Taking Stock of Official History, past, present and future

Keynote Lecture: Reflections from an Official Historian (Professor Sir Lawrence Freedman) 

Panel discussion
Chair: Philip Murphy (History & Policy)

• Sir Lawrence Freedman (Emeritus Professor of War Studies, King’s College London)
• Helen McCarthy (Professor of Modern and Contemporary British History, University of Cambridge)
• Matthew Jones (Professor of International History, London School of Economics and Political Science) 
• Roger Smethurst (Deputy Director, Propriety and Constitution Group, Cabinet Office)

IHR Seminar Series: Official History: Past, Present and Future

Editors and Officials in the writing of Official History

• Minute by Minute: The Problem of Officials in Official History (David Kaufmann)
• The unknown editor: Lillian Penson and British Documents on the Origins of the War, 1898-1914 (Luke Gibbon)

IHR Seminar Series: Official History: Past, Present and Future

Consultation in Germany and the UK: Past, Present and Prospects

Speakers: John Edmonds (former General Secretary GMB Trade Union and author), Ronald Staples (Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany) and Michael Whittall (Trade union secretary, IG-Metall, Germany)

IHR Seminar Series: History & Policy Trade Union Forum

This event concludes a series of three seminars we have organised in the recent past focusing on the prospects for employee consultation in a European context. The first was in May 2022 on Consulting Employees: Past, Present and Future to commemorate twenty years of the EU ICE regulations, with the second in January 2023 on European Works Councils: The Effects of Brexit. This one compares and contrasts trends and prospects in Germany and the UK.

Programme

Michael Gold (Chair) Introduction

John Edmonds- Restricted Rights or Pragmatism: The Search for an Effective System of Consultation in Britain

John will examine the evolution of consultation in Britain since 1900 and suggest why Britain has taken a different route from most European countries. He will explain how British governments withdrew from any attempt to enhance, or even influence, the process and why British trade unions have always insisted that only they should represent workers in consultation with employers. He will argue that the present state of consultation in Britain is deplorably weak and speculate on how it might be strengthened.

Ronald Staples and Michael Whittall- Navigating Co-Determination in Germany’s Digital Era: Between Constraint and Empowerment

Michael and Ronald will survey the current landscape of industrial relations in Germany amidst digital transformation, focusing on the dual forces of constraint and empowerment within co-determination practices. Drawing on empirical research and practical experience from the union perspective, they will explore how digitalization challenges traditional co-determination structures and offers new opportunities for employee participation, highlighting a recent conflict that illustrates the tensions between technological advancements and established labour relations. Insights from their co-authored book Partizipation und Un_Gleichzeitigkeit (Participation: Synchronicity and Asynchronicity) provide a theoretical framework for understanding these dynamics.

The Foreign Office and British Foreign Policy

Speakers: Gaynor Johnson (University of Kent), Niaz Cary-Pernon (Paul-Valéry Montpellier 3 University) & Jolanta Mysiakowska (The Institute of National Remembrance, Warsaw, Poland)

IHR Seminar Series: Official History: Past, Present and Future

• The Foreign Office and Official History: historiography, methods and people (Gaynor Johnson)
• Official histories of the Berlin Crisis, 1948-1949 in the UK: methodological traditions, ontological challenges (Niaz Cary-Pernon)
• In the ruins of Old Europe: Official History, British foreign policy and Eastern Europe after the First World War (Jolanta Mysiakowska)

Reflections on Official History

Speakers: Thomas Otte (University of East Anglia) & Patrick Salmon (FCDO Chief Historian)

IHR Seminar Series: Official History: Past, Present and Future

• The Uses and Pitfalls of History: Some Reflections on Twentieth-Century British Official Histories (Thomas Otte)
• Some Reflections on Official History: Past, Present and Future (Patrick Salmon)