The Welsh Government Archives
The Welsh Government Archives
Challenges for historians, but Mark Drakeford to the rescue.
The National Assembly (as was, now the Senedd or Welsh Parliament) and the Welsh Government (as is, formerly the Welsh Executive/Cabinet and Welsh Assembly Government) were created in the digital era, and you might have thought that this would mean the recording and capture of archive material would have been a smooth process. Sadly, things have not turned out that way, and it will be a problem for historians in the future. Luckily, a number of people, not least former First Minister Mark Drakeford, are on the case, and officials in the Welsh Government, the National Archives and the UK Web Archive understand the problem and are trying to address it.
I wrote to Mark about the challenges back in December 2023. I explained that I had been asked recently to review an academic article about Wales for a journal and I had recommended that the authors go and look at Welsh Government Cabinet Minutes for the period. They came back with the response that the minutes were no longer easily accessible. I checked and this was true. The essential problem is that the connecting links on the UK Web Archive public website do not work for older periods. You can obviously access the current Cabinet Minutes and go back to the previous administration. But then the links don’t work!
Second, I pointed out that the Cabinet Minutes for the Alun Michael period (1999-2000) are still not available, although the Head of the Cabinet Secretariat had told me several years back that they would be. Alun himself said in an interview with me for my students that he had no objection to this. Rhodri Morgan made an early decision that Cabinet Minutes would be published for his administration, and this has continued subsequently, albeit with the access problems I refer to above.
Third, UK Government papers are now subject to a twenty-year rather than thirty -year release ruie. This means that we are now seeing a lot of papers from the Blair administrations 1997-2002 relating to Wales. Sadly, the same is not quite as true for the Welsh Government, meaning that we have the London perspective but less of the perspective from Rhodri Morgan’s first years as First Minister. Some papers are available in the National Archives, but they appear to be a slightly strange selection. For example, there is a lot on the development of the new Senedd building, but it is harder to find material about (say) the 2002 closure of the Ebbw Vale Steelworks.
Mark responded very quickly, and told me he would have a meeting early in 2024 to discuss the issue. He sent me a full reply in his last week as First Minister, which I enclose below.
He continues to take an interest in this issue, and I have had a subsequent letter from him as my MS enclosing a reply from the National Archives.
I am currently going through the Cabinet Minutes year by year and I will post about them at regular intervals. I will also put accessible links to the Cabinet Papers online here as I work my way through them, starting with the minutes for the year 2000.
I am very grateful to Mark and to the officials in the Welsh Government, the National Archives and the UK Web Archive who have been so helpful.
Next week I will post about the first available year of Welsh Government Cabinet Minutes - the year 2000. I will also publish links to the minutes for each Cabinet Meeting. I’ve read them so you don’t have to!