Considering the Coolacrease debate: Brian Hanley writes in History Ireland January 16, 2008
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Irish History.trackback
Very briefly, simply to note that in History Ireland this month Brian Hanley has an excellent and very balanced overview of the RTÉ Hidden History documentary, The Killings at Coolacrease. Suffice to note before you go and read it yourselves that he makes the reasonable point that:
‘the subsequent comment in the press, radio and on the web generated more heat than light and highlighted the extent to which comment about the War of Independence period is still driven by present-day ideological concerns’.
He also suggests that ‘many people seem to be shocked by the notion of the ‘old’ IRA targeting civilians. But the War of Independence involved a great deal of killing….’.
And he goes on to tackle the issues of the legitimacy of the independence struggle and the nature of that struggle.
Editor Tommy Graham makes the point in the editorial that:
‘On the face of it this was an excellent topic, a truly ‘hidden history’. What we got instead was a teextbook (and brilliant) exercise in media spin, where the ‘line’ of the programme - that this was an incidence of ethnic cleansing carried out for sectarian and/or land-grabbing motives in a deliberately sadistic manner involving sexual mulitation - was taken up by other branches of the media and a predictably ill-informed and emotive ‘debate’ ensued… the programme makers can congratulate themselves on conjuring up a media will-o’-the-wisp but it is doubtful whether they have made any long-term contribution to scholarship on this sensitive issue’.
So, as ever with HI in recent years it’s well worth a read, (including an interesting article by Geoffrey Roberts on “Stalin’s victory? The Soviet Union and World War II” which takes a positive view of the Soviet leader’s military prowess and in the context of HI is - er - thought provoking, but in truth in a good way).
Must have a look at that issue of HI.
At UCC, Geoffrey Roberts was affectionately known as
the “Commissar” or “the Stalinist”.
Hmmm, and TG was no slouch back in his CPI-ML days… Was Roberts linked to any group and are you being entirely serious in your second sentence???
Didn’t this guy Roberts come up before in discussion? I think I went and looked him up on the UCC website at the time.
WBS,
You’ve cut Hanley’s sentence where he says the War of Independence (a free state term if ever there were one
) involved a lot of killing. Does it mean killing of civilians, or just killing? It’s hard to extrapolate what he goes on to say from that.
It was always said “tongue-in-cheek”…I wasn’t studying
History when I heard those nicknames bandied about.
According to this article, Roberts used to be in
the Communist Party of Great Britain:
http://www.socialistdemocracy.org/RecentArticles/RecentReviewTheRobertsBoys.html
Ah-hah! A former tankie! Cheers for that Starkadder.
Did being in the CPGB really count as being a tankie? Guess it depends on when and in which faction.
I’m joking really, but you’re right… It was always a brilliantly complex and paradoxical party….
Surely. And if one believes the weekly worker, its descendant remains so
That’s true too.. and an interesting read too!
I always took a Tankie to be a member of the CPGB who stayed on after the invasions of Hungary and Czechoslovakia, and who kept the Moscow line until the late ’80s. The mentality was also to be found in the senior cadres of SFWP.
I talked to Roberts at a conference just after he’d published Victory at Stalingrad (Pearson Education Ltd., Harlow, 2002) and in a brief discussion I never twigged he could’ve been in the CPGB, although membership was certainly hip among the London cycling community and, as far as could be ascertained, among the younger generation of historian, with maybe one or two years behind them in an academic post.
Anyway, Roberts struck me that evening as having old and deep rooted RCP tendancies. Funny though, he seems never to have written on Irish history. Hmmm…
Geoffrey Roberts calls himself a Eurocommunist….in other words a supporter of N Khruschev’s revisionist world outlook of ‘peaceful co-existence’ between opposing social systems.
His new book on Stalin is excellent, even the donkeys at ‘Foreign Affairs’ see merit in it - http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20070301fabook86249/geoffrey-roberts/stalin-s-wars-from-wold-war-to-cold-war.html
The current edition of IPR (Irish Political Review) has a number of articles on Coolacrease - well worth getting.
In fact the last few editions have covered the dispute.
The current issue also decimates Martin Mansergh in a polemic over the activity of British spies in Ireland. Essential reading.
Anarchaeologist,
Support for the USSR was to be found right throughout the WP. Even if most of those who loundly proclaimed to be pro-Soviet and pure Marxists, ended up going social democrat, or as independent Senators appointed by FF. And if he’s a Eurocommunist, not really a tankie I’d have thought.
” I never twigged he could’ve been in the CPGB, although membership was certainly hip among the London cycling community…”
Speaking of cycling leftists, the Victorian socialist Robert
Blatchford set up a series of Socialist cycling groups called
the Clarion Cycling Club. One associate of the group was Robert
Tressell ,author of “The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists”.
Starkadder might, or indeed has enjoyed Tim Hilton’s One More Kilometre and We’re in the Showers (Harper Perennial, 2004), a sorta leftie look at cycling and a good font of archane knowledge on all things wheelie.
Getting back to the Tankies and Dr Roberts, I particularly enjoyed the final suggestion in the HI article that Stalin, ‘ironically perhaps’ helped save the world for democracy! I think Robert Wyatt was putting this about a few years ago too (now there’s a tankie for you!).
Nothing ironic in that at all. Now saving the world for capitalism, a different matter.
“The current issue also decimates Martin Mansergh in a polemic over the activity of British spies in Ireland. Essential reading.”.
Er….aren’t these the same guys who wrote a whole book about
Elizabeth Bowen in WWII without mentioning she wrote an
article defending Irish Neutrality for the “New Statesman”?
I’m never entirely sure about the Soviets won freedom for the world argument. Certainly had the US not entered the war and had the UK and the USSR combined forces I suspect that they would still have won. But had they stayed on the sidelines the US and the UK would have won (had the US eventually entered the war). This isn’t to diminish their contribution in any sense, merely to say that there were three significant states involved and it took three. I’ve also read that the Germans goose was largely cooked by the time they decided to fix upon the USSR rather than the UK. It’s remarkable to think that by D-Day the US was turning out every six months enough materiel and trained personnel to replace that used in the invasion. Every six months! By 1944 the US had canceled more battleships than the Germans and Italians ever had. Add to that the fact that the Soviets alone once they had repelled the Germans from just outside Moscow were also able to massively outproduce the Germans on a continual basis. And finally even the British were able to outproduce the Germans as early as 41, and by the end of that year were destroying German aircraft and shipping faster than the Germans could rebuild them. But then for all its pretensions the Nazi state was never a truly continental power, whereas both the US and the USSR were and even the UK was largely - once it started - sufficiently well organised to produce considerable quantities of the necessary materials, arguably sufficient to combat if not quash the Germans.
Starkadder, I really don’t understand their animus against Elizabeth Bowen. What did she do to them, come round their place and trash it?
You’re right about the production levels WBS, and the yanks and Brits probably would have beaten the Nazis on their own, but more likely the UK and Germany would have struck a deal sometime after 1941, and they would have ended up moving closer together.
On Bowen, I think it’s because she’s seen as representative of a certain class and what they see as a patronising attitude. It’s also because of the use made of her by others in the varieties of Irishness argument although it might equally be something as simple as she was from the local area.
A deal in 42? Maybe. Why though?
I don’t credit the IHR with much of a class analysis. And they do patronising themselves pretty well…
Fear of defeat in Britain, added to a large element of the political elite with latent sympathies for a non-communist dominated Europe while Britain got a relatively free hand in the Empire. Stability to avoid a drawn out war with a less than certain outcome.
They do indeed do patronising. I think the hostility to Bowen et al is very class driven. And possibly with an underlying tone of chauvinism.
The cycling book looks interesting, Anarchaeologist, although
I haven’t cycled since I was 10 years old.
Blatchford is an important figure in English socialism-his
books were read by millions, and he set up various
clubs for working class Britons. His book “Merrie England”
expresses a proto-environmentalism critique of the
link between capitalism and pollution.
Unfortunately he opposed votes for women, argued
with James Connolly, supported WWI and finally “did
a Hitchens” . But his new support for the Tories
did him little good, and he died in 1943 in
obscurity.
So much conjecture about the IPR’s view on Bowen! Do ye actually read the feckin thing? It can be bought from ‘Books Upstairs’ at 36 College Green, Dublin 2. (I’ve been buying it there since about 1991)
The IPR, in fact have republished her reports verbatim in book form and have conclusively proved that in her activities she represented British interests over the interests of the Irish people. Plain and simple.
What book was it that said - ?
“I’ve also read that the Germans goose was largely cooked by the time they decided to fix upon the USSR rather than the UK”
Must have been written by a Brit?!
The SU cooked their geese and their German arses in three successive battles - Leningrad, Moscow and Stalingrad. The counter-offensive at Stalingrad was the beginning of the end for Nazism. Kursk broke the back of their technique of motorised warfare. While all this was going on the Anglo-Americans were prevaricating on opening the second front in Europe. The SU had to wait until 1944. What a ‘larf.
Peter, not at all… Firstly - so what about Bowen. Why is she the touchstone of all these things? The IPR appear to get a bee in their bonnet about people and never let go. The Irish Times debate is typical of that… who cares about single comments or letters set against a life. It’s the triumph of the particular over the general. That said the IPR is entertaining and interesting a read…
Secondly, no, actually not a British book as it happens - a number of books - and that’s not addressing the point I’m making which is that in combination any two of the three, UK, USSR, US could have overwhelmed the Germans. I’m not interested in either apportioning or reducing credit to any of those three all of who fought staunchly… as for the second front… sure but there was the little matter of having to fight in other areas, Europe was far from the only theater in the war…
Hardly a touchstone at all. IPR has just set the record straight regarding her activity on behalf of British intelligence. There shouldn’t be any argument at all as to her views as she was explicit in her own writings. IPR has set the record straight against the revisionist school of falsification.
Secondly, well the US ‘might’ have but they were more immediately interested in seeing Germany crush the SU.
The Brits couldn’t have with just the support of the US if Germany had defeated the SU and controlled all of continental Europe. Germany would have controlled the Atlantic and been able to mass all it’s troops against the British. The decisive figure is that Nazi Germany lost 10 million….10 million…in killed, wounded and captured of it’s 13.6 million casualties on the SU-German front. I know the Brits are great but it’s stretching it a bit far to think they could last more than a few days if the SU wasnt in the war and their allies were on the other side of the Atlantic.
If Germany had in fact conquered the SU the Anglo-Americans would have made their peace with Nazism and got on with doing business with them…bit like their attitude to Salazar and Franco (still in power up to the 70’s)
Anyway to prove my point who better that the inveterate anti-communist Churchill (the same buck who contemplated using chemical weapons against the Irish people in the 40’s)
In Aug ‘44 he said “…there was no force in the world which…would have been able to maul and break the German army…but the Russian Soviet armies.”
” IPR has just set the record straight regarding her activity on behalf of British intelligence. There shouldn’t be any argument at all as to her views as she was explicit in her own writings. IPR has set the record straight against the revisionist school of falsification.”
Peter, if you take Desmond Fennell or Brendan Bradshaw’s
definition of revisionism (historical research designed to undermine
Irish nationalism and glorify British rule) then for almost
20 years B&ICO/IPR were an integral part of that
“revisionist school of falsification”. For instance, I’ve said before
that their journal “Workers Weekly” published articles
praising the likes of John A. Murphy (18th Jan 1975) and Jim
Kemmy (29th Jun 1974) for
criticising the Irish nationalist views.It’s also known the likes of David
Trimble & Paul Bew (and maybe Eoghan Harris) drew on the ideas of B&ICO.
Of course, people can change their minds. But as one of the
commentators on Marxmail pointed out, they spend so much
time and energy on fighting Irish nationalism that it is
genuinely strange they abandoned this position, apparently
becuase of an economic boom and a repeal on the
the divorce ban.
And I do read the IPR-the Cork City Library carries a copy in
its reference section. The magazine is on sale in Dublin,
Belfast and apparently Galway as well. (I wonder how high its
circulation is-100-200 copies?).
It used to be on sale in the QUB bookshop up in Belfast.
I was flicking through an issue there a few years ago, and came across a piece on Rwanda. This alleged (if memory serves) that the genocide of 1994 had not in fact happened.
Thanks but no thanks.
I think the article on Rwanda was published in the
April 2004 IPR.
On Thursday, I was in the National Library, and out of
curiosity read the CPI (ML) pamphlet “Differentiate between
sham & genuine Marxism-Leninism”. This is an attack on
the B&ICO, and it also reprints part of an autobiographical
article by Brendan Clifford. In this Clifford states he was once part of the
CPGB, then joined Michael McCreey’s Committee to
Defeat Revisionism for Communist Unity. He then set up the Irish Communist Group, whose other members included Michael
Farrell and Eamonn McCann. The pamphlet also says he
tried to infiltrate the Connolly Youth Movement and
the Internationalists before setting up the B&ICO.
The pamphlet also attacks Clifford for his support for
the Ulster Unionists, Enoch Powell, and a seperate Ulster TUC.
The article the pamphlet cites was orignally
by Clifford in the 100th issue of the “Irish Communist”,but
the Library didn’t seem to have it. Given that Clifford’s
Communist/Unionist past is now a serious liability
for him, it would be interesting to read that article.
It’s still on sale in the Queen’s bookshop, along with a rake of their pamphlets.
The “Internationalists” group I referred to above was the
“Internationalists in Ireland” group that later became the
CPI (ML). According to the pamphlet, the ICO members were
invited to the “Necessity for Change” conference in 1967 but
walked out during the meeting.
Other guys discuss the history of Manchester United, different
.
pressings of Pink Floyd albums or the virtues of
each Star Wars film.
We discuss obscure leftist sects….
Doesn’t this blog do most of that other stuff?
Nick Hornby should write a book about a guy obessed
with the histories of the CPGB and the Socialist Workers’
Party….
Has anybody ever read Tariq Ali’s novel “Redemption”?
It’s a satire on the various left-wing sects in
Britain, and I was wondering was it any good.
Never read it. Have read “Quite Right Mr Trotsky!” though. I can thoroughly recommend it. Very funny.
Jaysus, youse are sad people! I hope one of yiz can post something on the CPI-MLs.
Bowen was a friend (and occasionally lover) of several left-republican intellectuals and as a result, has enjoyed a favourable reputation within that community ever since. It’s a community that many people I know have passed through. Her class doesn’t appear to have been an issue and her novels are generally ok.
She is certainly on record as advocating some form of pro-Allied neutrality (which she got) and why not? Sure, she was Irish, but there was also an Anglo part to her identity which obviously supported the war against fascism, the brunt of it, as we’ve seen above, being taken by the SU. Why shouldn’t she have offered information which, in any case, seems to have been of questionable use?
On a slightly different note, in the early ’90s, I was tangentally involved in a project to catalogue the papers of Sommerville and Ross at their house in Castletownshend, in a very Anglo part of Cork. A relative of Sommerville’s, an elderly retired RN admiral was murdered there in the ’30s for writing references for local aspirant sailors. I found it a cold harbour.
We often found ourselves drinking in the company of Eoghan Harris who delighted in offering his admiration of the ouvre of S&R to the Viennese professor in charge of the project (who, incidently, had lost his left hand when an anti-tank grenade he was about to lob at a Red Army tank on his 14th birthday went off prematurely).
I knew something of Harris’s positioning within RTE and something of his Official background and was quite amused at his love of Anglo-Irish whimsy. I assumed he was taking the piss…
One night the conversation got on to Bowen and again, Harris couldn’t get enough of her. He was very pleased she was a Corkwoman. We asked him about the allegations of her involvement with British Intelligence and he began to get quite angry and the matter was dropped.
This is why I always assumed that Aubane/IPR thing was an elaborate Discordian conspiracy to wind up EH! He never did got the credit for the 2 Nations stuff for which BICO owns the brand and he must be well pissed off. I wonder who funds them?
It says a lot about the standards of journalism in this country that EH’s considered a leading writer and political commentator. But I’m sure that’s discussed elsewhere.
Great blog!
btw… I always thought the Germans lost the war because they weren’t mechanised?
“This is why I always assumed that Aubane/IPR thing was an elaborate Discordian conspiracy to wind up EH! He never did got the credit for the 2 Nations stuff for which BICO owns the brand and he must be well pissed off. I wonder who funds them?”
I think they put a lot of emphasis on selling their books,
many of which would be aimed at a general readership interested
in traditional Irish history-possibly the sort of people
who used read the Irish Press or Ireland on Sunday.
The reason most Marxists rejected the “Two-Nations Theory” is
that the Ulster Unionsts did not meet the criteria set by Stalin in “The Bolsheviks and the National Question” (1913) for defining a
“nation”:
A Common Language
A Common Territory
A Common & Distinctive Economic Life
A Common Culture
People like DR. O’Connor Lysaght pointed out that their
“common territory” only covered half the Six Counties, and
their “economic life” was based on a split working class
and artifical British subsidies.
(It’s interesting that the anti-Stalinist
Lysaght understood Stalin’s ideas far better than either
Harris or Brendan Clifford did).
,
anarchaeologist… that appears to be EH’s M.O. in such instances… Cheers, we do our best. Any literature for the archive?
Peter… when did Churchill contemplate chemical weapons on the Irish? It doesn’t appear to be in W plan… You’re still missing my point re the SU. I’m not - again - diminishing what was in effect a war with racial or genocidal characteristics on the Eastern Front (from the Nazi side)… Whereas ‘only’ 3.5 % of Western allied prisoners died in captivity, by contrast of Germans in Soviet captivity 31% died [1 million] and of Soviets in German captivity 57% [3.3 million]. In a way, and this in some respects is implicit in your argument, these were like two very different wars albeit fought under the same umbrella. As to your point about the evil machinations of the Allies defending Europe to the very last drop of Soviet blood, I’m not so sure… The actual history seems to show that the US was fairly gung-ho from the off about invading, and as early as 1942 was very much behind Operation Sledgehammer whereas the British were more cautious - perhaps with good reason seeing as the disasters that they encountered in Dieppe later that year… Indeed quite contrary to your point there was strong argument on the US side that precisely to forestall a Soviet domination of Europe it was necessary to open the second front as soon as possible. And you’re ignoring the fact that right through 1942 to 1944 there were significant fronts around the Med and of course in the Pacific that were soaking up US resources…
Maybe this thread has finished. A few thoughts, even so, for what they’re worth.
I read the History Ireland article by Brian Hanley, and it’s very even-handed and sensible. But it’s an academic’s perspective – ‘more research is needed’ is always the conclusion.
But this is really about imagery, not research. Look at the still from the Coolacrease programme accompanying the Hanley article. The white shirts, the waistcoats, the caps – they come from the exact same wardrobe that was used for ‘The Wind that shakes the Barley’ and before that in ‘Michael Collins’. The Coolacrease programme was intended as a direct visual response to them – here are the same people, but doing nasty things instead of heroic ones. And now Perry Ogden is making a feature film of Coolacrease.
What this suggests to me is that the real revisionist/anti-revisionist debate is taking place in the cinema, rather than Indymedia or The Irish Times, let alone academic research. And the antis have won hands down – Liam Neeson, Julia Roberts, Aidan Quinn, the Palme D’Or. Ogden will be hard pressed to match that. Do they give the Ewart-Biggs prize to films?
On Aubane’s obsession with Elizabeth Bowen, Garibaldy has it right (post 19):
(a) the Bowens were landlords in North Cork, not a million miles from Aubane
(b) one of her ‘spymasters’ was Nicholas Mansergh, father of Martin, another obsession of Aubane’s (and also Munster gentry)
(c) she is championed by Roy Foster, another obsession of…
So the real “traditionalist-vs.-revisionist” debate is being
played out on the cinema, Bartholomew? That’s a very interesting
proposition-especially with the use of imagery from film in
the Coolacrease documentary.
On that point, has anyone here seen Jonathan Lewis’ TVM
“the Treaty” with Brendan Gleeson as Michael Collins? We say it
in secondary school and I thought it was very good. It also
has Julian Fellows as Churchill…the mind boggles.
Great show. Much better than anything else.
Maybe ‘debate’ is not the right word, but the struggle for public opinion is happening in the cinema, and by extension on TV. The discussion over the existence of a police report and so on is absolutely crucial in historical terms but won’t have any wider impact at all. What clearly did have an impact, to judge by Liveline and letters in newspapers, was a purely visual trick in the Coolacrease documentary, one which I don’t think I’d seen before in a historical programme of that kind. This was the showing again, in slow motion, of the supposed shooting in the genitals. An action replay, as if this was a football match. (Suggested by Eoghan Harris maybe?)
I was also very struck, years ago when Michael Collins came out, by Roy Foster’s coming on to Morning Ireland to criticise it, even though he admitted he hadn’t seen it. It’s inconceivable that he would do the same with a book or an article. But film is so much more powerful that it becomes very urgent to counter the influence of one that you even suspect you won’t agree with.
I just found this on Indymedia. A poster stated:
“The Broadcasting Complaints Commission (BCC), an independent statutory body, with the responsibility to deal with all broadcasting complaints concerning radio and television broadcasters licensed within the Republic of Ireland, has rejected Pat Muldowney’s formal complaint regarding RTE’s Hidden History programme, “The Killings of Coolacrease”.
This has been confirmed by a subsequent post
by Pat Muldowney , who claims the :
“The verdict of Broadcasting Complaints Commission is predicated on prior acceptance of the position of Alan Stanley, Eoghan Harris, and Niamh Sammon (above). Therefore the Commission is not objective, but is prejudiced on one side. Niamh’s triumph above is a hollow one.”
It looks like this case is closed, although, like the fact that
Brendan Clifford had to settle with Mary McAleese out
of court in the later eighties,they’ll probably be
whinging about it for years.
Interesting. One wonders was it the line of attack that Muldowney took which was the problem?
A problem was that the initial poster (going by the
didn’t give a source for his/her post-it
name of “Sierra”
was only when Muldowney replied at 11.03 today,that
he confirmed it. Needless to say the Aubane crowd are
furious, with Muldowney alleging the BCC is biased and
John Martin aggressively demanding that “Sierra” reveal
their real name.
Since the BCC have said that Court of Inquiry document that found that the ‘persons unknown’ who killed the Pearsons were ‘guilty of willful murder’,I think it proves their deaths were a war
crime. But this crime, while bad doesn’t invalidate the Irish War of Independence, any more than the bombings of Dresden
invalidate the Allied struggle against fascism.Of course
we should condemn those who abandoned the rules of
war in these instances, but it doesn’t mean the whole
struggles were wrong.
Muldowney’s discomfort with nuance and moral ambiguity
is a sign of his insecure and authoritarian vision-the
mirror-image of Harris & Myers, in fact.
The Broadcasting Complaints Commission has just
published its rulings for February. All complaints about the
“Hidden History Coolacrease” programme have been
rejected.
Those lodging Complaints were:
Mr. Jack Lane*
Dr. Patrick Muldowney*
Mr. John Martin*
Patrick Heaney
Daithi O hAilbhe*
Philip McConway
All the complaints were received on the 23 October
2007.
The BCC report is here:
http://www.bcc.ie/decisions/feb_08_decisions.html
*Members of the Aubane Historical Society and/or
Irish Political Review Group.
Looks like a serious setback for the Aubane group-four
members of them lodged complaints simultaneously
and all had them decisively rejected.
I wonder will RTE ever repeat the “Hidden History:
Coolacrease” documentary?
I forgot: another complaint against the show was
filed by a Mr. Peadar Ó Cinnéide.
I don’t know about anyone else,but I was disgusted at the
way people (Harris,Muldowney) milked the tragedy
of the Pearsons to serve their various agendas.
IPR put the facts clearly, that the program had -
a) Suppressed evidence, which would lead the viewer to a contrary view. He provided much of this evidence in the course of being interviewed on-camera for the documentary on July 28 in Kinnitty Castle, between 4.30 and 6.30 p.m. None of his contribution was used in the broadcast.
b) In cases where contrary evidence was submitted there were instant rebuttals, while assertions supporting the documentary’s themes were not contradicted.
c) Misrepresented the views of contributors, when these contradicted the documentary’s main themes.
d) Made assertions with no factual basis.
e) Failed to provide accurately the political context of the time.
f) Dismissed participants with a contrary view as being “in denial” or having some unworthy motive for their opinions.
g) Misrepresented the Cooneyite religion, manifested by the Pearsons, as pacifist (comparing it to Amish religion).
h) Posited false or secondary reasons for the killings and then dismissed them as having no basis in reality, in order to “prove” that the real reasons were a sectarian land grab.
Recent editions of IPR have comprehensively dealt with each of these points.
I’m not a member of their group but fair play to them all the same.
Muldowney/McConway/Heaney/Martin/Indymedia et al discredited.
From Wikipedia:
On 25 February 2008, the Broadcasting Complaints Commission (BCC), an independent statutory body, with the responsibility to deal with all broadcasting complaints concerning radio and television broadcasters licensed within the Republic of Ireland, considered seven formal complaints regarding RTE’s Hidden History programme, The Killings of Coolacrease. Claims that the documentary was “unbalanced and misleading”, that important evidence was omitted, that there were “inaccurate facts amounting to an attack on a person’s reputation or honour” and that there was “unacceptable suppression of pertinent source material” were rejected by the BCC.
http://www.bcc.ie/decisions/feb_08_decisions.html
Dr. Patrick Muldowney and co. (Mr. Jack Lane, Mr. John Martin, Patrick Heaney, Daithi O hAilbhe, Philip McConway and a few others) really are in trouble. The BCC decision has silenced them.
On the “Coolacrease - The Hidden Interview - an Indymedia EXCLUSIVE!” page, it says “We are currently not accepting any more comments on this article”.
Looks like it’s the end - the Pearson boys won this one.
It’s not a win or a lose situation.
Brian Hanley’s article was the most sensible contribution to the debate and that made that point very strongly. In fact if anything it’s the idea that history is a sort of political football which people can pick up and run trying to score points or goals and this somehow validates political projects in the contemporary period which is unsupportable in any serious analysis.
WBS,
Where was Hanley’s article?
To be honest,WBS, I’d agree with you about Brian Hanley’s
article and using history as a weapon in contemporary
issues. I don’t really think Irish historians have anything to gain
by continuing to argue over this issue-or at least let it
lie for a year or two.
Dingdongdoolies, I doubt that the BCC ruling will silence
the Aubane group, but if they keep ranting on and on
about Coolacrease, they’ll end up looking as ridiculous
as Ireland on Sunday’s campaign to clear Michelle
Smith of the urine-tampering charge….
Forget my idiotic question. Brain obviously not working properly.
Garibaldy,
The Jan/Feb. issue of HI has Hanley’s article on
pgs. 5-6.
Brian:
“I don’t know about anyone else,but I was disgusted at the
way people (Harris,Muldowney) milked the tragedy
of the Pearsons to serve their various agendas.”
I’d second that.
What “various” agendas were brought in to the IPR analysis of RTE’s program?
Well, for a start, there was in the Indymedia article
http://www.indymedia.ie/article/84547&comment_limit=0&condense_comments=false#comment223745
which featured Pat Muldowney’s whitewashing
of the Indian Axis collaborator Subhas Chandra Bose,
a man repudiated by Nehru and Gandhi.
As I’ve quoted elsewhere:
“There is no getting away from the fact that Bose deliberately ignored the moral evil that Nazi Germany represented. He had lived in Germany for much of the 1930s and the early 40s. He must have known something of what was going on…. But he was not sufficiently disturbed by Nazism to reject Hitler’s help. Similarly, his alliance with Japan ignored the atrocities that the Japanese had perpetrated against people in the countries they had occupied.”
Here’s the link:
http://web.archive.org/web/20050305012751/http://www.an…m.htm
I know Filipinos and Koreans whose relatives were tortured and
killed by the people Bose collaborated with. Muldowney’s
comments-Bose being praised simply because he was
anti-British-set off alarm bells.
Sorry, the history link’s gone. Here’s another:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/3684288.stm
Note that Bose’s associates became infamous for their
mistreatment of French civilians.
I kept visiting that Indymedia article and noticed that
comments were being deleted all the time.
The uncritical depiction of Bose by Muldowney strikes me as problematic-on one hand he genuinely believed in Indian
freedom,(and many Indians still admire him for it) but
on the other he looked to various tyrants (Stalin, Hitler,
Tojo) to help him achieve it.
Bose is an enormously controversial figure, but hey, that’s the IPR’s stock in trade, is it not?
Well for a start that all amounts to a whole heap of nothing.
By the way I not only know people but I have direct family connections with those who suffered Japanese aggression in North/East Asia.
Here’s an article from the ‘South Asia Forum Quarterly’, Vol. 10, No. 1, 1997, Chery Chase, Maryland, pp. 10-14 reprinted from Revolutionary Democracy and available here at http://www.revolutionarydemocracy.org/rdv7n1/Bose.htm which explains something of the context of Bose in Germany.
So what else constituted IPR’s “various agenda”?
You tell us!
I wrote: “the Pearson boys won this one”
and WorldbyStorm wrote: “It’s not a win or a lose situation”.
While I take your point to a certain extent, I still feel that “the winning” (or “the balanced weighing up of evidence” or whatever you want to call it) was important because there was a concerted campaign (by literally 7 or 8 people) to smear the name of the Pearson boys on the back of some very flimsy “evidence”.
Evidently the BCC thought so too.
And maybe more importantly, it is that History, and the reporting of it, that has “won” out in the end. The material that is written by Indymedia/IPR/Aubane etc and the manner in which it is written (snide comments, no objectivity, clear agendas) would never grace the pages of any serious academic journal.
As regards to Brian Hanley’s article, while I agree he did make some good points (which you outlined earlier), even he fell victim to quoting as “evidence” from Indymedia, which, subsequently, has been discredited by the BCC.
I have to say, the idea that Dr. Brian Hanley’s analysis of an area of Irish history, and Irish historiography, in which he is more than a bit of a specialist has been discredited by the BCC is just simply daft. Completely and utterly daft. The problem with the whole Coolacrease episode is that contextualisation has been left to the side in the pursuit of contemporary political agendas. That still stands. And the shrill shriek of “we won! we won!” is meaningless outside of contemporary political point scoring. I know one thing about Coolacrease. There’s been a lot of talk about it, and little if any of it has anything to do with the events of 1917-23. It’s all about the present. “We won.” What is this? A fucking playground? Time for the bottle of milk and tayto then, is it?
The problem is dingdongdoolies, and I’m not dismissing anything you say at all, is the BCC making a judgement (or discredit something) on the history as distinct from the programme. I can - and indeed probably would - make an argument that provocative historical programming is a good thing, Coolacrease included, without seeing that as being the final word on an issue. In other words while the BCC can attempt to determine whether a programme is justifiable on its own terms it’s not in a position to determine about the historical accuracy of the issue.
It’s a fine distinction, but one that is crucial. Particularly since history isn’t fixed in the way some seem to think it is and even clear factual evidence is open to interpretation. I’m highly critical of the IPR/etc/etc crowd. But they are an inverse of others with an opposite political agenda. And it’s the political agenda which is the crucial thing. I don’t think Hanley did fall victim to ‘evidence’, the point is that there are different ways of looking at that evidence which lead to an outcome which I think has always been argued here that the simplistic conclusions of one or other side merely mask a much more complex situation.
Taking the Pearson’s. I can see a scenario where the events that happened happened in a way that they thought they were being entirely true to their own beliefs and unmalicious (even to the extent of interacting with the security forces). The problem is that in a conflict situation polarisation leads to obvious dangers in such a stance - particularly where the vast majority think otherwise (and talking about Kosovo on another thread it can be no picnic to be a Serb deep within Kosovo). I’m not saying ‘these things happen’ in a glib or callous way, rather that conflict leads to tragic human outcomes due to their dynamic. But moving from there one has to ask what is the purpose of the exercise, to suggest that the independence struggle was invalidated because of such tragedies? I’m hard pressed to justify them in any sense but I don’t think so. And I don’t want to jump into whataboutery as regards a broader societal dislocation under British rule however soft that rule was prior to the flaring up of the independence movement. But that too must have fed a dynamic. In fact the only conclusion I can take away is that we have to be bloody sure not let it happen again on this island and that political negotiations and contexts are paramount as part of our agendas.
“The problem with the whole Coolacrease episode is that contextualisation has been left to the side in the pursuit of contemporary political agendas”.
I agree 100%.
The problem I referred to with Brian Hanley (who does, no doubt have more than a bit of a specialist knowledge) was that he quoted directly from one of “the side{s} in the pursuit of contemporary political agendas”.
But what he quoted, was it wrong? Or is it wrong simply because it was said by one of the sides? You got to look at what is being said, and if it can be backed up, then it stands. You can take evidence from an argument and ignore the conclusion, as long as what you take is evidence. The evidence still stands regardless of whether the conclusions are wrong.
I’d agree Conor, and that leads to another problem. If one side is wrong, why not the other? Or why aren’t both right, but in their own ways (which is more likely). Who is to judge. It is not the BCC in my opinion - if only because of a lack of historical expertise there. And that’s not to say that their judgement on the programme was necessarily incorrect in broad terms, or the specifics brought before them.
One other thing. As regards conclusions. You would never get away in peer-reviewed historical circles with the level of conjecture and assumption that’s allowed on TV. It one of the worst things about TV documentaries, they are not made to historicist standards. the BCC´s standards of reasonable proof and conjecture are not those those of peer-review historicism. To think that because a TV documentary meets loose journalistic standards of proof, that it would survive the rigors of peer-review, is wrong.
Which is why TV is great for polemical approaches, but peer-reviewed historical journals aren’t! And why there is a distinction between seeing the BCC adjudication as relating to aspects of a specific TV programme and in some way being the last word on the historical truth of said programme.
It’s apples and oranges. The BCC is concerned with broadcasting standards, not historical debate. Just as well, ‘cos little if any of the coolacrese storm has to so with historical debate. I mean, what gets me actually angry is the sanctimonious (and I don’t mean you here dindolngdoolies, I’m just talking in general about this case) claptrap blurted out about sectarianism during the War of Independence - because what underlies it is the attempts to shock southern partitionist attitudes. They can only shock southern partitionist attitudes because southern partitionist attitudes are: well, we know about those murdering psycho northies, but here? In the south? Say it isn’t so?”
Is this the same BBC that spliced film of a miners demo to make it look as if the Miners attacked the Police instead of the other way round?
Sorry about this. Head of steam and all that. There were thousands of cases of sectarian attacks and murders during the war of independence and civil war period. Most of them took place in Ulster. That seems to be ok for Irish people today. No problem there. However, it’s the sniff of ones in the south that get made into documentaries and get airtime. That’s politics man.
No. the BCC is the Broadcast Complaints Commission of Ireland.
WorldbyStorm, I fully take your point:
“while the BCC can attempt to determine whether a programme is justifiable on its own terms it’s not in a position to determine about the historical accuracy of the issue”.
I suppose my point is that from the date that the programme was shown through to the BCC ruling, a huge amount that was written was inaccurate, unclear and misleading (read “agendas”), and it has taken a BCC ruling for people to step back and try and look “objectively” at the “evidence” that was being thrown around on both sides. From the comments here and elsewhere, contributors are now not assuming that what is written on Indymedia or elsewhere is “fact”.
While we might have to agree to disagree about Hanley, I would respond to Conor McCabe’s:
“But what he quoted, was it wrong? Or is it wrong simply because it was said by one of the sides? You got to look at what is being said, and if it can be backed up, then it stands”.
Yes, it was said by one of the sides (with a “contemporary political agenda”), it was presented as “fact” and “evidence” (whereas it was merely a collation of rumours and hearsay) and it was never taken seriously by historians, the makers of the documentary and the BCC. It was a point argued strongly by Muldowney and co for a long time, but was never picked up by other historians (apart of course from the Aubane “historians”).
Could I ask you to quote what he said please?
To contextualise it first:
Dr Muldowney alleges that an RIC investigation concluded that the Pearsons were targeted by the IRA because they shot at two members of Sinn Fein.
But there was no RIC investigation.
The document Dr Muldowney cites as evidence of an RIC investigation is actually British army correspondence (5th Division Curragh Camp) that speculates on the reasons for the Pearson killings. It was filed after the Court of Inquiry had deliberated on July 2 in Birr. Titled ‘The Coolacrease Murders 30.6.21 — Possible Motives’, the first part of the document speculates that the Pearsons were targeted for their land. Part two then states: ‘It is said by the CI (County Inspector) Queen’s County that the two Pearson boys a few days previously had seen two men felling a tree on their land adjoining the road. Had told the men concerned to go away and when they refused had fetched two guns and fired and wounded two Sinn Feiners, one of whom is believed died.’ Crucially the very next sentence reads: ‘It is further rumoured when the farm house was burning two guns fell out of the roof.’ In other words, the army was simply collating the rumours surrounding the deaths of the Pearsons (in fact nobody died that night). Not only were these rumours never investigated, the ‘Possible Motives’ document did not even form part of the Court of Inquiry.
Hanley was quoting from the “evidence” as put forward by Muldowney.
All well and good, but what’s the quote from Dr. Hanley? I mean, what does Dr. Hanley actually say? I’m not being funny here, I just want to know what Dr. Hanley said.
By the way, the County Inspector quoted in the report is the RIC county inspector for Queen’s county.
I’m sorry dingdongdoolies, but the document you quoted from above itself contains a quote from the highest ranking RIC officer in Queen’s county, and that officer says that the Pearson boys shot a Sinn Feiner.
Furthermore, where does Pat Muldowney say that the British court of inquiry is actually an RIC inquiry? I’m reading an article he wrote for the Irish Times at the moment, dated 17 November 2007, and nowhere does he say that the court of inquiry was actually an RIC investigation. In fact, Muldowney makes the distinction quite clear in the article.
Noel, I’m sure Brian meant that both Harris and Aubane
represented an agenda each. Muldowney has an agenda-a
crude Anglophobia devoid of class analysis. A by-product of
this involves whitewashing a man whose naivety
made him an Axis collaborator.
Brendan Clifford also has an agenda-he hates the OSF/WP group.See IPR, Nov. 2007:
“The Official Republican war, waged in rivalry with the Provo war, was in my opinion an exercise in lunacy. But it passed muster for a while in the atmosphere of those times when a large bubble of Left ideology parted company with social reality. The consequences when the bubble burst are to be seen on all sides in the form of personnel of the Dublin media who are *doing well* for themselves. In their groundless idealist phase they had developed propaganda skills that were of great advantage to them in their careerist phase.”
“Harris was engaged in a campaign to de-legitimise the democratic sources of Irish sovereignty long before the Taoiseach made him a Legislator and made him a gift of something in the region of *half million Euros*.” (My asterisks).
We’re not listening to criticism here, only jealously and bitterness. Note how Clifford keeps emphasizing the financila success (”Half
of his opponents.Subconsciously, I think he’s envious of all the
a million Euros”
commercial success Harris had in adopting ideas similar
to his own.
Sorry, the quote from Hanley:
“The evidence, however, suggests that the Pearsons were killed because they had previously fired on IRA volunteers (seriously wounding one)…”
Conor McCabe wrote:
“…that officer says that the Pearson boys shot a Sinn Feiner”.
It most certainly does not say that.
It says ‘The Coolacrease Murders 30.6.21 — Possible Motives’ (Possible Motives being the important phrase) followed by phrases such as “It is said…” and “It is further rumoured…”
As I said earlier, it was British army correspondence (5th Division Curragh Camp) that speculated on the reasons for the Pearson killings and it was filed after the Court of Inquiry had deliberated on July 2 in Birr.
Not the same as Muldowney had written in the Village Magazine Friday, 26 October 2007:
“So how did it happen that the programme never mentioned – not once – the other Court, which met on 2 July 1921 to do exactly the same thing?
It is not that Hidden History did not know about the British Military Court of Enquiry, which met on that day in Crinkle Military Barracks, Birr.
The problem for the Hidden History/Eoghan Harris line was that the British Military Court of Enquiry, operating completely independently, found exactly the same as the Irish Court Martial. The Chief Inspector of the Queen’s County RIC testified to the Court that “the two Pearson boys a few days previously had seen two men felling a tree on their land adjoining the road, had told the men concerned to go away, and when they refused, had fetched two guns and fired and wounded two Sinn Feiners, one of whom it is believed died” “.
Furthermore, in The Irish Times Nov 27 2007 entitled “The Pearson brothers sided with the British and forfeited their civilian status”
Pat Muldowney argued:
“The British inquiry was held in Crinkle Military Barracks, Birr, Co Offaly, on July 2nd, 1921, the second day after the men’s deaths.
It took sworn evidence from doctors and eye-witnesses and the papers include a high-level police report stating the result of the RIC investigation of the episode: “It is said by the C I [ county inspector] Queen’s County that the two Pearson boys a few days previously had seen two men felling a tree on their land adjoining the road. Had told the men concerned to go away and when they refused had fetched two guns and fired and wounded two Sinn Féiners, one of whom it is believed died.”
“…the result of the RIC investigation…”
Inconsistent.
dindongdoolies, the quote about the possible motives comes from the RIC County Inspector. Now, regardless of what conclusions we draw from that, it shows that there was an RIC investigation. You said that there wasn´t one, and then you give me a quote from the most senior RIC officer i Queens county.
The evidence does suggest that the persons shot a Sinn Féiner. But that’s what it is, a suggestion. All that tells me is that there needs to me more done on this. But, on the point you made so stongly that there was no RIC investigation. You’re hardly proving your case by quoting from the most senior RIC officer in Queen’s county!
Dr. Hanley says that the evidence gives that suggestion, which it does. How does that undermine him as an historian?
What gets me about this is that you’re saying that the following quote was filed after the inquiry, and Muldownry says it was filed for the inquiry, no?
“‘It is said by the CI (County Inspector) Queen’s County that the two Pearson boys a few days previously had seen two men felling a tree on their land adjoining the road. Had told the men concerned to go away and when they refused had fetched two guns and fired and wounded two Sinn Feiners, one of whom is believed died.’ Crucially the very next sentence reads: ‘It is further rumoured when the farm house was burning two guns fell out of the roof.”
Now, whenever it was filed, it does make clear that there was an RIC investigation, and that the county manager reported on it. The timing seems to be of dispute, and I doesn’t have access to the actual file so I can’t comment on that. However, if the quote is true, that is, of nobody has made up the line from the County Manager, then it shows that there was an RIC investigation.
You seem to maintain that to mention this fact is to be wrong. Why?
Conor McCabe wrote:
“on the point you made so stongly that there was no RIC investigation. You’re hardly proving your case by quoting from the most senior RIC officer in Queen’s county! …then it shows that there was an RIC investigation.”
If there was an RIC investigation, where are its conclusions? What was the verdict on the death of the two boys? Why didn’t it form part of the inquiry?
There was no “official” investigation (and by deduction, conclusions).
Conor McCabe wrote:
“All that tells me is that there needs to me more done on this”.
All of the records mentioned in this post and earlier can be found in Kew archives - and there is no mention of an RIC investigation there (or anywhere else - it doesn’t exist. (I have the complete file). This has been the view taken by the researchers and historians of the doc.
As I said earlier, the army was simply collating the rumours surrounding the deaths of the Pearsons (and yes, it included that which was reported by the CI (County Inspector)). Not only were these rumours never investigated, the ‘Possible Motives’ document did not even form part of the Court of Inquiry.
There must have been some investigation by the RIC, otherwise who was the CI able to pass on his information to the Court of Inquiry. It may not have been an official one - again, haven’t seen the files - but nonetheless inquiries were made. The CI didn’t go out himself and physically collate the rumours, or did he?
Yes I would agree, inquiries would most probably have been made, notes would have been taken etc.
But no “official” findings were recorded. You inferred it yourself “It may not have been an official one”. The point is, the one document that does remain, entitled ‘The Coolacrease Murders 30.6.21 — Possible Motives’ was a British army correspondence (5th Division Curragh Camp) that speculated on the reasons for the Pearson killings. and it was filed after the Court of Inquiry had deliberated on July 2 in Birr.
Yes, I did mean each side had a different agenda and
were using this issue to promote it.
As for Brendan Clifford, someone should give him
.
a column in a big newspaper, so he can become a
national joke in the grand tradition of Myers, Waters
and Harris
Ok. So there may not have been an “official” investigation - no documentation left anyway - but there was an investigation by the RIC.
From what you said: “There must have been some investigation by the RIC…”
and from what I said: “…inquiries would most probably have been made, notes would have been taken etc. …”
can we conclude that “there was an investigation by the RIC” (though not “official”)?!? …
In the end its irrelevent to this case, because it didn’t influence any of the events, subsequently.
Is that a diplomatic way of putting it?!
Ah, now, whether you declare it to be irrelevant or not is your judgment on the case. From what you say, the British Army Court of Inquiry chose to ignore the statement given by the CI. I don´t know why they did that - I’m not au fait with the file - but you agree that they were right to do so.
Normally, something like that, a statement from a CI, that you find in the archives, you’re not going to ignore it. It doesn’t matter whether the Court of Inquiry ignored it, as a researcher you’re not going to dismiss a statement from a CI unless you have good reason to do so.
I mean, you can’t just ignore it! Pretend it didn’t exist, if for no other reason than for the simple fact that if you found it, someone else is going to find it as well, and they are going to ask you why did you ignore this statement. That’s basic historical research stuff, no?
So, on one hand you said that there was no RIC investigation, now, you’re saying that there was an “unofficial” one, but that it’s irrelevant. because it didn’t influence any of the events?
It doesn’t matter whether it influenced the court of inquiry or not, what matters is: it is plausible? I mean, the job of the historian is to find out what happened, not to simply report what the court of inquiry said what happened and leave it at that.
Any decent research worth its salt is going to mention it, and deal with it. If that means dismissing it, fine, but you’ve to give a better reason than the Court of Inquiry did so. No?
I’m amazed that people are taking the BCC decision as resolving the historical issues. The only category of decision listed on their website which could be said to apply in this case is ‘impartiality in news & current affairs’, which is in fact the category the complaints were listed under. But this is 1921, not current affairs. And in fact the Commission’s judgment explicitly disclaims any ability to judge on the historical issues:
‘In the circumstances of this broadcast, it is not within the remit of the Commission to assess the veracity, or otherwise, of the claims being made in this broadcast. Nor could one expect the Commission to do so.’ (This is in their judgment on the complaint by John Martin).
The sort of case intended by ‘impartiality in news & current affairs’ is one where only one party to a dispute is interviewed, for example, and the other had no right of reply and so on. This programme featured both sides. The problem was with how they were dealt with.
So I wouldn’t think that the Aubaners have lost. But it was a daft idea to appeal to the BCC. And to focus on the internal content of the documentary was only half the story. The other half was the typicality of the incident – that is, the choice to make the programme about that particular incident in the first place. That choice automatically confers an importance on the incident, so that it becomes emblematic of the War of Independence as a whole. This is how a lot of people took it up – Anne Marie Hourihane in the Irish Times wondering how many other such stories have been hidden from us. But it seems clear that the incident was very unusual.
I wouldn’t be as hard on the Aubaners as Starkadder. What I’ve read of their historical work is very thorough. They went to London to dig up the Bowen spy reports, for example, and the loyalist compensation records. And I think Clifford in particular has been ahead of the academic historians on a lot of things. He picked out Mangan as a crucial figure well before others did, and the same with Watty Cox (and anticipated a revival of interest in Thomas Moore). He published a book of extracts from Cox’s Hibernian Magazine back in 1992; I heard recently that it is going to be one of the first Irish periodicals to be digitised. I’d say that puts him 15 years ahead. He has form there since the 1970s.
It’s true that his style is a bit tortuous and self-justifying. I don’t mind that. You could even praise it as a kind of self-disclosure. But it is the typical rhetorical style of the autodidact, intended to counteract the cultural capital and institutional power of those with higher degrees (and it rubs some of those people up the wrong way). Hence his emphasis on his Sliabh Luachra farm labourer hedge school background. Anyway, to finish because I don’t know where this argument is going, I’d say that a cultural historian in fifty years time will find him a really interesting figure – more so than Eoghan Harris, whose obsession with low-church Protestants and evangelicals (see his play ‘Souper Sullivan’) is one reason why the programme on Coolacrease was made, and why it had the original title of ‘Atonement’.
By the way, like Brian, I noticed that every single posting to Indymedia on their Coolacrease thread between Thursday 13th and Tuesday 18th was deleted, including those complaining about the censorship!
Conor McCabe wrote:
“now, you’re saying that there was an “unofficial” one” and later “So, on one hand you said that there was no RIC investigation, now, you’re saying that there was an “unofficial” one, but that it’s irrelevant. because it didn’t influence any of the events”.
I did not say that there was an “unofficial one”. I cannot say with certainty that there was an “unofficial” one. One can surmise (as you and I did earlier), but there is no proof of an official or unofficial investigation.
Conor McCabe wrote:
“the statement given by the CI”.
I’m not sure if your understanding on this is the same as mine. He was not stating it as “fact”, or as his opinion. He was merely reporting rumours and hearsay. And more importantly this wasn’t ignored by contemporary historians; they looked at it, assessed it and decided whether it was sufficient proof (as you said: “it is plausible”?) that they were spies and informers and that they had definately shot at the IRA, injuring one etc.
Their conclusion was that it did not amount to sufficient evidence that they had definately shot at the IRA and that they were spies and informers - Remember, that document says that one of the IRA men was believed to have died. All sides now agree that that did not happen.
Also, with regard to the tree-felling incident, there are two very, very different accounts given by both sides (which that document cannot confirm or deny conclusively - hence its exclusion, no doubt). Alan Stanley claims that they shot over the heads of the IRA as a warning; Heaney claimed that someone was injured; rumours locally suggest that one IRA member accidently fired on one of its own member. The time of the shooting also has been of much dispute (compare Heaney and Stanley’s two different acounts).
Conor McCabe wrote:
“Any decent research worth its salt is going to mention it, and deal with it. If that means dismissing it, fine”.
As mentioned earlier, they did look at it, they did deal with it and yes, in the end they dismissed it, becaused it proved nothing.
Well ok. Fair enough then. I’m going to have to bow to your superior knowledge on this one. (And I am not being sarcastic. I think I have to state that as tone is hard to get across in comments.)
Oh, and cheers for the discussion as well !
I enjoyed the discussion too. And yes I agree that the tone is hard to get across in comments!
“…intended to counteract the cultural capital and institutional power of those with higher degrees (and it rubs some of those people up the wrong way)….”
Bartholomew, IMHO, a very good post!
Is the above,(the cultural capital and institutional power of those with higher degrees), a circumlocution for academic snobbery?!
Bartholomew:
“It’s true that his style is a bit tortuous and self-justifying. I don’t mind that. You could even praise it as a kind of self-disclosure. But it is the typical rhetorical style of the autodidact, intended to counteract the cultural capital and institutional power of those with higher degrees ”
Interesting post.
But I have read some issues of the IPR, and while I agree Brendan Clifford
and his gang are fairly smart, the fact that they use a very nasty
and bullying style of writing, which I find morally repugnant..
For instance, when Charles Haughey
died, the July 2006 IPR called his critics “hyenas” & implied that any Irish person who criticised Haughey’s hypocrisy is thus a self-hating “West Brit”
who is “led by Whitehall”. They emphasised Ruth Dudley Edwards and C.C. O’Brien
as Haughey’s main critics-the awkward fact that Haughey’s funeral had
hardly any working class people attending is completely ignored.
As Ed Hayes pointed out elsewhere on
this blog:
“They were prone to making nasty and snide remarks about their rivals and enemies as well, some of which verged on anti-Catholic sectarianism. Now they are doing much the same thing, except from the opposite side.”
There’s also
no sense, as there is with (say) the Irish Socialist Network, that they would
be interested in engaging in dialogue with other political groups-they repeatedly
depict themselves as the only group who understand any political issue, and everyone
else is a traitor or a moron. They never admit they might have made a mistake
or misinterpretation on even the most minor issue, so defending
the imprisonment of the Birmingham Six (Workers Weekly, 30/2/8
and claiming the IRA weren’t responsible for for Robert MacCartney’s
death all become part of a gigantic con job. It’s not so much a
self-justifying style as the style of someone with a huge ego
and a lot of malice towards the world.
The fact they are supporting now causes I am sympathetic to-the Republican/anti-Revisionist ,anti-Iraq war and
anti-Globalisation movements-in their own way doesn’t matter. They still haven’t dropped the sneering, cliquey, self-righteous methods they once used against NI Catholics and Trotskyites . They’re still using nasty means to achieve
ends I approve of, but you can’t separate ends and means, as Aldous Huxley pointed out.
I don’t want anything to do with the BICO/Aubane group, who
in my opinion are a gang of narcissists, hypocrites
and bullies.
A) The Pearsons were held in custody by the RIC after the Killings, therefore the RIC was in a position to know the Pearson family’s version of events. It is possible that the Pearsons thought, incorrectly, that one of the IRA men was killed at the roadblock incident and this was repeated by the County Inspector.
Paddy Heaney has claimed that not only did the Pearsons shoot two IRA men that night but they shot an ex RIC man (Bert Hogg) who had been arrested by the IRA ten minutes earlier.
This would lead one to believe that the CI report to the British Military Court of Inquiry was based on much more than rumours. It had a direct interest in what was going on. One of its ex members was a victim. The rumour aspect of the CI report only refers to the arms stored by the Pearsons.
B) One of the IRA men shot was not just “someone”, but was Mick Heaney, who was a relative of Paddy Heaney. Mick Heaney died about 5 years later as a result of the injuries incurred at the roadblock incident. That is the Heaney family’s understanding of the matter.
C) The IRA’s version confirms the County Inspector’s version except that the former knew that Mick Heaney had not died.
These are three separate, independent pieces of evidence which have to be dismissed in order to believe that the Pearsons did not shoot IRA volunteers on active service.
Finally, and this is a question for Conor. My understanding is that the PRO in Kew only stores records from the executive arm of the State: the civil service, cabinet papers, diplomatic corp, the Army. It does not store reports or investigations of the Police force. The CI report only came to light because it was in British Army files.
As I said I could be wrong on this. I just find it difficult to believe that Police or RIC files would be made available to the public. If I’m right, it is not at all surprising that Ding Dong Doolies couldn’t find any substantive RIC report on the matter.
Brian,
I’m sure you’re right when you say that the Aubaners are ‘a gang of narcissists, hypocrites and bullies’. But I would say that the substance of a lot of their historical work stands despite that. I was mainly referring to Clifford’s books on the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, which I found genuinely enlightening.
Nollaig O,
‘The cultural capital and institutional power of those with higher degrees’ was not intended as a circumlocution for academic snobbery. But ‘it rubs some of those people up the wrong way’ certainly was!
The Aubaners are never going to win any
?
popularity contests, eh
“Eoghan Harris, whose obsession with low-church Protestants and evangelicals (see his play ‘Souper Sullivan’) is one reason why the programme on Coolacrease was made, and why it had the original title of ‘Atonement’.”
I didn’t realise before that Harris was fascinated
by Non-Conformist Protestantism, but Bartholomew is
right-it is one of his interests. Is “Souper Sullivan” any good
as a drama?
On a completely different note, Brian has reminded me that
Aldous Huxley wrote extensively about political
issues (pacifism,environmentalism, anarchism) and
his last novel “Island” is his political manifesto for
his ideal society.I read the novel years ago, and
one of the ideas I remember from it is that
people were made do rock-climbing and
other dangerous sports as a safe outlet
for human aggression.
If human beings do have an innate streak
of aggression (as some evolutionary
psychologists argue) maybe Huxley
was on the right track?
If you read David Goodway’s book “Anarchist
Seeds beneath the Snow”, it has an extensive
discussion of Aldous Huxley’s political ideas (he supported
the Irish War of Independence, you know).
I saw Harris’s ‘Souper Sullivan’ in 1995 or 1996, I think, because it toured Ireland as a Famine commemoration. To be honest, I don’t remember too much about it. But it was the only commemorative event that I saw that focussed on the question of proselytism during the Famine. (It’s set in west Cork during the Famine and deals with religious conversion and Famine relief.).That used to be a central feature of the public image of the Famine in Catholic Ireland up until a few decades ago. What the play has in common with the Coolacrease programme is an emphasis on religion, and particularly on Protestant-Catholic conflict, in the main events of Irish history. This is a feature of revisionist writing in general, but I thought Harris went even further in his contribution to the Coolacrease programme by using the theological term ‘atonement’ – ‘a crime that cries to high heaven for atonement’ or something like that. It’s as if he regards history as primarily a moral or metaphysical drama, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he regarded the programme itself as a form of atonement by a Catholic state through its state broadcaster. (Thinking about this, I take back what I said earlier – Harris will at least as interesting as Clifford to future cultural historians!)
There is an echo of this in dingdongdoolies first few posts. WorldbyStorm and ConorMcCabe both very reasonably criticised him/her for presenting it as a win and lose situation. But look also at who or what has won, according to ddd. Not justice, history or truth. Not even reconciliation or something like that. ‘The Pearson boys won this one.’ I wonder who they defeated, and how. This type of history exists in a perpetual present, which strikes me as pretty moral and metaphysical. Mind you, the Aubaners clearly think the same, since they appealed to the BCC under ‘current affairs’.
On Harris and “atonement”:
I deduced that last November he hoped to hear or read statements of atonement from people in the Cadamstown, Co. Offaly area when he appeared to leave a door open to people sa timpeallacht to do so by regularly stressing that the the IRA unit was from North Offaly.
In doing so he shot his main argument, that the motive for the killing was a sectarian land grab, in the foot. How would supposed land grabbers living many miles away benefit from the killings?
PS – I’ve just come across a review of Paul Bew’s ‘The Politics of Enmity’, by Brendan O’Leary. It’s as much about Bew himself as it is about the book, and traces his trajectory over the last 40 years or so. Here’s a section that caught my eye, in the context of this thread:
‘Bew rejected Green Marxism – especially its presumption that a united Ireland was the best means to socialism. He maintained that Protestant working class resistance to a united Ireland was autonomous of ruling class suasion or manipulation. He did not, however, pander to the most reactionary traits in unionist and loyalist culture. Unlike some of the membership of the British and Irish Communist Organisation (B&ICO), and its acolytes, he did not indulge in “Orange Marxism”. The latter slipped into the view that the Union was more important than working class union, celebrated the benefits of British rule in Ireland and elsewhere; justified, or denied, discrimination against Catholics and called for hard-line measures against the IRA, though not against loyalist paramilitaries.
The B&ICO was not Bew’s home, to his credit.’
(A footnote at this point says ‘There are, however, many citations of the works of Brendan Clifford in The Politics of Enmity, especially in his post-B&ICO development.’)
So – Clifford’s politics are questionable, but his recent historical work is well worth engaging with. The review is online, by the way, in the Dublin Review of Books – http://www.drb.ie. O’Leary’s review is a very substantial piece, not as entertaining as his nuclear strike on Richard English last year, but with a long analysis of the influence of Edmund Burke on Irish historians, some intriguing counterfactual speculation about the Act of Union etc. as well as the portrait of Bew.
Bartholomew,
Thanks a million for that review. I would have missed it otherwise. I could say lots about it, but, like the review of English, he runs off target when indulging his own agendas. Also entertaining that he saw no need to talk about his own politics - such as supporting the “redistribution” of Iraqi oil - to US corporations after an imperialist war. Also some exactitude in what he means by “national, religious and ethnic” or “entho-national” would have been in order.
The Hidden History programme is going to be repeated this
week, and it has also been nominated for an award.
http://www.tvnowmagazine.ie/showFavourites.aspx?id=8
Although TV Now Award? It’s not exactly a BAFTA or
a Emmy,is it?
Just found this out-”"The Killings At Coolacrease”" won an award-the
Hugo Television Award in Chicago.
http://www.rte.ie/about/awards/page1199734.html
Those bloody industrial branches! Smullen and Harris ensured they were set up everywhere. Even Chicago.
Mind you, the Hugo awards recognise ‘creativity’, which might be a bit of a back-handed compliment for a documentary.
It might indeed…
Finally saw the program. Interesting and well made, albeit
slightly slanted in the Pearsons’ favour.
BTW, thanks for the link Bartholomew.
Whatever else can be said about any work which is touched by EH, production values tend to be reasonably good. Where did you see it?
Saw the RTE repeat last night.