Forthcoming & Recent Witness Seminars
Forthcoming:
The History, Role, and Functions of the UK Mission to the United Nations (New York)
22 May 2013
The Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), the Institute of Contemporary British History (ICBH) at King’s College London, and the Foreign ad Commonwealth Office (FCO) are jointly organising a seminar on: The history, role and function of the UK Mission to the United Nations (New York). The event will be held at the Foreign & Commonwealth Office, London, on Wednesday, 22 May 2013.
The seminar will bring together an unparalleled panel of senior FCO alumni of British representation at UKMIS NY. Participants will include:
Sir Thomas Richardson KCMG: First Secretary, 1974-78
Charles Humfrey CMG: First Secretary, 1981-85
Sir Crispin Tickell GCMG: UK Permanent Representative, 1987-90
Lord Hannay of Chiswick GCMG: UK Permanent Representative, 1990-95
Sir Stewart Eldon KCMG: UK Deputy Permanent Representative, 1998-2002
Sir Emyr Jones Parry GCMG: UK Permanent Representative, 2003-07
The seminar will take the form of an interactive group interview, chaired by Sir Franklin Berman KCMG: UKMIS Legal Adviser, 1982-85 and Kirsty Hayes: Head, International Organisations Department, FCO , with provision for discussion and questions from delegates. It is intended that the oral history interviews and historical analysis will help us to better understand how the UK has interacted with the United Nations. The seminar will be attended by humanities researchers, diplomats, policymakers, analysts and others with a strong interest in the future of policy in this area.
This is an invitation-only event. Please contact Dr Michael Kandiah (on Michael.Kandiah@kcl.ac.uk or 020 7848 7044), Institute of Contemporary British History, King’s College London, Strand, London, WC2R 2LS with any queries.
This is the fourth in a series of six witness seminars. The first focused on the British High Commission in New Delhi and was held on 17 November 2011. The second, on the British Embassy in Beijing was held on 7 June 2012. The third was held on 7 November and examined the British High Commission in Canberra. The next witness seminar in this series will examine the British Embassy in Paris. This witness seminar series builds on previous seminars held by ICBH such as The British Embassy in Moscow and The British Embassy in Washington (click on the links to go to pages about those seminars, with downloadable pdf files of the transcripts).
Recent:
The Cold War Challenge to the Christian Churches
Thursday, 29 November, 1–4 pm.
ICBH are jointly organising this seminar with the Faculty of Law, Governance and International Relations, London Metropolitan University, and the School of History, University of Ulster. The event will be held in Room CM238, Aldgate Campus, London Metropolitan University, Goulston Street, London, E1 7TP, on Thursday, 29 November 2012.
The seminar will bring together a panel of Christian activists involved in different capacities with the problems of the churches and East-West relations going back to the 1960s. The participants possess critical insights into two significant institutional responses to the Cold War challenge to the Christian Church, the British Council of Churches’ East-West Relations Advisory Committee and the Centre for the Study of Religion and Communism (later Keston Institute).
Panel Participants:
The Very Rev Canon Dr John Arnold, Dean Emeritus of Durham
The Very Rev Canon Dr Michael Bourdeaux, founder of Keston College
Xenia Dennen, Chairman of the Keston Institute
The Very Rev Canon Dr Paul Oestreicher, former vice president CND
The seminar will take the form of an interactive group interview, introduced by Professor Jeff Haynes and chaired by Dr Dianne Kirby, the UK co-ordinator of the research project ‘Christian World Community and the Cold War’, for which the seminar is the first event to be held in Britain. It is intended that the participants’ testimony will help us to better understand the extent to which the Cold War was a religio-political enterprise that confronted the churches with profound challenges on a number of levels that have only recently begun to attract serious attention from Cold War scholars. Humanities researchers and those with a strong interest in this area, as well as other Christian activists with Cold War recollections will attend the seminar.
This is an invitation-only event. It will be recorded and the recording will subsequently made available via the London Metropolitan University website, whilst an agreed version of the transcript of the proceedings will be published in the ICBH witness seminar series.
For further information contact: Dr Michael Kandiah at ICBH (Michael.Kandiah@kcl.ac.uk, or 020 7848 7044) or Dr Dianne Kirby, (d.kirby@ulster.ac.uk, or 02871 375285).
This is the first in what is intended to be a series of witness seminars. The second seminar, which is to be held next year, will focus on the dilemmas with which nuclear weapons and the peace movement confronted Britain’s churches.
Recent Witness Seminars:
The Role and Functions of the British High Commission in Canberra, 8 November 2012
The Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), the Institute of Contemporary British History (ICBH) and the Menzies Centre for Australian Studies, both at King’s College London, and the Foreign ad Commonwealth Office (FCO) are jointly organising a seminar on: The history, role and function of The British High Commission in Canberra, Australia. The event will be held at the Foreign & Commonwealth Office, London, on Thursday 8th November 2012.
The seminar will bring together an unparalleled panel of senior FCO alumni of British representation in Australia, going back to the mid-1950s. Participants will include:
Rt. Hon. the Lord Carrington, KG, GCMG, CH, MC: High Commissioner 1955-1959; Foreign Secretary, 1979-1983
Gavin Hewitt CMG: First Secretary 1973-1978
Peter Collecott CMG: Deputy High Commissioner 1982-86
Sir John H.G. Leahy KCMG: High Commissioner 1984-1988
Sir Brian L. Barder KCMG: High Commissioner 1991-1994
Sir Roger J. Carrick KCMG, LVO: High Commissioner 1994-1997
Hon. Sir Alexander Allan, KCB: High Commissioner 1997-1999
Rt. Hon. the Lord Goodlad KCMG: High Commissioner 1999-2005
Rt. Hon. the Baroness Liddell of Coatdyke PC: High Commissioner 2005-2009
The seminar will take the form of an interactive group interview, chaired by Professor Carl Bridge of the Menzies Centre for Australian Studies and David Fitton, Acting Head of Pacific Department, FCO, with provision for discussion and questions from delegates. It is intended that the oral history interviews and historical analysis will help us to better understand how the UK has promoted its international presence and political, security, economic and cultural interests in Australia in the recent past. The seminar will be attended by humanities researchers, diplomats, policymakers, analysts and others with a strong interest in the future of policy in this area.
This is an invitation-only event. Please contact Dr Michael Kandiah (on Michael.Kandiah@kcl.ac.uk or 020 7848 7044), Institute of Contemporary British History, King’s College London, Strand, London, WC2R 2LS with any queries.
It is the third in a series of six witness seminars. The first focused on the British High Commission in New Delhi and was held on 17 November 2011. The second, on the British Embassy in Beijing was held on 7 June 2012. The next witness seminar in this series will examine the British Embassy in Paris. This witness seminar series builds on previous seminars held by ICBH such as The British Embassy in Moscow and The British Embassy in Washington (click on the links to go to pages about those seminars, with downloadable pdf files of the transcripts).
The Tomlinson Report and After: reshaping London's Health Services in the 1990s, 13 November 2012
A joint ICBH-London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine witness seminar.
One of the most intractable organisational challenges in the history of Britain’s health services has been the configuration of provision in London. Indeed, between the 1892 House of Lords Report on Metropolitan Hospitals and the 2007 Darzi Report, Healthcare for London, there have been around 30 major reports and strategies for medicine in the metropolis. With different permutations, these consistently articulated a 'London problem’ which by the 1980s comprised three interlocking concerns. First, the past had bestowed a concentration of hospital services, and particularly specialist facilities, in central London; this meant a geographical mismatch between provision and demand which was exacerbated by population movement to the suburbs. Second, there was the difficulty of integrating London’s medical schools (the nation’s leading cluster) both with hospitals and primary care for clinical teaching, and with the colleges of the University of London. Third, London continued to experience variability and inadequacy of primary and community care, with disproportionate numbers of poorly supported and staffed general practices; the concentration of resources in the hospital sector intensified this problem. Confronting these systemic challenges was a distinct pattern of need shaped by the capital’s economy and demographics: poor life expectation in deprived areas, high numbers of acute mental health patients, re-emergent tuberculosis amongst migrant communities, the majority of the nation’s HIV AIDS cases, and so on.
The aim of this Witness Seminar was to examine a pivotal moment in this history. In October 1992 the Report of the government-commissioned Tomlinson Inquiry was issued, with proposals for reorganisation. Political impetus then saw the formation of the London Implementation Group to carry forward change. There were a host of mergers amongst the medical schools and research institutes, analysis and reconfiguration of acute services, and the establishment of the London Implementation Zone to tackle primary and community care. Yet a few years later the limits to this achievement were apparent, as the King’s Fund and the Turnberg Review (1997) warned of dangerous pressures on a range of services. How do we explain and appraise this period of change? What lessons, if any, can be drawn for continuing attempts to improve health services in the capital and other conurbations?
Witnesses and roles in the period:
Ms Virginia Beardshaw Secretary King’s Fund London Commission
Professor Sir Michael Bond Member, Tomlinson Enquiry
Baroness Bottomley Secretary of State for Health
Pearl Brown Member, Tomlinson Enquiry
Professor Sir Cyril Chantler, Clinical Dean, Principal Guy’s Hospital:
Mrs Ainna Fawcett Henesy Nurse Advisor, London Implementation Group
Professor Sir Malcolm Green, Director, British Postgraduate Medical Federation
Professor Sir Brian Jarman, Member Turnberg Review
Mr Robert (Bob) Nicholls Director, London Implementation Group
Dr Tony Stanton British Medical Association, London Medical Committee
Mr Jonathan Stopes-Roe Secretary Tomlinson Enquiry
Lord Turnberg Chair: Health Services in London, Strategic Review