Orwell's list of 'crypto-communists' to be released
The government has agreed to strip the final shred of secrecy from the leftwing author George Orwell's famous 54-year-old list of "crypto-communists" and put it in the public domain.
The Foreign Office is expected shortly to disgorge its copy of the document - until now held back as too sensitive. The public record office in Kew hopes to make the file openly available this summer.
The foreign secretary, Jack Straw, disclosed the decision in a letter to the historian and author Timothy Garton Ash. His move follows the Guardian's disclosure last month of the full text of another copy of the list, written by Orwell in May 1949, shortly before his death. Garton Ash, who on Tuesday was given a preview of the Foreign Office copy, has confirmed that the two documents are identical.
This was "final definite confirmation" of a search which began when Orwell's role in drafting a blacklist for a now defunct Foreign Office propaganda offshoot, the information research department, was first indicated in the 1990s.
Like the list the Guardian published, it contains the names of 38 public figures, from the actors Charlie Chaplin and Michael Redgrave to the author JB Priestley, whom Orwell suggested should not be trusted by the IRD as anti-communist propagandists.
Mr Straw's letter said: "Since all the information contained in [the list] is now in the public domain, we plan to release it shortly at the national archives."
Last night, a Foreign Office spokeswoman said its copy would be available at the archive in August. The Foreign Office's programme of releasing documents was "tangible evidence" of commitment to greater transparency. The government's freedom of information act would be a further step forward, she said.
But in today's column in the Guardian, Garton Ash warns of parallels between the cold war anxiety in which Orwell compiled his list and the current war against terrorism in which Alastair Campbell was trying to "intimidate" the BBC.
The freedom of information act would "not so much as tweak the blanket" of the secret state's exemption from public scrutiny.
The Foreign Office is expected shortly to disgorge its copy of the document - until now held back as too sensitive. The public record office in Kew hopes to make the file openly available this summer.
The foreign secretary, Jack Straw, disclosed the decision in a letter to the historian and author Timothy Garton Ash. His move follows the Guardian's disclosure last month of the full text of another copy of the list, written by Orwell in May 1949, shortly before his death. Garton Ash, who on Tuesday was given a preview of the Foreign Office copy, has confirmed that the two documents are identical.
This was "final definite confirmation" of a search which began when Orwell's role in drafting a blacklist for a now defunct Foreign Office propaganda offshoot, the information research department, was first indicated in the 1990s.
Like the list the Guardian published, it contains the names of 38 public figures, from the actors Charlie Chaplin and Michael Redgrave to the author JB Priestley, whom Orwell suggested should not be trusted by the IRD as anti-communist propagandists.
Mr Straw's letter said: "Since all the information contained in [the list] is now in the public domain, we plan to release it shortly at the national archives."
Last night, a Foreign Office spokeswoman said its copy would be available at the archive in August. The Foreign Office's programme of releasing documents was "tangible evidence" of commitment to greater transparency. The government's freedom of information act would be a further step forward, she said.
But in today's column in the Guardian, Garton Ash warns of parallels between the cold war anxiety in which Orwell compiled his list and the current war against terrorism in which Alastair Campbell was trying to "intimidate" the BBC.
The freedom of information act would "not so much as tweak the blanket" of the secret state's exemption from public scrutiny.
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