Know Your Enemy

"Much material from Ruskin’s past has already been physically trashed. This includes admission records of some of the trade union students who attended Ruskin in its first decades. These were activists, sponsored by their unions, who usually went back into the trade union and labour movement as leaders. Such archival matter is like gold dust to labour and social historians enabling a better understanding of the political and cultural life of working class people in the twentieth century. With the huge interest in family and local history it is also the sort of material that descendants find fascinating.

The destruction to date has not happened by accident. The college principal had stated her intentions, or, more accurately, her decision; the chair and vice-chair of governors, themselves from a trade union background, were advised of this intended operation months ago and took no action. The trashing of such records, David Norman, the chair, declared in email correspondence, was an ‘internal administrative matter’ and thus he declined to intervene."

Hilary Kean, former Dean of Ruskin College in Oxford, denounces the programme of vandalistic destruction of historical material instructed by college principal Audrey Mullender. The expose has stirred the passions in this part of the world, and, as a former academic myself (if not really a researcher of the sort who would spend hours trawling through archives for titbits of information), I can understand the fury. The story's even been picked up by the national media, Mullender attempting a defence in the Telegraph.

(Thanks to Simon for the link.)