Irish Politics

In 1980, three Republican women prisoners held in Armagh prison in Northern Ireland joined the hunger strike being conducted by male Republican prisoners in Maze Prison. Overshadowed by the fatal 1981 strike, the 1980 strike involved these women in Armagh, who challenged the traditional nationalist notion of the strong male warrior, while generating sympathy and solidarity across the globe, including with the far left and the women’s liberation movement in Britain. This article will look at how the left and the women’s liberation movement in both Britain and Ireland looked to portray these women within their competing narratives.

This article argues that the post-Dayton political organisation of Bosnia represents an exemplary illustration of the difficulties associated with the empirical application of the pluralist model of “consociational democracy”. The country’s political system has been predicated on the existence of consensus and the spirit of cooperation among the three ethnic groups without, however, offering any electoral or political incentives to their leaderships to cooperate. Also, the inclusion of several elements to the Dayton accords of a partition approach to conflict resolution has even encouraged the ethnic leaderships to maintain their nationalistic programs and their endeavours to exploit the aforementioned power-sharing arrangements. Indeed, the structural deficiencies of the Dayton agreement have permitted nationalists to continue implementing their ethnic
agendas and have accounted for the slow progress towards the implementation of the Bosnian peace process. Therefore, this article elaborates on the international policies in Bosnia, aimed at transforming the country into a viable multiethnic state, and highlights the significance of motivations for implementing the peace process.

This paper analyses the strength of the new laws regulating lobbying in Ireland and the United Kingdom (UK). This examination was conducted using the Centre for Public Integrity’s (CPI) “Hired Guns” quantitative method for assessing the stringency of lobbying legislation. These laws were introduced, after years of unfulfilled promises and scandals, in an effort to increase the public’s trust in their representative institutions. We find that the Irish Regulation of Lobbying Act 2015 offers a slightly higher level of transparency than the UK’s Transparency of Lobbying, Non-Party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Act 2014. Additionally, using the CPI’s index allows our findings to be compared with those from other jurisdictions around the world with lobbying regulations in place.

Sunday Times 13 July 2014

In Justine McCarthy's article about Joyce McSharry, who was separated from her mother in the Bethany Home in 1951, the solicitor David Phelan of Hayes & Sons disclaimed knowledge of an irregular 'Adoption Agreement' written by the firm (Quest for lost mother ends at graveside, News, last week).
    In the 'Agreement' Ralph Walker of Hayes & Sons, nephew of Bethany Home residential secretary Hettie Walker, was named as the 'attorney' of Joyce's mother, Emily Sheppey.
    This was so as to arrange a future legal adoption without consulting Emily.
    Derek Leinster and I wrote to Hayes & Sons between 2010-11.
    The firm also wrote the 'Adoption Agreement' which saw Derek handed to a dysfunctional family in 1945.
    In 2011 a representative volunteered without explanation that he approached a retired partner to see if he could shed light on the mystery. The person concerned is a son of the Bethany Matron. She witnessed the 1951 'Agreement' and remained as matron until the home closed in 1972.
    He too was “not aware of the existence of any records relating to Bethany Home”.
    I wrote again on July 3 with regard to the Emily Sheppey 'Agreement', indicating that this indicated ongoing engagement between the home and the firm.
    I am informed that such documentation should not be destroyed and also that, if destroyed, a record would normally be kept.
    Mr Phelan wrote to me at 8.39pm on Friday July 4th that unsuccessful "searches have been carried out", and that therefore "there is nothing more we can do".
    I suggested to Mr Phelan that "If the documents have been removed from your firm you are unlikely to find them in it".
    I also asked Mr Phelan to consider calling in the authorities if he concludes that important documentation was removed in a possibly unauthorized manner.
    Whatever he decides, Children separated from their parents in the Bethany Home would appreciate if Mr Phelan could provide them with more information.

Niall Meehan, Faculty Head, Journalism & Media, Griffith College Dublin.

In response to a paper I delivered at the "Institutions and Ireland: Medicine, Health, and Welfare" conference at Trinity College, Dublin in January 2016, I was generously invited to contribute to the "Perceptions of Pregnancy" blog. In this post I offer an account of the political and aesthetic ends to which references to Ireland’s Lock hospitals and the discourses of sexual hygiene with which they were enmeshed are deployed in the writings of James Joyce and Oliver St John Gogarty.

"Perceptions of Pregnancy" is an interdisciplinary and international network for researchers working on fertility, pregnancy and childbirth, which grew out of the "Perceptions of Pregnancy: From the Medieval to the Modern" conference, held at the University of Hertfordshire from 16-18 July 2014. The network and associated blog are run by Dr Jennifer Evans and Dr Ciara Meehan of the School of Humanities, University of Hertfordshire.

The "Perceptions of Pregnancy" site is an extremely valuable and ever-evolving resource for scholars and general readers alike and is well worth a visit.

This book chapter examines Herbert Remmel’s childhood experience which juxtaposed Hitler’s Germany and de Valera’s neutral Ireland. Born in 1936 in Cologne he experienced the war from the perspective of a child. As a fortunate nine year old, he escaped the bombed out Rhineland by taking advantage of a humanitarian operation involving the Irish Red Cross and the Save the German Children Society (SGCS). He landed off the mail-boat from Liverpool at Dun Laoghaire in Dublin on 27 July 1946 as a member of the first group of approximately 80 German children arriving under the scheme. Herbert’s experiences with his two Irish foster families instilled in the young German boy a deep and intimate appreciation of Ireland, its society, the Irish sense of place, the people’s traditions, the Irish rural way of life and Irish nationalism. Though only in Ireland for just under three years, the interlude was indelibly imprinted on his being and identity. His experience granted him rare insights into both his native fatherland, Germany, and his fostering motherland, Ireland.

This book, co-edited with Mark O'Brien, presents an overview of political communication in the Republic of Ireland from a multiplicity of perspectives and sources. It brings together academics and practitioners to examine the development and current shape of political communication in modern Ireland. It also examines what the future holds for political communication in an increasingly gatekeeper-free media landscape.

The field of political communication, where journalists, public relations professionals and politicians intersect and interact, has always been a highly contested one fuelled by suspicion, mutual dependence and fraught relationships.

While politicians need the media they remain highly suspicious of journalists. While journalists remain wary of politicians, they need access to them for information. For most of the time, what emerges is a relatively stable relationship of mutual dependence with the boundaries policed by public relation professions.

However, every so often, in times of political crisis or upheaval, this relationship gives way to a near free-for-all. Politicians, spokespersons and sometimes even journalists, become fair game in the battle for public accountability and support. The determination of public relations professions to avoid this and keep the relationship based on mutual dependence has become a central component of modern statecraft and systems of governance. The need to keep politicians and the media ‘on message’ and use the media to inform, shape and manage public discourse has become central to the workings of government, opposition and interest groups.

On the other hand, the packaging of politics has potentially troublesome implications for the democratic process. In the era of the instant news cycle, new technologies and constant opinion polling, just where does information end and misinformation begin? With millions being spent annually on advisors and ‘spin-doctors’, just where does media access end and media manipulation begin?

In an attempt to facilitate greater voting participation in the Republic of Ireland, photographs of candidates have been placed on the ballot paper for local, national and European elections. Limited research undertaken in advance of the implementation of the photograph policy advised that the measure would assist people with literacy problems. However, social psychology research has long demonstrated that people are willing to make considerable judgements about a person when shown a photograph. The advent of ballot paper photographs allows candidates to be evaluated on the basis of their appearance. This article will explore how photographs could have become a factor in voter decision-making. Providing additional knowledge to encourage greater participation and engagement has introduced a possible new level of superficiality into the voter decision-making process.

The Irish Times published a letter from me on 28 January 2020. It pointed to errors and contradictions in Irish Times reports on how many former residents of institutions the Committee to Investigate Child Abuse (CICA) had interviewed. Those errors were due to confusion in CICA's 2009 report. CICA acknowledged that I had brought to their attention a major error concerning how many children resided in institutions over many decades. The letter was submitted in early December but the paper refused to publish. After I complained to the Press Ombudsman and some correspondence the newspaper changed its stance and published the letter in late January 2020. The letter is here, plus some explanatory material (7 pages in all).

The role of higher education systems in the formation and reproduction of governing elites, and their countervailing potential for the creation of a more egalitarian, or meritocratic, society, has been an enduring subject of concern, debate and research. Many of these debates are made all the more difficult by our inability to directly compare elite formation systems within and between countries and over time. To resolve these problems, this paper employs elite formation quantitative indices to directly and transparently compare elite formation systems, namely the role of higher education systems in political elite formation over three quarters of a century in two countries. Specifically, the paper compares the influence, exclusiveness and eliteness of the Irish and British higher education systems in the production of their respective governing political elites in the 75 years between 1937 and 2012.

This article considers Angela Kerins v John McGuinness, a 2019 case decided by the Irish Supreme Court concerning the justiciability of parliamentary proceedings. It is in four parts. The first two are descriptive: one presents the important facts of Kerins (including facts outlined in Kerins' submissions to the Court but not in the judgment); the other, the relevant constitutional text and precedents. Part III assesses how, in light of the text and precedents, the judges approached the question of justiciability in the case. It gives some consideration to the approach taken to the same question in Denis O’Brien v Clerk of Dáil Éireann, a related case decided in the same period, and in tandem, by the same seven judges. The concluding part offers analysis of the coherence and implications of this jurisprudence.

Austerity and economic hardship are common themes in the narratives about the causes of contemporary populism. Ireland, having endured a decade of austerity and a very severe EU-IMF bailout, might therefore seem to be a fertile bed for populism. But Ireland has (so far) seen the effects of populism only in a limited and unusual form. There has been neither a great left-wing populist rise, nor a new nationalist, populist right. Populism manifested chiefly in a movement – powerful and influential in its limited way – to resist payment of water charges.
 
The introduction of domestic water charges with the aim of reducing water waste and improving water infrastructure resulted in massive backlash, far greater than those from more severe consequences of austerity such as tax hikes, sweeping cuts in expenditure, a colossal bank bailout, and very high unemployment. It spawned a populist political movement, rallying and uniting left-wing political parties and creating a major lobby and protest group. Massive demonstrations were held. Workers installing water meters were obstructed and harassed. A senior government official was trapped in her car by water protesters, leading to prosecutions of a number of water protesters for false imprisonment along with considerable public controversy around accusations of political policing. Many Irish people refused to pay water bills sent to them.
 
This has been the major issue championed by anti-austerity and left-wing populist parties, with calls for wide-scale boycotts and protests and even suggestions that a right to water should be inserted into the Irish Constitution. It has been the focal point of Irish politics for the last half decade, affecting the outcome of both local and general elections.
 
This is a strange story of populism. On the one hand, many of the risks often associated with populism – government capitulation to populist demands, creep of mainstream parties towards populist causes, a splintering of the parliament – actualised in Ireland. On the other hand, they actualised in an unusual way that has left the political establishment largely intact: the party that led the imposition of austerity remains in power; political and structural reforms have been minor; concessions to populism have been largely limited to the issue of water. It seems as though populism was contained.  
 
I have two goals in this paper. First, I wish to map the idiosyncratic Irish experience, so that it can be considered in discussions of populism; and secondly, I wish to use this example to make a broader point about the local nature of populism.
 
Certainly, Ireland’s experience of populism can only be properly understood in light of its public law and conventions: its electoral system, executive dominated government, centrist political culture, and particular economic circumstances all played a role. From this, it might be thought that generalisable lessons could be learned from the Irish experience about avoiding the worst effects of populism, but I wish to argue that the opposite is true: Ireland’s unique experience shows the irreducible complexity and locality of populism. Populism is always contingent and local, reacting the peculiarities of political culture and circumstance. The best way to study populism is not through theory and search for similarity, but through observation of diversity. While we might see some similarity, pattern, and convergence in populism around the world, this is largely happenstance, and populism will always be recast and remade in each and each place to produce distinct and often unpredictable results. It is, even if while it seems to sweep the world, fundamentally a local phenomenon. The surprising and peculiar characteristics of the Irish case help illustrate the local nature of populism, which should inform any analysis of contemporary populist movements.

Purpose-The purpose of this paper is to investigate the prospects of Belfast as a Tourism City with a special focus on dark (troubles) tourism. Design/methodology/approach-This paper uses two surveysone for overseas-based potential tourists and one for Northern Ireland residents; one focus group with potential tourists; and three interviews, one with a Belfast MP and two with tour-guide operators, one from each side of the Northern Ireland divide. This paper is less theoretical than exploratory. Findings-Generally, there is strong and widespread support for the concept of troubles tourism. Stakeholders must ensure that troubles tourism is intelligently and sensitively handled and builds up communities. Originality/value-This is a relatively new and under-researched area. Belfast has been rarely looked at in urban-tourism studies. Findings have applicability for other post-conflict and divided countries, such as the countries of the former Yugoslavia.

The Revolution Papers is a weekly newspaper that tells the story of the Irish revolution from 1916 to 1923 by reproducing newspapers covering key events in the period. As editor, I write a review of the newspapers in each issue. This review is from our first issue which was published on 28 December 2015. For further details, please visit http://therevolutionpapers.ie/

This paper focuses on the difficulties Kathleen O'Brennan faced as a political radical and foreigner operating as an Irish republican activist in the United States. In 1920, O'Brennan constructed for herself and the American Women Pickets for the Enforcement of America's War Aims an American identity rooted in popular conceptions of the American Revolution. This let her work more effectively at the same time that it allowed feminists, radicals, and leftists to campaign for U.S. recognition of the Irish Republic in the face of opposition from the conservative Friends of Irish Freedom and American nativists. Yet once Irish republican politicians established the American Association for the Recognition of the Irish Republic, thus shaping their own acceptable American identity, they made it difficult for the radical O'Brennan to act as an Irish nationalist in the United States. In defiance, O'Brennan and Dr. Gertrude B. Kelly formed American auxiliaries of the Irish White Cross. Irish politicians and their American organization, however, foiled O'Brennan's efforts by branding her un-American, and, therefore, un-Irish. O'Brennan's activities show that displays of American patriotism and American character served as political tools in the transatlantic Irish republican cause, but the movement ultimately depended on who could best use American identities for their own ends.

Review of Robin Bury, 'Buried Lives, the Protestants of Southern Ireland, History Press of Ireland, 2017.

This survey of 20th Century southern Protestant experience notes that it began badly for Protestant landlords. Their huge estates were sub-divided for purchase by unappreciative mainly Romanist tenants.
    Then things went further downhill.
    Bury’s narrative asserts that IRA attacks on individual Protestants during the 1919-23 War of Independence and Civil War were sectarian. Southern Protestant testimony rejecting this perception is ignored, alongside other contrary evidence...... (the rest in PDF)

This paper is focused on the dangers and opportunities for Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland presented by Brexit. It argues that the difficulties cannot analytically be understood nor the opportunities seized until we disaggregate ‘identity politics’, seeing it not as a function of a homogenous identity but of identity change. Once set in place, however, identity politics takes on its own dynamic. Exogenous shocks can open the opportunity of alternative aims, alliances and identity-coalitions, and then the task is to find the institutional and political incentives to guide identity change in more open, deliberative and dialogic directions. That is what a constitutional moment provides.  I argue that the exogenous shock of Brexit opens the way for such a period of North-South deliberation and reconstruction. The paper begins with the general argument, and goes on to show how Brexit stimulates Irish government action and can lead to a constitutional moment, one focused not on the state in control in Northern Ireland but on creating deliberative political communities on the island and in its two parts .

As private sector archaeologists in Ireland struggle to cope with the negative effects of the recent development meltdown, this article analyses the relationship between the ‘developer pays’ principle and the ongoing problem of non-publication of excavations and other issues.

This chapter considers the record of the Irish Supreme Court in its constitutional policing of the two political “organs of State.” It outlines the basis upon which the judicial organ enjoys the authority to determine the limits of the powers of the Oireachtas and Government. It explores the various approaches taken by judges and courts in a selection of the main cases in the period 1970-2020. On the powers of Government – and the power of the judicial organ with respect to those powers – it considers the famous case of Crotty v An Taoiseach. Here, a five-judge Supreme Court split on a fundamental question of constitutional principle: whether Government had the authority to enter the State into a particular treaty. Two of the five saw no basis for judicial intervention, whereas three, and thus a majority, were satisfied that there was such a basis. As for the powers of the Oireachtas – and the power of the judicial organ with respect to those powers – the chapter looks at In re Haughey, Abbeylara and Angela Kerins. Like Crotty, these cases go to the heart of the separation of powers in Irish constitutional law and politics. Overall, the analysis suggests that Irish judges have not been at all meek in their constitutional regulation of the political organs of State. They have happily stepped in, though generally seeking to limit their interventions to particular cases and contexts.

NEW CCOB letter in full to Mary Holland 30 September 1979.

In 1979 Mary Holland's freelance contract with the Observer newspaper was terminated. An award-winning journalist and broadcaster, she had written for the newspaper since 1964. Holland pioneered coverage of the Troubles in Northern Ireland.

As editor in chief, Conor Cruise O'Brien objected to her coverage of Northern Ireland, in particular to an article on ten years of the Troubles. O'Brien wrote to Holland after he had altered the article (causing an entire edition of the Observer magazine to be pulped). He noted, 'It is a serious weakness in your coverage of Irish affairs that you are a very poor judge of Irish Catholics. That gifted and talkative community includes some of the most expert conmen and conwomen in the world and in this case I believe you have been conned'. It letter is included here in full.

O'Brien also wrote in relation to the subject of Mary Holland's piece, Derry woman Mary Nellis, 'Since Irish republicanism - especially the killing strain of it - has a very high propensity to run in families, and since the mother is most often the carrier, I incline to the view that a mother [Mary Nellis] whose [H Block prisoner] sons behave in this way has had something to do with what they believe and how they behave.'

O'Brien would not allow Holland to contribute similar material in future. Her contract was terminated in 1979. When O'Brien vacated his post in 1981, Holland returned to write for the paper.

Irish Press, Irish Times and Guardian coverage is also attached (pp3-6). Pages 1-2 contains cover of Embers of Revisionism pamphlet, and a leaflet handed out at TCD's Centenary Conor Cruise O'Brien Symposium.

This 2005 article discusses the value of the Guy Liddell diaries, 1939-45. Liddell dictated these as a kind of rolling aide memoire. One part of the question posed at the conclusion of the artlcle - whether he continued the practice in peacetime - was eventually answered with the release of postwar volumes up to his departure in 1953. The other - whether he kept such diaries before the war - has not.

The use of terrorism as a strategy for obtaining political goals by non-state actors persists in the international system, despite attempts by states to counter the phenomenon. This article explores the resurgent threat posed to British security by dissident Irish republicans in order to illustrate the limited utility of terrorism as a strategy in the current sociopolitical context. Therefore, it has three objectives: First, it explains how strategic theory can aid in constructing a conceptual framework for explaining the persistence of terrorism, in general, and dissident republican violence, in particular. Second, it examines the dissident threat in light of the general failure of “armed struggle” to achieve republican goals in Irish politics. It is argued here that dissident republicans have confused “means” with “ends” and that this, ultimately, demonstrates the futility of their violence. Finally, the article suggests ways of tackling the dissident republican variant of terrorism.

This article was the first in a series written about Protestant decline in County Cork, and particularly, West Cork based on the release of the 1911 census online which showed the complex nature of the Protestant population in Cork. The article showed that in Cork more than half of the decline was related to the British military industrial complex in Cork. Inevitably, this was relevant to the 'Dunmanway' controversy in Irish history and recent separate research by Dr. Andy Bielenberg and Professor David Fitzpatrick which confirms the analysis contained here.

A 1994 analysis of the crisis in Queen's University Belfast, due to a finding by the Fair Employment Agency (later Commission) that the university systematically discriminated against Roman Catholics. The university was forced to take remedial action at an institutional level, arising from publicity locally, in Britain and in the USA. This is an improved text-searchable version.

From the back cover:

Protestant bigotry, a Masonic conspiracy, the treachery of individuals, or mere "procedural irregularities" - what is the truth of the Queen's University of Belfast's Fair Employment Crisis?

This thought-provoking study suggests that the answer is to be found at a much deeper level, within the structures, personnel and culture of the University. The reader is invited to question widely-held assumptions regarding both the position of Queen's as a liberal institution and its relationships with wider Northern Irish society. Ultimately this book is a call for full and open debate on the core issues of equality of opportunity at Queen's.

Cathal Smyth had been a student at Queen's since 1987, studying in a number of faculties and holding posts in the Student's Union including that of President in 1991/92. This book is based on his under-graduate dissertation in the Department of Politics. Cathal graduated in 1994 with a first class honours degree.

The Kilmichael Ambush Centenary
Talk by Niall Meehan for Independent Left, 9pm, 28 November 2020

Here is the historical Nine O'Clock News. I am going to talk about and event that took place this day one hundred years ago, about five hours earlier.

The Kilmichael Ambush on 28 November 1920 occurred two years after Sinn Fein’s November 1918 General Election victory, taking 73 of 105 Irish seats with approximately 70% support, and refusal to sit in the British House of Commons. It was over a year since Britain outlawed the separatist parliament, the Dáil, set up in January 1919. Many of the newly elected members were in British jails. The IRA emerged as a force that defended Dáil institutions and defied British jurisdiction, in a situation of contested dual power. The armed struggle was part of a campaign of resistance that involved strikes against British militarism, refusal by Irish workers to transport British forces and materiel (inspired by British workers who refused to transport munitions for use attempting to overthrow the new Soviet Union), trenching of roads, setting up alternative courts and local administration, as well as demonstrations and vigils. The hotbed of defiance and resistance was in Ireland’s largest and southernmost county, Cork.

South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) is an internationally-regarded-if contested-touchstone for transitional justice, but it functioned above all as exemplary theatre, bringing together thousands of disparate voices. Like the theatrical space generally, it provided a forum for differing narratives about the past to be aired in post-Apartheid South Africa. In Ireland, on the other hand, there has not been – nor are we likely to see – any truth commission. It is this essay’s contention that drama is the nearest the society will get to exploring the past, with the theatre a safe space in which storytelling and debates are taking place beyond the impasse of the political culture. This article approaches this through four plays: Athol Fugard’s The Train Driver and Owen McCafferty’s Quietly (both 2012) and David Ireland’s Cyprus Avenue and Mongiwekhaya’s I See You (both 2016). All reflect complications of dialogue(s) taking place on the past, and themes of reconciliation, in their respective territories.

This paper considers the prospect of using the Constitution of Ireland as the basis for a iunited Ireland Constitution. It is perhaps assumed by some political commentators in the South that this approach – similar to the German unification experience – is an obvious starting point. But it is far from clear that this is a workable model. It might have an advantage in giving us a default, a starting point and some sense of continuity that might make agreement on a constitutional arrangement less likely to break down. But at the same time, defaulting to the Irish Constitution’s positions could itself be so divisive as to cause such a breakdown in consensus.

If the Irish Constitution could fill this role, it would have to be overhauled in a major way, leaving a document that might look almost unrecognisable. The practicality of this should be carefully considered, but so too should the risk that unwritten or conventional aspects of the original constitutional order might remain in spite of radical change. This raises the philosophical quandary of the ship of Theseus: is a ship, with all its planks gradually replaced, still the same ship? The paper considers whether the protean nature of this radically amended constitution’s identity – simultaneously the same and vastly different – could offer a road to a successful compromise.

Throughout history, the Druids have always been seen as sorcerers who had a strong bond with nature. Ancestral knowledge holders within Celtic society, directed all religious activity as the highest authority linked to the gods, practiced human sacrifices and festivals organized as Imbolc, Beltaine, Lugnasad or Samain, etc.. all aspects of which are discussed in this article.

This book provides a comprehensive overview of the Irish welfare system in comparative perspective. It examines key issues which have shaped the development of the Irish welfare state including the impact of Ireland’s post-colonial position, the role of globalisation and Ireland’s integration into the world-economy, and the respective roles of Irish state and societal institutions. The book places the Irish welfare state in a comparative European context and examines the extent to which Ireland fits into existing welfare typologies. It looks at the key policy areas of welfare support for those of working age, pensioners and children. It outlines the development of welfare systems in each area, describes the current level of coverage in a comparative context and outlines key debates. It also examines key policy issues including public opinion on the Irish welfare state, proposals for a basic income and debates on the privatization of welfare. The book concludes by discussing the possible future directions of welfare policy in Ireland.

Historians in southern Ireland, who examine the interaction of religion with social and political policy, tend to fixate on the Roman Catholic Church. Southern Protestants plus their socio-economic, political and religious interactions within wider society are often ignored. Though over 90% of southerners were, for a long period, Roman Catholic, were other denominations as irrelevant as this absence of consideration appears to suggest?

I look here at a much relied upon, pioneering and, generally, highly astute account, J.H. Whyte’s Church & State in Modern Ireland, 1923-1970 (1971). Whyte interviewed ten clergymen including five bishops, all Roman Catholic, in a book devoted to that church’s role in independent Ireland.  These geographical and denominational limitations produced avoidable interpretive weaknesses.

Take Article 44 of the 1937 Constitution, on religion. Article 44.1.2 recognised the ‘special position of the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Roman Church as the guardian of the faith professed by the great majority of citizens’. It recognised also, in 44.1.3, the Church of Ireland, Presbyterian and Methodist churches, the Religious Society of Friends, Jewish congregations and ‘other religious denominations existing’ at that time.

The affirmation of a ‘special position’ represented, said Whyte, ‘One more instance of the movement … to enshrine Catholic principles in the law of the land’. It marked, ‘the culmination of [a] process’ in which ‘the Irish state appeared wholly committed to the maintenance of Catholic values’.

Whyte ignored published evidence from the Church of Ireland that should have qualified his observations. Due to unavailability of archival records, the extent of consultation with the Roman Catholic Church in framing Article 44 was unclear in 1971.  Evidence of consultation with the Church of Ireland was available

INTRODUCTION

OPPONENTS of the Northern Ireland government accuse it of operating a police state. The Ulster Unionists, who have held control for nearly half a century, make automatic denial each time this charge is urged.

Undocumented allegations and blanket disclaimers do not help towards fair assessment. For seven months we have examined what happened during a Civil Rights march from Belfast to Derry. We have also looked to the aftermath of this demonstration, its consequences, and action taken by the authorities.

We are not primarily interested in reciting what happened to students and other young people who set out on the road, hoping to break through barriers of religious bigotry by directing attention to social and economic issues. We have tried to produce a study of Northern Ireland government in action. During their march the walkers learned much of police behaviour and political attitudes through a series of sharp object lessons. We have tried to establish facts, identify participants, and assess the parts they played.

The Northern Ireland unit was created in 1920 to appease the fears of a substantial Protestant majority faced with the prospect of inclusion in a Catholic-dominated, all-Ireland state. The Belfast Parliament was given control of matters of local importance, though the British Parliament retained wide powers to intervene. These have not been exercised.

From the outset, political attitudes in the new unit were wedded to religious persuasion. Critics argue that this has been disastrous for most of the people. It benefits only the ruling caste within the Ulster Unionist Party. This body is assured of continued power by the adherence of the majority of all classes of Protestants. As this power relies upon the enduring nature of old fanaticisms, official antipathy, previously reserved for those who were opposed to the existence of the Northern Ireland state, now extends to those who campaign against the religious divide.

We offer no exhaustive assessment of how the Unionist Party has governed during 50 years of near-absolute power, but seek to tell what we have discovered about the rule of law in Northern Ireland. The incidents described raise important questions about police and governmental partiality, and about the use of mobs to implement official policy. Our description should allow each reader to decide whether the appellation police state" should be applied to this area, and will permit him to assess how well the government has adhered to the principles underlying one of the most potent and cherished Unionist catch-cries: "For civil and religious liberty".

Bowes Egan & Vincent McCormack, London, August 1969.

In 1964, BOWES EGAN, with a group of others from Queen's University, Belfast. established a committee to investigate abuse of power by central and local government authorities in Northern Ireland. Since then he has been closely concerned with the Civi l Rights movement. He is a lecturer in law at the City of London College, author of a number of books, and has been contributor to The Times, the Sunday Times, and other national newspapers and specialist journals.
VINCENT McCORMACK is a writer and trainee psychologist at the Department of Psychology of Queen's University. During the last few months he has carried out an exhaustive investigation into the Burntollet incidents.

The Kilmichael Ambush, 28 November 1920:
2012 History Ireland discussion with historians, relatives of Kilmichael Ambush participants and of IRA veterans.
Maureen Deasy (daughter of IRA veteran Liam Deasy (brother of Kilmichael Ambush casualty Pat Deasy); Sean Kelleher (son of IRA veteran Tom Kelleher); Maura O’Donovan (daughter of Kilmichael Ambush veteran Pat O’Donovan); Marion O’Driscoll (wife of solicitor Jim O’Driscoll;  John Young (son of Kilmichael Ambush veteran Ned Young);  plus historians Niall Meehan, Eve Morrison, Pádraig Óg Ó Ruairc. Also two appendices: statement by John Young (son of Ned young) and Sunday Times report of statement

Niall Meehan analyses some aspects of the late Professor Peter Hart’s treatment of the 1922 ‘April killings’ in West Cork (aka, 'The Bandon Valley Massacre'), confusion created by Hart and by his PhD supervisor on the question of 'ethnic cleansing', and errors of elision, omission and distortion that gravitated from Hart's PhD thesis into his book on the subject.

The Year of Disappearances, Political Killing in Cork, 1920-23 by Gerard Murphy, published in November 2010 by Gill & Macmillan, excited considerable media and academic interest. It attempted to document in extensive detail a previous historian’s assertion that the IRA ramped up a campaign of anti-Protestant violence beginning in the summer of 1920. Despite an impressive initial flurry of favourable commentary from Eoghan Harris in the Irish Examiner, Kevin Myers in the Irish Independent and from Oxford University based historian John Paul McCarthy in the Sunday Independent (on 5,7,12 November, respectively), the book fared less well subsequently. A problem for Murphy was that, aside from documented errors, most of his disappeared Protestant victims were unnamed. They had no known prior existence. No archive reveals them, no relatives searched for them and no one cried wolf. At the time of writing, Professor David Fitzpatrick’s commentary in the Dublin Review of Books (DRB) is the sixth consecutive considered response to argue that it cannot be seriously taken as historical research. Mine was the first to make this point.

However, I expressed a similar conclusion about aspects of pioneering work by the late Professor Peter Hart, Fitzpatrick’s much-celebrated former student, and also the historian whose book, The IRA and its Enemies, Violence and Community in Cork, 1916-1923 (1998), inspired Murphy.

Perhaps for this reason, Fitzpatrick’s review went some lengths to separate what he termed Gerard Murphy’s ‘disorganised dossier’ from the ‘intellectual power and academic skill’ displayed by Peter Hart. Even some of Peter Hart’s harshest detractors concede the attributes Fitzpatrick rightly awarded him. Hart was capable of combining gifted and imaginative scholarship with exceptional powers of exposition. At its best, his work demonstrated a masterful integration of archival detail that drove forward a clearly structured and an elegantly composed narrative. However, while Hart’s academic skill and narrative presentation was superior to Murphy’s, problems associated with Murphy’s book have also been identified in Hart’s scholarship. This is most evident in the selection and presentation of sources appearing to imply that ethnic and sectarian hatreds drove the quest for Irish independence during the period, 1919-23.

In that sense, Murphy’s book represents a kind of continuity with Hart’s work, rather than the binary Fitzpatrick suggested. For those who question Hart’s historical scholarship, Murphy’s book represents a logical, and a significant, decline in Irish historical standards. This is a subject I would like to further develop here.

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[See also in 'Papers':

Distorting Irish History [One], the stubborn facts of Kilmichael: Peter Hart and Irish Historiography, November 2010

A response on use (and non-use) of sources to Professor David Fitzpatrick (TCD), HIstory Ireland, July August 2009]