Oral History - guide to resources: Politics & Government

As part of a reconsideration of 1968 as a historic moment, this international project conducted oral history interviews with those involved as young activists. The project has a broad geographic scope, encompassing activists from across northern Europe, southern Europe, and the USSR. Oral recordings of the interviews, along with written transcripts, are available, but only to those undertaking academic research.

Topics: Politics & Government

Keywords: 1968; protest; students; translations

This programme was established in 1995 to record the memories of former British diplomats or other officials who played a significant role in international relations. Through these oral histories, which are conserved at the Churchill Archives Centre (Churchill College, Cambridge), the Programme aims to go behind the official documents to explore how diplomats experienced significant events as well as providing valuable insights into the daily workings of diplomacy. The transcripts of the BDOHP interviews can be broadly searched by subject, country and historical event. You can also try a more advanced search by using the indexed catalogue to the transcripts on ArchiveSearch (which contains information on most of the archives and manuscripts held in Cambridge), or do free text searching within all the transcripts themselves on Churchill Archives Centre's Access Portal.

Topics: Politics & Government

Keywords: diplomacy; foreign policy; government; international relations

[This resource is currently unavailable as an ongoing consequence of the 2023 cyberattack targeting the British Library. Currently the only way to access sound files from the British Library collection is by making an appointment to visit the Reading Rooms in St Pancras. Please refer to the interim Sound & Moving Image Catalogue ]

Some sound extracts can be accessed through the Library's Soundcloud page.

The British Library has an extensive collections of sound recordings, including oral history resources on a wide range of subjects.

Topics: Anthropology & Folklore; Arts & Culture; Education; People; Politics & Government; Science & Medicine; War & Conflict; Work

Keywords: portal

This project, organised by the Institute of Commonwealth Studies at the School of Advanced Studies, University of London, conducted interviews with key members in the history of the Commonwealth since 1965. The digitised interviews are available online through a dedicated website hosted by the School of Advanced Study. The project was designed as a Commonwealth equivalent to the British Diplomatic Oral History Programme based at Cambridge.

Topics: Politics & Government

Keywords: Commonwealth; government

TUC History Online has provided online access to four audio clips from an interview with an East End striker during the 1926 General Strike.

Topics: Politics & Government; Work

Keywords: union

Since the early 1990s the Imperial War Museum has conducted interviews with both protestors and military personnel stationed at Greenham Common Air Base. The Cruise Missiles sited at the base made it the target of an anti-nuclear protest lasting 19 years, from 1981-2000. The complete interviews are available to listen to at the IWM Sound Archive, alongside a larger number collected as part of a project on the Anti-War Movement from 1914 to the present day.

Topics: Politics & Government; War & Conflict

Keywords: anti-war; military history; politics; protest

The History of Parliament's Oral History project is working with the British Library to create a sound archive of British politics since 1945, and will provide a unique record of post-Second World War British political history. It is intended to interview as many former Members of the House of Commons as possible. The interviews include valuable insights into the lives of individual former MPs as well as the development of political careers in the second half of the twentieth century. They illuminate the changing patterns of parliamentary politics, the development of constituency pressures, the changes in parliamentary lobbying, the history of election campaigns, and many other themes. A catalogue of material is available from the website, as are clips from and summaries of interview recordings with former MPs. The full recordings are currently only available to listen to onsite at the British Library, St Pancras.

Topics: Politics & Government

Keywords: government; politics

The Institute of Contemporary British History (ICBH) has organised over 100 oral history ‘witness seminars’ since 1986. Witness seminars are group interviews that bring key participants to a particular event or policy together in front of an audience of expert academics and interested parties. The agreed transcripts from the majority of past seminars are now available to download from the site, along with expert introductions and additional background information. The past seminars are listed under five subject areas: Defence History, Diplomatic History, Economic History, Political History, and Science and Technology History. If a transcript is not yet currently available for download, please email Dr Michael Kandiah or Dr Virginia Preston.

Topics: Politics & Government; Science & Medicine; War & Conflict

Keywords: diplomacy; foreign policy; politics; science

[no longer freely available.] In the First Person is an in-depth index of thousands of collections of English language personal narratives from around the world. Along with diary entries and letters, the index contains approximately 17,00 entries for oral history. The index is searchable by keyword.

Topics: Anthropology & Folklore; Arts & Culture; Education; People; Politics & Government; Science & Medicine; War & Conflict; Work

Keywords: portal

This database of the digitised Mass Observation archive is available to University members. As well as providing online access to top level file reports produced by Mass Observation from 1937 to 1972, this resource also provides access to raw data consisting of interviews as well as questionnaires, observations and ephemera.

Topics: Arts & Culture; People; Politics & Government; War & Conflict; Work

Keywords: cinema; family; music; politics; radio; television

Established in 1987 with the mission to record and preserve a wide range of voices through in-depth biographical accounts, National Life Stories is an independent charitable trust within the Oral History section of the British Library. The audio recordings of its interviews are available to listen to in full at the British Library, St Pancras. Remote access continues to be hampered by the fallout of the 2023 cyberattack on the Library, but some audio and video extracts can be accessed through the NLS webpage.

Topics: Arts & Culture; Politics & Government; Work

Keywords: industry; politics; religion; sports

‘Observing the 80s’ makes available online a number of digitised archival holdings, which relate to the 1980s, from both Mass Observation and the British Library Oral History Collections. The aim of bringing these collections together in an accessible format is to stimulate academic research that spans current approaches to the decade, whilst also encouraging the collections’ use by a wide range of subject disciplines. From the Mass Observation collections, written responses from across the decade by 23 men and women, from a variety of social backgrounds and ages, were chosen for digitisation. The entire audio recordings of 26 interviews from the British Library Oral History Collections were also selected for digitisation.

Topics: People; Politics & Government; Science & Medicine; War & Conflict; Work

Keywords: finance; healthcare; union

A collaborative oral history project from Queen Mary University of London, Trinity College Dublin, and Dundalk Institute of Technology, which aimed to collect 100 interviews recording the memories and views of key figures in the Irish peace process since the 1960s. The decision was taken to embargo these interviews for up to 40 years in order to encourage frankness. The project website does provide an extensive list of links to previously conducted interviews regarding the peace process under the Layers of Meaning Online Directory section.

Topics: Politics & Government; War & Conflict

Keywords: art; community; education; politics; sport; union; women

In 2000-2003, the Feminist Archive South conducted a large oral history project that collected the personal memories of women who were involved in the Women’s Liberation Movement in Bristol. Visit this blog to find out more about the project and download excerpts and summaries from the interviews.

Topics: People; Politics & Government

Keywords: feminism; politics; women

[Remote access unavailable as an ongoing consequence of the 2023 British Library cyberattack - title links to relevant interim Sound and Moving Image Catalogue records]
This project recorded oral history interviews with women at the forefront of the Women’s Liberation Movement in the 1970s and 1980s. Major themes are: Family and Children; Bodies, Minds and Spirits; Sex, Love and Friendship; Race, Place and Nation; Education; Equality and Work; Activism; Politics and Legislation; Changing Cultures and the Arts; and Who We Were, Who We Are. The complete 60 audio interviews and verbatim transcripts are only accessible onsite at the British Library, but extensive content summaries of many of the interviews are available through the British Library Sound & Moving Image Catalogue.

Topics: Arts & Culture; People; Politics & Government; Work

Keywords: education; feminism; politics; race; women

This resource provides online access to large portions of oral history and other sound recordings held by The Centre of South Asian Studies, University of Cambridge. The list of interviews is arranged alphabetically by interviewee name. The interview transcripts have also been indexed making them keyword searchable. The collection of interviews, captured in India, the U.K. and the USA, is very wide ranging and includes details of the lives and careers of members of the British Army based in India. A small collection of recordings of music and unusual languages is also accessible online.

Topics: Arts & Culture; People; Politics & Government; War & Conflict; Work

Keywords: colonialism; education; industry; journalism; language; missionary; music; politics; women

This is a school run project which began from a desire to record the experiences of individuals who attended the school’s Veterans’ Day in 2008. The complete video recordings of 43 oral history interviews are now available to watch online. The interviews are divided into two sections. The first section is on ‘The Second World War 1939-45’ and includes interviews with members of the fighting forces, with individuals employed as Land Girls, Bevin Boys and in the ATS, and also with individuals who experienced the war in Germany or were affected by the Holocaust. The second section of interviews on ‘Britain and the world 1945-’ covers a wide variety of subjects including the Korean War, sport, science and political involvement.

Topics: People; Politics & Government; Science & Medicine; War & Conflict; Work

Keywords: Holocaust; migration; mining; military_history; refugees; sport; WWII

The UK Data Service provides online access to a wide range of qualitative data sets, including oral history resources. The collections are searchable by keyword. Researchers must register with the UK Data Service and state their intended purpose for any data accessed.

Topics: Education; People; Politics & Government; War & Conflict; Work

Keywords: portal

The TUC has produced a series of films containing oral history interviews with women and union representatives involved in major cases in the fight for equal pay since 1968. They are available to watch online through this website.

Topics: People; Politics & Government; Work

Keywords: union; women

This project, launched in 2011, documents feminist music-making from the 1970s and 1980s, which formed part of the Women’s Liberation Movement. Information about individual bands and musicians is gathered under their names and listed alphabetically. Oral history interviews are included for some entries alongside photographs, videos, recordings, gig lists, lyrics and musical scores, press clippings, flyers, posters, weblinks and manifestos.

Topics: Arts & Culture; People; Politics & Government

Keywords: feminism; gender; music; women

YouTube provides access to a large quantity of resources, both oral history interviews and information videos on the conduct and practice of oral history. Some organisations, archives and oral history projects have their own YouTube channels.

Topics: Anthropology & Folklore; Arts & Culture; Education; People; Politics & Government; Science & Medicine; War & Conflict; Work

Keywords: portal