Catalogue description Records of Imperial, Commonwealth and International Conferences, etc

Details of Division within CAB
Reference: Division within CAB
Title: Records of Imperial, Commonwealth and International Conferences, etc
Description:

Records of international and imperial, later Commonwealth, conferences for which the Cabinet Office supplied the secretariat.

Records of the Supreme War Council are in CAB 25. Records of other inter-allied conferences and councils relating to the First World War are in CAB 28, while those of the Peace Conference, 1919-1920, and other international conferences to 1939 are in CAB 29, except for:

  • Washington Disarmament Conference, 1921-1922: CAB 30
  • Genoa Conference, 1922: CAB 31
  • Committee on Non-Intervention in Spain, 1936-1939: CAB 62

Records of imperial war conferences and imperial conferences of the inter-war period are in CAB 32

Records of the meetings of British representatives with representatives of Northern and Southern Ireland, 1921-1922, are in CAB 43, and records of the Irish Boundary Commission, 1924-1925 are in CAB 61

Records of international and Commonwealth conferences during the Second World War are in CAB 99, while those of the post war period are in CAB 133

Records of the UK and Commonwealth delegations to the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRAA) will be found in CAB 142
Date: 1915-1976
Arrangement:

The BED series of minutes and memoranda initiated for the British Empire Delegation at the League of Nations in 1920 was also used in a continuous numerical sequence for the Washington Disarmament Conference and the Genoa Economic Conference in 1921 to 1922. The series can be found as follows:
Related material:

See also Foreign Office, Division within FO
Held by: The National Archives, Kew
Legal status: Public Record(s)
Language: English
Physical description: 12 series
Access conditions: Subject to 30 year closure
Administrative / biographical background:

From 1915 Sir Maurice Hankey, as secretary of the War Committee, acted as secretary to the British representatives at a number of inter-allied conferences. When the War Cabinet was formed it became customary for it to supply the British secretariat at such conferences as well as at imperial war conferences.

When the secretariat of the Supreme War Council was established at Versailles in late 1917, the British section was under the control of the War Cabinet Office. When the Peace Conference opened in January 1919, the War Cabinet established an office in Paris and provided the secretariat of the British Empire Delegation.

At the end of 1922 general responsibility for arrangements of British representation at international conferences passed to the Foreign Office, but that for imperial, and later Commonwealth, conferences remained with the Cabinet Office.

Thereafter, although the Cabinet Office still had a concern in international conferences, it was normally a less central one. Sir Maurice Hankey's personal success at the Peace Conference however, led to his appointment as Secretary-General to the Hague, London Naval and Lausanne Conferences in the inter-war period. From 1936 to 1939, purely as an ad hoc arrangement, the office also provided the secretariat for the International Committee for the Application of the Agreement regarding Non-Intervention in Spain. During the Second World War it provided the whole or part of the secretariat for various international meetings, notably the conferences between Churchill and Roosevelt.

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