One of our more recent political collections is the archive of the late Labour MP Sir Gerald Kaufman. Kaufman was a colourful character in more ways than one (never one to confine himself to the sober suits favoured by most of his parliamentary colleagues, some of his photographs would make a bird of paradise look dull), and besides the usual political material which you generally find in MPs’ papers, Kaufman’s archive goes off into some more unexpected directions.
From an early age, Kaufman had a passion for film, especially for musicals, and while still a student eagerly took up the role of film journalist. Though he joined the Daily Mirror as a political writer in 1955, throughout his career he managed to combine politics with his earlier love. His archive contains some of his scripts for the groundbreaking 1960s satirical sketch show ‘That Was The Week That Was’, fascinating interviews with Gene Kelly and Debbie Reynolds from 1991 on the making of the legendary musical ‘Singin’ in the Rain’ and amongst a large collection of press cuttings, numerous film and book reviews.
Of course if you are looking for more conventional political material, you will find that in Kaufman’s archive too. Before he became an MP he worked as an aide to Harold Wilson, making good use of his journalistic background as a Press Liaison Officer, and there are some lively accounts of internal Labour Party politicking in the 1960s, as well as a fascinating summary of Kaufman’s visit to Israel at the time of the Six Day War in 1967, with the scribbled comment by Wilson that it “should be carefully locked away. Or swallowed.”
We also have the annotated draft text of Kaufman’s brilliant 1980 book “How to be a Minister’, which was regarded by the Cabinet Office as essential reading for incoming ministers in the Thatcher and Major governments, and is still used as a primer by overseas governments today.
Though Kaufman certainly had a sharp tongue at times (his reading of the 1983 Labour Party manifesto as ‘the longest suicide note in history’ remains justly famous), he was a much-loved constituency MP. The final section of his archive contains many letters and tributes from his Manchester constituents after his death in 2017, and the city laid on a special memorial service for him at the Town Hall. As a final tribute, 47 trees, one for every year he served as a Manchester MP, have been planted in memory of Sir Gerald Kaufman in Rusholme.
Katharine Thomson, Archivist