the EEC’ speech to PLP

1963 and 1967: Similarities and Differences

Considering the embarrassment of Britain’s failed attempt to enter the European Economic Community in 1963, it is perhaps surprising that the issue returned to public discussion so quickly. Between 1958 and 1963, Harold Macmillan’s Conservative government had attempted to get Britain into the association but had been humiliated, in 1963, when the French president General de Gaulle vetoed British accession outright. In contrast, Britain’s 1967-68 attempt, unflatteringly dubbed ‘the Probe’, under the Labour government of Harold Wilson looks very similar. Yet this is not how it seemed to contemporaries.

Britain was a very different place in 1967 to what it had been under Macmillan. For one thing, the attitude of the Labour Party – traditionally the less ‘European’ of the two – had changed profoundly. Under Hugh Gaitskell, Labour had vigorously opposed entering the Common Market. In government after 1964, their new leader Harold Wilson led a surprising volte-face.

This reversal was even more remarkable given Wilson’s own initial stance. In a speech given in 1962, the draft of which is preserved in the Bodleian, Wilson had voiced scepticism at the stance taken by ‘the Six’ EEC members and, especially, the Belgian statesman Paul-Henri Spaak:

Now, M. Spaak began by saying “We [the British] forget that we are the askers”. [Perhaps not his intention, but] Seemed to suggest [the only posture fr. wh. the British can negotiation is one of suppliance] we should adopt a suitably suppliant tone. This is not our position at all… We in UK are also centre of a trading system – older, less integration, not based on any T[rea]ty or Constitution, yet an effective + identifiable trading area [community, outward looking] without wh. would be a gt. deal poorer…(MS.Wilson c. 873)

MS.Wilson c.873, iii.3: ‘Problems of Western Foreign Policy’ (undated speech at Wilton Park).

Partially, Wilson’s rethinking can be seen as an attempt to outflank his rival – the pro-European, Conservative leader Ted Heath. But it was also a reaction to Britain’s changing circumstances.
Importantly, British industry was in ever-faster relative decline. Lack of investment, as well as poor labour relations, led to economic stagnation in contrast to more dynamic continental economies, such as West Germany, which had access to the European market. In 1945, GDP per capita was about 90 percent higher in Britain than in continental Europe; by 1967, the difference was just 6 percent. Soon, Britons would be poorer than Europeans.
What really prevented British industry from reaching the ‘white heat’ to which Wilson aspired was a lack of markets. Britain’s own European Free Trade Area (EFTA) could simply never compete with the Common Market set up within the EC. ‘All EFTA countries now seem to accept that the goal is that they should all sign the Treaty of Rome’, noted a Conservative Party report in 1966 (CRD 3/10/2/3). Likewise, the Commonwealth was clearly failing to live up to the expectations of those who hoped that it would one day form a viable trade block of its own. In short, Britain needed Europe or – as a Conservative report concluded – entering Europe was ‘the only immediately practicable way of revitalising British industry’ (CRD 3/10/2/3).

CRD 3/10/2/3: ‘EFTA + Appreciation for Association to EEC’ (28 Oct 1966).

But if Britain had changed profoundly, so too had Europe. The EC had begun to move in a new direction – one that emphasised the power of national authorities within a ‘Europe des états’ – and this suited the British. Likewise, the new Common Agricultural Policy removed the problem of continuing Britain’s heavy subsidies to farmers which had been a major obstacle in the 1958-63 negotiations. Perversely, much of this change had been brought about by the same man whom the British reviled for his earlier veto.

CRD 3/10/2/3: ‘Preliminary Report by the Industrial Sub-Group’ for the Committee on Europe (c. Nov-Dec 1966).

As a Conservative briefing put it:

The British attitude towards…General de Gaulle has…often become tinged with elements of hypocrisy and envy. Hypocrisy because sometimes he has done certain things straight-forwardly which we have done deviously and envy because sometimes he has done things successfully which would like to have achieved ourselves. (CRD 3/10/2/1/1)

CRD 3/10/2/1/1: ‘Brief for Mr Heath for the Television Programme ‘Britain in Search of a Continent’ on 9th June’ (8 Jun 1966).

Negotiations

Uncertain of their position – and, especially, the opinion of de Gaulle – Wilson chose to approach the European negotiations cautiously. Stuart Holland, an Oxford academic, was despatched to gauge the French government’s mood through a personal contact, Pierre Joxe. The results appeared encouraging.

This low-key approach did not find favour with the more pro-European Conservative Party:

The Labour Party appear to want to start the negotiations by sending someone round Europe drawing up a list of all the difficulties. And this is justified by earthy metaphors about not buying goods before you have inspected them. This is not a deal to buy a second-hand car. You do not go around Europe kicking at bits of the Common Market for all the world as if you were looking for rust under the mudguard in the hope of being able to knock £5 off the purchase price. (CRD 3/10/2/1/1)

CRD 3/10/2/1/1: ‘Statement on Britain and Europe’ (27 Mar 1966).

Britain officially submitted its application to join the EC in May 1967, joined by its traditional non-EC trading partners: Ireland and Denmark. Everything seemed to be going well.
Then, on 27 November 1967, de Gaulle walked into a press-conference and, apparently out of the blue, vetoed British EC membership. It was yet another humiliation.
But the mood in Britain had changed in favour of Europe – and, importantly, the British government refused to withdraw its application for membership. Other members of the ‘the Six’ were also becoming increasingly sympathetic to British entry and impatient with de Gaulle’s personal agendas. Negotiations would eventually be re-opened in 1970 and would culminate, in 1973, with Britain finally fulfilling the twenty-year hope of entering the European Communities.

Source: Daddow, O. J. (ed.) Harold Wilson and European Integration: Britain’s Second Application to Join the EEC (London, 2016).