Staff Side of the National Whitley Council for the Civil Service

This collection contains: registry files concerning a range of issues, 1911-1979; non-registry records, 1919-1962; 'Whitley Bulletin', 1959-1977.

The Staff Side of the National Whitley Council for the Civil Service, more commonly called the National Staff Side, was formed in 1920. The primary purpose of the National Staff Side was to coordinate the activities and harmonise (where possible) the policies of the staff associations represented on the National Council for the Administrative and Legal Departments of the Civil Service, generally know as the Civil Service National Whitley Council. The scope of the National Whitley Council encompassed the administrative Civil Service and the Post Office (until 1969) but not the industrial Civil Service. Its role was to secure the greatest measure of co-operation between the state, in its capacity as employer, and its civil servants. It provided a machinery for dealing with grievances and for determining pay. In 1980 the Staff Side was reconstituted as the Council of Civil Service Unions.

Reference: B.V. Humphreys, 'Clerical unions in the Civil Service'. Oxford, 1958; H. Parris, 'Staff relations in the Civil Service : fifty years of Whitleyism'. London, 1973; introduction to the catalogue of the Civil Service National Whitley Council Official Side secretariat files held at the National Archives (class T 275).

This collection is available to researchers by appointment at the Modern Records Centre, University of Warwick. See https://www2.warwick.ac.uk/services/library/mrc/using/

Link to full catalogue: https://mrc-catalogue.warwick.ac.uk/records/CCS

Records with references beginning with MSS.296 were transferred to Kingston Polytechnic in 1979 where they remained until 1988 when they were deposited in the Modern Records Centre. Records with references beginning with MSS.415 were deposited by the Public and Commercial Services Union.

The Centre also holds records of the Council of Civil Service Unions (CCSU) and of individual predecessors of the Public and Commercial Services Union, as well as the PCSU itself. It also holds copies of Staff Side and CCSU records in the papers of Norman Jacobs, an official of the Civil and Public Services Association.