These materials, created and collected by William F. Stout, a minister in the Northern Ireland government, document politics from the Irish Civil War in the 1920s, through the internment campaigns in the 1960s and 1970s, and into inquiry into Bloody Sunday in the early 2000s. Materials include correspondence, clippings, handbooks, organizational charts, legal documents, pamphlets, photographs, and reports.

Materials on Northern Ireland generally include Stout's correspondence; newspaper and magazine clippings on Irish issues, predominantly the 1970s Arms Trial; speeches; organizational charts for his department; a manuscript on Eamon De Valera's role in World War II politics written by American diplomat David Gray; and photographs of Republican and Loyalist murals in Belfast and of the Maze prison.

Government documents comprise handbooks from the British Home Office; minutes from Joint Security Committee meetings about Irish affairs during the early 1970s; reports and planning for the internment drives in Northern Ireland in the early 1970s; and notes on legal issues including the delegation of powers from the Governor of Northern Ireland to the Ministry for Home Affairs and the prerogatives of the Governor in relation to court-martial cases held in Ireland.

Pamphlets include the treaty between Great Britain and Ireland in 1921; the draft constitution of the Irish Free State in 1922; a paper on Irish treaty ports from 1938; and Queen Elizabeth II's speech to Parliament from 1971.

Finally, the Bloody Sunday Inquiry materials contain a draft of the Saville Report, and correspondence to the Solicitor for the Inquiry from various Irish legal firms answering or posing questions in response to the activities of the Inquiry.