Archives under threat at Ruskin College

By DAVID HORSPOOL

The move of a red-brick Oxford College from one part of the city to another is not an event one would expect to interest anyone beyond the postman and Pickford's. But a spot of decluttering presided over by the College Principal, Audrey Mullender, has caused some consternation. The College itself has concentrated on their "discovery" of a portrait of Bernard Shaw by the Fabian artist Bertha Newcombe, painted in 1892, and previously thought to have been lost during the Second World War. Actually, it has been on the wall of the College common room. “When we got it down, on the back it had a sticker that said “owner: Labour Party”, so I thought they might want it back", Professor Mullender explained to the local paper.

The Labour Party were pleased to receive the painting, and Professor Mullender was photographed with Ed Miliband to seal the deal. No one seems to have asked whether the Party might actually have donated it to the College, and whether they should keep it. GBS's biographer Stanley Weintraub thinks that the College's decision is "sheer blindness . . . .The label on the back of the painting offers no evidence of loan or gift. The Labour Party has no serious exhibition space for it and very likely it will go on the auction market once the issue quiets down, and make the big money Bertha Newcombe could never earn". Apart from any other consideration, one wonders, if the painting is sold, why the College, rather than the Labour Party, wouldn't want the money.

But if giving away prize assets seems a little cavalier, that is nothing compared to the upset caused by Mullender's decision to destroy admissions records from the College's early years in the move. A blog by a historian, Hilda Kean, who once worked for Ruskin, called this decision an "act of philistinism". Prof Mullender told me that the destruction of the originals happened after the data they contained had been digitized, though not the "subjective material" that, she says, would contravene the data protection act if it referred to people who were still alive. She also wanted to make it clear that suggestions that a banner from the 1984 Miners' Strike and a historic plaque had been lost were inaccurate. One was back on display in the College's new premises, the other is on loan to the Marx Memorial Library in London.  

It is certainly debatable whether the provisions of the Data Protection Act do demand the destruction of personal material as Prof Mullender believes. At SOAS, the archive website declares that there are "exemptions provided by the Data Protection Act which allow the permanent retention of data for historical and statistical research. . . .  SOAS's history should not be endangered by the overzealous destruction of data that could be retained as historical archives." At Bishopsgate Library, where the archive has previously accommodated material once at Ruskin, the archivist Stefan Dickers was not much reassured by the news that the records had been digitized. He believed that "no professional archivist" had been involved with selecting or transferring the material, questioned what level of access would be made available, and thought that the material would be "far more vulnerable" in digital form. At Bishopsgate, as at other libraries and archives, many documents and images have been  digitized, but the originals have been kept. 

We have been here before, with libraries large and small destroying card indexes, chucking out historic newspapers, and so on. Professor Mullender feels that the allegations are "unfounded and inaccurate", but does not dispute that material has been destroyed. Can it really be true that personal material must be destroyed? Can it not be kept for an agreed period, after which any sensitive material (tutors' comments on candidates, candidates' own statements) can be examined by historians and researchers without fear of upset. Mullender seemed worried that relatives might be offended by "completely inappropriate" material making its way into researchers' hands. But a hundred years from now, won't completely inappropriate material strike enquirers as merely interesting and potentially enlightening?

Comments

[Andrew Blackman]

Good article. I do worry about the destruction of records. Sometimes when I'm reading a biography I'm struck by how much information we have about people's lives fifty or a hundred years ago, thanks to the meticulous keeping of apparently irrelevant (and perhaps even inappropriate) records. In Patrick French's The World Is What It Is, for example, we were able to learn which books VS Naipaul checked out of the university library sixty years ago. Nowadays I'm sure that information is not retained for more than a few years before the records are wiped. That, along with the changes in communication habits, means that future biographers and historians will have a very hard time piecing together information about us. There's so much available right now on the internet, but how much of it is being archived for future generations?

[David Martin]

It's ironic that individuals at Ruskin, a college long associated with the labour movement, should be destroying these records. Thirty or forty years ago historians such as Raphael Samuel (a Ruskin tutor)succeeded, or so it appeared, in making the case that the study of "people's history" was at least as worthy as that of the ruling classes. In 1981, for example, Samuel edited "People's history and socialist theory", a collection that originated at one of the "History Workshops" Ruskin students organised from the late 1960s. It is to be hoped that articles such as this by David Horspool will lead to the reversal of this ill-considered policy of destruction before more damage is done. Those of a similar view will probably want to add their names to an online petition: http://www.thepetitionsite.com/120/368/331/stop-further-archive-destruction-at-ruskin-college-oxford/

[Ian Cawood]

"Professor Mullender feels that the allegations are "unfounded and inaccurate", but does not dispute that material has been destroyed"

One should always allow administrators like Prof Mullender the opportunity to condemn themselves - well done, David.

[Brenda Landes]

Hopefully, the wiping out of records was a mistake that should be rectified.

[Pat Francis]

It beggars belief that such an institution should destroy documents with so much potential for future research in social history

[Truthlord]

This is a truly shocking story,almost unbelievable.I would like to know more about this woman. Perhaps the thought of all those heavily bearded tweedy men stinking of Old Holborn aroused resentments...
In todays strange world hatreds can lurk in the most benign of places.
Until a few yars ago, Britains parks and gardens were full of huge rhododendron bushes over a century old. Suddenly those in charge decided they were redolent of Empire and they were all torn up.
Those in charge of Britains historic colleges should realise that every artifact is valuable ,once destroyed it is gone forever
A strange,shocking indeed bizarre business

[Andrew McCulloch]

The TLSs own NB (July 1st 2011) carried a not dissimilar story. 'A concerned reader has kindly sent us a newspaper cutting from the Manchester Evening News of June 14. Under the heading 'A third of library's stock facing The End', the article gives a short account of Manchester central library's clear-out of around 300,000 books, magazines and periodicals, about one-third of its collection'. The press statement claimed that the library refurbishment programme 'gives us the opportunity to weed out the books that are out of date or no longer needed', prompting NB to observe that 'such difficult and contentious decisions could be discussed more clearly if both sides of the argument could agree on the terms of their rhetoric - starting, perhaps, with what lies behind the idea of a book that is 'no longer needed''. The absence of any attempt at reaching such agreement is bound to generate deep resentment and suspicion. The similarities with the Ruskin case don't stop there: NB, quoting from Manchester Library's website, observes that, 'in September 1852 Manchester became the first authority to establish a rate-supported public lending and reference library under the free Libraries Act'.

[Katie Birkwood]

The use of the Data Protection Act as an excuse to destroy admissions (or other) records is spurious in the extreme. All over the country there are professional archivists working in universities, colleges and other institutions that hold confidential information about people still living. They've developed systems to keep the information confidential while people are (or might be reasonably assumed to be) still alive, and to make it available for research thereafter. Understanding such issues is a core part of the work of an archivist.

[RICHARD HOUSE]

Academic vandalism, pure and simple. A sad sign of the 'audit culture' times we're having to live through and retain our sanity.

[Anon]

One need only look at the centralisation of power in Ruskin college that has the principle holding direct authority for almost every key role in academic and administrative fields to understand how such a situation has arisen. When you deliberately build a situation in which staff are not consulted or feel too afraid to speak out then the whims of the dictator will carry the day.

What worries me most is that the trustees do not seem to be concerned by the matter. They would appear not to take their role particularly seriously.

Ruskin would appear to be a Trades Union college no longer. It is a personal fiefdom that the unions, through ignorance or neglect, continue to help fund.

[Peter Scott]

As long as archives continue to have no legal protection in Britain, the diligent efforts of generations of people seeking to preserve the institutional heritage of colleges, charities, businesses, and other organisations, can be lost though the actions of a single blinkered executive. Data Protection is now excuse for this sort of vandalism.