2023 – a year in review

As we move into the new year we take time to look back over 2023 and reflect on the work of Archives and Special Collections in the last twelve months.

Signature of the first Duke of Wellington

Wellington 40

2023 was a significant year for the Archives as it marked the fortieth anniversary of the arrival of the papers of the first Duke of Wellington at Southampton after they were allocated to the University under national heritage legislation. The collection arrived on 17 March 1983, bringing to Southampton the University’s first major manuscript collection, leading to the creation of an Archives Department and the development of a major strand of activity within the University Library.

To celebrate this momentous occasion we hosted a number of events and activities throughout the year. It started with a Wellington 40 Twitter campaign, where both staff and researchers who had worked on the archive shared their favourite Wellington document. In March (the month when the collection arrived) we ran a series of blogs looking at forty years of work on the collection; conservation; events and the Wellington Pamphlets collection. This was followed by a series of Wellington themed blogs using the letters of the Duke’s name – starting, appropriately enough, with W for Waterloo.

On 7 July we hosted an in-person event, providing attendees with the opportunity to see behind the scenes, meet the curators and learn more about the work of the Archives and Special Collections, including conservation. As well as a selection of archival material on view, there was also an exhibition in the Level 4 Gallery reflecting on forty years of curation of the collection. And the visit was rounded off with tea and a talk by Dr Zack White about his research on the Wellington Archive.

Wellington 40 exhibition marking forty years of curation of the Wellington Archive, Level 4 Gallery

In October, the Special Collections Gallery opened again for the first time since 2020 with an exhibition The Duke presents his compliments. Taking the Wellington Archive as a starting point, the exhibition looks at the development of the archive collections since 1983. It continues to run weekdays (1000-1600) from 8 January to 16 February, so there is still time to come and have a look.

Events

As well as the event hosted by Archives and Special Collections as part of the Wellington 40 celebrations in July, we hosted visits for the Jewish Historical Society of England on 9 October and for the Come and Psing Psalmody event at the Turner Sims concert hall on 22 October. This latter event showcased some of the West Gallery music material collected by Rollo Woods, who was an expert in this field as well as a former Deputy Librarian at the University.

Rollo Woods

In November we ran an activity for the Hands-on Humanities day at the Avenue Campus. For the activity intrepid travellers were asked to take their archives passport and embark on a journey learning more about the collections. Feedback from those attending was very positive, with participants finding it a fun way to find out about the collections and the university. Highlights noted were “learning about history”, “discovering unexpected items” and, of course, “using the quill”.

Image of knitted pineapple purse from the Montse Stanley collection with magnifying glass and quill.

The Archives and Special Collections has continued to support teaching and research throughout the year, hosting sessions introducing students to archives for a range of undergraduate and master courses. Karen Robson and Jenny Ruthven have been involved in leading sessions on the curation of specialist libraries and on archives for the new MA in Holocaust Studies that runs for the first time in 2023/4. Karen will be leading further practical sessions on this course in the second semester in 2024. We also led two group projects as part of the second-year history undergraduate course in early 2023. This course asks the students to focus on archive sources for their project and for this year we offered a project about nineteenth-century press and politicians, utilising material from the archive of third Viscount Palmerston, and a project based on the papers of the Women’s Campaign for Soviet Jewry. 

Protest at Wembley Arena by members of the Women’s Campaign for Soviet Jewry [MS254/A980/4/22/178/3]

Collections and projects

Although the collection arrived and was reported in the review for last year, the Ben Abeles archive was officially launched in an event hosted by the Parkes Institute in June 2023. Karen Robson formed part of the panel for this hybrid event which attracted an international audience. Details of the Abeles collection is accessible in the Archive Catalogue.

Amongst the new Jewish archival and interfaith collections for 2023 were the papers of Professor Alice Eckardt, a leading scholar and activist in the field of Christian-Jewish relations, relating to her connection with a leading British figure in the same field – Revd Dr James Parkes. We have, throughout the year, acquired additional papers for existing collections, such as for Eugene Heimler and the Jewish Youth Fund. We also acquired more material documenting student life in previous decades with papers for the Med Soc reviews in the 1980s.

We have continued to develop our maritime archaeology archival holdings and the most sizeable acquisition of material this year has been the working papers of Peter Marsden relating to shipwrecks.

Part way through the year, Archives and Special Collections was the recipient of a grant from the Honor Frost Foundation for a project supporting work to make over 5000 digital images created from slides in the Honor Frost Archive, together with catalogue descriptions for each of the images, available online. The project is due to be completed by 31 January 2024.

Two stone anchors [MS439/A4278/HFA/8/3/12/8]: one of the images that is part of the Honor Frost project

Archives searchroom services

2023 saw the expansion of the Archives and Special Collections Virtual Reading Room service offering remote access to collections through digital appointments. This is a growing element to the archive reading room service and usage has grown by 28% in the last year. For information on how to book a digital appointment look at the Special Collections website access page.

This usage has been paralleled by a growing quantity of enquiries being handled within Archives – rising by 11% in the last year.

Looking ahead

In 2024 we are looking ahead to marking the 240^th anniversary of the birth of third Viscount Palmerston with events, including social media programmes and an exhibition relating to the Palmerston family and Broadlands. We have a number of projects ongoing and new for 2024, including working with the Parkes Institute to create a series of films promoting the collections and a three-year conservation project on the Schonfeld archive. Do look out for news on our social media channels.

Wellington 40 exhibition

For those unable to come to the Hartley Library in person, we’re sharing – via our Blog – the exhibition which has just been mounted in the Level 4 Gallery Exhibition space. If you are on campus, please do come and see it in all its glory!

This exhibition is the third of several events and commemorations planned for 2023 to mark the 40th anniversary of the arrival of the Wellington Papers at the University of Southampton. We started with a #Wellington40 Twitter campaign @HartleySpecialC in April followed by a series of blogs inspired by the letters in the Duke’s surname. We’re hosting an in-person behind-the-scenes tour, tea and talk event on 7 July and, finally, an exhibition of Archives and Rare Books in the Special Collections Gallery which will open in October 2023.

In 1983 the government allocated the papers of Arthur Wellesley, first Duke of Wellington, to the University of Southampton under national heritage legislation. The collection arrived on 17 March of that year. This brought to Southampton the University’s first major manuscript collection, leading to the creation of an Archives Department and the development of a major strand of activity within the University Library.

The Duke of Wellington examining a bound volume of Wellington documents at the official opening of the Wellington Suite Archives accommodation, 14 May 1983

This blog reflects on some of the highlights of this important collection, together with the curatorial and outreach work that has taken place to make it available over the last four decades.

Wellington Archive in the Archives strongroom, 2023

Arthur Wellesley, first Duke of Wellington (1769-1852), was a long serving politician as well as the premier soldier of his generation. He became a public figure after the Battle of Waterloo and at his death in 1852 was treated as a national hero. His archive dates from the great age of government by correspondence. Composed of around 100,000 items, that cover the Duke’s career as a soldier, statesman and diplomat from 1790 to his death in 1852, the collection bears witness to great military, political and social events of the time. It is exceptional among the papers of nineteenth-century figures for its size and scope.

Headed note paper containing a depiction of the Wellington Arch, Hyde Park Corner, London, on a letter
from John Wilson Croker to Wellington, 24 November 1846 [MS61/WP2/150/61]

Cataloguing the collection

The arrival of the Wellington Archive in 1983 marked the beginning of Southampton’s long involvement in automated archive catalogues. The Wellington Papers Database, which used STATUS software, could claim to be one of, if not the earliest, online archive catalogue in the UK. The cataloguing was done ‘offline’ by the archivists on BBC microcomputers equipped with rudimentary word-processing packages – but no memory – and all text was saved onto floppy discs. It was subsequently transferred to an ICL mainframe computer for incorporation into the database by batch programme. This being the days prior to the World Wide Web, the initial database was made available by the Joint Academic Network (JANET) and the public switched telephone network. It was initially scheduled to be made available 156 hours a week, rising to 168.

A new catalogue for a new era

In 2023 the catalogue of the Archive can be accessed in the Epexio Archive Catalogue, a new system that Archives and Special Collections launched in November 2021. The cataloguing has been at an item level, producing rich and detailed descriptions of the individual letters in the collection. This enables researchers to follow a military campaign day-by-day, see the progress of the drafting of legislation, such as the Catholic emancipation bill of 1829, or read the correspondence from a wide cross section of society offering Wellington their views on a whole range of subjects, asking for patronage, promotion or assistance or even asking him to be the godfather of their children.

Conservation

The collection also came with a major conservation challenge – some ten per cent of the collection was so badly damaged it was unfit to handle and in a parlous state. Paper is susceptible to many hazards – water, mould, vermin have all made an impact on the collection. As early as 1815, part of the archive was damaged in a shipwreck on the Tagus. But most damage was the result of storage in a damp environment during the Second World War. Mould growth severely weakened and stained the papers, leaving some letters in a fragmentary state.

Extremely delicate documents being supported on a silk screen during washing

For the conservation of the Archive, Southampton adopted a technique known as leaf-casting. This creates new paper made from pulp similar in nature to the original paper. The result is a sympathetic repair, which strengthens the weakened area, without putting undue stress at the repair edge. The conservators began by working with the less severely damaged materials so that they were able to build up expertise in conserving this type of exceedingly fragile material before tackling the most fragmentary bundles.

As a result of the work undertaken, important material is now available for research, including for the Peninsular War, papers for 1822 (for the Congress of Verona) and for Wellington as Prime Minister in 1829. The badly degraded and mould-damaged bundles from 1832, significant as this was the time of the First Reform Act, are available for the first time since 1940.

Events and activities

Visitors at an ‘Explore Your Archive’ drop-in session

The last forty years also has seen a great deal of outreach and activity focused on the Archive. The Archives and Special Collections has arranged seven international Wellington congresses, the most recent in 2019. It has curated a number of exhibitions to showcase the collection, including for the bicentenary of Waterloo in 2015. In 2015 and 2017 Karen Robson and Professor Chris Woolgar presented a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) they had co-created relating to Wellington and Waterloo.

Join us in 2023 as we continue to share this amazing collection!

Wellington Papers 40 – Behind the scenes tour, talk and tea

In order to mark the fortieth anniversary of the arrival of the Wellington Papers at the Hartley Library in Southampton, we are hosting a free behind the scenes day on Friday 7^th July 2023: ‘Wellington Papers 40 – Behind the scenes at the Archives’. To book in for this event please go to the Eventbrite page.

There will be a chance to meet the curators, see a selection of gems from the collection and to find out about aspects of curation, including conservation work. An exhibition outlining work undertaken on the collection over forty years will be on show in the Level 4 Gallery of the Hartley Library and there will be a talk by Dr Zack White as well as tea in the Library Conference Room.

There will be two sessions that day – one at 10am and another at 2pm.

Scrimshaw nautilus shell, engraved by C.H. Wood, depicting the Duke of Wellington on one side and St George slaying a dragon on the other [MS351/6/A4170/28]

For those unfamiliar with the Hartley Library it can be found on University Road on the Highfield Campus in Southampton and there are good bus connections to the campus; the library is marked as building number 36 on our campus map.

 The event will be held on Level 4 of the Hartley Library, our library floorplans are available here.

Dr Zack White is a historian, doctoral researcher and holder of the Archival scholarship at the University of Southampton, specialising in crime and punishment in the British Army during the Napoleonic Wars. He is also a battlefield guide and hosts The Napoleonic Wars Podcast.

Zack is also the Chair and a Trustee of the Napoleonic and Revolutionary War Graves Charity.

In Zack’s own words: “I’m a historian and podcaster fascinated with the Napoleonic era, legal history, and particularly how people are affected by conflict. I specialise in nineteenth century history, and especially the period 1789-1815. As a former secondary school teacher turned historian, sharing my passion for the past, and infecting people with that same enthusiasm, has been my life’s work. When I’m not presenting ‘The Napoleonic Wars podcast’, you can find me exploring Napoleonic era battlefields, building and painting scale models of aircraft, searching a graveyard for the resting places of veterans, or taking a flying lesson.”

We very much hope that you can join us for this event – it is free to attend but booking is essential.

We hope to record Zack White’s talk and make it available on YouTube after the event.

We also have plans to record and share some short videos about some of the archival material we’ll have on display, for anyone unable to attend in person that day.

Dr Zack White, Military Historian & Author

Wellington 40: Events

In this week’s blog we’re taking a look at various public events – conferences, lectures, exhibitions and drop-ins – the University has hosted over the years to share the Wellington Papers and make the collection accessible to all.

Madding Crowd: Dancing at the “With Wellington We’ll Go” concert on Friday 10 April 2015. Photo: Alan Weeks

Wellington Congress

The University of Southampton has hosted seven international Wellington Congress events with the first being in 1995. The following year the first of the Wellington Studies volumes published some of the papers given at that conference. The Congresses have usually been held at the University’s Avenue Campus. In the early years delegates stayed in the University’s Highfield hall of residence which provided convenient, but somewhat Spartan, accommodation.

The Third Wellington Congress was held in the glorious summer sun of July 2006. It brought to Southampton delegates from four continents to hear the latest in Wellington scholarship. In total thirty-eight papers were given on all aspects of Wellington’s career. Delegates had the option to visit Stratfield Saye and the Royal Armouries Museum at Fort Nelson. There was a private view of the “War Against Napoleon” exhibition. On the final evening there was a memorable walking tour of Southampton, concluding at the fifteenth-century Duke of Wellington public house.

The Uniform of Marshall Wellington’, a comedy in one act, by Kotzebue enclosed in a letter from Letter from Philip Henry Stanhope, Viscount Mahon, Hatfield House [MS61/WP2/7/30]

While the wide variety of papers has always been at the core of the conference, a highlight is the entertainment. The Fourth International Congress, held in 2010, included a reading of “The uniform of Marshal Wellington”: a one-act comedy by August Friedrich Ferdinand von Kotzebue. It was translated and sent to the Duke by Viscount Mahon. The “actors” (we use the term loosely!) included Special Collections staff and one student volunteer. Selected papers from the conference were published in Wellington Studies V.  

One afternoon, the delegates had the option to visit to Strafield Saye or the Historic Dockyard at Portsmouth. The evening entertainment consisted of a rousing musical performance by local group, Madding Crowd, who provided a superlative introduction to songs “with Wellington” as their theme.  Interspersing music with extracts from manuscripts, contemporary newspapers and other historical sources, the songs and stories were a well chosen mix, exhibiting a great appreciation of the impact of a good anecdote and a fine tune.  They balanced a fascinating picture of the patriotism of the period and Wellington as the military hero with an exploration of his associations with Hampshire and more personal connections.

Prior to the Saturday night Congress dinner there was a reception in the Hartley Library and private view of the exhibition in the Special Collections Gallery: ‘“Victory searches for her son”: defending Spain and Portugal against Napoleon, 1810’.

Advertisement for the Sixth Wellington Congress in 2015

The fifth Congress (2013) offered delegates the chance to visit Tudor House, Southampton as well as a piano recital by David Owen Norris. One delegate gave the following feedback after their attendance:

Just a brief note to say how much I enjoyed the Congress, I met up with a couple of old friends and made some new contacts. Some of the papers were also very interesting and entertaining in some cases as well. It was not quite the ‘dry academic’ event I thought it might be.

Congress delegate

You can read all about the Sixth Wellington Congress in a blog we produced in 2015.

The Duke of Wellington’s dancers; they provided entertainment at the 2019 Wellington Congress

The Duke of Wellington’s dancers provided entertainment at the seventh Congress. This event also included the 2019 Wellington Lecture, “Wellington, the “Scum of the Earth’ and the army in the Iberian Peninsula” given by Chris Woolgar.

Wellington Lecture

This event, given on the aspects of the life and times of the first Duke of Wellington, is somewhat of an institution at the University, and most years takes place in October or November.

The First Wellington Lecture was given in 1989 when Michael Carver spoke on “Wellington and his brothers”. There have been so many lectures, it would not be possible for us to give details of them all. The earlier lectures, however, were published and print copies are available in the Hartley Library University Collection. Highlights over the years include when some 300 people filled the Turner Sims Concert Hall on 29 November to hear the lecture, given by Lord Hurd of Westwell, on the theme “Wellington and Peel: from Tory to Conservative”.

Lord Hurd delivers the 2006 Wellington Lecture

The lecture took the form of a musical presentation for the first time in 2007. “Songs of Wellington’s Wars” was an evening of musical entertainment by the award-winning folk singer Martin Carthy, his partner Norma Waterson and brother-in-law Mike Waterson. While very different from the more conventional lecture format, this event provided a readily accessible route to the study of Wellington and his world. The enthusiastic reception accorded by the capacity audience was an appreciative testament to the programme’s success.

Another highlight is from 2012 when Peter Snow, one of Britain’s best-known journalists and presenters, gave the 24th Wellington Lecture “To War with Wellington – from the Peninsula to Waterloo”. The 2015 lecture, the year of the bicentenary of Waterloo, was aptly given by the Duke himself, Charles Wellesley, the seven times great grandson to the first Duke.

The most recent Wellington Lecture was given in October 2022 when Beatrice de Graaf spoke on “L’Homme de l’Europe’ Revisited: The Duke of Wellington and the Fight against Terror in post-Napoleonic”. The lecture continued in virtual form through COVID times and all the more recent lectures have been recorded and are available on YouTube.

The Wellington Prize is often awarded by the Duke at the Wellington lecture. It recognises the best dissertation or thesis submitted by an undergraduate or postgraduate candidate for a university qualification on a subject in the general area of Iberian Studies or Military History or British Political History or Government. Entries for the prize are submitted by Heads of Departments or Boards of Examiners to the secretary of the Wellington Prize Committee by the last day of the Summer Term. The award will be made by Senate on the recommendation of the Wellington Prize Committee.

Exhibitions and drop-in events

In addition to the congresses and lectures, the Special Collections has organised numerous exhibitions to showcase this collection, many of which have been linked to other events and already mentioned in this blog.

November 2008, for example, saw “Wellington and His Papers” to coincide with Professor Chris Woolgar’s  inaugural lecture as Professor of History and Archival Studies “Wellington, His papers and the Nineteenth-Century Revolution in Communication”. This was part
of the celebrations to mark the twenty-fifth anniversary of the allocation of the first Duke’s papers to the University of Southampton under the national heritage legislation.

Twentieth Wellington Lecture left to right: Professor Nick Foskett, Professor Richard Holmes, Professor Bill Wakeham, Vice Chancellor of the University of Southampton, Professor Chris Woolgar and Marquis of Douro

A particularly special anniversary celebration was, of course in 2015, which saw many commemorative events to mark the bicentenary of the Duke’s most famous victory. They included the exhibition “Wellington and Waterloo: ‘the tale is in every Englishman’s mouth’”. That year Karen Robson and Professor Chris Woolgar presented a MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) they had co-created relating to Wellington and Waterloo. This was re-run in 2017.

The Special Collections has also hosted smaller, more personal Explore Your Archive drop-in events which have given people the opportunity to look at a selection of material in the searchroom and seminar room space.

Visitors in the gallery for the Wellington and Waterloo exhibition, 2015

One such event was on 28 October 2015, in conjunction with that year’s Wellington lecture by the Duke and the Wellington and Waterloo exhibition.

A commemorative cake for the Wellington and Waterloo event: it was eaten well away from any archive material!

We hosted a similar explore the Wellington Archive open afternoon, the following year, on 19 October 2016, in conjunction with the 28th Wellington Lecture by Bernard Cornwall.

Visitors in the Special Collections seminar room at the drop-in session on 19 October 2016

In 2017 the Wellington Lecture event was extended to include an exhibition, entertainment by the Duke of Wellington’s dancers and cake!

A dancer in regency dress photographed in our exhibition gallery

Future events

If this has whetted your appetite, you’ll be pleased to hear we’re planning various events for 2023 and beyond! Throughout March @HartleySpecialC will be tweeting #Wellington40. We’ve ask various people to select their favourite item from the collection to help us celebrate; and we couldn’t resist choosing some of our own! If you’re a Twitter fan watch out for our popular #WellingtonWednesday tweets which we share all year long.

We’ll be hosting a Behind the Scenes at the Archives event in July 2023. Tickets are free but booking is essential: secure your place now on Eventbrite.

The next Wellington-focused exhibition will be in autumn of 2023 in both the Special Collections and Level 4 Galleries in the Hartley Library.

2023 will see the 34th Wellington Lecture: details will be available nearer the time on the University’s Distinguished Lecture Series page and, finally, the next Wellington Congress is scheduled for 2025.

The scale of his archive left impressed the Duke as much as others. And so to close, we’ll leave you with some words of the great man himself:

I did not believe it possible that a correspondence which I preserved at first solely as memoranda and for reference, and afterwards from idleness and the desire to avoid the trouble of looking over the papers to see which might be destroyed, could ever be turned to a purpose so useful to one profession and the publick interests.

[Wellington, writing to Colonel Gurwood, editor of the Dispatches on the conclusion of their publication in 1838.]

2022 – a year in review

In the first blog of the new year we reflect on our work and activities for 2022. This included further developments in the new online catalogue and the Virtual Reading Room service, hosting events and activities on campus and welcoming a range of new collections into our care.

University platinum jubilee

Early in the year the University marked its own platinum jubilee, as it had been the first educational institution to be granted University status in the reign of Queen Elizabeth II.

Part of the University charter, 29 April 1952 [MS1]

To mark the occasion in April, Archives and Special Collections created a series of blogs focusing on the 1950s, these featured fashion; politics – with a particular spotlight on the Suez crisis; food, including making a couple of dishes that featured as part of the banquet in July 1953 to mark the installation of the Duke of Wellington as the first Chancellor of the newly created University; and Southampton in the 1950s.

And as part of a jubilee alumni day in May 2022, Archives and Special Collections hosted a behind the scenes visit which enabled visitors to view material from its holdings on University and student life from the 1950s onwards. The visits proved to be particularly nostalgic for a number of visitors and resulted in donations of new material for the Archives.

Visitors viewing material in the Archives and Special Collections during the Alumni Day, May 2022.

Archive Service Accreditation

Towards the end of the year, in November, Archives and Special Collections were awarded Archive Service Accreditation by The National Archives. 

Accredited Archive Services ensure the long-term collection, preservation and accessibility of our archive heritage. Accreditation is the UK quality standard which recognises good performance in all areas of archive service delivery. Achieving accredited status demonstrates that Archives and Special Collections has met clearly defined national standards relating to management and resourcing; the care of its unique collections and what the service offers to its entire range of users.

As a service, we were delighted to receive this national recognition which acknowledges our expertise and hard work. The Archive Service Accreditation Panel noted that it “…welcomed this application from a forward-looking, well-supported and ambitious archive service which is delivering well for its own mission and for the wider work of the university. The considered and high-quality approach of the service across its remit was commended….”

Events

We contributed to two Parkes Institute events during the year: Karen Robson took part in a round table discussion on discovering new meanings in Special Collections in January, while Jenny Ruthven and Karen Robson spoke at a seminar on historic libraries in November.

In June, Karen Robson attended the Religious Archives Group Conference at Lambeth Palace Library and presented a joint paper on behalf of herself and Professor Tony Kushner relating to Jewish archives in the UK.

On Wednesday 7 December we hosted a panel discussion about refugees and migration. Archives and Special Collections is the home of considerable archival holdings relating to the Basque child refugees who had arrived in Southampton 75 years previously and this was our contribution to mark the anniversary. The event had been postponed from September. In what was a fascinating and wide-ranging discussion, the panel (Professor Tony Kushner and Dr Jennifer Craig-Norton, together with Wendy White, Director of Library Services as moderator) considered not only the experiences of the Basque children and the Jewish refugee children who arrived in the UK as part of the Kindertransport but many contemporary resonances, including historic and present-day reactions to refugees, their portrayal in the press and the development and skewing of language in the discourse about refugees, migrants and asylum seekers.

Collections

First editions of Jane Austen’s Emma (1816)

We are pleased to say that the Library has received copies of the first editions of Jane Austen’s Emma (1816) and Northanger Abbey and Persuasion (1818) and the second edition of Sense and Sensibility (1813) in the allocation of material from the Blavatnik Honresfield Library. The contents of this private collection have been distributed to libraries around the country to ensure that they remain accessible to the public following its acquisition by the Friends of the National Libraries. The donation is especially welcome as the Library has lacked early editions of books by Hampshire’s best-known author.

The Library was formed towards the end of the 19th century by William Law (1836-1901), a Rochdale mill owner, who created an exceptional collection of English and Scottish manuscripts and printed books that had the Brontës at its heart, as well as manuscripts in the hands of Jane Austen, Robert Burns and Sir Walter Scott and a significant collection of printed books. It has been largely inaccessible for the last 80 years, until the work of Friends of the National Libraries enabled the collection to be purchased for the nation in 2021.

Certificate honouring Professor Landsberg as a pioneer in renewable energy, 1994 [MS459/A4369/8]

We have continued to add to the archival holdings over the last twelve months, including new material relating to the University and its history, some of which arrived as a result of the alumni event in May, but which also include the papers of the theoretical physicist Professor Peter Theodore Landsberg who had been Professor of Applied Mathematics. Born in Berlin to the Jewish family Professor Landsberg came to the UK in the late 1930s.

Prototypes of solar cells created by Professor Landsberg, 1970s [MS459/A4369/9]

There have been other significant new Anglo-Jewish archive collections during the year, such as the papers of JCORE (Jewish Council for Racial Equality), those of the West Central Liberal Synagogue and of another European physicist, this time the Austrian/Czech physicist Benjamin Abeles whose research in the United States of America in the 1960s led to the development of technology that powers space probes such as the Voyager. Abeles came to UK with the Kindertansport in 1939. An event is being planned in June 2023 to mark the arrival of this collection at Southampton.

Photograph of Ben Abeles for immigration documentation, 1961 [MS464/A4383/2/13]

Social media

We have continued to maintain a very active social media presence throughout the year with weekly blogs and regular tweets. The blogs have covered a whole range of subjects, including shining a spotlight on collections. As well as the 1950s themed blogs in April, we had a series of articles looking at the work Behind the scenes of the Special Collections in May which gave an introduction to putting on events, a conservation project, the work of the archivists and rare books cataloguing. The winter themed blogs that we began in December will be continuing next week with a look at Arctic clothing. We do hope that you will join us for this.

Behind the scenes: putting on an event

Two visitors at a drop-in session relating to local history

With covid and the various lockdowns over the last couple of years, this has limited the scope of in-person events and exhibitions, transferring the focus to online – details of these for 2020 and 2021 can be found in the respective Year in Review blogs. We are delighted to be able to again plan and be involved in more on site activities. On Saturday 14 May we ran tours of Special Collections as part of the University’s Alumni Day providing visitors with the opportunity to engage with memorabilia relating to student life from the 1950s onwards.

The types of events that we organise are wide ranging, from visits, including by students and by special interest groups, to drop-in sessions open to the general public, seminars, workshops and conferences, including our hugely popular Wellington congresses and two study days relating to the Wellington and Waterloo MOOC, and University-wide activities such Hands-on Humanities or the Science and Engineering Fair. We also have run an active exhibition programme encompassing both the Level 4 Gallery and the Special Collections Gallery, the latter of which is where we exhibit original items from the collections.

Unreliable memories exhibition in the Special Collections Gallery

But what is entailed in putting on an event or curating an exhibition? In all of these there are a number of stages: from the original conception of an event, through an analysis of the audience, the choice of material, curation and interpretation and finally the delivery.

The shape and content of an event or activity will vary depending on the audience. A good example of this might be activities that we created introducing groups to the development of handwriting and of different types of writing implements. Whilst students attending sessions on palaeography did have the opportunity to write with quills, the focus was a much more academic one, introducing them to the different hands over different centuries with practical exercises based on examples from the archive collections. For the Hands-on Humanities events, aimed at families and children, the fun factor was much higher with activities using quills and ink being much more at the fore.

Hands-on Humanities writing activity

Hands-on sessions for visits of students or special interest groups are not just about choosing items that are interesting for their content, but also considering the importance of the item as an object, the significance of which can only be fully experienced by handling them and experiencing their materiality. Thus the choice of items has to be framed by wanting to inspire and add that additional dimension – the “creative inspiration” – for those engaging with them. Two very good examples of this is a lovely nineteenth-century commonplace book that we hold, as well the letter books of the secretary of the Jewish Board of Guardians, a fascinating historical record of the administration of this organisation and its philanthropic work, but also an amazing object that physically manifests the working practices of the secretary.

Letterbook of the secretary of the Jewish Board of Guardians, 1901-9 [MS172/1/11/3]

The planning process for all events and sessions takes time, but with exhibitions we have at the very least a six-month lead in period for the curatorial work. The planning and development of this programme will have been begun much earlier since six months is the absolute minimum time required by standard agreements if material is to be loaned from other institutions, such as in the case of the Early Modern Image exhibition which included items from both the British Library and the Victoria and Albert Museum.

Private view for the Early Modern image exhibition

The choice of subjects for exhibitions in the Special Collections gallery can be tied to anniversaries or events at the University or to highlight particular facets of our collections. Choosing the right material is a key factor in making an exhibition work successfully. What is meant by the right material might be defined in a number of ways, such as its appropriateness for its intended audience; how it contributes to the narrative thread of the exhibition; how it supports a nuanced or balanced interpretation of a subject; whether it adds variety and interest to the display. One of the problems with exhibiting written archives is that viewing material as items in an exhibition gallery is fundamentally different from how it is usually used – written material is intended to be read as a piece of text and not looked at as an object. And whilst the content of written archives can be fascinating, they can look rather dull as objects. Finding material that is both relevant, of important content and visually interesting can be challenging. It also is important to take into account the gallery conditions, particularly the low lighting, that can make items difficult to read. Plus there is the added dimension that not everyone will be able to read the handwriting in some of the documents that we hold.

The issue of how much interpretation and exposition you should have with the objects in an exhibition can be a tricky one. Beverley Serrell Exhibit labels: an interpretative approach (Altamira Press, 1996) noted that “visitors should be allowed to feel they are there primarily to look and do, not to read”, but where you have an exhibition with lots of written archives and written interpretations it starts to be very text heavy. While you need to create a narrative thread and to explain the context of the material, this should never overwhelm the items themselves. I am a great advocate of space around items as this allows them to speak more for themselves and allows the audience to engage with them rather than with the captions.

As well as the practical issue of how much text to put on a caption or label for an item, there is also the intellectual issue of how you interpret material. How much prior knowledge of a subject do you assume? How complex is the language you are going to use? How do you tackle material that is controversial or offensive or could be interpreted in different ways?

Of course all this work in curating the exhibitions could not be completed without the significant input from colleagues undertaking conservation work and preparing material for exhibition, exhibition design and the myriad of other tasks that are involved in the process. As in so much of our work, it is a team effort and that is always very much in evidence in the last few days before an exhibition opens.

Item used in the Early Modern Image exhibition – Figure and drapery studies by Francis Cleyn, including a study of a young man in a helmet, possibly related to the depiction of Ajax in a tapestry of Ajax and Cassandra, now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
[MS 292 f. 19r]

Our next exhibition will be images from the Basque child refugee archive which will be on display in the Level 4 Gallery, 5 September – 28 October 2022. We also shall be running a panel discussion on 19 September: this coincides with events organised to mark the 85th anniversary of the arrival of the Basque children in Southampton. Do look out for further details.

2021 – a year in review

And so for another year we faced the challenges of the covid pandemic. But yet again this did not prevent us from completing important projects, as well as welcoming researchers and student groups into the Archives reading room when restrictions permitted.

New Archive catalogue

In October we formally launched the new Archive Catalogue.  We have worked with the Metadatis, the team that created Epexio, to deliver this archival discovery platform that brings together for the first time into one integrated online system all catalogue descriptions that Southampton has been creating in online databases since the 1980s.  The introduction of the new Epexio Archive Catalogue marks a significant change for online archive catalogues at Southampton and the development and enhancement of the catalogues, as well as of the archive management system, will be an ongoing element of work.

Epexio Archive Catalogue home page

And for anyone interested in a little bit of the history of automated archive catalogues this was covered in our launch blog in October.

Online resources

A second major project for 2021 was the Broadlands digitisation project.  Focusing on the private diaries of Lord and Lady Mountbatten, as well as correspondence between them, this project has seen the publication of this material online. Available are diaries for Lord Mountbatten, 1918, 1920, 1922-44, 1946-68, together with appointment diaries, 1956-7 and 1977-8, tour diaries 1969-78.  For Lady Mountbatten there are diaries 1923-42, 1944-50 and appointment diaries 1950-60.  There are correspondence files between the couple, 1921-60.

Containing over 50,000 images, this resource can be accessed either via the Special Collections website Broadlands digitisation page, or links in the new Archive Catalogue.

Special Collections has created a number of films, which it has made available online on its Hartley Special Collections YouTube channel to assist with using the new Epexio Archive Catalogue. 

Events

In February, Karen Robson took part in an online panel discussion archives of East European Jewry, organised by the Parkes Institute, alongside Jonathan Brent, Executive Director of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research in New York and Aleksander Ivanov of the Interdepartmental Center for Jewish Studies, St Petersburg.

During a Summer Festival in June, we ran a Historical Poster Art activity that used posters from the Special Collections to inspire participants to create their own, using their artistic imagination. The posters used were from MS73 papers of L.A.Burgess; MS116/85 design works of A.Games; MS348 David Kossoff collection; MS291 the Nuffield Theatre Collection; and the Cope Collection.

Historical Poster Art activity, 15 June 2021

And in November we participated in the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales Explore Your Archives week of virtual “snapshot talks with a film on the maritime archaeology collections at Southampton. All talks will become available in due course on the Royal Commission’s YouTube channel.

James Parkes in 1924 [MS60 A625/34/6 box 1 folder 1]

Finally, we worked in conjunction with the Parkes Institute this year for two exhibitions which drew extensively on the archive collections: the Kindertransport exhibition and also that relating to James Parkes to mark forty years since his death.

Social media and publicity

We have maintained an active social media programme throughout the year, with our weekly blogs and regular tweets on the Special Collections Twitter account. On Twitter we participated in national programmes such as History begins at Home and Explore Your Archives.

The blog programme also picked up on national or international campaigns or notable days throughout the year. For Women’s History Month in March, for instance, we celebrated the collections that we hold of four very different women. Those featured were Trude Dub (1910-2002) who was Leicester correspondent of the Jewish Chronicle for over forty years; the psychologist, poet and humanitarian Asenath Petrie (1914-2001); Miss Eleanor Aubrey, who was a key personality at University College in the early part of the twentieth century; and finally Charlotte Chamberlain (1878-1956), a major benefactor of the University of Southampton. 

Portrait of Miss Eleanor Aubrey [MS310/71/2/3]

May is local and community history month and for this we published features on the poetry of John Henry Todd; Romsey Abbey; Southampton Gordon Boys’ Brigade; The British Red Cross and Hartley Witney; and finally Middle Bridge, Romsey.

In June we drew on the Broadlands Archives for two very different blogs.  In the first we marked national immigrant heritage month in the USA with a feature on emigration from Ireland to North America in the nineteenth century. We then celebrated Father’s Day drawing on the correspondence of the second Viscount Palmerston to his children.

Blogs throughout the year shone a spotlight on the collections that we hold for an array of different individuals: the screen writer Norman Crisp; Selig Brodetsky and Cecil Roth; Walter Schindler and Eugene Heimler who worked in the fields of psychology and psychotherapy; Elinor A.Moore; Rabbi Solomon Schonfeld; the acoustician Hugh Creighton; Sir Donald Acheson, a former Chief Medical Officer and professor of Medicine at Southampton; S.H.Somper; youth worker Stanley Rowe; and Revd William Annesley and his interest in biodiversity.

Organisations featured in blogs included: Youth Aliyah; Leo Baeck College, London; Hutchinson House Club for Working Lads; the Jewish Youth Fund; the Maccabaeans; the Jewish Religious Education Board; and the Central Council for Jewish Religious Education.

A number of blogs related to the University: three blogs chronicled the early days of the institution from the Hartley bequest and opening of Hartley Institution in 1862; the years 1862-1902, and then for the period 1902 until just before the First World War. Others looked at a collection of material relating to the Southampton University Training Corps and University open days, whilst in another former student Jennifer Cooper reminisced about student life in the 1950s and 1960s.

A further series of blogs focused on Southampton and Hampshire: the Stella Memorial Southampton; Bevois Mount House; Queenwood College, Hampshire; guidebooks for Hampshire and the Isle of Wight in the Cope Collection; a nineteenth-century account of walking the Isle of Wight; and the experience of Vietnamese refugees in Hampshire.

We also explored the genteel art of knitting in April, when we tried out some of the patterns noted in a notebook of stitches held in the Special Collections; the art of pickling and preserving with material from the Perkins Agricultural Library; Board of Agriculture Surveys; and our final blog of the year looked at Christmas gift books.

Collections

During the last twelve months we have continued to add to the archival holdings, including with a range of material relating to the University and its history and three collections of significance added to the Anglo-Jewish Archives holdings. Amongst those University related items are the papers for the Southampton University Training Corps, described in a blog mentioned above and papers of two former University Librarians from different eras: Bernard Naylor and Mr Bland.

University College Southampton Dance Band, 1932, standing in the hut left over from the First World War used by the Music Department [MS416/32 A4258]

We also have been pleased to provide homes for papers of Rabbi Professor Jonathan Magonet, former Principal of the Leo Baeck College, London; material of Evelyn Friedlander, who ran the Hidden Legacy Foundation which focused on the research, preservation and exhibition of the history of rural Jewry in the UK; and papers of Leonard Kessler.

Correspondence from the Leonard Kessler collection [MS456 A4361]

Archives searchroom service

The Archives searchroom service re-opened again in the spring after the lockdown in the early part of the year.  We have been delighted to welcome a wide range of researchers making research visits.  And Southampton has been one of the institutions in the UK upholding democracy by supporting the research undertaken by the researchers for the Infected Blood Inquiry.

With on-site teaching during this autumn term, we have been able to host research sessions for undergraduate and MA history students and for Winchester School of Art MA students.

Looking ahead to 2022

We look forward to 2022 with optimism as we plan ahead for another busy year.  The Special Collections will be marking the seventieth anniversary of Southampton being granted University status with a social media programme celebrating this and the 1950s.  We shall also be drawing on the archive collections to create an exhibition and other online resources to mark the seventy fifth anniversary of the independence of India and Pakistan.

The Yerusha project to which we contributed in 2019 is due to be launched in spring 2022. This online platform will provide access and showcase Jewish archive collections across Europe and Southampton is delighted to be involved with this initiative.

2020 – a year in review

And what a year it has been! It was certainly not as any of us could have envisaged. Yet despite all the disruption during lockdown and a shift in working patterns, Special Collections remained busy with an array of different activities throughout the year.

Exhibitions and events

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  Letter signed by “Captain Swing” to the Duke of Wellington threatening assassination, n.d. c.November 1830 [MS61 WP1/1159/114

• 

  Illustration of the attack and defence of the Westgate Hotel, Newport, November 1839 [MS61 WP2/64/74]

• 

  Fascist Hooliganism!: leaflet of the Jewish People’s Council, 1936 [MS60/15/53]

• 

  Image of crowds at the “Battle of Cable Street” in the Illustrated London News,10 October 1936 [Per A]

• 

  Headlines from an article in the Nottingham Gazette, 5 October 1936 [Rare Books Parkes quarto BZ8221.P73]

• 

  Badges of the 35’s: campaign for Soviet Jewry [MS 254 A980/4/1]

• 

  Red t-shirt used for Women’s Campaign for Soviet Jewry demonstrations featuring Yuri Federov, Josef Mendelevich and Aleksey Muzhenko on the front. Ida Nudel, Anatoly Sharansky and Vladimir Slepak are featured on the back [MS254 A980/5/1/3]

The first Special Collections exhibition of the year We Protest! opened as normal on 17 February, before sadly having to close early the following month as we faced lockdown due to the covid-19 pandemic. Taking the Cato Street conspiracy of 1820 as its starting point, the exhibition also looked at two subsequent nineteenth-century protests, before exploring the work of a number of 20th-century protest and pressure groups – such as the Women’s Campaign for Soviet Jewry – and of student protests. Highlights of this exhibition appeared as blogs in April: covering 19^th-century protests; opposition to fascism in the 1930s; and campaigns for change in the latter part of the 20th century.

With staff working away from site from March onwards and with restrictions in place, the planned autumn exhibition Voyages of Discovery could not be held as a physical event. We used the opportunity instead to create an online exhibition. To mark the 400^th anniversary of the sailing of the Mayflower in 2020, this exhibition explores voyages of discovery both in terms of travel and exploration of ideas and knowledge.

In early February, the Special Collections, which is the home to the Basque child refugee archive played host to an event where the inaugural Natalia Benjamin essay prize was awarded to Southampton student Josh Burns for his dissertation. Josh’s dissertation used journals produced by the children to evaluate Basque child refugee agency and identity, a topic he discussed further in his guest blog.

February also saw us play host to a year 10 student from Redbridge School in Southampton with an interest in history who wished to do some work experience with us. With a self-confessed fascination in the Second World War, Louie was able to work on documents relating to the Southampton Fifth, the RAF short course run at the University during the war, as well as material from one of our Jewish collections. In his reflections on his time with us, Louie talked about how informative and interesting he found his visit.

Sadly we were unable to host further events and visits for most of the remainder of the year, although we were able to run some research sessions for history students in November and December. We have contributed to the Science and Engineering Fair’s #SOTSEF goes digital with activities in its art meets science strand.

And our handwriting and printing activities also were part of online activities provided by Southampton City during the summer and as part of the Hands-on Humanities event in November.

George Bickham’s The Universal Penman (1741): part of the writing activity provided by Special Collections

Online resources

Staff worked on a range of projects in the lockdown period since March including on a number of online resources.

Special Collections launched a YouTube channel People, Papers and Pasts which hosts a series of films on items within the Archives and Manuscripts and Printed Special Collections and the stories they tell.  

 The first three films of the series are:

(1) an introduction to the Special Collections

(2) a look at the Duke of Wellington and the “scum of the earth” letter of 1813

(3) Gandhi’s note of 2 June 1947

We produced a Flickr online exhibition showcasing images of University sports teams and invited alumni to both identify team members and contribute to the exhibition.

Men‘s football team 1956-7 [MS1/7/291/22/4]

Telling their stories is an online resource relating to the Basque child refugees which forms part of the Special Collections website. Drawing on oral history testimonies and writings of the children, including from the magazines they produced themselves, the resource reflects on their experience in the UK.

And we were involved in Havens East, launched on 12 June, an online exhibition that tells the stories of the Basque child refugees who came to East Anglia to escape the horrors of the Spanish Civil War and using a range of material from Southampton.

Amistad Journal produced by Basque child refugees [MS404 A4171/6/1/1 Folder 1]

For anyone missing visiting exhibitions in the Special Collections Gallery and Level 4 Gallery, there is now the opportunity to revisit past exhibitions at the new Special Collections Gallery site.

Social media and publicity

Special Collections maintained a full social media programme throughout the year, with its weekly blog and a liberal use of twitter.

Chamberlayne Gas Column in Houndwell Park

The subject matter covered in the Special Collections blog has been as wide ranging as usual, reflecting something of breadth and scope of the collections that we hold. We marked Veganuary in January, as well as Chanukah and Christmas fare, based on recipes from the 18th and 19th century, in December. The Duke of Wellington and his archive featured in a number of blogs, from Captain Swing and the riots in Hampshire in the early 19th century, to Wellington at Walmer Castle and the Duke of Wellington as Lord Lieutenant of Hampshire. Other subjects included Gillow furniture, the Bournemouth Poetry Society, Pageant plays, the Titchbourne claimant and the Chamberlayne Gas Column in Southampton.

Photograph of Edwina Ashley showing examples of 1920s jewellery and makeup [MS62 MB3/63] featured in the 1920s women’s fashion blog

We also focused on a number of themes in the social media during the year. At the start of the year were a couple of blogs relating to the 1920s, covering women’s fashion and Southampton in that decade. Then in March, to mark Women’s History Month and International Women’s Day, we featured a series of blogs celebrating women in the Archives: these looked at four quite different subjects: the maritime archaeologist Honor Frost; the philanthropic work of Mary Mee, Lady Palmerston; the Union of Jewish Women collection; and finally Cissi Rosenfelder, who was Honorary Secretary of the Golders Green Beth Hamedrash in 1938-9 and did much work to assist child refugees fleeing from Nazi Europe.

May was local and community history month and the themed blogs for this month started with a look at two of Hampshire’s local champions Thomas Shore and Sir William Cope. The remaining blogs for the month ranged from tourism of country houses to the London Jewish community as reflected from the letter books of the Jewish Board of Guardians and finally art and theatre in Southampton.

The most enduring theme used throughout the year was that of “The stories they tell”, in which we looked at a range of items from the Special Collections and considered the narrative behind the objects as well as what the objects themselves tell us. The blogs in this strand ranged from an article on the model resolution of the Council and Christians and Jews, to pieces about the relic of the Royal George ship, refugees at Atlantic Park, Eastleigh, a letter written before the Battle of Waterloo, mobile ambulance synagogues, Rosicrucian plays, student songs and student life in the 1980s, travel journals for Palestine in the 1920s, the development of football, Raiza Palatnik, the ORT Technical Engineering School in Leeds and Southampton Fifth course.

Mobile synagogue ambulance at the Central Jewish Board Office, Athens, December 1945 [MS 183/374]

Finally, we were delighted to post blogs that reflected both work on the collections as well as in response to features that we had produced. As well as the pieces by Josh Burns and Louie Kesby that have already been mentioned, we hosted an article by Dr Martin Walsh on his work based in part on the archive of the Jewish Association for the Protection of Girls, Women and Children (MS173). In June, we had a blog highlighting the stories you had shared with us in response to our own articles. While in October we had the first in what we hope will be a new feature of student societies as guest stars, with a piece by the Athletics and Cross Country Club. The Special Collections holds archive material relating to this society.

There were a number of themes covered in the Twitter account during 2020. We ran the second part of our Highfield in 100 objects tweets until April looking at the development of the University over 100 years. The themes of Monday Memories, Tuesday Trivia, Wednesday Wonder, Thursday Thoughts and Friday Feature or Flora and Fauna provided us with lots of fun as we delved into the collections to find relevant material, as did the Archives A-Z. For August our theme was holidays and journeys, whilst in September onwards we looked at student life. To mark the presidential elections in the US, our November theme was #Electionsincollections and we ended the year with #Winterwarmers A popular theme that will continue into 2021 is that of WellingtonWednesday. If you want to find out more about some of the tweets for 2020, do look at our final blog of the year in which we looked back at the most popular tweets.

Collections

The lockdown was not the most fortuitous time to collect material, due to restrictions on movement and issues about handling and quarantining of material. However, ensuring that archival heritage was not lost remained a pressing concern, pandemic or not, and one such case was that of the archives of the Nuffield Theatre which came to us in September after the theatre closed. Southampton City was sad to see the closure of this, a victim of the pressures on theatres during the current pandemic. The Nuffield Theatre on Highfield campus, which was designed by the architect Basil Spence, was officially opened by Dame Sybil Thorndike in March 1964 and there is material relating to its development amongst the University archives held in the Special Collections.  Due to this University link, we have been delighted to be able to provide a home for the archives of the NST.

Interior of Nuffield Theatre at Highfield campus

We also took custody of additional papers relating to Norwood charity in the summer to ensure that they too had a home for the long term.  Other material that we have acquired in the year, which is much smaller in quantity, has included a fascinating additional selection of papers of Christopher Collins who was private servant to the first Duke of Wellington as well as a separate small collection of items relating to the funeral of the Duke; small collections of university related papers, and papers of an individual involved with the Women’s Campaign for Soviet Jewry.

And cataloguing work and work creating finding aids progressed throughout the year. Alongside work on new collections that is ongoing, we were also able to achieve significant work on parts of the Wellington Archive and on aspects of the Broadlands Archives during lockdown.

Looking ahead to 2021

With a range of projects and the implementation of a new Archives management system in progress, Special Collections is already looking at a busy year of activity.

Protest stories (3): We Protest! – campaigning for change

Welcome to the third and final of our blogs featuring highlights from the Special Collections We Protest! exhibition. This week we look at campaigns by protest groups from the 1960s onwards, in particular student protests and the work of a very singular Jewish organisation: the Women’s Campaign for Soviet Jewry.

Handcuffs used at demonstrations by the Women’s Campaign for Soviet Jewry [MS254 A980/5/4/3]

Student protests

Although mass student protests had been taking place prior to May 1968, it was the demonstrations in Paris of that year that brought newfound energy to political campus activism. At Southampton that activism was to reflect many of the social, economic as well as political concerns of the modern era and the form that student protests have taken — such as marches, boycotts and sit-ins — likewise have followed the repertoire of contention of campus protests.

The material featured in the exhibition dates from the 1960s onwards. In this decade it was the apartheid regime in South Africa, as well as the Vietnam War, that was to be the focus of demonstrations.

Student group leaflet advocating boycott against South Africa, 25 November 1969 [Rare Books Univ. Coll. c LF 788.89]

Students at Southampton were amongst those at a number of institutions involved in sit-ins in the 1970s: for instance, the 48 hours occupation of the Administration Building on 14-15 November 1973 in support of the National Union of Students’ campaign for grants.

Headline from Wessex News, reporting on the sit-in in support of the NUS grants campaign, 1973 [Univ. Coll. LF789.9]

The late 1980s saw student loans coming to the fore as an issue, with the Students Union passing a motion in 1988 describing top-up loans, as ‘merely the thin end of the wedge … eventually leading to a full loans system’.

“No loans” campaign by students [MS1/Phot/19/263]

Current activism, such as that on climate change, likewise reflects the concerns of the present era.

“Those wonderful women in black” – the Women’s Campaign for Soviet Jewry

Badges of the 35’s: Campaign for Soviet Jewry [MS254 A980/5/4/1]

Established in 1971, the Women’s Campaign for Soviet Jewry was a pressure group set up to assist members of the Jewish community in the Soviet Union wishing to leave the country, but denied permission. The term “refusnik” was coined to describe these individuals. On hearing the news that thirty-five-year-old librarian Raisa Palatnik from Odessa had been arrested for distributing samizdat, (banned literature), a small group of women decided to hold a protest outside the Soviet Embassy in London. From these modest beginnings grew the campaign on behalf of the refusniks.

Demonstration held at Soviet Embassy, London, with placards bearing slogan ‘SHKOLNIK YAVOR USSR How Many More?’ and ‘Sheffield Concern for Soviet Jewry’, Autumn 1973 [MS254 A980/4/20/1]

Many of the founder members of the Women’s Campaign for Soviet Jewry (affectionately known as the 35s due to the average age of the group) were middle-class, Jewish housewives from North West London who had no previous experience of activism or campaigns. They proved themselves to be a formidable force, conducting a tireless campaign to heighten public awareness of their cause, and were known for their effective and highly imaginative demonstrations.

Demonstration outside Wembley Arena, with placards in support of Anatoly Sharansky and a protester wearing a Brezhnev mask [MS254 A980/4/22/178]

Indeed, the “wonderful women in black” were to prove to be excellent examples of how clothing could be used in a performance capacity to support political activism and demands for social reform.

Red t-shirt used for Women’s Campaign for Soviet Jewry demonstrations featuring Yuri Federov, Josef Mendelevich and Aleksey Muzhenko on the front. Ida Nudel, Anatoly Sharansky and Vladimir Slepak are featured on the back. [MS254 A980/5/1/3]

White t-shirt used for Women’s Campaign for Soviet Jewry demonstrations with the logo ‘KGB release Sharansky’ [MS254 A980/5/1/2]

We hope that you have enjoyed over the last three weeks this showcase of some of the items from the recent Special Collections exhibition. We hope that you will be able to join us for future exhibitions, both in the galleries and online.

Protest stories (2): We Protest! – opposing fascism

This second blog, presenting highlights of the Special Collections We Protest! exhibition, looks at organisations in the 1930s that opposed fascism.

One such was the Jewish People’s Council Against Fascism and Anti-Semitism for which there is material within the archive of Dr James Parkes.

“Fascist Hooliganism!”: leaflet of the Jewish People’s Council Against Fascism and Anti-Semitism, 1936 [MS60/15/53]

In the mid-1930s, the British Union of Fascists, under the lead of Oswald Mosley, concentrated their anti-Semitic activities in the East End of London as this was where a large proportion of the Anglo-Jewish community was based. Their campaign drew on an anti-Semitic tradition that dated back to the period from the 1870s to the start of the First World War and to the influx of large numbers of Jewish migrants from Eastern Europe. This BUF focus on anti-Semitism had the effect of  increasing the involvement of the Jewish community in anti-fascist activities as they became more closely linked to opposition to anti-Semitism.

Oswald Mosley attending a meeting, 1954 [MS60/17/16]

It was in this environment that the Jewish People’s Council Against Fascism and Anti-Semitism came into being. It has been described as one of the period’s most confrontational anti-fascist bodies. It is certainly clear, as this memorandum shows, that the organisation saw its duty to actively oppose fascism and the activities of the British Union of Fascists:

Memorandum of the Jewish  People’s Council Against Anti-Semitism and Fascism [MS60/17/16]

“For the first time in the history of this country, a mass organisation seeking political control makes its main appeal on the basis of anti-Semitism. The campaign of slander and vilification of the Jews is already resulting in making their position an increasingly precarious one. It is therefore urgently necessary that the whole Jewish People should unite in the struggle against every form of Anti-Semitic expression. In order to combat the already obvious growth of Anti-Semitism, every Jew, irrespective of political opinions or attitude to religion, and every Jewish organisation must be united, and the fear and hatred of Fascism which is felt by every Jew must be translated into effective action.

The Jewish People’s Council Against Fascism and Anti-Semitism has been formed with a view to facilitating by all constitutional means the unity of the Jewish people and the drawing together of all Jewish organisations in the work of combating Fascism and Anti-Semitism.

The only way of effectively fighting Anti-Semitism is by attacking the organisation responsible for this Anti-Semitic campaign, i.e. the Fascist party.

The fight against Fascism also puts us in close cooperation with the existing anti-fascist organisations, and strengthens our hands in our campaign against Anti-Semitism. 

The struggle for democratic liberty is the concern of the Jews as such, because it is only under a democratic form of Government that the Jews can hope to enjoy equality of citizenship, as history has proved abundantly in the past…”

[MS60/17/16]

Headlines from an article in the Nottingham Gazette, 5 October 1936 [Rare Books Parkes quarto BZ8221.P73]

The “Battle of Cable Street” which took place on Sunday 4 October 1936 has been portrayed as a peak of a wave of anti-fascist activity in which the Jewish People’s Council and members of the Jewish community were very much at the heart. During this event a large force of anti-fascist protesters, including communist and socialist as well as Jewish groups, clashed with the Metropolitan Police, sent to the London’s East End to protect a march of members of the British Union of Fascists. Whilst the event could be seen as a victory against fascist forces — the march was prevented and Oswald Mosley the BUF leader beat an ignominious retreat — it was to unleash in its wake greater Jewish intimidation since it allowed Mosley to portray a picture of British citizens prevented from exercising their lawful right to demonstrate.

Image of crowds at the “Battle of Cable Street” in the Illustrated London News, 10 October 1936 [Per A]

Opponents of fascism in Britain, including the Jewish People’s Council, learned important lessons from Cable Street. One such lesson was that it was better to organise politically and to infiltrate the far-right groups gathering intelligence than to confront them. In recognition of this, the Jewish People’s Council began to urge Jews to stay away from BUF marches or meetings. And it was this lesson about gathering intelligence that organisations formed in the 1960s to oppose new extreme right organisations, took to heart.

Join us next week for the final part of the exhibition as we look at protest groups in action in the latter part of the twentieth century.