Last Friday afternoon, 50 historians and archivists piled into the Entente Cordiale room in London's Foreign & Commonwealth Office (FCO). They were there to discuss the fate of hundreds of thousands of historic files dating back to the 17th century, some of which contain damning evidence of murder and torture by British colonial authorities.
In October, the Guardian revealed that the FCO had unlawfully retained millions of historic documents in violation of the Public Records Act at a maximum security compound in Buckinghamshire known as Hanslope Park, which the FCO shares with intelligence agencies MI5 and MI6.