By Alice
I had the oppotunity to take part in work experience between the 6th-10th of July at The Keep in the Mass Observation archive. During the week I was able to gain an insight into how a purpose built archival centre works, and especially how it is used for public reasearch. Before working at the Mass Observation archive I had a very limited idea in how an archive works, and especially what the Mass Observation archive did.
Finding out about the history of the MOA and why it was set up was very interesting and it explained why the topics covered are so broad. I found the scope of the topics covered very impressive and I was able to view a lot of the archives. I found the war diaries amazing to look through, as because they were anonymous they very
candidly talked about their experiencs of living through the war period and the criticisms they had for the government at the time. One thing I read was an account of someone going to the cinema. They mentioned that when the royals were shown in a pre film propaganda show reel there was limited applause, which could have possibly shown declining attitudes towards the wealth of the monarchy given the amount of sacrifice that the ordinary person had to make.
I had the oppotunity to pick out a variety of doccuments from The Keep collection as a whole. Due to my interest in the cold war I used the Keep’s online records to find documents relating to it, which eventually led me to the Kingsley Martin archive. One of the first things I noticed was the exapanse of the archive collection with its 15.6 cubic feet of archives. Kingsley Martin was a british journalist and main editor of the New Statesman which ran from the 1930s to the 1960s. I found this time period partically interesting as it was a pivotal moment for international relations and world order.
Luckily the collection contained a variety of primary sources and I decided to look at his journalist files in the New Statesmen, looking specifically at his work in the campaign for nucleur disarnment and correspondance papers from the start of the cold war. I found looking at these doccuments facinating as it gave a hugley relevent insight into the attitudes of the time on important cold war events, such as the threat of full scale nuclear war during the 1960s.
Due to this, one doccument I found interesting was a CND demonstration manifesto focused on the south-east when Kennedy planned to visit. It outlined a protest route arround the Birch Grove area where Harrold Macmillan was hosting talks. I found this massivly insightful as I did not know that Kennedy visted the UK at that time or how there were widespread protests begining due to the distaster of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Additionally, I looked at correpsondances between Martin and J.B Priestly which I found very interesting as it did not know that he was involved in journalism during the cold war.
This inspired me to do my own reasearch after looking at the letters where I found that he was also a prominent member of the CND, writing in the New Statesman about it and was even lablled a ‘crypto-communist’ by George Orwell in 1949.
Overall, I really enjoyed my time doing work experience at the keep. I was able to see the behind the scenes of an archive which really helped me to understand why the historical preservation of doccuments is so important and relevant today partically in the digtial era, where misinformation can be easily spread. One example of this I found was the mass amounts of day diaries sent in to the MOA during COVID which is a massivly relevent and personal source for future generations to see the impact of the pandemic. I was also able to take part in cataloging doccuments, transcribing diaries and seeing how the repositories kept doccuments safe, even from as early as 1011, as well seeing the extent of the doccuments kept here.