Military Lists?

Are the names of those in the military about 1950 available anywhere? I
guess not; it would be too good to be true!

Don Phillipson...

No such information was ever made public in the 1950s:
and nowadays (because many soldiers of the period are still

roy...

You and others constantly make the mistake of referring in a vague
way to "privacy legislation".

In the UK there is no such thing as privacy legislation in general.
Convention not to release details within a certain time period,
perhaps, yes, but there are no privacy laws as such that I am aware
of apart from the 100-year-old closure rule on censuses and certain
rules under the Data Protection Act. No doubt the Ministry of Defence
would tell you it's policy not to release details of people who were
in the forces in the 1950s but I tend to question whether there is
actually any law on this.

The whole thing seems spurious nonsense to me anyway, since in my
experience most people who did National Service in the 1950s and
1960s are perfectly happy to talk about it (especially as it was
probably a very boring period of their lives), and many well-known
people have written about it in their memoirs.

Once again, I must ask why we are all so obsessed with the so-called
privacy of living people? Where's the big deal?

Don Phillipson...

It is a pleasure to learn UK methods are so common-sensical. . . .
Privacy legislation may be a North American fad, but exists
in some jurisdictions e.g. Canada where it has added a notable
delay to all requests for archival information. E.g. if the personal
documents of Jack Jones, poet 1850-1900 have been in the
national archives for decades, and occasionally consulted over
those decades, any request for them must nowadays be
assessed and approved by a Privacy Officer who must decide
whether the applicant is qualified to see the personal documents.

(When in 1982 I requested the minutes of a government committee
of the 1930s, in order to write its history with the scientist who
actually kept the minutes, I was told in the early months
of Privacy Law restrictions that I was unqualified to see them
. . . and so too was the man who actually wrote them.)

Roy Stockdill

"There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about,
and that is not being talked about."

Oscar Wilde

living) it would be restricted by current privacy legisation.

Searching for your radiographer, your best chance would be
if she held a commission in the RN nursing corps, in which
case she might be listed like all RN officers in the annual
Admiralty List of the period. (I forget the nursing corps' name.
Each service had its own: QARANC = army, PMRAFNC = RAF.)

The reason I ask is that the Mary Lacey I knew in 1952 seems to have
qualified as a radiographer in 1950, and it suddenly came to me that she
talked about serving in the military - the navy maybe - for a while, and the
good treatment she received there from some commanding officer to whom she
reported.

Charles Ellson...

Officers can be found in the annual Army (or Navy, etc.) Lists, copies
of which are held in larger reference libraries in the UK and
presumably in relevant (e.g. LOC and military/historical interest)
libraries on the west side of the Pond. Other ranks tend to be harder
to find unless e.g. they received an award which resulted in a listing
while short on detail gives you at least rank and service number as
further (inclusive or exclusive as appropriate) references; there are
501 "Lacey" references from 1950-1959.