Prof Brendan Bradshaw, replying (September 11th) to my diary about his remarks to the Desmond Greaves Summer School, referred to me by my surname alone, a deliberate discourtesy I had not shown him. He described my remarks as "scurrilous"; "grossly or indecently abusive", says my dictionary of that term. My remarks about him were not grossly nor indecently abusive, either by intent or by reasonable interpretation, apart from one word, "revolting". It was a stupid thing to say, and I regret it: what I thought - and think - revolting are the possible implications of Prof Bradshaw's notion of present-centred history - not in his hands, but in the hands of others. Debauched, present-centred history has been one of the standard tools of totalitarians this century.
But even his understandable irritation at my using the rword doesn't justify all that Professor Bradshaw said. He wrote of the implications of what I had written:
"One such implication was that I favoured fabricating the historical record in order to provide a version amenable to the nationalist community." I implied no such thing. I think no such thing. If Brendan Bradshaw actually believed in fabrication of the historical record, he would belong to the taxi-driver school of historiography rather than be what he actually is: one of the most respected Tudor historians in these islands. It is his very eminence which makes his ideas about the role of history and historians important.
The r-word
No doubt I stupidly started the intemperate tone with my use of the r-word; it is a pity he continued it in his reply. Perhaps he has immersed himself too well in the discourses of the saint and martyr the Bishop of Rochester, the seminal study of whom he co-edited with Eamon Duffy. Ich bin nicht Luther.
But whether I am right or wrong in my attitudes is barely important; the issue is whether people are able to discuss subjects such as nationalism and the deeds done in the name of nationalism, while listening properly, rather than reaching out across the table and bopping someone on the nose, which in essence is what Prof Bradshaw did in reply to my column; and perhaps I deserved it for my use of the r-word, perhaps not.
"Owning" history
But I certainly do not apologise for disputing his notion that it is the duty of historians to enable people to "own" their history, and do so with empathy and imagination. Empathising with what?
Empathising with, say, the men who decided to launch a Rising in the centre of Dublin? Or with, as I said in an earlier Diary to which Prof Bradshaw referred, the families of the 28 children killed in the Rising? Or with the mother of Lt Neilan, killed in the Rising in which his brother was a participant? Or with the parents of the young English conscripts slaughtered at Mount Street Bridge? Historical empathy is surely not confined to the Irish; so how can the German people empathise with their history?
For empathy in a general and unspecific sense is all very well as a virtue; but what does it actually mean, most especially since empathy is a drug which, if taken in large doses, anaesthetises historical perceptions? Almost without exception, histories of the Anglo-Irish wars of 1916-1921 have empathised with Irish separatism, and in that empathy terrible truths have been occluded - the perfectly atrocious campaign against ex-servicemen, say, which is simply never mentioned in any account of this period, or the sectarian outrages in what is now the Republic.
I have drawn attention to these events as a journalist simply because their empathetic exclusion both from the historical record and the accepted popular narrative of that time makes them still news today: I drew attention to the deaths of 28 children in the Rising because those deaths are "facts" which most people are unaware of.
Use of violence
Brendan Bradshaw remarked that I vilified the rebels because of those deaths. Not correct. I did not "vilify" the rebels personally - but I do generally deplore the use of violence for many reasons, most of them perfectly understood, but alas imperfectly transmitted, by the Catholic Church. Few circumstances justify the taking of human life; and none existed which justified the taking of human life in Dublin or Meath in 1916 or at Solohead Beg in 1919 - though of course, once you resort to violence you will invariably unleash a dynamic which will cause others to justify their violence in reply, which then justifies further violence from you.
I asked one question in the Diary to which Prof Bradshaw took exception, but he did not answer it. In the resume of the paper which he delivered to the Greaves Summer School, he is said to have referred to "neo-unionist" interpretations of history. I am used to being called unionist by the stupid, but not by the likes of Prof Bradshaw. Why does a disdain for Irish nationalist violence make one a unionist? What relationship is there between a regard for the House of Windsor and a taboo against the sin of Cain?
There is none. I dislike unionist and British violence too; in my dislike of that violence, am I then to be adjudged to be a republican? And are we so inured to tribal jeers that we use them casually as terms of abuse for that which we do not like? Neo-unionism. Discuss.