This series contains papers of the Permanent Working Group of SEATO [South East Asia Treaty Organisation], associated committees and study groups. These records are the copies received by the Department of Defence SEATO sub-registry in Australia. In addition, copies of SEATO documents controlled by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade from A4311, 'Cumpston Collection' of documents relating to the history of Australian foreign policy, have been combined with the Defence SEATO holdings to form this and related series.
The Permanent Working Group of SEATO was established to carry out preparatory work on proposals and policy matters for the Council Representatives. It was composed of representatives from the Thai Foreign Ministry and of member country embassies in Bangkok. The Permanent Working Group was chaired until 1973 by the Deputy Secretary-General.
The records of the Permanent Working Group were maintained and registered by the central SEATO registry operated by the Secretariat to the Secretary-General. The system of control adopted by the SEATO registry was modelled on those of other international organisations identifying each document with a unique number which included alphabetical indicators for the responsible body and the type of record.
Each member country was obliged to set up a SEATO Registry which was expected to mirror the central registry's systems of arrangement. The main Australian SEATO Registry in Bangkok was maintained by the Department of Defence, with sub-registries located in both Bangkok and Australia. Copies of SEATO documents were distributed to these registries by the Secretariat's central registry.
The records in this series created by the Permanent Working Group comprise working papers, reports to the Council, the annual SEATO questionnaire, agenda for the meetings of expert committees, discussion of the content of SEATO publications, aid matters such as scholarship programmes and general administrative issues. Each document is identified with the prefix 'PWG', followed by the year, an alphabetical infix denoting the type of records and a unique item number. The alphabetical infixes are:
AG for agenda
WP for work programmes
R for records of meetings
D for working papers
Financial matters were dealt with by the Budget Sub-Committee of the Permanent Working Group, records of which are registered in the same way, with the prefix 'BC'.
The Permanent Working Group also handled matters associated with the Expert Committees and Study Groups which were set up by SEATO to provide information and to recommend action. In 1955 to 1956, three standing committees were established, the Committee of Economic Experts (EE), the Committee on Information, Culture, Education and Labour (CICEL) and the Committee of Security Experts (CSE). The Committee of Security Experts was succeeded in 1963 by the Intelligence Assessment Committee (IAC) which was in turn superseded by the Intelligence Committee (INT) during the 1973 to 1974 reorganisation of SEATO resulting in the merger of its civil and military structures.
The Committee of Economic Experts and the Committee on Information, Culture, Education and Labour were abolished in 1962 and replaced by ad hoc committees and study groups on such diverse areas as telecommunications, cultural programmes and counter subversion.
Various records of the Committees and Study Groups have survived and have been incorporated into this series. Each committee and group was allocated a unique alphabetical prefix and an identical system of arrangement to that of the primary Permanent Working Group was imposed. The document lists held in A9948, Booklets entitled 'SEATO Document Lists', chronological series, refer to a number of such bodies whose records do not appear to have survived. A list of records created by the SEATO Advisory Group [SAG], for example, has been incorporated into the final consignment list for this series although none of the records are extant.
The system of arrangement imposed on the records in this series once received by the Department of Defence sub-registry in Australia has not been established. The records have consequently been arranged alphabetically by prefix and then alphabetically by infix and finally by the annual single number component of their control numbers to facilitate transfer to the Australian Archives and subsequent retrieval. In the case of some working parties and committees the year infix has been replaced by a single number denoting the year; the annual single number arrangement is not however affected. Occasionally the single number component of the control symbol may not appear where the document concerned is the primary or sole document created in a given year.
No evidence has been found of control records used by the Australian SEATO registry or sub-registries. The Documents Lists contained in A9948, while prepared retrospectively as a finding aid by the SEATO Secretariat, can be used to identify individual documents under the current system of arrangement.
The consignment list for this series is composed of copies of the entries for documents of the SEATO Permanent Working Group, associated committees and study groups in the SEATO Document Lists. The entries have been annotated to show where documents are no longer extant or are held in the consignment.