Appendix: Treasury Historical Memoranda 1 Treasury and Acts of God 1957 2 Festival Pleasure Gardens 1957 3 Civil Service Superannuation 1960 4 The Convertibility Crisis of 1947 1962 5 The Government and Wages 1945–60 1962 6 Form of Estimates 1963 7 Long Term Economic Planning, 1945–51 1964 8 Policy to Control the Level of Demand 1953–58 1965 9 History of Aircraft Purchasing for the Air Corporations 1965 10 Negotiations with the European Economic Community 1961–63 1966 11 Economic and Financial Obligations of the Nationalised 1966 Industries 12 History of Prescription Charges 1967 13 Rebuilding of Downing Street and the Old Treasury 1960–63 1968 14 Rehousing of the Commonwealth Institute 1968 15 Provincial Differentiation and London Weighting 1969 16 Sterling Balances since the War 1972 17 Decisions on Public Expenditure for 1971–72 and 1974–75 1971 18 Control of Demand 1958–64 1972 19 The Sterling Agreements, 1968 1972 20 The Gold Crisis, March 1968 1975 21 The Control of Credit in the Private Sector, 1965–71 1975 22 The Control of Demand 1964–70 1975 23 Exchange Control, 1959–72: UK attitudes and reactions 1975 24 Incomes Policy 1961–64 1975 25 International Liquidity, 1962–68 1975 26 The Defence Budget 1946–71 1976 27 Prices and Incomes Policy 1968–70 1976 28 Incomes Policy 1964–68 1976 29 Special Study of Incomes Policy 1976 30 The Collapse of the Bretton Woods System, 1968–73 1976 Note: THMs are in T267/1–36, TNA. THM 2 is available on-line at http://archive. treasury.gov.uk/pub/html/thm/thmlist1.html. 252 Notes 1 British policymakers and history 1. Peter Hennessy, ‘Civil Service accused of neglecting history’, The Times, 28 Apr. 1978. 2. Margaret Gowing, Reflections on Atomic Energy History: The Rede Lecture 1978 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), p. 4. 3. Gowing to Guy Hartcup, 17 Dec. 1976, Private papers of Guy Hartcup (GH). 4. Jeremy Black, Using History (London: Hodder Arnold, 2005), pp. ix, 1–11; Christopher Hill, ‘Academic international relations: the siren song of policy relevance’, in C.R. Hill and P. Beshoff (eds), Two Worlds of International Rela- tions: Academics, Practitioners and the Trade in Ideas (London: Routledge/LSE, 1994), pp. 1–21. 5. W. Palmer, Engagement with the Past: The Lives and Works of the World War II Generation of Historians (Lexington, Ky.: The University Press of Kentucky, 2001), pp. 297, 303. 6. See http://www.historyandpolicy.org/. 7. Peter Mandler, History and National Life (London: Profile Books, 2002), pp. 141–2, 163. 8. G.R. Elton, ‘Second thoughts on history at the universities’, History,54 (1969), 66. 9. John Tosh, The Pursuit of History: Aims, Methods and New Directions in the Study of Modern History, 3rd edn (Harlow: Longman, 1999), p. 4. 10. John Tosh (ed.), Historians on History (Harlow: Longman, 2000), pp. 2–8. 11. See Peter J. Beck, ‘History and policy-makers in Argentina and Britain’, in Hill and Beshoff (eds), Two Worlds, pp. 164–87; Black, Using history, pp. 72–84. 12. Donald Cameron Watt, ‘The political misuse of history’, in Trends in Historical Revisionism: History as a Political Device (London: Centre for Contemporary Studies, 1985), p. 11. 13. Quentin Skinner and Russell Price (eds), Machiavelli, The Prince (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), p. 53. 14. William Lamont, ‘Introduction’, in W. Lamont (ed.), Historical Controver- sies and Historians (London: Routledge, 1998), p. xv; Arthur Marwick, The New Nature of History: Knowledge, Evidence, Language (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2001), p. 42. 15. Michael Howard, The Lessons of History (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), pp. 9–11; Tosh, Pursuit of History, pp. 213–14. 16. There is not space to develop this point here, but even A.J.P. Taylor, whose advocacy of the role of accident and contingency underpinned his critique of learning from history because it merely taught policymakers how to make new mistakes in the present, was not immune from this approach: A.J.P. Taylor, ‘Men of 1862: Napoleon III’ in Chris Wrigley (ed.), A.J.P. Taylor, From Napoleon to the Second International: Essays on Nineteenth-Century Europe 253 254 Notes (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1993), p. 279. For example, Taylor’s 1977 tele- vision lecture on the causes of war in 1914 concluded with an attack on the concept of deterrence by way of reinforcing the case for nuclear disarm- ament: Chris Wrigley (ed.), A.J.P. Taylor: British Prime Ministers and Other Essays (London: Penguin, 1999), p. 204. 17. Eric Hobsbawm, On History (London: Abacus, 1998), pp. 32–3. 18. Eric Hobsbawm, ‘Introduction: Inventing traditions’, in Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger (eds), The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), pp. 1–14. 19. Palmer, Engagement with the Past, pp. 292–7; Tosh, Pursuit of History, p. 214. 20. Andrew Roberts, ‘An inadvertent history lesson’, Evening Standard, 29 Oct. 1994. 21. Eric J. Hobsbawm, ‘Spreading democracy’, Foreign Policy, Sept./Oct. 2004, http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/files/story2666.php, accessed 14 Dec. 2004. 22. Hobsbawm, On History,p.33. 23. Ibid., pp. 46–7. 24. Yuen Foong Khong, Analogies at War: Korea, Munich, Dien Bien Phu, and the Vietnam Decisions of 1965 (Princeton, NJ.: Princeton University Press, 1992), pp. 3–18, 174–205; Jeffrey Record, Making War, Thinking History: Munich, Vietnam and Presidential Uses of Force from Korea to Kosovo (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2002), pp. 11–18, 146–55. 25. David Dutton, Anthony Eden: A Life and Reputation (London: Arnold, 1997), pp. 1–19; Peter J. Beck, ‘Politicians versus historians: Lord Avon’s “appease- ment battle” against “lamentably, appeasement-minded” historians’, Twen- tieth Century British History, 9 (1998), 396–419. 26. Eden to Sir Toby Low, 21 Apr. 1961, AP23/4/44A. The Lord Avon papers (AP) are located at the Library, University of Birmingham. 27. Encl. Lord Avon to Spanel, 4 June 1965, AP24/64/28A. 28. Anthony Eden, ‘Foreword’, The Memoirs of Sir Anthony Eden: Full Circle (London: Cassell, 1960). See Eden to Viscount Chandos, 29 Sept. 1959, AP23/17/36B. 29. Eden, Full Circle, p. 431. 30. Ibid., p. 518. 31. Anthony Gorst and Lewis Johnman (eds), The Suez Crisis (London: Routledge, 1997), pp. 32–3; Dutton, Anthony Eden, pp. 356–63; Sue Onslow, ‘ “Battlelines for Suez”: the Abadan Crisis of 1951 and the formation of the Suez Group’, Contemporary British History, 17 (2003), 21–2. 32. Evelyn Shuckburgh, Descent to Suez: Diaries, 1951–56 (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1986), p. 75. 33. Anthony Nutting, No End of A Lesson: The Story of Suez (London: Constable, 1967), pp. 7, 12–16. 34. John W. Young, Britain and the World in the Twentieth Century (London: Arnold, 1997), pp. 166–7; W. Scott Lucas, Divided We Stand: Britain, the US and the Suez Crisis (London: Sceptre, 1996), pp. 324–30. 35. David Carlton, Anthony Eden: A Biography (London: Allen Lane, 1981), p. 478; Richard English and Michael Kenny, ‘Conclusion: decline or declinism?’, in R. English and M. Kenny (eds), Rethinking Decline (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2000), pp. 279–96. For an alternative revisionist view arguing that Eden was Notes 255 right to stand up to Nasser’s ‘piratical confiscation’, see Andrew Roberts, ‘Betrayal of the brave at Suez’, Sunday Times, 20 Oct. 1996. 36. Peter Hennessy, ‘The pleasures and pains of contemporary history’, History Today, 44 (Mar. 1994), 17. 37. Margaret Thatcher, The Downing Street Years (London: HarperCollins, 1993), p. 186. 38. The Falkland Islands. The Facts (London: HMSO, 1982), p. 10; Peter Beck, The Falklands Islands as an International Problem (London: Routledge, 1988), pp. 29–56. 39. Tony Blair, ‘Doctrine of the international community’, Chicago Economic Club, Online NewsHour Select, 22 Apr. 1999: http://www.pbs.org/news hour/bb/international/jan-june99/blair_doctrine4-23.html accessed 25 June 2004. Seldon sees Roy Jenkins’ influence in encouraging Blair’s adoption of a historical perspective drawing upon the Munich analogy: Anthony Seldon, Blair (London: Free Press, 2004), p. 519. 40. Hansard Parliamentary Debates, House of Commons (hereafter Hansard Commons), 14 Sept. 2001, vol. 372, col. 618: http://www.parliament.the- stationery-office.co.uk /pa/cm200102/cmhansrd/vo010914/debindx /10914- x.htm, accessed 20 June 2004. 41. Straw, 2 Oct. 2001: http://politics.guardian.co.uk/labour2001/story/0,1414, 561867,00.html, accessed 20 June 2004. 42. Robin Cook, The Point of Departure (London: Simon & Schuster, 2003), p. 121. 43. Cook, Point of Departure, pp. 203, 224; Robert Fisk, ‘New crisis, old lessons’, The Independent, 15 Jan. 2003; Robin Cook, ‘The invasion of Iraq was Britain’s worst foreign policy blunder since Suez’, The Independent, 19 Mar. 2004. 44. Interviews with Historians: Margaret Gowing with Charles Webster (London: Insti- tute of Historical Research, 1988). The rare distinction of election as a fellow of the Royal Historical Society (1970), the British Academy (1975) and the Royal Society (1988) recognized her authority on both history and science. 45. Gowing to Sir Douglas Wass, 31 Oct. 1978, MG Corresp. Wass. The Margaret Gowing Papers (MG) are located at the Library, Museum of the History of Science, Oxford. 46. Hennessy, ‘Civil service accused of neglecting history’; J. Ford to Miss Court, 5 July 1978, EO22/85/01. EO (Establishment Officer’s branch) files were read at the Treasury. 47. See Denys Hay, ‘British historians and the beginnings of the civil history of the Second World War’, in M.R.D. Foot (ed.), War and Society: Historical Essays in Honour and Memory of J.R. Western, 1928–1971 (London: Paul Elek, 1973), p. 54. 48. Lorna Arnold, ‘A letter from Oxford: the history of nuclear history in Britain’, Minerva, 38 (2000), 202–10; Sarah White, ‘Nuclear historian’, New Scientist, 28 Nov.