NIS has scanned and uploaded the vast archive of the late nuclear weapons researcher and writer John Ainslie. Over 3000 documents, reports, press cuttings, FOI responses, declassified UK, US and Russian documents dating back to the Cold War are available to browse and search below.

In November 2022 NIS hosted a webinar with some of John’s friends and colleagues reflecting on his work.

Short videos showcasing items from the archive are here. This blog by Tim Street introduces the archive and John’s life and work. This document provides a guide to the themes and content of the archive.

The paper archives have been accepted into the National Library of Scotland special collections in Edinburgh and a public event and panel discussion was held there on 12 September 2024 as well as a debate in the Scottish Parliament to acknowledge the work and celebrate the homecoming of the archives. Recordings from the events are here.

A project is underway to improve text searches with Optical Character Recognition (OCR) in the near future.
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Go to John Ainslie’s reports

Search the Ainslie Archive

This will search for items in the document Ainslie Archive. Click here to search the whole library instead

John Ainslie was an internationally respected expert, author and campaigner on nuclear weapons and disarmament, working for many years with Scottish CND up until his death in 2016. Nuclear Information Service has taken on the task of making his valuable archive available to current researchers, parliamentarians, campaigners and the general public.

The painstaking scanning, categorising and uploading has been made possible by donations from Scottish CND, Lansbury House Trust, individual donors, friends and associates of John Ainslie.

The work is now completed and the paper files are joining The National Library of Scotland's special collections in Edinburgh. Disclaimer

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