FOR THE RECORD People think archives are dull and boring, that they're all about dusty papers on shelves or whatever. But records are people. The only reason they're created is because people are achieving things, either within an organisation or as individuals. As they go about their business, people like you and me are creating records. I studied history at Cambridge University, but that's by no means the natural path to a career in archives. There isn't really a conventional path. I stumbled into it quite by accident when I moved to Australia as a researcher, after graduating in 1964. When I saw an advertisement in the Commonwealth Gazette for a post as archivist, I had to look [the word] up in the dictionary. I'd always been interested in the past and archiving seemed to be an exciting adventure into history. My first job as an archivist was in the Commonwealth Archives Office in Canberra, Australia. I was put in charge of the reference service, so apart from deciding what to preserve from the vast number of records, I was also helping users - PhD students, memoir writers, government ministry workers.
FLYING HIGH At 27, I became the archivist for the Royal Air Force Museum in Britain, in 1970. It was fascinating. The museum job attracted me for various reasons: one was that I had three uncles who had served with the RAF. The museum was interested in expanding its archives, not just of wartime service records, but also of the scientific, commercial, recreational and sporting aspects of aviation. I met a vast range of fascinating people, such as Air Chief Marshal Arthur Harris, who led the bomber command in the second world war, and Sir Douglas Bader, who lost both legs during a flying accident in the 30s but returned to service with artificial legs during the Battle of Britain. The job involved a bit of detective work, which was quite fun. One of the people I managed to track down was New Zealand aviator Jean Batten, who had retired to Gibraltar after an illustrious flying career setting all kinds of distance and speed records in Europe. I wrote to her seeking personal records - log books, letters, souvenirs - and she shipped over boxes and boxes of things, including a set of golf clubs. When she moved back to the UK for a while, we became friends. She was so pleased that I had made contact and, as a result, brought her out of retirement.
MAKING THE MOVE I was working in Australia in 1987 when I was head-hunted for a five-year contract with the Hong Kong government. The Public Records Office here had been set up by Australian archivist Ian Diamond in 1971, but after his retirement, the office ceased being proactive about acquiring records. When I was brought in, my first task was to set up a microfilming programme, which was to provide the UK government with selected records from Hong Kong, to support its responsibility to monitor Hong Kong for the 50 years after handover under the Joint Declaration. Using the office as the core, I created the Government Records Service, dealing mostly with records that had not been vetted for archiving. Because archives are records that are selected for preservation, if you don't create and manage records properly in the first place, you aren't going to have any archives. We needed a unit which would drive improvements in record-keeping - what didn't exist was an overriding management system to provide guidance and direction to all government agencies. I hoped the Government Records Service would be that. I recommended that legislation be enacted. Unfortunately, over 20 years on, that recommendation still hasn't been adopted.
THE RULE OF LAW Most organisations depend on their records for 70 to 80 per cent of their information. If you don't manage your records, you don't have the information you need to operate. If you are going to spend millions creating records, you might as well do it efficiently and get the biggest dividends that you can, in terms of productivity and efficiency. When it comes to government, all its actions and activities should be on behalf of the people. Otherwise, what's the point of having a government? They should be accountable to the people. And one of the critical ways to do this is by monitoring the activities - policy making and implementation - being documented in records. Hong Kong is the only jurisdiction in the so-called modern world that does not have legislation covering the archiving of government records. There is a records office, sure, but no legislation and therefore no authority to set standards, inspect, monitor and require agencies to conform. You don't need to look at Australia or Europe for examples - even the People's Republic of China and Singapore have legislation.
TAKING ACTION Hong Kong's code of access to archives has pages and pages of exemptions, rendering it basically worthless. Having a law would be dif- ferent. It would be able to prevent arbitrary destruction of documents. An example: some Falun Gong followers were refused entry to Hong Kong a few years ago and an administrative review was brought to Justice Michael Hartmann on their behalf. When the Immigration Department was asked to produce records related to the incident, the review was told they had been destroyed weeks before. While he didn't think the records were deliberately destroyed, Hartmann expressed great surprise that the records were not kept. Everyone can draw their own conclusions.
Apart from running my own archive consultancy out of Hong Kong since 1994, I'm also a member of the Archives Action Group, formed a couple of years ago. We continue to educate and campaign for archive legislation here.
