I am particularly honoured to be asked to give the Desmond Greaves Memorial Lecture. In my opinion, it is very appropriatethat this talk should be about the rise of what is popularlycalled "revisionism" in Irish historical writing. It was asubject which concerned Desmond Greaves very much during themonths before his death. When I last saw Desmond, only a month orso before that tragic event, he was discussing the idea of aconference to draw attention to the changing attitudes in Irishhistorical writing...those attitudes have already been describedby 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. Thusall historians worth their salt are "revisionists". The label ismeaningless. My own view is that the school we are dealing withis a neo-colonial one, an anti-nationalist school which in itsmildest form apologises for English imperialism in Ireland, or,in its strongest form supports that imperialism. We could termthose historians from the 26 County state, who are engaged insuch writing, as "Unionist fellow travellers."
We are not dealing with a new phenomenon. Until 1921 Irishhistory (we are confining ourselves to the 26 counties) was inthe hands of the Unionist school, just as in the 6 Counties Irishhistory has remained in those hands. Only after the emergence ofthe 26 County state did the nationalist interpretation become thegenerally accepted view of Irish history--which was based on thepremise that the Irish people had a moral right to fight fortheir political, economic, social and cultural independenceagainst the imperial ethics of their big neighbor--was theaccepted view of history. Perhaps we can now call it thetraditional view of Irish history.
The rise of the anti-nationalist school, the apologists forimperialism, into a preeminent role during this particular periodis no accident. Anti-nationalist views of Irish history havesurfaced during a time when the unfinished business of Ireland'sstruggle for political, economic, social and culturalindependence has once more come to dominate the life of theseislands. The rise of this school, with the obvious blessing ofthe 26 County government and political establishments, issymptomatic of the concerns felt by that establishment withregard to the problem of North-East Ulster.
We are witnessing one of those extraordinary contradictions whichsometimes, and more frequently than is supposed, appear inhistory. Successive 26 -county governments, from 1921 to date,have claimed an inheritance from the national struggle forindependence, and appeals have been made to the spirit of everyuprising from 1798 to 1916. Irish governments have claimed to bethe true inheritors of the Irish Struggle.
But the continuing struggle in the North of Ireland has placedthe 26 county establishment in an invidious situation. To claimthe historical validity of the cause of Irish nationalism, thatis the independence struggle, is also to accept its validity inthat part of Ireland which has been forcibly severed from therest of the country. Time was when Irish governments refused toadmit the morality and, therefore, legality of Partition; whenthey claimed jurisdiction over the entire island of Ireland (atleast in the Constitution) and refused to accept the authority ofWestminster enforcing Partition against the democratic will ofthe vast majority of the Irish people. Time was, indeed, whenthey could claim that their goal was the reunification ofIreland. Well, that was before the shooting war broke out andWestminster started to apply pressure on Dublin.
The 26-county political establishment grew concerned; they fearedfor their own power-base, being rocked from the North, and sothey felt that they had to reject the very traditions out ofwhich the 26 county state was born. They are conservatives whowish to preserve the de facto status quo between the 26 countystate and Westminster. Notice I say de facto, what is in actualfact; for the 26-county state had never been governed accordingto its constitution as a truly sovereign republic. Until Irelandwent into Europe you would have been hard pressed to findEuropeans who realized that Ireland, in some part at least, wastheoretically independent of Britain. If a minister inWestminster sneezed, a minister in the Dail would obligingly blowtheir nose. At no time prior to 1969 did any Dublin governmentprotest before international bodies at the lack of civil rightsand the abuses of a corrupt system in the North. They were happyin their cozy home-rule statelet. Happy until 1969...the start ofthe current phase of the struggle in the North. Then they beganto worry and to consider ways as to how the reality of therelationship between Dublin and Westminster could be protected. Their self-professed tradition, the claim to be inheritors of theindependence struggle in Ireland, placed them in an awkwardposition. The sham was clearly revealed. They therefore had tomake some changes...and rather than change their position theysimply went about changing their inheritance.
Looking at some of the work being done today, I am reminded ofGeorge Orwell's "1984". You will recall Orwell's protagonist,Winston Graham, works in the Record Department of the Ministry ofTruth. His job is to correct the newspapers and books and bringthe 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 ownMinistry of Truth.
In 1972 two book paved the way for the new 'revisionism'. One wasGarrett Fitzgerald's "Towards a New Ireland" and the other wasConnor Cruise O'Brien's "States of Ireland." Both books sought tonegate the nationalist tradition in Irish history, to attempt asort of peace with English imperialism by maintaining that thereal Irish independence tradition was the O'Connellite 'homerule' philosophies. The lesson they attempted to hammer home wasthat separation from England was never a popular concept in Irishhistorical development, that the republican tradition was aminority view which made no significant impact on Irish politicalphilosophy. The theme developed in both books was that all theIrish people ever wanted was a greater say in their domesticaffairs within English colonial structures. Above all, thesebooks developed the Unionist concept of "two nations" existing inIreland--a Catholic nation, which was Gaelic and nationalist, anda 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 aconsiderable amount of what Orwell would have called 'double-think' as his father had fought in the 1916 Rising, became a SinnFein MP in the 1918 General Election, while his mother was MableMcConnell, and Ulster Protestant who was both a republican and anIrish language enthusiast. It has been said, with somejustification, that Fitzgerald was 'spitting on the grave of hismother.'
In endorsing the Unionist theory that Protestants in the Northconstituted a separate 'Ulster nation', Fitzgerald and O'Brienbecame partially responsible for paving the way for the 'Cruthintheory'. In 1974, Dr. Ian Adamson, from Queen's University,Belfast, published a book entitled "The Cruthin" in which UlsterProtestants were given a new nationality.
We have seen that Ulster Protestant Unionists (to give them afull and clear definition) did not accept themselves as beingIrish; they were also uncomfortable with the label 'British'since the term was synonymous with English; nor could they reallyjustify the term 'Ulster' as three Ulster counties were outsidethe jurisdiction of the Six Counties regime. Dr. Adamson came upwith 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 originalinhabitants of Ireland, arriving long before the Gaels. The Gaelscame and drove the Cruthin to Scotland but, during the 17thcentury Plantations of Ulster, the Cruthin returned to take theirrightful place in the Irish scheme of things. This, at one strokegave the Unionists a new justification for being in Ireland. Theywere the original inhabitants and not merely the descendants ofthe colonial settlements. It is rather like the philosophy ofZionism. They were no longer newcomers settling on the lands ofthe dispossessed natives but a 'chosen people' who had returnedto their 'Promised Land'. Dr, Adamson even tries to shore up histheory by examples of blood groupings to show that the Irish arecomposed 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 thepoint of simply ignoring it. The Cruthin is the Goidelic Celticform of Preteni, which is a Brythonic Celtic name. The Preteni,known as Picti, or 'the painted people', were an offshoot of theContinental Celts who arrived in northern Scotland some centuriesBC, according to Professor Kenneth Jackson, one of the leadingCeltic scholars of this century. There are no texts in the'Pictish language' but some scanty recordings of personal namesand 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 theBritons also came and not from the Q-Celtic, which was the sourceof the Irish and Scottish Gaelic". Now this immediately sendsDr. Adamson's slightly awry because, according to accepted Celticscholarship. Q-Celtic (Goidelic) is more the archaic from ofCeltic and speakers of this form were the first to reach theseislands many centuries before the speakers of the P-Celtic(Brythonic) form. Moreover, in contradiction to Adamson's 'racetheory', both his Cruthin and the Gaels shared a common Celticinheritance.
We might find such arguments very amusing, and very nonsensical,but Adamson's book has had an affect on some prominent sectionsof Unionist thought. More insidiously, Dr. Roy Foster, the doyenof the anti-nationalist historians, in a recent lecture inColeraine, singled out Adamson's work as being worthy of serioushistorical evaluation. In my opinion. not since Houston StewartChamberlain wrote his notorious "Die Grundlagan des NeunzehntenJahrhunderts" (Foundations of the 19 Century), 1899, which was aview of European history and race ideology which became the basisof Nazi political philosophy in the Third Reich, has there beensuch a distorted racist mish-mash.
The philosophies of Fitzgerald and O'Brien were joyously taken upby certain 'academics'. One influential work was Leland Lyons'"Culture and Anarchy in Ireland 1890-1939" which started life asa series of lectures delivered at Oxford in 1978. Lyons depictedthe current struggle, and I quote, as "the battle of twocivilizations'. One, he depicted, as being "Anglo-Irish,pluralist, essentially non-sectarian, which is progressive andliberal" and the other was described as "the heady resurgence ofGaelic separatist values." There now came a veritable dawn-chorus of historians such as Professor Henry Patterson, RonanFanning, Roy Foster and others, emerging mainly from UniversityCollege, Dublin, and all lemming like, rushing to stake theirclaims as leaders of the new school of historians.
In their hands, Irish history is now bering brought into acompatibility with historical perceptions long preached byUnionist historians. Benjamin Franklin was right when he observedthat historians relate not so much what is done as what theywould have believed.
The current cause for concern is not that this anti-nationalistschool of historians exists but the attempt to fool the publicthat they have been given a divine gift of historicalinterpretation that they are producing neutral and unbiasedhistories, that they are somehow rising to the moral 'highground' above factions, above nationalists and Unionists. Theyuse 'academic objectivity' as a watchword, a totem to disguisetheir partisanship.
And even more worrying is the role of the 26-county government isdoing all in its power to promote the works of this school.Recently we have seen Roy Foster having his book "Modern Ireland1600-1972" short listed for the Irish Literary Award by the"Irish Times", the first time a work of history has ever beenshort listed. And we have also seen the Taoiseach, CharlesHaughey, taking the very unusual step of personally launchinganother such book and using the offices of the Department ofForeign Affairs in Dublin. This was Dr. Marianne Elliot's "WolfeTone, Prophet of Irish Independence", in which Tone and theUnited Irishmen, founders of the Irish republican tradition, aredismissed as nothing more than dilettantes and poseurs.
In a brilliant review of this book, Dr. Anthony Coughlan ofTrinity College, Dublin, comments: "Sadly this book, despite itsimpressive academic scholarship and the interesting new materialit contains, is a fundamentally hostile interpretation of Tone.This stems from the fact that the author evidently has littlesympathy with the ideal of an All Ireland Republic which Tone andhis fellow Protestants came to adopt in the 1790's, and which ofcourse remains attained. It is perhaps hard to write asympathetic biography of a political figure if one does not tosome 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 domesticsquabble to a key role in a new international order" (page 347).A 'domestic squabble' implied that the matter had little to dowith English government policy. The cumulative effect of herpejorative and patronizing characterizations of her subject showshow out of sympathy she is with political purposes. Thedenigratory adjectives tends to be chosen when the kinder onemight just as validly for the circumstances. Thus Tone was 'anegligent husband and father,' his republicanism was 'an accidentof nature', he was converted by his own arguments', he was a'young Whig careerist', 'no great initiator of ideas', 'pricklyself-righteous', 'no democrat', 'temporarily unhinged in his ind', with 'an inflated sense of honour', 'not an originalthinker'. She speaks of 'the characteristic Tone device oftelling an audience what it wanted to hear'. 'Tone's thoughprocesses were simplistic.' The oddness of her view of subsequentrepublicanism is conveyed in a comment she makes about Tone inFrance. "This father of Irish republicanism could still long fora time when he might see Sheridan's "School for Scandal" on anEnglish stage."
Before I deal with some detail of the differences between thenationalist, or traditionalist school of Irish history, and thenew revisionism, I think I should make some general remarks aboutattitudes to history. I implied at the beginning of my talk thatall historical writing was biased. You may have heard statementsto the contrary, especially from the works now emanating from theanti-nationalist historian. Bias is only something in the historybooks with which they are disagreeing...not something in theirown works. Wee, such statements are nonsensical. Bias isinevitable. An honest historian would begin by stating theirphilosophical attitudes or making those attitudes known.
History is not simple about the enumeration of facts. It is aboutthe moral interpretation of those facts. Indeed, the very form inwhich the historian relates the facts conveys judgement andprejudice.
For example, let me make what, on the surface, is a simplestatement of fact.
The bottle is half empty. It is a quantifiable fact which surely cannot be argued. Yetif the same fact is put another way--The bottle is half-full--itprovides us with an entirely different concept or interpretationof that very same fact from an entirely different angle.
History, more than most disciplines, is one in which thehistorian 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 anddispassionately. But the historian is just as caught up, involvedand biased, as any of the historical actors who parade beforethem. Consciously or sub consciously, they will contribute tothose historical characters something of themselves, giving theirown values, judgements and reactions. Very few historians canemphatise totally and fully understand what motivated thehistorical characters.
Often a history book will tell you more about the historian thanit does about the historical facts. Historical narratives arefull of the personal judgements of the historian.
As those here tonight would obviously adhere to the historicalphilosophies of James Connolly, who was one of the most brilliantinterpreters of 'historical materialism', I will use thisviewpoint as a means of explaining differences in historicalapproach. Connolly said of the use of Karl Marx's theory ofhistorical materialism' provided "the most reasonable explanationof history."
This theory teaches that the ideas of human beings are derivedfrom their material surroundings, and that the forces which makefor historical changes and human progress have their roots in thedevelopment of the tools men and women use in their struggle forexistence. We are using the word 'tools' in its broadest sense toinclude all the social forces of wealth-production. It teachesthat since the break-up of common ownership and the tribalcommunity, all human history has turned around the struggle ofcontending classes in society--one class striving to retainpossession, first of the persons of the other class to hold aschattel slaves; and then to retain the possession of the tools ofthe other class, to hold them as wage-slaves. It teaches that allthe politics of the world resolve themselves in the last analysisinto a struggle for the possession of that portion of the fruitsof labour which labour creates but does not enjoy...rent,interest and profit.
Therefore, Marx's theory gives an order and logic to historicalinterpretation. To sum up: the key to this is that in everyhistoric epoch the prevailing method of economic production andexchange, and the social organization necessarily following fromit, forms the basis upon which alone can be explained thepolitical and intellectual history of the epoch. Now Marx'stheory was simply a tool of interpretation, and that tool was nobetter 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 abolitionof slavery. The popular, non-Marxist view is that slavery wasabolished because western society progressed to more humaneattitudes and ideals. As we know, it was not until 1791 thatBritain abolished her slave trade; not until 1807 that Britishship were forbidden to transport slaves to other countries andfinally, not until 1833 that slavery was abolished in Britain asa legal institution. Now did the Establishment in this countrysuddenly become more human and liberal in their outlook duringthe period 1791-1833. We know it was a period of tremendousreaction, and the suspension of Habeas Corpus, of presscensorship and lack of civil liberties. And of the oft propoundedideas is that Christian ethics changed the moral climate...well,that is demonstrably false. The Christian Church, in all itssects, lived quite comfortably with slavery for eighteen hundredyears 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 ownersto hire men and women, discharging them when the job was done,than it was to buy men and women and be compelled to feed themall the time, working or idle, sick or well. During the 17thcentury many slave owners came to that realization. That was whyIrish indentured servants, forcibly transported from Ireland tothe colonies and provided free by the English government toplantation owners, were ill-uses, starved and worked to death.The owners had no financial responsibility for them. They couldbe replaced without charge. But slaves--well, slaves had to bebought and, as a financial investment, had to be treated in farbetter conditions than the indentured servants. To sum it up,slavery became immoral and was banned because slaves were morecostlier than wage-labor.
Now it is not my intention to discuss various philosophical viewsthrough which one may approach the understanding of history--simply to state that they exist. From the outset one shouldunderstand what motivates the individual historian rather than bemisled by the nonsensical claims of 'academic objectivity'. Let'sbe entirely cynical about the subject and echo Paul Valery in "Del'histoire": "History justifies whatever we want it to."
So, ignoring all the pseudo-academic justifications and cant withwhich our so-called 'revisionist' friends have bombarded us inrecent years, let us look at the viewpoints of the 'nationalist'and 'anti-nationalist' schools of history. I have already saidthat history was not simply about the enumeration of facts--it isabout the moral interpretation of those facts.
Let us, therefor, deal with the 'nationalist' historian. Andperhaps in view of many people's problems with understanding theword 'nationalist' I should begin with an interpretation of thatword. To English ears, and perhaps because of their imperialisttraditions, nationalism conjures up ideas of Chauvinism andjingoism. But, in the context used in Ireland, it simply means apolicy of securing national rights, the claim of Ireland to be anindependent nation. It is the advocacy of the freedom of nationalcommunities from the political, economic, social and culturalexploitation of other nations. It is a moral stance and one, inmy opinion, which goes hand in hand with a socialist view ofhistory--for national and social freedoms are not two separateand unrelated issues. They are two sides of one great democraticprinciple, each being incomplete without the other. How can onehave 'social freedom' in a state wherein a majority nation keepsa minority nation from exercising its right to decide its ownaffairs? Such a situation is neither democracy nor socialism.
The 'nationalist' historian, therefore, starts from basic moralpremise--the premise that no nation has any defensible right toinvade, conquer and seek to destroy the political, economic,social or cultural fabric of another country. Having assumed thisview, that imperialism is wrong in all its forms, the historiancan commence to interpret Irish history. That history then ceasesto be a welter of unrelated facts, a hopeless chaos of sporadicoutbreaks of violence, intrigues, massacres, treacheries, murdersand purposeless warfare. With this moral historical key, allthings become understandable and traceable to conquer anddominate Ireland.
Then what of the anti-nationalist, our so-called 'revisionist'historian? Their standpoint is not so simple, for they have toperform several gymnastics to support what is, in my opinion atleast, a morally indefensible position. Let me give you a fewexamples.
The most flagrant position is the acceptance, overt or implied,that England's invasion and conquest of Ireland is not a matterfor moral judgement. The argument being that 'force majeure" wasmerely the politics of the Middle Ages and everyone was indulgingin it. The argument goes further; it is claimed that an Irishnational consciousness did not exist, that Ireland was simply aland of divided warring factions and the arrival of one more suchfaction is not a matter of importance nor of moral speculation.
Without wasting much time in rebutting such an argument indetail, we can perhaps point to Donal O'Neill's famousremonstrance to Pope John XXII in 1317 AD which makes it quiteclear that the Irish had a concept of a united nation fightingfor 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 byEdmund Curtis in "A History of Medieval Ireland", Methuen,London, 1923, p 191-194.
The fallacious theory that an Irish national consciousness onlyevolved at a very late stage in Irish historical development(usually asserts as the late 18the Century, presumably to accountfor the 1897 uprising), is one of the most popular arguments ofthe 'anti-nationalist' school.
We have another standpoint: the view that the English colonialrule in Ireland was beneficial to the Irish people and this isusually argued as a corollary to the historian pretending to takea moral 'high-ground', denouncing all factions as backwards andwar-mongering before coming to the 'conclusion' that, on thewhole England had a lot to offer Ireland and that it was simply amatter of regret that she was just a wee bit too brutal, attimes, 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 faitaccompli. It is very much like the current English governmentand, indeed, the official view of the Opposition, talking aboutthe will of the majority in Northern Ireland as some form ofdemocratic totem. By so doing they totally ignore theundemocratic and bloody history of the birth of the Six Counties,how they were forcibly partitioned in 1921 against the democraticwill of the Irish people and were set up as an arbitrary andartificial unit. Democracy has no currency in the Six Counties.The same historians will also argue that the Unionists will neveraccept a reunited Ireland so it is better to give in to theirminority position while ignoring the fact that the people whocompromise the bilk of Unionists, the Ulster Presbyterians, werethe inspiration and mainspring of Irish republicanism during the1798 uprising and many continued to play not insignificant rolesin subsequent struggles for independence. Ulster Presbyterianswere subsequently subverted by English propaganda in one of themost successful divide and rule campaigns ever devised. One ofthe great lessons of history in this respect is how easy it is thchange people's political attitudes. So what was changed once maywell 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 oftheir approach.
Firstly: that the historian must prepare the way for anacceptance of a justification form the status quo in Irelandtoday, particularly in regard to the Six Counties. The SixCounties of North-East Ulster are depicted as a democraticallyformed unit in which the political majority is represented by theUnionists. Partition, imposed by bloodshed and violence, andthreats of bloodshed and violence by Britain against thedemocratic wish of the Irish nation, is not considered in suchhistories. Partiton is merely accepted and made morally bindingon the people.
Secondly: to justify Partion, a two-nation theory is proposed inthat it is argued there exists a Catholic-Gaelic nation,nationalist in politics, and a Protestant-English-speakingnation, Unionist in politics. The cultural separation of the twomain religious communities in Ireland is a key part of the 'anti-nationalist' approach. Not for them Wolf Tone's laudable ambitionto unite Catholic, Protestant and Dissenter under the common nameof Irishmen and Irishwomen.
Dr. Roy Foster, at his recent lecture in Coleraine, tried (andI'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 whathe called 'the over-used concept of historiographicalrevisionism' and he went on to tell his audience: "In the lastgeneration, path-breaking work has delineated a political map farless neatly demarcated than the land-lord versus the tenant, theorange versus the green, patterns of the old textbooks (nowadhered to only by wishful thinking English and Americanobservers.)
I presume that this puts me in my academic place!
Foster claims that historians of his ilk want to indulge in 'thestudy of mentalities-not only those of the separatistnationalist...but the mind of the Castle Catholic also, and afortiori, that of Protestant...the way people saw themselves asIrish deserves attention, rather than awarding or denyingIrishness 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 othersection of the Irish community...but what is being argued here iswhether the Castle Catholic, supporting and acting as themiddleman for English colonial rule, represented the spirit ofthe Irish nation and were a group who betrayed their compatriotsto the exploitation of a foreign colonial power.
A fascinating feature of Dr. Elliot's biography of Wolfe Tone isher apologia for Dublin Castle. She is reluctant to criticise theactions of Dublin Castle and its London masters and takes refugein sociological abstractions.
In another context, one can certainly understand a Frenchhistorian wanting to examine the mind of Marshall Petain orconsider the Vichy regime of 1940-44. But it would be a matter ofsome astonishment if the historian depicted Vichy as a regime tobe approved of and being representative of the true Frenchdemocratic tradition-even further-to see the current Frenchgovernment applauding such work and claiming their politicalantecedents from the Vichy regime. To take and even more extremeview...what would our reaction be if a Jewish Dr. Foster emergedand, in the name of 'academic objectivity', began to argue theNazi side of the Holocaust?
Let us clear up this business of 'academic objectivity' which, asI have said, is waved as the totem of the 'anti-nationalist'school and which Foster claims he uses. His texts are full ofemotive juxtapositions that hardly support 'objectivity' in anyform. 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 fromFoster: 'Fenianism and Anglophobia have given way to more maturepolitics'. The implications of these sort of phrases are obvious.
Dr. Elliot's language is equally emotive and her biography ishardly 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, DailEireann (the Irish Parliament) was established in Dublin. How dothe 'anti-nationalists' view such an event? I'll quote one view:"Throughout 1919 it {the Dail that is} did its best to cripplethe legitimate government of Ireland, which was direct rule fromWestminster through Dublin Castle. Rival courts and localgovernment bodies were set up and the ordinary machinery {ofgovernment} boycotted." Think about what one is being asked tobelieve in these sentences. The Dail miraculously appeared fromnowhere and did its best to cripple the legitimate government ofIreland.
The fact that Sinn Fein had just won, in overwhelming terms, the1918 General Election in Ireland, and on a clear mandate for itsMPs to withdraw, if they held the majority of seats, andestablish a separate parliament-the Dail--in Dublin, is not evenconsidered. The Dail had been set up by the democraticallyexpressed will of the Irish people and therefore was it not thelegitimate government of Ireland? What makes a governmentlegitimate if not by democratic will? Yet the 'anti-nationalist'would appear to have us believe that legitimacy can only beconferred by a foreign occupying power who held control only byforce of arms.
Let us examine this 1918 General Election. At the dissolution ofParliament in 1918, the Irish Party held 68; there were 10Independent 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 105total. The Irish Party were reduced to 6 seats while theUnionists managed to increase to 26 seats. This increase wasexplained by the fact that several Unionists were able to claimseats on a split vote between Sinn Fein and the Irish Party.
The 1918 election result was a landslide for Sinn Fein inanyone's language...anyone, that is, except the 'anti-nationalist' historians. These historians are now denigrating thesignificance of that election result. Their arguments arefascinating. 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 greatdeal upon intimidation for its success."
If, as the 'anti-nationalists' claim, Sinn Fein obtained such aresult by intimidating the Irish electorate, they the party'spower and organization would have been unparalleled inhistory...it would make the Nazi Party and their electoral gainsin 1930 and 1932 look like the work of a pack of bunglingamateurs.
But adopting this view, the 'anti-nationalist' can even absolvethe British government from any moral dilemma when it ignored thedemocratic will of the Irish nation, attempted to arrest all SinnFein elected representatives and poured troops into the countryin an attempt to coerce the Irish people into withdrawing themoral authority which they had given to the Dail.
In one recent work I find another astonishing view of the 1918General Election: "It was not clear what the Irish had voted forin this election. In contested constituencies in Ireland only 69oercent of the electors had voted; and of these only 47 percenthad voted Sinn Fein. Independence, then, was the wish only of aminority of Irishmen."
Needless to say, our 'academically objective' historian failed toadd to this figure the percentages accruing from the 26consitutencies where Sinn Fein MPs were elected withoutopposition which would have added substantially to that 47 percent 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 westerndemocratic governments have come to power with more than 47 percent of the votes in an election. The logical conclusion of theirargument in claiming that Sinn Fein was not representative ofthe will of the Irish people would be to claim that MargaretThatcher's government has no legal validity because she haspursued her autocratic regime in this country with only anendorsement of 42 per cent of the electorate.
As with most of their arguments, the 'academically objective'historians have been extremely selective with election figures tosupport their claims. And talking of the 1918 period we findsubsequent election figures are glossed over because they do notendorse the point they are making.
I refer to the January, 1920 municipal elections in which SinnFein won 72 town and city councils, with a coalition of Sinn Feinand the Irish Party taking a further 26 town and city councils--making 98 out of 127 town and city councils controlled byrepublicans.
And glossed over are the June, 1920, elections for the county andrural district council boards of guardians. Sinn Fein won 28 outof the 32 county councils; they won 186 out of the 206 ruraldistrict councils; and they won 138 out of the 154 boards ofguardians. And this during a time when the English military werecontrolling Ireland with an iron fist, when the excesses of the'Black and Tans' and the Auxiliaries were causing public opinionthroughout 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 GeneralElection, following the enforcement of Partition and thepartition parliaments. In this election Westminster introducedproportional representation into Ireland, not because theWestminster government believed in it as a better system ofvoting (indeed, even today Westminster is wary about proportionalrepresentation). PR was introduced into Ireland in a desperateattempt by Westminster to decrease the support given to SinnFein. So if one takes that 1921 result as an all-Ireland total wefind that Sinn Fein has won 130 seats out of 180, the Irish PArtyhad won 6 seats and the Unionists had won 44.
But our 'anti-nationalist' historian can calmly remark: "It wasnot clear what the Irish had voted for." (During questions, after delivering this paper, I half-jokinglysuggested that among future 'revisionist' works we might find the'Great hunger' (1845-9) was self-induced by the Irish and thatEnglish absentee landlords and the government did not contributeat 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 overviewof the historiography and urges a fresh appraisal for, he says,no one was to blame for the 'famine'. The Irish, he argues, weresimply 'unlucky'! Yes, the loss of two-and-a-half millionpopulation (by death and migration) was merely a question ofluck.
Curiously, he argues that had the famine occurred 20 yearsearlier, people would have been less dependent on potatoes andthe government less hidebound by economic dogma. And 40 yearslater, the population would have been smaller (yes, 2.5 millionsmaller!) and the philosophy of the government towards poorrelief different. Also, he suggests, an antidote to the blightwould have been available. What peculiar arguments for ahistorian to make. The point is about as irrelevant as arguingthat had Hitler been assassinated in 1938 then there would havebeen no war in 1939. It is an interesting speculation but notpertinent.
Christine Kinealy, writing in "Fortnight", April 1990, sings apaean of praise over O Grada's book, dismissing Cecil Woodham-Smith's classic "The Great Hunger" (1962), which stands as themajor work on the period, a product of nine years research by theOxford-trained historian, as 'populist and simplistic toacademics". 'Revisionists' all seem to suffer academic snobbery.We are back to 'academic objectivity'; only 'academics' possessthis and, for 'revisionist purposes, only those who work in thehistory department of universities can be deemed 'serioushistorians'.
The new work, delights Christine Kinealy, will go some way tocorrecting 'the prevalence of myths and misunderstandings-storiesof ships full of grain leaving Ireland, of overcrowded faminegraveyards, of callous landlord.' In fact, all these 'myths andmisunderstandings' are well documented facts. I have had themoving experience of visiting an overcrowded famine graveyardwhere it has been estimated up to 100,000 Irishmen, women andchildren lay in mass graves. That experience was no myth ormisunderstanding. I would suggest a reading of 'Grosse-Ile: TheHolocaust Revisited" by Padraic O Laighan ('The Irish In Canada',edited by Robert O'Driscoll and Loran Reynolds, Vol. 1, CelticArts of Canada, 1989) for an extremely well documented essay offacts in this regard.
Christine Kinealy is not so subtle as other of the school shefollows because, in her view of O Grada's work, she lets the'revisionist' cat out of the bag. She writes: "Yet the famine hasbeen the subject of little serious research--*perhaps because itcan be used by nationalists to fit their view of history and mostserious historians would not wish to contribute to thisinterpretation* (Ellis' italics). I can hardly believe sheadmits their purpose so flagrantly or proudly. So, 'serioushistorians' (only 'revisionists' apparently fit this title) willnot tackle those areas of Irish history which might be seen ascontributing to nationalist interpretation? My, on my! That's 700years of Irish history which should be ignored for a start!)
I agree with Desmond Fennell, when he recently remarked that thework of these 'anti-nationalist' historians was 'thehistoriography of the Irish counter-revolution.'
To sum up: G.K. Chesterton once remarked: "The disadvantage ofmen not knowing the past is that they do not know the present.History is a hill or high point of vantage, from which alone mensee the town in which they live of the age in which they areliving." But to see the town or the age clearly, people need aperspective, a means of interpretation. Unless they know thefallibility or the bias of the historian--then great damage willbe done. We must beware of our 'academically objective'colleagues. We must make ourselves aware of the new 'anti-revisionist' school and challenge their assumptions andinterpretations at every opportunity.
Peter Berresford Ellis is a historian and novelist and a regularcontributor to the "Irish Democrat". He is the author of "AHistory of the Irish Working Class", "Hell or Connaught: TheCromwellian Colonisation of Ireland" and "The Boyne Water: TheBattle of the Boyne 1690". He edited and introduced "JamesConnolly: Selected Writings".
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