“Aoibhinn beatha an scoláire”! During the past decade, since retiring from DCU, I have spent time working my way through the story of the foundation of our Irish State. We are still deeply influenced by what happened a century ago.
But the story is part fable, and only part fact. That has inspired me to author five books to help put the record straight. I have aimed to correct (as the title of my most recent volume has it) Myths and Lies of “The Irish Revolution’” One Irish Times reviewer described this work as “brave and intriguing”.
When facts don’t fit our way of seeing the world, we often discount them. So when people read that official records of private sessions of the first Sinn Féin Dáil, which were locked away for years, have Éamon de Valera telling deputies in August 1921 that any Ulster county might vote itself out of an Irish republic, they may not register the news. Surely insisting on a united Ireland was what the later Civil War was all about? Otherwise, why so much destruction?
I have been lucky to enjoy the health and time to research this period. But it was only worth doing if readers find my books useful and interesting. The five volumes include a biography of Arthur Griffith (of whom Harry Boland is said to have remarked “Damn it, hasn’t he made us all”), and a character study of the young de Valera (launched by Mary McAleese) who pulled himself out of poverty by his bootstraps. There are also two pocket-guides, one an outline of the Civil War and the other an account of the complex Treaty talks in London in 1921.
READ MORE
For too long the Treaty talks have been seen through the distorting lens of Peace by Ordeal, a volume undertaken in the 1930s by Frank Pakenham (later Lord Longford) when he was working for the Tory Party in England – and finished with the active assistance of de Valera himself.
Pakenham slyly supported the anti-Treaty narrative by suggesting that Griffith somehow betrayed the cause. Even before his tragic death in 1922, Griffith condemned this allegation as a “damnable lie”. Surviving records support Griffith. He was neither a “pacifist” (code word for “coward”?) nor a committed “monarchist”. He made no secret promises to Lloyd George. He had, after all, founded Sinn Féin.
So why spend so much of my time in libraries and archives instead of taking up golf perhaps? Certainly not to justify some Civil War “side”. But because the paradigm of Fianna Fáil vs Fine Gael vs Sinn Féin has been a straitjacket on the body of the Irish State. We are so used to it that we do not notice its dangerous, suffocating impact. It has defined the social, economic and religious contours of our daily lives in ways that are still influential yet taken for granted. It is not a useful model for Ireland in the future.
History is to society what psychology is to the individual. It is a way of escaping from patterns of thought that limit or imprison us. If we do not understand ourselves or our societies we can slip into repeating painful behaviour.
With a Border poll and a united Ireland now being talked up, we need to avoid taking positions based on past errors, or on emotional attachment to our ancestors rather than on the best interests of our descendants. I have dedicated my latest book to my grandchildren.
The second reason I wrote these books is because I like telling stories, and have been doing so most of my life. As the 17th-century Irish poet put it, “Pleasant the scholar’s life, when his books surround him … No better is in Ireland”. I have long experience as a lawyer, journalist and academic, and I try to apply the energy and ethics of those professions to my writing.
There may be no such thing as absolute objectivity, but we can and should aim for that ideal. We can recognise fairness when we see it. I have never been aligned with any of “the Civil War parties” and carry no baggage for them. Whatever I conclude in my books is based on my own reading of the available sources of information. There is a sense of achievement is this, although I never imagine myself to be always right.
Some of the libraries and archives in which I have found myself in Britain and Ireland have been wonderful, not least the new Public Record Office in Belfast which puts to shame the Irish State’s poor record of investment in this aspect of our heritage. Yet despite its constraints, the National Library of Ireland (for example) is unremittingly helpful.
Eastwood Books/Wordwell produced my four most recent titles, while Merrion Press published the Griffith volume. In the small Irish market, how publishers can afford to produce substantial, referenced and illustrated volumes in attractive covers at an affordable price for most readers is a mystery to me. I well remember a time when there were far fewer books published in Ireland.
There is great satisfaction in untangling the web of opposing versions of history, unearthing new information or insights hidden in archives, and in clearing the mists through which we glimpse the forces that made us what we are today.
Colum Kenny is emeritus professor of communications at Dublin City University and winner of the gold medal of the Irish Legal History Society. His earlier books include histories of King’s Inns and of Kenmare, and a study of silence published in English and Korean.
