Wolverhampton's archive service retains top accreditation
The service was first awarded the Archive Service Accreditation in 2015.National Archives said following its inspection it was "impressed by the progress made around digital preservation since the award of accreditation and the efforts made by the service regarding succession planning".Council cabinet member for digital and community Obaida Ahmed congratulated staff, adding the recognition was "testament to the excellent service the team offer to residents and visitors to the city"."It is a valuable resource and is well utilised in the city by those wanting to research and explore the rich history that we have of Wolverhampton and its people."
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Telegraph
6 days ago
- Telegraph
Rolex founder was suspected Nazi spy
MI5 suspected that the German founder of Rolex was a Nazi spy, the Telegraph can reveal. Formerly classified documents at the National Archives show how secret service agents feared Hans Wilsdorf should be blacklisted due to his 'strong' sympathies for Adolf Hitler's regime. The Second World War papers, dated between 1941 and 1943, state that Wilsdorf was 'most objectionable' and 'suspected of espionage'. The file also suggested the businessman may have made much of his decision to offer British prisoners of war (POWs) free Rolex watches despite his real intentions being anything but patriotic. The papers – many stamped from 'Box 500', the colloquial civil service nickname for MI5 due to its wartime address – show the increasing concern that Wilsdorf, a naturalised British citizen, posed a threat to the Allies. Wilsdorf was born in Bavaria in 1881 and moved to London in 1903, where he made watches in Hatton Garden before registering the name Rolex and marrying British-born Florence Crotty. In 1919, he based the company headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland. By 1941, the British authorities were concerned Wilsdorf supported the Nazis. A report that year from the British consul in Geneva said he was 'well known for his strong Nazi sympathies' citing how his brother, Karl, was 'reported to be an active member of [Joseph] Goebbels' propaganda ministry'. The file claimed the brother would 'make use of Hans Wilsdorf in Geneva to put out Nazi propaganda all over the world, and we heard that Hans is, in consequence, being watched by the Swiss federal police'. An MI5 report from 1943 said the secret service had been 'interested in the affairs' of Rolex, from its UK base in Bexleyheath, and its founder 'for some time'. 'Wilsdorf and his wife are majority shareholders, and he is suspected of espionage on behalf of the enemy,' it added. The papers repeatedly said Wilsdorf was 'well known' as a 'strong Nazi'. One 1941 letter from the Blacklist Section of the Ministry of Economic Warfare said it was 'desirable' to 'review' blacklisting Wilsdorf, but noted it 'may not be entirely in our interests at the moment' because his company 'would undoubtedly have to share his fate [and] a large amount of its overseas trade seems to be with the Empire countries'. It added that intelligence had been 'unable to detect any undesirable activities on the part of the Swiss firm'. It even said how Wilsdorf's 'indebtedness to German bankers may result in a considerable enemy interest in both the Swiss and the British [Rolex] companies'. A 1943 message from MI5 concluded that blacklisting Wilsdorf should not go ahead, despite him being 'most objectionable'. The British consul report insists there was 'no doubt whatever' about Wilsdorf's 'political opinions' and questioned his motives for sending watches – as well as 'food parcels and tobacco' – to British POWs. In 1940, Cpl Clive Nutting, a POW in the notorious Stalag Luft III in Poland, contacted Wilsdorf requesting new watches after German officers confiscated servicemens' Rolexes when captured. Wilsdorf sent the corporal Rolexes insisting he should 'not even think' about paying for them until after the war. 'Stunt to gain favour' But, despite the move proving a public relations coup for Rolex, the consul report in the files was sceptical of his motives. 'It is interesting to note that, according to a letter from Mr Hans Wilsdorf... he has been acting for many months as an intermediary between 25 British officers, prisoners of war in Germany, and their friends at home... 'Of course, these activities may have been due to an impulse of generosity on the part of Mr Wilsdorf, but, if our other information about him is true, this hardly seems likely.' Jose Perez, a horological historian, discovered the existence of the MI5 file and contacted The Telegraph, which then retrieved it. He said the documents add to mounting evidence Wilsdorf was a Nazi sympathiser. 'The fact Rolex offered watches to Allied POWs in German camps suggested Wilsdorf was on the right side of history,' he added. 'But, I believe it was a stunt to gain favour with the British government. It must also be considered that from 1941 to 1946, the import of Swiss watches to the UK was basically prohibited, so this might have been the proverbial killing of two birds with one stone: gain favour with the British and sell some watches in the process, even though payment was only due after the war.' A spokesman for Rolex said the company was 'well aware' of the file in the National Archives. 'Given the sensitivity of these allegations, we have already commissioned an independent, authoritative team of historians who are carrying out research into the exact role of Hans Wilsdorf during this period,' she said. 'This research has been entrusted to Dr Marc Perrenoud, a Swiss historian renowned for his work on contemporary history, especially regarding Switzerland during the Second World War. 'For this assignment, Dr Perrenoud has assembled a scientific committee comprising distinguished historians from the various countries concerned. 'In the interest of transparency, we will publish Dr Perrenoud's findings once he has completed his work.'
Telegraph
05-08-2025
- Telegraph
The 1939 manual that shows Trump how to wreck Russia's economy
It is unlikely that Donald Trump will tour the National Archives in Kew during his state visit to Britain next month, but if the president were to find the time, he could study the original instruction manual on how to wreck a national economy. Deep in the vaults lies Britain's Handbook of Economic Warfare, circulated on August 14 1939 and kept secret – or 'under lock and key', according to the emphatic instruction on its cover – right up until 1990. Its 52 pages, compiled on the eve of the Second World War, amount to an elegantly-written manifesto for economic havoc, filled with relevance for today's decision-makers. Perhaps most of all for Trump, who could this week punish Vladimir Putin's refusal to agree a ceasefire in Ukraine by taking what the President's supporters call a 'sledgehammer' to the Russian economy. The hammer in question would be a raft of American sanctions with one vital difference: they would be targeted not on Russia itself, but on any country that buys Putin's oil, with the aim of depriving the Kremlin of its customers and suffocating its single biggest source of revenue. The objective of these 'secondary sanctions' would be to choke Russian finances so severely that Putin would have to sue for peace in Ukraine. That goal finds its echo in said British handbook. 'The aim of economic warfare,' reads chapter one, 'is to so disorganise the enemy's economy as to prevent him from carrying on the war'. This amounts to a 'military operation, comparable to the operations of the three services, in that its object is the defeat of the enemy.' The 'weapons' include 'interference with trade' and 'withholding financial, shipping and insurance facilities.' The word 'sanctions' does not appear in the handbook; instead chapter two proposes a 'statutory list' of 'firms' and 'vessels' with which all trade and any contact would be banned. Just as Trump wants to compel other countries to stop buying Russian oil, so the handbook stresses the necessity of 'persuading or inducing neutral governments, firms and persons to refrain from transactions advantageous to the enemy.' Indeed, such is the text's relevance that it is now said to be back in vogue in Whitehall. Deputy National Security Adviser Jonathan Black has reportedly pointed colleagues towards the handbook in recent months, claiming it will help guide them as Britain deals with threats from the likes of Putin's Russia. Trump must now decide whether secondary sanctions are the right tool of persuasion even though America has used them only sparingly in the past, mainly against Iran, and no other Western country has resorted to them at all. Even the handbook, written when war was imminent, stops short of recommending them. On the surface, the president and his allies seem unrestrained. Lindsey Graham, a Republican senator representing South Carolina, has introduced a bill that would impose 500 per cent tariffs on any country buying Russian 'petroleum products', describing this as a 'sledgehammer available to President Trump to end this war' and a sanction of 'bone-breaking' power. Ukraine certainly hopes so. On Sunday, one of President Zelensky's key advisers, Andriy Yermak, said that Russia's economy was 'holding on only through the sale of energy resources' and it would be possible to 'strangle' Putin's revenues with 'secondary tariffs proposed in the USA.' On July 28, Trump said that Putin had '10 or 12 days' to accept a ceasefire in Ukraine or face unspecified consequences, a deadline that the White House later clarified would expire this Friday. Earlier, the president had threatened 'tariffs at about 100 per cent – you'd call them secondary tariffs' on any country importing Putin's oil. The biggest targets would be China and India, which buy nearly 75 per cent of Russia's seaborne oil exports. If Trump is in earnest, then the world's second and fifth biggest economies respectively will this week suffer American tariffs of 100 per cent, though there seems no immediate prospect of him endorsing Senator Graham's bill and its penalty of 500 per cent. The president is a master of bombast and empty threats, but the oil price still responded to his words by climbing above $70 per barrel. Faced with a choice between punitive US tariffs or abandoning Russian oil, China and India would probably have to choose the latter and cut Putin loose. Thanks to Russia's dependence on just two customers, that would make a big difference to Moscow's revenues. In June alone, Russia earned more than £6 billion by selling 2 million barrels of oil a day to China and 1.5 million to India. Add in exports of coal, gas and refined oil products, and Russia received a total of about £7.5 billion from the two countries in one month – representing about half of the Kremlin's global fossil fuel revenues. 'If those markets are lost, then clearly this would have a serious impact on Russia,' says Jonathan Eyal, an associate director of the Royal United Services Institute. 'But as always with the oil market, it's swings and roundabouts.' Secondary sanctions, if imposed, might be too successful for their own good. By choking off Russian oil, they could unbalance the market and cause the price to rise, damaging the world economy and forcing Trump's voters to pay more to fill up their cars. A higher price would also allow Putin to earn more from any remaining exports. Thanks to sanctions, Russian oil already sells at a discount on the market price. If that baseline was higher, then the Kremlin could raise more revenue even with the discount. And how would the sudden imposition of punitive tariffs on China square with Trump's wish to negotiate a trade deal with the world's second biggest economy? On Friday, Trump enacted a 25 per cent tariff on India in retaliation for its supposed protectionism against US exports. But he had publicly threatened an extra 'penalty' for the country's purchases of Russian oil. So far, no such 'penalty' has appeared and India's tariff is still lower than Canada's 35 per cent. Eyal points out that Trump has not yet given his backing to the Graham bill, and the president's separate announcements are 'muddying the waters', creating a 'typical Trump mess.' But there is no doubt that imposing different tariffs based on whether countries comply with America's foreign policy objectives violates World Trade Organisation rules. And deliberately placing a sovereign state under unbearable pressure to stop doing business with another sovereign state could break international law. 'As a principle, we've always argued that these measures are illegal because they effectively extend US jurisdiction to other countries,' says Eyal. Britain's Handbook of Economic Warfare from 1939 notes another familiar risk, namely that neutral countries, 'if pressed too hard', could 'throw in their lot with the enemy', just as excessive American pressure on China and India might drive them closer to Russia. Even when the Second World War was imminent, the British Government weighed the risks and decided against imposing secondary sanctions on neutral countries doing business with Nazi Germany. 'There will be no Secondary Statutory list,' says the handbook. 'That is to say, neutral traders will not be penalised merely for continuing to trade with another who has been placed on the Statutory List.' But the text stresses the importance of maintaining an artful pretence that secondary sanctions might at any moment be imposed, noting how this bluff had been highly effective during the First World War. 'The fear, which was discreetly fostered, that a Secondary Statutory List, might be enforced proved, however, extremely efficacious during the war of 1914-18,' says the handbook. 'There is evidence that some firms on the Statutory List were virtually boycotted by other firms for fear of consequences that we had no intention of permitting.' In the same way, just the possibility of America imposing secondary sanctions has already made companies in China and India and elsewhere wary of doing business with Russia. The fact that Putin must sell his oil at a discount is proof of this chilling effect. Yet Putin's incessant drone and missile attacks on Kyiv, which killed 31 people in one night last Thursday, suggest that he does not believe that Trump will go ahead with secondary sanctions against Russia's biggest economic partners. Instead, Putin's assaults on Ukrainian cities suggest that he is determined to ignore what he thinks is Trump's bluster. It will soon become clear whether Putin is right and the president is bluffing just as surely as Britain was in 1939. If not, this could be the week when Trump takes up his sledgehammer and wields it against Russia with a severity that would exceed Britain's actions against Nazi Germany in the countdown to war.
Glasgow Times
03-08-2025
- Glasgow Times
North Lanarkshire history archive recognised with award
North Lanarkshire Archives has been awarded Archive Service Accreditation in recognition of meeting the UK standard for managing and sharing historical records. The archive, which holds documents dating from the 1500s to the present day, charts the transformation of the region from farmland to industrial powerhouse and beyond. Read more: Interactive science show to bring castles to life in North Lanarkshire North Lanarkshire heritage centre in Motherwell (Image: Supplied) Heather Liddle, who manages active and creative communities at North Lanarkshire Council, said: 'We're thrilled the panel has recognised the great work our team does and how well we work with our partners. 'The team has worked really hard to keep improving and meet the high standards needed for this award.' North Lanarkshire Archives' new accreditation confirms that it is well managed, publicly accessible and able to adapt to change. The award is supported by organisations including National Records of Scotland, The National Archives, the Scottish Council on Archives and the Welsh Government. Read more: North Lanarkshire Council marks World Breastfeeding Week with record rates North Lanarkshire Archives reading room (Image: Supplied) Councillor Geraldine Woods, convener of communities, said: 'This is a fantastic achievement and a real testament to the dedication and professionalism of everyone involved in our archives service. 'Their commitment to preserving and sharing our local history is something we can all be proud of. 'Congratulations to the whole team on this well-deserved recognition.' With funding from the Archives Revealed programme, the team is currently focused on organising and promoting its collection about Cumbernauld New Town. This work will help improve access to an important chapter of Scotland's urban development history.
