IT GOES without saying that the past is imperfectly recorded. No matter how many sources on a topic are consulted – archives, newspapers, government reports and the like – there are always unknowns. And there can be few historians who have not muttered: ‘If only they’d left a record of what happened!’

As regards coronavirus, the Chronicle has made a start with Khalid Aziz’s isolation diary, but a national organisation headquartered in Hampshire is taking the lead by calling for members to keep diaries and take photographs that will provide material for future social historians. Records will be started as soon as possible and include recollections of the past month or so. Photographs will be dated and captioned.

Leading the project is Angela Blaydon who chairs the Publicity and Publications Sub-Committee of the Family and Community Historical Research Society (FACHRS), at Dogmersfield, near Hook.

She said: “We believe this to be a unique opportunity for us as historians to leave a lasting legacy that will be of benefit to social historians in the future, as well as making for interesting reading for us all even now.

“Our experiences, feelings, frustrations, and coping strategies will be a starting point for many researching this event in the future, as never before has there been such global connectivity that is linking us all and delivering instantaneous news and information on the daily situation.”

FACHRS has its roots in an Open University course on family and community history and was founded in the 1980. It publishes an academic journal, Family and Community History, holds roadshows and has a long list of publications.

As these plans are only open to those who belong to FACHRS, Hampshire Archives Trust (HAT) has decided to add its weight to the cause by calling for its own members to keep records, ensuring that the county is well covered. To help future historians tell the story of the coronavirus pandemic it will be consulting with the county archives services.

HAT chairman David Livermore said: “Our role is to support archives and local history in all its forms, and especially to record this historic event. It is bound to be a recurrent theme in attempts to tell the history of the rest of the twenty-first century. We don’t know what will happen – whether it will rank with other great disasters, such as the great plague, and even the Black Death. But by asking for evidence of all kinds, to supplement news media and official reports, we think HAT will be playing a significant role.”

It remains to be seen whether governments –national and local – will be treated kindly by accounts of the pandemic. The last local crisis of similar magnitude was the Second World War blitz. In late 1940 Southampton was subjected to very heavy air raids, with major attacks on the Civic Centre and the centre of the town. Shortly afterwards it was visited by Wing Commander John (later Sir John) Hodsoll in his capacity as Inspector-General of Air Raid Precautions.

Due to embargoes on the release of official reports, Hodsoll’s account was not released until 1973, when it caused a major furore locally. He reported that Southampton had not been in a fit state to take the punishment, that the local authority was out of its depth and the mayor and town clerk were incompetent.

The report was all the more toxic as it followed an equally damning account from Mass Observation, the organisation founded by sociologist Tom Harrisson to monitoring public opinion. Southampton was said to be close to neurosis and compared badly to Bristol. The full story has been told in The Southampton Blitz published in 1977 by Southern Evening Echo journalist Tony Brode.

The reports were vigorously contradicted by many Sotonians and led to the creation of a Defence of Southampton Committee. An honourable truce was eventually reached when the Lord Chancellor agreed to file a rebuttal alongside the Hodsoll Report in the National Archives.

If the handling of coronavirus pandemic has a similar fate, it could be several decades before an accurate, balanced account is available. And the personal records of the people of Hampshire will surely have been a valuable source.

For more information, visit: www.hampshirearchivestrust.co.uk, and www.fachrs.com.

barryshurlock@gmail.com