14th November 2021
Someone must think this is a very clever idea.
If only the United Kingdom government had thought of this before.
An ‘official’ history of Ireland to counter the narratives of the nationalists.
The Victorians could have waved volumes of an official history to silence the complaints of Daniel O’Connell and Charles Parnell.
The 1916 uprising would have been avoided if instead of issuing a proclamation at the Dublin post office, the protestors had gone inside and picked up parcels containing official British histories of Ireland instead.
But: seriously?
What a misconceived notion.
In respect of the troubles, this official history will somehow have explain away how the civil rights of minorities were systemically infringed up to and including the 1970s (and beyond).
And about how torture and inhumane treatment was routinely used by the British state.
It would also need, for example, to explain things like the complicity of the British state in the murder of the Irish lawyer Pat Finucane (on which the British government is still refusing to have a full inquiry)
Uncomfortable things – things the British state is still seeking to avoid getting on the historical record.
The last thing the British state would really want is an objective, evidence-based approach of its conduct during the troubles.
The history of the troubles does need to be recorded – but it will not be done by a British official history.
And on this same basis the history of the terrorists also needs to be recorded – and this will need to be done by those who are not partisans.
No participant in the troubles is going to provide a history that the other participants will accept over and above their own versions.
There is a great deal which the various participants will not want to admit on the record themselves (or even to themselves).
And all this is quite apart from enduring issues of legal liability.
One day, perhaps, there may be a history of the troubles that the various communities and the British and Irish states will accept as a single comprehensive version.
Perhaps.
Perhaps it will be when there is a single comprehensive history of the rest of Britain’s relations with the island of Ireland that is generally accepted.
But that history is still contested – hundreds (if not a thousand) years later.
The better response by the British state to the existence of alternative versions to its own is not to shout over them and to impose an official history but to, well, listen.
To listen to the versions of history that the British state finds so uncomfortable.
And if the British state did listen then…
…that would be something for the history books.
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