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The Right to Know: The Unfolding of the Public Records

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2014

John Cantwell
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Extract

IN NOVEMBER 1979 THE GOVERNMENT ABANDONED ITS PROtection of Official Information Bill within a fortnight of its second reading in the Lords. That it should have failed to survive its first encounter outside the departmental world in which it was conceived, came as no surprise to those familiar with what Dick Crossman, in reference to excessive secrecy, once described as the real English disease.

Type
Original Article
Information
Government and Opposition , Volume 17 , Issue 2 , 01 April 1982 , pp. 157 - 163
Copyright
Copyright © Government and Opposition Ltd 1982

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References

1 Report of the Departmental Committee on Section 2 of the Official Secrets Act 1911, London, HMSO, Cmnd 5104, 1972.

2 First Report of the Royal Commission on Public Records, p. 21, London, HMSO, Cd 6361, 1912.

3 London, HMSO, Cd 7544.

4 Public Record Office: Cab 104/2, PRO 1/103, PRO 1/105.

5 Report of the Committee on Departmental Records, London, HMSO, Cmd 9163, 1954.

6 Report of the Committee on the Civil Service, London, HMSO, Cmnd 3638, 1968.

7 Reform of the Official Secrets Act 1911, London, HMSO, Cmnd 7285, 1978.

8 For this tangled story see Young, Hugo, The Crossman Affair, Hamish Hamilton & Jonathan Cape, 1976.Google Scholar

9 London, HMSO, Cmnd 6386, 1976.

10 Open Government, London, HMSO, Cmnd 7520, 1979. The promised report on overseas practice was also published in 1979.

11 Report of the Committee on Modern Public Records, London, HMSO, Cmnd 8204, 1981. Although the Committee thought the system of selection of public records for permanent preservation, based on the Grigg Report 1954, basically sound, they thought its implementation seriously defective.