The writer is head of the Bodleian Library at the University of Oxford and author of ‘Burning the Books: A History of Knowledge Under Attack’
There is a drenching irony in the fact that documents — seemingly mundane pieces of paper or digital files — are at the heart of the political turmoil that has embroiled Donald Trump and Boris Johnson, two of the most buccaneering and reckless political leaders in recent memory.
Such is the power of the humble document that Trump is now the first president to be indicted for felonies, and Johnson has resigned his seat in parliament rather than be suspended by a parliamentary committee. What marks these cases out is that both men were trying to use documents to manage their political narratives. Trump’s own use of classified records of national significance may have had a performative aspect — showing them off to his friends and donors after dinner — but storing them in a bathroom underlines his breathtaking disregard for their sensitivity.
Two points emerge from these scandals. First, these former heads of government — in their pursuit of political dominance and their willingness to break the law to retain it — are only the latest in a long line of populist, authoritarian leaders who have sought to control knowledge as a means of exercising power.
Ashurbanipal, ruler of Assyria in the seventh century BCE, was prone to forcibly seizing cuneiform tablets from his enemies, and Henry VIII targeted monastic libraries to gather evidence in support of his cause, while destroying the rest. Putin’s attack on libraries and archives in Ukraine is a reminder that controlling the historical narrative is a weapon in the arsenal of authoritarianism, alongside the missile and the drone.
Second, these episodes underline the importance of record-keeping for good government and open society. The populist urge to control knowledge through erasure, and through misinformation and disinformation, highlights the role of robust record-keeping in showing to the public evidence of how politicians, civil servants and special advisers behave.
A well-curated paper trail strengthens integrity in public life. Such records track the evolution of public policy (for example, through the pandemic), as well as the inequities in policy implementation (such as awarding PPE contracts). Documents enable the public to hold those in power to account. Both Trump and, to a lesser extent, Johnson demonstrate that archives are an essential part of the infrastructure of democracy.
However, there is an ignoble history of suppressing public access to documents. The University of Oxford’s Bodleian Library holds the war diary of Lewis “Loulou” Harcourt, secretary of state for the colonies in the early 20th century, which relays the debates in Herbert Asquith’s cabinet in the prelude to the first world war and the early years of the war itself. It was written on sheets of headed notepaper marked “Colonial Office” and on the backs of Foreign Office telegrams. Asquith didn’t want the cabinet discussions to be made public, and sent Harcourt a letter in 1916, rebuking him for his notetaking. “As I have pointed out more than once in the past,” he wrote, “this is a violation of our unwritten law, under which only the Prime Minister is entitled to take and keep any record of Cabinet proceedings.”
While David Lloyd George introduced an official cabinet diary in December 1916 when he became prime minister, this lacked the acerbity of Harcourt’s prose style. Harcourt’s very human urge not just to communicate, but to document and preserve, gives us a window into momentous cabinet debates, which made decisions affecting the lives of a whole population. The Covid-era WhatsApp messages of Matt Hancock — revealed against his will — offer an unfiltered glimpse into government crisis management.
I have previously warned of the dangers of using private messaging systems to conduct government business, and urged the Cabinet Office to update its guidance to ensure these messages were considered under the purview of the 1958 Public Records Act. Since then we have seen how these messaging systems have the potential to erode the health of our democracy.
The time has come for a thorough review of the ministerial code, and its relationship to the 1958 act and to the freedom of information legislation. Above all, parliament needs to be given the teeth to ensure that Orwell’s warning in 1984 does not come to pass: “The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became truth.”