The reclosure of files on the royal family: some questions for the National Archives
Andrew Lownie |
For years I have championed more open access to public records and criticised the curation of our history by selective release, even destruction, of our public records. I have now found myself inadvertently playing a minor role in the reclosure of previously open documents or at least of them being put under ‘Access Under Review’ for an undetermined time at the National Archives.
In September 2020, I requested the Home Office file HO 144/21191 ‘Police protection to members of the Royal Family, members of the Cabinet and others 1929-1939’, as part of continuing research into the Duke of Windsor, the subject of my last book Traitor King: The Scandalous Exile of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor.
As the file was almost a hundred years old and I knew - from similar ‘protection’ files, which had been released - that it was not sensitive, I was amazed to be told by the Metropolitan Police that its release would jeopardise the current safety of the Royal Family. It was refused under section 31 FOI (law enforcement) and section 40 (personal data), though a 16 year old in 1939 would now be over a hundred.
That judgement was supported by the regulator, the Information Commissioner, which increasingly has been supporting public authorities against requestors, a disturbing trend in itself. It ‘concluded that there was a causal link between the disclosure of the requested information and the prejudice envisaged, and that such a prejudice was more probable than not.’ There have been numerous memoirs by royal protection officers, Prince Harry can give away security details from the recent past, but historians cannot look at any part of such files, many of which are almost a century old.
I decided to take the matter to the First Tier Tribunal, and in my application highlighted a dozen comparable files which had been open for decades without the safety of the Royal Family being harmed. Indeed, one of them, revealing the surveillance of Wallis Simpson and her affair with a used-car salesman Guy Trundle (MEPO 10/35), had been widely quoted in books, television programmes and even on the website of the National Archives.
The judge asked to see the files so he could judge for himself, so in June 2022 I pre-ordered them at Kew for three weeks hence. I was therefore surprised to be told by Kew, the day before I was due to see them, that they were out to another reader but I could book another date. When I queried how this was possible, I was eventually told they had been placed ‘Access Under Review’ ‘due to an active legal case’.
Yet, I and countless others had copied some of the files already, most of which consist of cuttings. It also seemed to me to be a contempt of court in frustrating a judicial request.
The files were removed from public access in June 2022, the tribunal took place the following November, and the judge gave his decision at the beginning of 2024 stating that most of the requested file (HO 144/21191) should be opened. Almost two years after being ‘temporarily’ placed ‘Access under Review’, the other files remain closed. So we have the irony of the previously closed file now being open but the previously opened files being closed.
I asked the First Tier Tribunal if the judge would order their release to be told it was not in his power but I would have to request release through the Information Commissioner, a process which I knew would take months and even years.
I have lodged various Freedom of Information and Subject Access requests to try and understand what happened but these have been refused. We still don’t know who ordered the reclosures, on what grounds and when public access might be restored.
Amongst the ‘Access Under Review’ files, which I wanted to look at, are the following:
MEPO 2/2828: H.R.H. The Prince of Wales: Police protection by an Inspector 1932. Open document.
MEPO 2/2832: Sharing of protection duty of Royal Family 1934-1936. Open document.
MEPO 3/557: Special protection afforded to the Royal Family, Cabinet Ministers and others by Special Branch 1925-1932. Opened February 2005.
MEPO 3/558: Officers attending members of the Royal Family and the formation of a regular establishment 1932-1934. Open document.
MEPO 3/1872: Royal residences: protection duties 1936-1951. Opened October 2006
The National Archives should be about making public records available, not suppressing them, and the Keeper now needs to address this censoring of our history. Why were over 3,000 items taken out of circulation last year, over 500 on a single day and almost all by his staff? There seems to be an element of Orwellian ‘doublespeak’ in invoking the 'public interest' in order to deny the public access to documents.
It is now certainly in the public interest that the Keeper should answer these questions. All historians will want to know the answers.
Why will the National Archives not say on what basis and whose authority these reclosures are taking place?
Why are all items marked for reclosure not first raised with the Advisory Council on National Records?
Why is the catalogue not updated with a link to the Reclosure Report?
Please note: Views expressed are those of the author.
About the author
Related Opinion Articles
“Access under review”: Freedom of Information, Data Protection, and the Disappearing Archive
Alison McClean |