Conservatism, the Right Wing, and the Far Right: A Guide to Archives. Archie Henderson

As archives have assumed a more important role in contemporary scholarship, the need for access to the archives has increased. The "digital revolution" and the existence of electronic finding aids, many of which have been created, uploaded and revised--sometimes frequently--in the last few years, have done much to expand access. Before the development of the internet and the creation of online finding aids, historians depended on printed bibliographic guides, references in secondary sources, suggestions from colleagues, suggestions from archivists, and accession lists in historical journals. Of these sources of information, references in secondary sources were by far the most useful.11 A survey conducted by Michael E. Stevens in 1977 on the number of archives visited by responding historians in the previous five years found that nearly half of the sample visited more than five research institutions during the five-year period. It is clear that historians consult many more archives now, partly because information about the archives, accessed especially through online finding aids, is so much more readily available. Jennifer Rutner and Roger C. Schonfeld, surveying another group of historians in 2010, wrote that historians "desire to have finding aids for all archival collections online."12 The historians expressed the further "desire to have these finding aids collocated for centralized searching."13

The move towards online finding aids began in the 1990s. As of February 2000, approximately 8 percent of repositories listed at the 'Repositories of Primary Resources' website had mounted at least four full finding aids on the Web.14 In a 2004 survey, it was found that most archives surveyed had no more than 10 percent or less of their holdings described online. In a 2010 paper, Christopher J. Prom found that among surveyed institutions "the 'average' institution makes descriptive information at any level of completeness available on the Internet for a paltry 50% of its processed collections and 15% of its unprocessed collections."15 As of the summer of 2010 only 20% of the collections of the Special Collections and University Archives (SCUA) at the University of Oregon Libraries were discoverable online either in the form of a MARC record in the library catalog or an EAD finding aid in Northwest Digital Archives (NWDA).16 Many finding aids remain in paper form only for consultation at the archives in question and may or may not be listed on the websites of the libraries or archives in question. Many collections do not have finding aids. "Libraries, archives, and cultural institutions hold millions of items that have never been adequately described. This represents a staggering volume of items of potentially substantive intellectual value that are unknown and inaccessible to scholars."17 There are hundreds, probably thousands, of unprocessed political collections in repositories across the United States.18 These numbers indicate that, while much work has been done to upload finding aids, much remains to be done.

With online finding aids for archival collections now numbering in the tens of thousands, it is now possible to locate archives and compile a guide to their holdings in a way that would have been out of the question a few years ago.19 Why a printed guide to archives whose finding aids are already available online? Finding aids open up the contents of archives and collections. At the same time, items tend to get buried in finding aids.20 One reason for this is that finding aids tend to be produced by the institution holding the archive and tend not to be integrated into a network that extends beyond the institution or beyond a state or regional system. On the other hand, a search across finding aids at an institutional search engine may produce too many returns when, instead, a principle of selection is needed. For example, the National Archives (UK) search engine21 returns 514 results for Oswald Mosley. The Eisenhower Library alone lists hundreds of finding aids on its website.22 In the face of this abundance of material, the most relevant items may get lost. Finding aids, moreover, are being added to the internet faster than it is possible to locate them. Keyword searches on a general internet search engine may cast a wide net for a specific topic and may gather more material than is needed, while at the same time casting a narrow net that will miss many related topics.

       The present work is an attempt to facilitate the use of archives in the area of conservatism, the right wing, and the extreme right by pulling together relevant archival materials from online finding aids into a fully-indexed master list. It is an effort to network the finding aids. Although it is one step removed from the finding aids that comprise almost all of the material described, it is hoped that this "finding aid of finding aids" will at the same time bring a wider spectrum of material within view of the reader. Furthermore, all mentions of a person, topic, or organization can be checked in an instant in the index. Also, this guide may also serve as a pointer to unprocessed collections or to collections unknown to the compiler which relate to subjects covered in the guide. For example, reference is made to a handful of state or local Associations Opposed to Woman Suffrage. No doubt there were many similar organizations operating in other states–perhaps in all the states–whose records or publications remain to be publicized or brought to light.

In my selection of archives and collections related to the subject at hand, I have attempted to be as broadly representative as possible. Collections have been selected for one or more of a number of factors, including the size, thematic range, or importance of the collections or individual items in the collections; their geographical diversity; their similarities or links to other listed collections; and the usefulness of the corresponding finding aid. An archive is more likely to be listed if it contains material which dramatizes a conflict, particularly of the "pro"/"anti-" kind. Thus, preference has been given to collections which address one or both sides of divisive or hot-button issues, such as pro-choice or anti-choice (pro-life), compulsory unionism or voluntary unionism, praise and criticism of the New Deal (and--more generally--the administrative state), constitutionalism versus governmental centralization and socialism (or, as in the title of one of Joseph P. Kamp's pamphlets, "Bureaucratic regimentation vs. constitutional government"), free enterprise or government intervention, national sovereignty or states rights, regionalism or nationalism, segregation or desegregation/civil rights, isolationism or interventionism/internationalism, nationalism or cosmopolitanism, women's suffrage or anti-women's suffrage, pro- and anti-immigration, Equal Rights Amendment support and opposition, gay rights or traditional marriage, and Americanism versus Communism.23 Other divisive issues include disputes with science (evolution, human equality, vaccination, and climate change) as well as child labor.

It is beyond the scope of this introduction to offer working definitions of the terms embodied in the title of the guide. It is, in fact, likely that, for each of the terms "conservatism," "right wing," and "extreme right," there are as many definitions as there are for the term "terrorism," for which more than 100 have been catalogued.24 It has been stated that "There is little uniformity in how scholars characterize the right in modern Western societies."25 Michael Whine describes the definitional problem as "a continuing problem for researchers of the far right."26 Especially today in the United States, when "the mainstream Republican Party has become ideologically extreme," the distinctions between mainstream conservatism and extremism are blurred beyond recognition.27 For purposes of this guide, however, the right may be characterized broadly as any political ideology or expression generally considered to be to the right