‘State-directed’ public history of Troubles ‘lacks credibility’

A row has erupted over plans for a UK government-backed “independent public history” of the Troubles in Northern Ireland.

Up to five historians will be granted full access to UK state archives to “provide an independent and authoritative examination of the UK government’s policy towards Northern Ireland during the Troubles”.

An expert advisory panel for the project was announced at the end of April, but some academics have criticised the project, highlighting the lack of representation of academics currently working in Northern Ireland, with co-chair Lord Bew and Henry Patterson holding emeritus professorships at Queen’s University Belfast and Ulster University respectively.

The other co-chair is Caoimhe Nic Dháibhéid, senior lecturer in modern history at the University of Sheffield.

Laura McAtackney, professor in heritage studies at Aarhus University, said the initiative was also “problematic” because it was part of an “overarching process” imposed by the Westminster government that includes the Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Act, which came into force on 1 May. This ends access to legal mechanisms to deal with unlawful killings during the Troubles.

While ministers have insisted that the history is not connected to the Legacy Act, Professor McAtackney, who also works at University College Cork, told Times Higher Education that the timing signalled that routes to justice have been closed and replaced with a top-down “public history” process.

“These acts cannot be viewed in isolation: state-directed public history in such a context cannot be written without taking into account its role in the imposition of overarching legacy mechanisms,” she said.

Anna Bryson, a professor in the School of Law at Queen’s, agreed.

“Whilst the opportunity to gain access to hitherto closed files is a mouth-watering prospect for most academic researchers, the broader structural legislative and policy context for this work cannot be ignored,” she said.

“The harsh reality is that the underlying motivation for this work and the context in which it has been developed will inevitably undermine its credibility.”

Professor McAtackney added that the scholars on the nine-person panel – whose remit includes helping to select the researchers who will write the public history – were “all well-respected academics with impeccable research careers”, but a number of scholars are understood to have declined invitations to participate.

Marie Coleman, professor of 20th-century Irish history at Queen’s, said that a new Labour government at Westminster, which has promised to repeal the Legacy Act, might very well abolish the history project as well.

“Even if it survives, the project faces serious challenges in ever being realised, not the least of which will be finding historians to undertake the research,” she added. “The majority opinion within academia would appear to be one of scepticism and not wanting to be associated with this.”

In response to the criticism, the panel told THE that the project would focus specifically on British government policy and was “neither an inquiry into breaches of human rights – a properly legal and judicial task – nor a full history of the conflict”.

“We have no illusions about how difficult an undertaking this is, and we recognise that many people have reservations. For our part, we feel that, under the conditions of transparency set out in our terms of reference, it is worth engaging with this process, to allow historians an unprecedented opportunity to access otherwise closed materials which may never be released,” they said.

patrick.jack@timeshighereducation.com