The Malvine Project is alive and well

Sir Hilary Jenkinson

The Archivist is not and ought not to be an Historian. He will need of course, some knowledge of History and may be interested in it personally, just as he may be interested in Metallurgy or any other science: but his duty is to his Archives, independently of any of the Research subjects (of which at present History is the most prominent) which make use of Archives for their own ends; and therefore an interest in any of these subjects, since it might give him a prepossession in favour not only of a subject but also perhaps of a school of opinion within that subject, might be more than inconvenient or inappropriate, it might be positively dangerous.

(Sir Hilary Jenkinson, Deputy Keeper of the Public Records and founder of the British archives profession in A Manual of Archive Administration, 1922.)

In previous blogs SQA looked at the underlying motive of the Malvine Project, an EU project underpinning much archival thinking and one that seeks to reward archival institutions for participating in selecting collections identified as capable of supporting research into and justifying European integration and the fabled common European heritage. The EU achieves this by making available funds for conservation of and facilitating access to such favoured collections and repositories, with, impliedly, all those other collections and custodial archival institutions not deemed as being relevant to the European project languishing to the point they are conveniently disaggregated or decay. This is similar to the tactic well known to generations of planning officers in respect of achieving the otherwise difficult outcome of demolishing listed buildings lying in the way of brave new developments such as petrol stations, multi-storey car parks and housing estates. In this blog we look at how the Malvine Project is progressing.

The Daily Telegraph reports that an exhibition in the museum of the UK National Archives at Kew has aroused controversy by misrepresenting not only its own exhibits including photographs in galleries entitled Empire and Colonisation and The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, but also the contributions of the Royal Navy, government policy, anti-slavery organisations and prominent anti-slavery campaigners like William Wilberforce in suppressing slavery. That TNA’s museum ignores British imperial achievements in education, commerce, law, religion, government, defence and human rights almost goes without saying. We have previously lamented that TNA has ignored Commonwealth Day (formerly Empire Day) and generally complained about the iconoclastic view of British history taken by those charged with preserving the documentary, artistic and physical evidence of our heritage.

Unlike other commentators, heritage organisations and the national press, SQA has clearly understood and stated the reasons for this and it is necessary to once again remind ourselves of these. In doing so, we also reveal the complicated geopolitics of the European Union and the New World Order of whose development the great majority of people, even in the developed world, are wholly ignorant.

We should begin with political correctness whose origins are associated with the expounding of the principles of Leninism, explored in a previous SQA blog. Crucial to Leninism, which is the means by which Communism or its watered down version, Communitarianism, is to become the global system of government, is the undermining of the western Imperial powers including and especially Britain and by extension the USA and the Old Commonwealth countries. Associated with the destruction of western Imperial powers is the fomenting of racial hatred which it is believed will lead to civil unrest and even civil war in multi-racial societies like Britain and thereby, most importantly, through the enactment of repressive legislation to the imposition of authoritarian rule. The incitement of racial hatred, not as is so often contended an object of the political Right, is actually one of several tactics used to prepare the way for social unrest by the political Left.

Far-fetched though this may seem, the government plan to engender racial unrest through uncontrolled immigration has recently been confirmed by Andrew Neather, a former adviser to Jack Straw during the latter's Home Secretaryship.

Political correctness and multi-culturalism have been in turn adopted as the doctrine of the UK Civil Service, local government, the EU, United Nations and the New World Order. For the archivist, historian and the general public, the consequences of political correctness for archives are, step by step, the distortion of historical truth to suit the political agenda, the disaggregation of archives and ultimately the destruction of archives, to prevent contradiction of the new political system. SQA judges that at the present moment in the development of the Communitarian state, EU and New World Order, the status of archives lies somewhere between distortion and disaggregation. Destruction is perhaps 20-30 years down the road. However, if rumours about a National Archives project, TNA Project 2020 are true, the destruction of archives may be closer than we realise.

Project TNA2020 reportedly focuses on plans to convert TNA to a purely digital service and we may speculate that this will entail the destruction of its holdings. Would this be legal? Interestingly, there seems not to be a statutory obligation on TNA to physically preserve its collections permanently. Instead, the legislative and Common Law framework that defines the work of TNA permits the selection of government records and puts in place arrangements for their transfer to TNA, storage at TNA or at their outstore in Wales and researcher access but SQA is not aware that the collections are subject to a legal compulsion for them to be permanently physically preserved. This contrasts with arrangements for the physical preservation of the built heritage in the form of listed buildings and scheduled ancient mounments. Assisted by a general public lulled into a false sense of security about the safety of all physical heritage on the precedent of buildings, TNA may be using a loophole in the statutory framework to plan a digital future. A digital future of course opens the way for much easier digital distortion of the truth.

Lindsay Jenkins

The National Archives are the documentary ‘soul’ of the nation. Their
Keeper, now called a chief executive, was always of proven high academic ability and experience.

Sadly that is not the case today. That is the problem. Labour party politics has intervened.

To cut experienced staff, substantially reduce opening hours and deny
researchers easy access or even access at all to important national documents
is to cut the link with the heart of our nation, what we are as a nation. It is a blow against freedom.

The National Archives are not another museum, an offshoot of a BBC genealogical programme. They cannot be reduced merely to mass entry by the coach load, however welcome that interest undoubtedly is.

So while the National Archives long-standing digital programme to the particular benefit of schools and universities is extremely welcome that should not now be used as an excuse to reduce access
.
Lindsay Jenkins, author.

Further reading

Lindsay Jenkins, SQA patron, discourses on the origins of the EU view video

A Hero for Europe view video

Jamie Oliveoil's recipe for Fudge view video

Daniel Hannan Conservative MEP and Dr. Lee Rotherham blow away the myths about leaving the EU

Ruth Wilcock's letter on TNA Project 2020 in The Daily Telegraph 25 September 2009




In the first place, we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or birthplace, or origin. But this is predicated upon the person's becoming in every facet an American, and nothing but an American... There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn't an American at all. We have room for but one flag, the American flag.... We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language... and we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people.

Theodore Roosevelt, 1907

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