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(The following text was given as the 1989 C. Desmond Greaves
Memorial Lecture, under the auspices of the Connolly Association,
at the Conway Hall, Red Lion Square, London, on Tuesday, October
31, 1989.)
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I am particularly honoured to be asked to give the Desmond
Greaves Memorial Lecture. In my opinion, it is very appropriate
that this talk should be about the rise of what is popularly
called "revisionism" in Irish historical writing. It was a
subject which concerned Desmond Greaves very much during the
months before his death. When I last saw Desmond, only a month or
so before that tragic event, he was discussing the idea of a
conference to draw attention to the changing attitudes in Irish
historical writing...those attitudes have already been described
by Desmond Fennell as "the historiography of the Irish counter-
revolution."
Let me start by saying that I do not like the term "revisionism"
as applied to historians. Revisionism means the act of revising,
correcting, improving or reinterpreting from new materials. Thus
all historians worth their salt are "revisionists". The label is
meaningless. My own view is that the school we are dealing with
is a neo-colonial one, an anti-nationalist school which in its
mildest form apologises for English imperialism in Ireland, or,
in its strongest form supports that imperialism. We could term
those historians from the 26 County state, who are engaged in
such writing, as "Unionist fellow travellers."
We are not dealing with a new phenomenon. Until 1921 Irish
history (we are confining ourselves to the 26 counties) was in
the hands of the Unionist school, just as in the 6 Counties Irish
history has remained in those hands. Only after the emergence of
the 26 County state did the nationalist interpretation become the
generally accepted view of Irish history--which was based on the
premise that the Irish people had a moral right to fight for
their political, economic, social and cultural independence
against the imperial ethics of their big neighbor--was the
accepted view of history. Perhaps we can now call it the
traditional view of Irish history.
The rise of the anti-nationalist school, the apologists for
imperialism, into a preeminent role during this particular period
is no accident. Anti-nationalist views of Irish history have
surfaced during a time when the unfinished business of Ireland's
struggle for political, economic, social and cultural
independence has once more come to dominate the life of these
islands. The rise of this school, with the obvious blessing of
the 26 County government and political establishments, is
symptomatic of the concerns felt by that establishment with
regard to the problem of North-East Ulster.
We are witnessing one of those extraordinary contradictions which
sometimes, and more frequently than is supposed, appear in
history. Successive 26 -county governments, from 1921 to date,
have claimed an inheritance from the national struggle for
independence, and appeals have been made to the spirit of every
uprising from 1798 to 1916. Irish governments have claimed to be
the true inheritors of the Irish Struggle.
But the continuing struggle in the North of Ireland has placed
the 26 county establishment in an invidious situation. To claim
the historical validity of the cause of Irish nationalism, that
is the independence struggle, is also to accept its validity in
that part of Ireland which has been forcibly severed from the
rest of the country. Time was when Irish governments refused to
admit the morality and, therefore, legality of Partition; when
they claimed jurisdiction over the entire island of Ireland (at
least in the Constitution) and refused to accept the authority of
Westminster enforcing Partition against the democratic will of
the vast majority of the Irish people. Time was, indeed, when
they could claim that their goal was the reunification of
Ireland. Well, that was before the shooting war broke out and
Westminster started to apply pressure on Dublin.
The 26-county political establishment grew concerned; they feared
for their own power-base, being rocked from the North, and so
they felt that they had to reject the very traditions out of
which the 26 county state was born. They are conservatives who
wish to preserve the de facto status quo between the 26 county
state and Westminster. Notice I say de facto, what is in actual
fact; for the 26-county state had never been governed according
to its constitution as a truly sovereign republic. Until Ireland
went into Europe you would have been hard pressed to find
Europeans who realized that Ireland, in some part at least, was
theoretically independent of Britain. If a minister in
Westminster sneezed, a minister in the Dail would obligingly blow
their nose. At no time prior to 1969 did any Dublin government
protest before international bodies at the lack of civil rights
and the abuses of a corrupt system in the North. They were happy
in their cozy home-rule statelet. Happy until 1969...the start of
the current phase of the struggle in the North. Then they began
to worry and to consider ways as to how the reality of the
relationship between Dublin and Westminster could be protected.
Their self-professed tradition, the claim to be inheritors of the
independence struggle in Ireland, placed them in an awkward
position. The sham was clearly revealed. They therefore had to
make some changes...and rather than change their position they
simply went about changing their inheritance.
Looking at some of the work being done today, I am reminded of
George Orwell's "1984". You will recall Orwell's protagonist,
Winston Graham, works in the Record Department of the Ministry of
Truth. His job is to correct the newspapers and books and bring
the accounts in line with the new political thinking and values.
A hero or heroine of yesterday can become the villain of today.
So the 26-county political establishment set up their own
Ministry of Truth.
In 1972 two book paved the way for the new 'revisionism'. One was
Garrett Fitzgerald's "Towards a New Ireland" and the other was
Connor Cruise O'Brien's "States of Ireland." Both books sought to
negate the nationalist tradition in Irish history, to attempt a
sort of peace with English imperialism by maintaining that the
real Irish independence tradition was the O'Connellite 'home
rule' philosophies. The lesson they attempted to hammer home was
that separation from England was never a popular concept in Irish
historical development, that the republican tradition was a
minority view which made no significant impact on Irish political
philosophy. The theme developed in both books was that all the
Irish people ever wanted was a greater say in their domestic
affairs within English colonial structures. Above all, these
books developed the Unionist concept of "two nations" existing in
Ireland--a Catholic nation, which was Gaelic and nationalist, and
a Protestant nation, which was English speaking and Unionist.
Both nations were recognized as having a valid claim to the label
'Irish'.
For Garret Fitzgerald this reasoning must have taken a
considerable amount of what Orwell would have called 'double-
think' as his father had fought in the 1916 Rising, became a Sinn
Fein MP in the 1918 General Election, while his mother was Mable
McConnell, and Ulster Protestant who was both a republican and an
Irish language enthusiast. It has been said, with some
justification, that Fitzgerald was 'spitting on the grave of his
mother.'
In endorsing the Unionist theory that Protestants in the North
constituted a separate 'Ulster nation', Fitzgerald and O'Brien
became partially responsible for paving the way for the 'Cruthin
theory'. In 1974, Dr. Ian Adamson, from Queen's University,
Belfast, published a book entitled "The Cruthin" in which Ulster
Protestants were given a new nationality.
We have seen that Ulster Protestant Unionists (to give them a
full and clear definition) did not accept themselves as being
Irish; they were also uncomfortable with the label 'British'
since the term was synonymous with English; nor could they really
justify the term 'Ulster' as three Ulster counties were outside
the jurisdiction of the Six Counties regime. Dr. Adamson came up
with a new concept for them, a new nationality--the Cruthin or,
as they are more popularly known, the Picts.
According to Dr. Adamson, the Cruthin were the original
inhabitants of Ireland, arriving long before the Gaels. The Gaels
came and drove the Cruthin to Scotland but, during the 17th
century Plantations of Ulster, the Cruthin returned to take their
rightful place in the Irish scheme of things. This, at one stroke
gave the Unionists a new justification for being in Ireland. They
were the original inhabitants and not merely the descendants of
the colonial settlements. It is rather like the philosophy of
Zionism. They were no longer newcomers settling on the lands of
the dispossessed natives but a 'chosen people' who had returned
to their 'Promised Land'. Dr, Adamson even tries to shore up his
theory by examples of blood groupings to show that the Irish are
composed of two nations- the nationalist Catholics (the Gaels)
and the Ulster Protestants (the Cruthin).
Of course, Dr. Adamson has done a tremendous amount of
'revisionism' with what is known about the Picts, even to the
point of simply ignoring it. The Cruthin is the Goidelic Celtic
form of Preteni, which is a Brythonic Celtic name. The Preteni,
known as Picti, or 'the painted people', were an offshoot of the
Continental Celts who arrived in northern Scotland some centuries
BC, according to Professor Kenneth Jackson, one of the leading
Celtic scholars of this century. There are no texts in the
'Pictish language' but some scanty recordings of personal names
and place-names show them to be (according to Professor Jackson)
"unquestionably Celtic, and moreover what is called P-Celtic,
that is, sprung from the Continental Celtic milieu from which the
Britons also came and not from the Q-Celtic, which was the source
of the Irish and Scottish Gaelic". Now this immediately sends
Dr. Adamson's slightly awry because, according to accepted Celtic
scholarship. Q-Celtic (Goidelic) is more the archaic from of
Celtic and speakers of this form were the first to reach these
islands many centuries before the speakers of the P-Celtic
(Brythonic) form. Moreover, in contradiction to Adamson's 'race
theory', both his Cruthin and the Gaels shared a common Celtic
inheritance.
We might find such arguments very amusing, and very nonsensical,
but Adamson's book has had an affect on some prominent sections
of Unionist thought. More insidiously, Dr. Roy Foster, the doyen
of the anti-nationalist historians, in a recent lecture in
Coleraine, singled out Adamson's work as being worthy of serious
historical evaluation. In my opinion. not since Houston Stewart
Chamberlain wrote his notorious "Die Grundlagan des Neunzehnten
Jahrhunderts" (Foundations of the 19 Century), 1899, which was a
view of European history and race ideology which became the basis
of Nazi political philosophy in the Third Reich, has there been
such a distorted racist mish-mash.
The philosophies of Fitzgerald and O'Brien were joyously taken up
by certain 'academics'. One influential work was Leland Lyons'
"Culture and Anarchy in Ireland 1890-1939" which started life as
a series of lectures delivered at Oxford in 1978. Lyons depicted
the current struggle, and I quote, as "the battle of two
civilizations'. One, he depicted, as being "Anglo-Irish,
pluralist, essentially non-sectarian, which is progressive and
liberal" and the other was described as "the heady resurgence of
Gaelic separatist values." There now came a veritable dawn-
chorus of historians such as Professor Henry Patterson, Ronan
Fanning, Roy Foster and others, emerging mainly from University
College, Dublin, and all lemming like, rushing to stake their
claims as leaders of the new school of historians.
In their hands, Irish history is now bering brought into a
compatibility with historical perceptions long preached by
Unionist historians. Benjamin Franklin was right when he observed
that historians relate not so much what is done as what they
would have believed.
The current cause for concern is not that this anti-nationalist
school of historians exists but the attempt to fool the public
that they have been given a divine gift of historical
interpretation that they are producing neutral and unbiased
histories, that they are somehow rising to the moral 'high
ground' above factions, above nationalists and Unionists. They
use 'academic objectivity' as a watchword, a totem to disguise
their partisanship.
And even more worrying is the role of the 26-county government is
doing all in its power to promote the works of this school.
Recently we have seen Roy Foster having his book "Modern Ireland
1600-1972" short listed for the Irish Literary Award by the
"Irish Times", the first time a work of history has ever been
short listed. And we have also seen the Taoiseach, Charles
Haughey, taking the very unusual step of personally launching
another such book and using the offices of the Department of
Foreign Affairs in Dublin. This was Dr. Marianne Elliot's "Wolfe
Tone, Prophet of Irish Independence", in which Tone and the
United Irishmen, founders of the Irish republican tradition, are
dismissed as nothing more than dilettantes and poseurs.
In a brilliant review of this book, Dr. Anthony Coughlan of
Trinity College, Dublin, comments: "Sadly this book, despite its
impressive academic scholarship and the interesting new material
it contains, is a fundamentally hostile interpretation of Tone.
This stems from the fact that the author evidently has little
sympathy with the ideal of an All Ireland Republic which Tone and
his fellow Protestants came to adopt in the 1790's, and which of
course remains attained. It is perhaps hard to write a
sympathetic biography of a political figure if one does not to
some extent share his views'. ("Irish Democrat", December 1989).
Dr. Coughlan sums up Dr. Ailed's methods when she write:
"She reveals her own political attitude when she write's of
"Tone's tendency to raise Irish independence from a domestic
squabble to a key role in a new international order" (page 347).
A 'domestic squabble' implied that the matter had little to do
with English government policy. The cumulative effect of her
pejorative and patronizing characterizations of her subject shows
how out of sympathy she is with political purposes. The
denigratory adjectives tends to be chosen when the kinder one
might just as validly for the circumstances. Thus Tone was 'a
negligent husband and father,' his republicanism was 'an accident
of nature', he was converted by his own arguments', he was a
'young Whig careerist', 'no great initiator of ideas', 'prickly
self-righteous', 'no democrat', 'temporarily unhinged in his
ind', with 'an inflated sense of honour', 'not an original
thinker'. She speaks of 'the characteristic Tone device of
telling an audience what it wanted to hear'. 'Tone's though
processes were simplistic.' The oddness of her view of subsequent
republicanism is conveyed in a comment she makes about Tone in
France. "This father of Irish republicanism could still long for
a time when he might see Sheridan's "School for Scandal" on an
English stage."
Before I deal with some detail of the differences between the
nationalist, or traditionalist school of Irish history, and the
new revisionism, I think I should make some general remarks about
attitudes to history. I implied at the beginning of my talk that
all historical writing was biased. You may have heard statements
to the contrary, especially from the works now emanating from the
anti-nationalist historian. Bias is only something in the history
books with which they are disagreeing...not something in their
own works. Wee, such statements are nonsensical. Bias is
inevitable. An honest historian would begin by stating their
philosophical attitudes or making those attitudes known.
History is not simple about the enumeration of facts. It is about
the moral interpretation of those facts. Indeed, the very form in
which the historian relates the facts conveys judgement and
prejudice.
For example, let me make what, on the surface, is a simple
statement of fact.
The bottle is half empty.
It is a quantifiable fact which surely cannot be argued. Yet
if the same fact is put another way--The bottle is half-full--it
provides us with an entirely different concept or interpretation
of that very same fact from an entirely different angle.
History, more than most disciplines, is one in which the
historian is thought to sit in splendid isolation as a judge,
viewing the events which are paraded before them. THe historian,
so it is expected, will view the events objectively and
dispassionately. But the historian is just as caught up, involved
and biased, as any of the historical actors who parade before
them. Consciously or sub consciously, they will contribute to
those historical characters something of themselves, giving their
own values, judgements and reactions. Very few historians can
emphatise totally and fully understand what motivated the
historical characters.
Often a history book will tell you more about the historian than
it does about the historical facts. Historical narratives are
full of the personal judgements of the historian.
As those here tonight would obviously adhere to the historical
philosophies of James Connolly, who was one of the most brilliant
interpreters of 'historical materialism', I will use this
viewpoint as a means of explaining differences in historical
approach. Connolly said of the use of Karl Marx's theory of
historical materialism' provided "the most reasonable explanation
of history."
This theory teaches that the ideas of human beings are derived
from their material surroundings, and that the forces which make
for historical changes and human progress have their roots in the
development of the tools men and women use in their struggle for
existence. We are using the word 'tools' in its broadest sense to
include all the social forces of wealth-production. It teaches
that since the break-up of common ownership and the tribal
community, all human history has turned around the struggle of
contending classes in society--one class striving to retain
possession, first of the persons of the other class to hold as
chattel slaves; and then to retain the possession of the tools of
the other class, to hold them as wage-slaves. It teaches that all
the politics of the world resolve themselves in the last analysis
into a struggle for the possession of that portion of the fruits
of labour which labour creates but does not enjoy...rent,
interest and profit.
Therefore, Marx's theory gives an order and logic to historical
interpretation. To sum up: the key to this is that in every
historic epoch the prevailing method of economic production and
exchange, and the social organization necessarily following from
it, forms the basis upon which alone can be explained the
political and intellectual history of the epoch. Now Marx's
theory was simply a tool of interpretation, and that tool was no
better nor worse than the individual who used it.
To illustrate just how Marxist history would differ from other,
let me give you an example in the interpretation of the abolition
of slavery. The popular, non-Marxist view is that slavery was
abolished because western society progressed to more humane
attitudes and ideals. As we know, it was not until 1791 that
Britain abolished her slave trade; not until 1807 that British
ship were forbidden to transport slaves to other countries and
finally, not until 1833 that slavery was abolished in Britain as
a legal institution. Now did the Establishment in this country
suddenly become more human and liberal in their outlook during
the period 1791-1833. We know it was a period of tremendous
reaction, and the suspension of Habeas Corpus, of press
censorship and lack of civil liberties. And of the oft propounded
ideas is that Christian ethics changed the moral climate...well,
that is demonstrably false. The Christian Church, in all its
sects, lived quite comfortably with slavery for eighteen hundred
years and often defended it as a Christian institution.
The Marxist historian would argue that slavery was, in fact,
abolished because it was realized it was cheaper for the owners
to hire men and women, discharging them when the job was done,
than it was to buy men and women and be compelled to feed them
all the time, working or idle, sick or well. During the 17th
century many slave owners came to that realization. That was why
Irish indentured servants, forcibly transported from Ireland to
the colonies and provided free by the English government to
plantation owners, were ill-uses, starved and worked to death.
The owners had no financial responsibility for them. They could
be replaced without charge. But slaves--well, slaves had to be
bought and, as a financial investment, had to be treated in far
better conditions than the indentured servants. To sum it up,
slavery became immoral and was banned because slaves were more
costlier than wage-labor.
Now it is not my intention to discuss various philosophical views
through which one may approach the understanding of history--
simply to state that they exist. From the outset one should
understand what motivates the individual historian rather than be
misled by the nonsensical claims of 'academic objectivity'. Let's
be entirely cynical about the subject and echo Paul Valery in "De
l'histoire": "History justifies whatever we want it to."
So, ignoring all the pseudo-academic justifications and cant with
which our so-called 'revisionist' friends have bombarded us in
recent years, let us look at the viewpoints of the 'nationalist'
and 'anti-nationalist' schools of history. I have already said
that history was not simply about the enumeration of facts--it is
about the moral interpretation of those facts.
Let us, therefor, deal with the 'nationalist' historian. And
perhaps in view of many people's problems with understanding the
word 'nationalist' I should begin with an interpretation of that
word. To English ears, and perhaps because of their imperialist
traditions, nationalism conjures up ideas of Chauvinism and
jingoism. But, in the context used in Ireland, it simply means a
policy of securing national rights, the claim of Ireland to be an
independent nation. It is the advocacy of the freedom of national
communities from the political, economic, social and cultural
exploitation of other nations. It is a moral stance and one, in
my opinion, which goes hand in hand with a socialist view of
history--for national and social freedoms are not two separate
and unrelated issues. They are two sides of one great democratic
principle, each being incomplete without the other. How can one
have 'social freedom' in a state wherein a majority nation keeps
a minority nation from exercising its right to decide its own
affairs? Such a situation is neither democracy nor socialism.
The 'nationalist' historian, therefore, starts from basic moral
premise--the premise that no nation has any defensible right to
invade, conquer and seek to destroy the political, economic,
social or cultural fabric of another country. Having assumed this
view, that imperialism is wrong in all its forms, the historian
can commence to interpret Irish history. That history then ceases
to be a welter of unrelated facts, a hopeless chaos of sporadic
outbreaks of violence, intrigues, massacres, treacheries, murders
and purposeless warfare. With this moral historical key, all
things become understandable and traceable to conquer and
dominate Ireland.
Then what of the anti-nationalist, our so-called 'revisionist'
historian? Their standpoint is not so simple, for they have to
perform several gymnastics to support what is, in my opinion at
least, a morally indefensible position. Let me give you a few
examples.
The most flagrant position is the acceptance, overt or implied,
that England's invasion and conquest of Ireland is not a matter
for moral judgement. The argument being that 'force majeure" was
merely the politics of the Middle Ages and everyone was indulging
in it. The argument goes further; it is claimed that an Irish
national consciousness did not exist, that Ireland was simply a
land of divided warring factions and the arrival of one more such
faction is not a matter of importance nor of moral speculation.
Without wasting much time in rebutting such an argument in
detail, we can perhaps point to Donal O'Neill's famous
remonstrance to Pope John XXII in 1317 AD which makes it quite
clear that the Irish had a concept of a united nation fighting
for the restoration of national rights, political, social,
cultural and economic, from interference of an imperial power.
The text of the Remonstrance is found in Fordun's
"Scotichronicon" III, p. 908-26. It is excellently summed up by
Edmund Curtis in "A History of Medieval Ireland", Methuen,
London, 1923, p 191-194.
The fallacious theory that an Irish national consciousness only
evolved at a very late stage in Irish historical development
(usually asserts as the late 18the Century, presumably to account
for the 1897 uprising), is one of the most popular arguments of
the 'anti-nationalist' school.
We have another standpoint: the view that the English colonial
rule in Ireland was beneficial to the Irish people and this is
usually argued as a corollary to the historian pretending to take
a moral 'high-ground', denouncing all factions as backwards and
war-mongering before coming to the 'conclusion' that, on the
whole England had a lot to offer Ireland and that it was simply a
matter of regret that she was just a wee bit too brutal, at
times, in imparting her civilizing affects on the Irish.
Perhaps the most favorite stance taken by the 'anti-nationalist'
is the plea to accept the current status quo as some sort of fait
accompli. It is very much like the current English government
and, indeed, the official view of the Opposition, talking about
the will of the majority in Northern Ireland as some form of
democratic totem. By so doing they totally ignore the
undemocratic and bloody history of the birth of the Six Counties,
how they were forcibly partitioned in 1921 against the democratic
will of the Irish people and were set up as an arbitrary and
artificial unit. Democracy has no currency in the Six Counties.
The same historians will also argue that the Unionists will never
accept a reunited Ireland so it is better to give in to their
minority position while ignoring the fact that the people who
compromise the bilk of Unionists, the Ulster Presbyterians, were
the inspiration and mainspring of Irish republicanism during the
1798 uprising and many continued to play not insignificant roles
in subsequent struggles for independence. Ulster Presbyterians
were subsequently subverted by English propaganda in one of the
most successful divide and rule campaigns ever devised. One of
the great lessons of history in this respect is how easy it is th
change people's political attitudes. So what was changed once may
well be changed again.
These, then, are just some of the viewpoints used by the 'anti-
nationalist' historians. I'll sum up the two main tenents of
their approach.
Firstly: that the historian must prepare the way for an
acceptance of a justification form the status quo in Ireland
today, particularly in regard to the Six Counties. The Six
Counties of North-East Ulster are depicted as a democratically
formed unit in which the political majority is represented by the
Unionists. Partition, imposed by bloodshed and violence, and
threats of bloodshed and violence by Britain against the
democratic wish of the Irish nation, is not considered in such
histories. Partiton is merely accepted and made morally binding
on the people.
Secondly: to justify Partion, a two-nation theory is proposed in
that it is argued there exists a Catholic-Gaelic nation,
nationalist in politics, and a Protestant-English-speaking
nation, Unionist in politics. The cultural separation of the two
main religious communities in Ireland is a key part of the 'anti-
nationalist' approach. Not for them Wolf Tone's laudable ambition
to unite Catholic, Protestant and Dissenter under the common name
of Irishmen and Irishwomen.
Dr. Roy Foster, at his recent lecture in Coleraine, tried (and
I'll grant with some eloquence) to justify the 'anti-nationalist'
school with the claim that it was simply presenting a new
'objective ' way of presenting Irish history. He dismissed what
he called 'the over-used concept of historiographical
revisionism' and he went on to tell his audience: "In the last
generation, path-breaking work has delineated a political map far
less neatly demarcated than the land-lord versus the tenant, the
orange versus the green, patterns of the old textbooks (now
adhered to only by wishful thinking English and American
observers.)
I presume that this puts me in my academic place!
Foster claims that historians of his ilk want to indulge in 'the
study of mentalities-not only those of the separatist
nationalist...but the mind of the Castle Catholic also, and a
fortiori, that of Protestant...the way people saw themselves as
Irish deserves attention, rather than awarding or denying
Irishness like a mark of good conduct."
Well, one cannot disagree that it is as valid, and as essential,
to deal with the mind of the Castle Catholic as with any other
section of the Irish community...but what is being argued here is
whether the Castle Catholic, supporting and acting as the
middleman for English colonial rule, represented the spirit of
the Irish nation and were a group who betrayed their compatriots
to the exploitation of a foreign colonial power.
A fascinating feature of Dr. Elliot's biography of Wolfe Tone is
her apologia for Dublin Castle. She is reluctant to criticise the
actions of Dublin Castle and its London masters and takes refuge
in sociological abstractions.
In another context, one can certainly understand a French
historian wanting to examine the mind of Marshall Petain or
consider the Vichy regime of 1940-44. But it would be a matter of
some astonishment if the historian depicted Vichy as a regime to
be approved of and being representative of the true French
democratic tradition-even further-to see the current French
government applauding such work and claiming their political
antecedents from the Vichy regime. To take and even more extreme
view...what would our reaction be if a Jewish Dr. Foster emerged
and, in the name of 'academic objectivity', began to argue the
Nazi side of the Holocaust?
Let us clear up this business of 'academic objectivity' which, as
I have said, is waved as the totem of the 'anti-nationalist'
school and which Foster claims he uses. His texts are full of
emotive juxtapositions that hardly support 'objectivity' in any
form. A favorite phrase he uses is 'knee jerk Fenianism'--
meaning republicans had, and have, no philosophy but reaction;
then, we have 'pious nationalism', 'exclusive nationalism' and
'Gaelic Catholic nationalism'. And take this little sentence from
Foster: 'Fenianism and Anglophobia have given way to more mature
politics'. The implications of these sort of phrases are obvious.
Dr. Elliot's language is equally emotive and her biography is
hardly testimony to any form of balance--academic or otherwise.
I would like to end by giving a direct example of what 'anti-
nationalist' history is really about. Seventy years ago, Dail
Eireann (the Irish Parliament) was established in Dublin. How do
the 'anti-nationalists' view such an event? I'll quote one view:
"Throughout 1919 it {the Dail that is} did its best to cripple
the legitimate government of Ireland, which was direct rule from
Westminster through Dublin Castle. Rival courts and local
government bodies were set up and the ordinary machinery {of
government} boycotted." Think about what one is being asked to
believe in these sentences. The Dail miraculously appeared from
nowhere and did its best to cripple the legitimate government of
Ireland.
The fact that Sinn Fein had just won, in overwhelming terms, the
1918 General Election in Ireland, and on a clear mandate for its
MPs to withdraw, if they held the majority of seats, and
establish a separate parliament-the Dail--in Dublin, is not even
considered. The Dail had been set up by the democratically
expressed will of the Irish people and therefore was it not the
legitimate government of Ireland? What makes a government
legitimate if not by democratic will? Yet the 'anti-nationalist'
would appear to have us believe that legitimacy can only be
conferred by a foreign occupying power who held control only by
force of arms.
Let us examine this 1918 General Election. At the dissolution of
Parliament in 1918, the Irish Party held 68; there were 10
Independent Nationalists and 7 seat were held by Sinn Fein.
Unionists held 18 seats.
In the General Election Sinn Fein won 73 seats out of the 105
total. The Irish Party were reduced to 6 seats while the
Unionists managed to increase to 26 seats. This increase was
explained by the fact that several Unionists were able to claim
seats on a split vote between Sinn Fein and the Irish Party.
The 1918 election result was a landslide for Sinn Fein in
anyone's language...anyone, that is, except the 'anti-
nationalist' historians. These historians are now denigrating the
significance of that election result. Their arguments are
fascinating. Let me quote:
"Sinn Fein was not at all particular in its methods.
Intimidation of rival candidates and voters was rife." And again
"Although it had much genuine support, Sinn Fein depended a great
deal upon intimidation for its success."
If, as the 'anti-nationalists' claim, Sinn Fein obtained such a
result by intimidating the Irish electorate, they the party's
power and organization would have been unparalleled in
history...it would make the Nazi Party and their electoral gains
in 1930 and 1932 look like the work of a pack of bungling
amateurs.
But adopting this view, the 'anti-nationalist' can even absolve
the British government from any moral dilemma when it ignored the
democratic will of the Irish nation, attempted to arrest all Sinn
Fein elected representatives and poured troops into the country
in an attempt to coerce the Irish people into withdrawing the
moral authority which they had given to the Dail.
In one recent work I find another astonishing view of the 1918
General Election: "It was not clear what the Irish had voted for
in this election. In contested constituencies in Ireland only 69
oercent of the electors had voted; and of these only 47 percent
had voted Sinn Fein. Independence, then, was the wish only of a
minority of Irishmen."
Needless to say, our 'academically objective' historian failed to
add to this figure the percentages accruing from the 26
consitutencies where Sinn Fein MPs were elected without
opposition which would have added substantially to that 47 per
cent total. But if one even took 47 per cent at its face value,
accepting this myopic equation, then surely the 'anti-
nationalists' are walking on some thin ice? Very few western
democratic governments have come to power with more than 47 per
cent of the votes in an election. The logical conclusion of their
argument in claiming that Sinn Fein was not representative of
the will of the Irish people would be to claim that Margaret
Thatcher's government has no legal validity because she has
pursued her autocratic regime in this country with only an
endorsement of 42 per cent of the electorate.
As with most of their arguments, the 'academically objective'
historians have been extremely selective with election figures to
support their claims. And talking of the 1918 period we find
subsequent election figures are glossed over because they do not
endorse the point they are making.
I refer to the January, 1920 municipal elections in which Sinn
Fein won 72 town and city councils, with a coalition of Sinn Fein
and the Irish Party taking a further 26 town and city councils--
making 98 out of 127 town and city councils controlled by
republicans.
And glossed over are the June, 1920, elections for the county and
rural district council boards of guardians. Sinn Fein won 28 out
of the 32 county councils; they won 186 out of the 206 rural
district councils; and they won 138 out of the 154 boards of
guardians. And this during a time when the English military were
controlling Ireland with an iron fist, when the excesses of the
'Black and Tans' and the Auxiliaries were causing public opinion
throughout the world to denounce England's role.
If one is bandying about election figures to prove a point,
perhaps we should also remind ourselves of the May, 1921 General
Election, following the enforcement of Partition and the
partition parliaments. In this election Westminster introduced
proportional representation into Ireland, not because the
Westminster government believed in it as a better system of
voting (indeed, even today Westminster is wary about proportional
representation). PR was introduced into Ireland in a desperate
attempt by Westminster to decrease the support given to Sinn
Fein. So if one takes that 1921 result as an all-Ireland total we
find that Sinn Fein has won 130 seats out of 180, the Irish PArty
had won 6 seats and the Unionists had won 44.
But our 'anti-nationalist' historian can calmly remark: "It was
not clear what the Irish had voted for."
(During questions, after delivering this paper, I half-jokingly
suggested that among future 'revisionist' works we might find the
'Great hunger' (1845-9) was self-induced by the Irish and that
English absentee landlords and the government did not contribute
at all to what was, when all is said and done, an artificially-
induced famine. Well, the revisionists are an industrious crew.
Recently published is Cormac O Grada's "The Great Irish Famine
(Gill & Macmillian.) He says he is merely presenting an overview
of the historiography and urges a fresh appraisal for, he says,
no one was to blame for the 'famine'. The Irish, he argues, were
simply 'unlucky'! Yes, the loss of two-and-a-half million
population (by death and migration) was merely a question of
luck.
Curiously, he argues that had the famine occurred 20 years
earlier, people would have been less dependent on potatoes and
the government less hidebound by economic dogma. And 40 years
later, the population would have been smaller (yes, 2.5 million
smaller!) and the philosophy of the government towards poor
relief different. Also, he suggests, an antidote to the blight
would have been available. What peculiar arguments for a
historian to make. The point is about as irrelevant as arguing
that had Hitler been assassinated in 1938 then there would have
been no war in 1939. It is an interesting speculation but not
pertinent.
Christine Kinealy, writing in "Fortnight", April 1990, sings a
paean of praise over O Grada's book, dismissing Cecil Woodham-
Smith's classic "The Great Hunger" (1962), which stands as the
major work on the period, a product of nine years research by the
Oxford-trained historian, as 'populist and simplistic to
academics". 'Revisionists' all seem to suffer academic snobbery.
We are back to 'academic objectivity'; only 'academics' possess
this and, for 'revisionist purposes, only those who work in the
history department of universities can be deemed 'serious
historians'.
The new work, delights Christine Kinealy, will go some way to
correcting 'the prevalence of myths and misunderstandings-stories
of ships full of grain leaving Ireland, of overcrowded famine
graveyards, of callous landlord.' In fact, all these 'myths and
misunderstandings' are well documented facts. I have had the
moving experience of visiting an overcrowded famine graveyard
where it has been estimated up to 100,000 Irishmen, women and
children lay in mass graves. That experience was no myth or
misunderstanding. I would suggest a reading of 'Grosse-Ile: The
Holocaust Revisited" by Padraic O Laighan ('The Irish In Canada',
edited by Robert O'Driscoll and Loran Reynolds, Vol. 1, Celtic
Arts of Canada, 1989) for an extremely well documented essay of
facts in this regard.
Christine Kinealy is not so subtle as other of the school she
follows because, in her view of O Grada's work, she lets the
'revisionist' cat out of the bag. She writes: "Yet the famine has
been the subject of little serious research--*perhaps because it
can be used by nationalists to fit their view of history and most
serious historians would not wish to contribute to this
interpretation* (Ellis' italics). I can hardly believe she
admits their purpose so flagrantly or proudly. So, 'serious
historians' (only 'revisionists' apparently fit this title) will
not tackle those areas of Irish history which might be seen as
contributing to nationalist interpretation? My, on my! That's 700
years of Irish history which should be ignored for a start!)
I agree with Desmond Fennell, when he recently remarked that the
work of these 'anti-nationalist' historians was 'the
historiography of the Irish counter-revolution.'
To sum up: G.K. Chesterton once remarked: "The disadvantage of
men not knowing the past is that they do not know the present.
History is a hill or high point of vantage, from which alone men
see the town in which they live of the age in which they are
living." But to see the town or the age clearly, people need a
perspective, a means of interpretation. Unless they know the
fallibility or the bias of the historian--then great damage will
be done. We must beware of our 'academically objective'
colleagues. We must make ourselves aware of the new 'anti-
revisionist' school and challenge their assumptions and
interpretations at every opportunity.
**********
Peter Berresford Ellis is a historian and novelist and a regular
contributor to the "Irish Democrat". He is the author of "A
History of the Irish Working Class", "Hell or Connaught: The
Cromwellian Colonisation of Ireland" and "The Boyne Water: The
Battle of the Boyne 1690". He edited and introduced "James
Connolly: Selected Writings".
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