Official Histories

Lord Addington Excerpts

Thursday 10th December 2015 Grand Committee

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, when I saw that my noble friend had put down a debate on official histories, I must admit that I thought, “Oh, I quite like reading history, so I will find out what an official history is”. It has been a voyage of discovery and, having listened to the debate so far and read previous debates, I realise that I am treading very gingerly on ground that I do not really recognise. But it has become clear that I have actually seen and used official histories on occasion. I did not know what they were—they were just history books that had been provided by the state to look at the state.

If that is being done properly, it is a great expression of confidence in the state by the institution of the state. I rather suspect that there are a great many people—say, a Minister—who will be keener on the idea of an official history going into office than on leaving it. So we have that idea bubbling around. But if we are doing this—looking at our comparatively recent past—the programme is probably a good thing. If we take it to be a good thing, what should we do about it? Quite clearly, the first thing that we should do, as the noble Lord, Lord Lexden, and my noble friend Lord Rodgers said, is continue to produce them.

I am further indebted to my noble friend for providing me with a copy of the Pilling report. One of the most important things it says is that great big books may be wonderful things for people who have the time and the inclination to read them. But I am a person who likes history but is rather addicted to the article: the small, easy to read copy. I pride myself on having a very good veneer knowledge of history: it is wide-ranging and has a nice shiny surface in places but in other places is worn through and is non-existent. Accessible articles are the best way forward. If you are going to do this work, which is valuable and not very expensive, surely making sure you divest and get it out there would be an extremely good idea. It is about using it in a more creative way.

There is an appetite for consuming history—and it is a broad spectrum of history we are covering here—and for using that knowledge. We have many institutions that will help us do it. Surely we should be tapping into that. We have an example in the Pilling report of a good way of using new media intelligently to reach a mass audience. Surely that is what is required here.

But you have to continue to do the work. Having less monumental lists of work and being more up to date and selective in producing things in a more realistic timeframe would also help the process. You could build into that an expectation of receiving knowledge and pushing it out again, but you should still carry on doing it.

It has already been suggested that we are supposed to be in much better economic times. Surely the Government’s general duty to inform and indeed encourage people to use our heritage come together here and feed off each other. One thing that we are absolutely sure about is the fact that nothing happens in isolation. If we want to keep alive the heritage industry, and indeed learning, we must use this approach to support it in various ways, and to support the work that has already been done. That is something that I would like an answer on, if not today then as soon as possible. How are we using this great store of knowledge to support education, general interest and other projects? That is something that we should be doing.

I do not think there is much more I can say that will help this debate. I hope that we will, first, carry on and, secondly, try to use any future work more creatively and go back and redistribute knowledge in a more creative way. We all have a very big, intimidating textbook at home that grins at us from the shelf. There is good stuff in it, but are we brave enough to open it and read a number of chapters? In certain cases, I certainly am not.