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Belfast, 12 November 2024

 

 

SPEECH BY DR. MARTIN MANSERGH MRIA AT THE LAUNCH OF THE ÉAMON PHOENIX FOUNDATION WEBSITE AND ARCHIVE, THE NORTHERN IRELAND PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, TITANIC QUARTER BELFAST, TUESDAY, 12 NOVEMBER 2024, AT 1.00PM

It is a real honour for all of us here today to have this opportunity to celebrate the life and work of Dr. Éamon Phoenix but also to welcome the securing of his legacy for the benefit of future readers and scholars through his website and archive. We should all be grateful to his wife Alice, the family, and the Éamon Phoenix Foundation for their important initiative.

Éamon, who was such a prolific historian, as well as a judicious and an entertaining one, spent many hours in this state-of-the art building. Some of the items on the website relate to papers held here. I would like to thank PRO NI Director Dr. David Huddleston and his staff for their hospitality today, and for the many ways they with others have facilitated the assemblage of the website and archive, which will be further added to in the future.

I too am glad to be a PRONI ticketholder. This Public Record Office is of course the repository of documents since the creation of Northern Ireland, but it also holds many papers relating to the whole of Ireland preceding partition 100 years ago and indeed since. Partition was not a clean cut archivally or any other way. As we know, the blowing up of the Four Courts and the incineration of most of the Public Record Office at the start of the Irish civil war in 1922, about which figures as diverse as Ernie O’ Malley and Winston Churchill were remarkably complacent, inflicted far more damage on the country’s archives than partition. An important project is underway to reconstruct and reconstitute as far as possible from copies of documents held by other institutions what was contained in the Public Record Office up to 1922. The name of this is ‘Beyond 1922: the Virtual Record Treasury of Ireland’, and some of it is already accessible.

It is not often recognized, but there are quite a few instances when Northern Ireland leads, not just in its own area of jurisdiction, but exercises some responsibility in speaking for the island as a whole. There were several occasions when this happened in relation to commemoration of the First World War during the decade of centenaries, when Northern Ireland led, not just on its own behalf but also reflecting the contribution made by people on the whole island, for example, to take just one, in relation to those from Cork to Belfast who fought in the only naval engagement in 1916 at the Battle of Jutland.

Much of the credit for that must go to the Northern Ireland centenaries committee, who took a large rather than a narrow view. Two days ago, I took part by invitation in a remembrance ceremony in Thurles Cathedral, and after mass there was a procession up to St. Mary’s Church of Ireland, where there is a garden of remembrance with many memorials relating to every field of conflict, including Irish UN peacekeepers who died chiefly in the Congo and the Lebanon, but also Irish soldiers who fell in the Korean war, serving with US, Commonwealth and British forces.

One of the last occasions I met Martin McGuinness, Deputy First Minister, was in 2016 in the restored buildings that remain of Richmond Barracks, when he unveiled a memorial to Francis Ledwidge, the Co. Meath poet serving in Britsh uniform on the Western Front, who wrote a famous Lament for Thomas McDonagh, also a poet, who was executed for his part in the 1916 Rising. Mc Guinness said to me as he passed: ‘We have a lot to learn’.

As everyone who works here knows, actual history is full of complexities and does not conform to Procrustean ideological beliefs, and one of the services that historians such as Éamon Phoenix perform is to question the ‘certainties’ that emanate from received but often originally carefully constructed received narratives. In his early days as Taoiseach, Enda Kenny once famously said, ‘Paddy likes to know what the story is’.

But, as my wife points out, actually what is even better is to know what the history is. They are not always the same thing, and indeed sometimes even the most determined and earnest revisionism will not succeed in dislodging the comfortable myth. All of us are guilty sometimes. We much prefer to believe that King Duncan in Shakespeare’s Macbeth was murdered in his bed, rather than that he fell in the field of battle.

Michael Collins is an excellent and enthralling film. I remember a Loyalist, not obviously from the political wing of his organization, telling me in the 1990s that there was one man he really admired in Irish history and that was Michael Collins. I was not clear that this was an entirely reassuring message. Anyway, some UCD historians were wringing their hands, and wondering how long it would take to disabuse their students of some of the fictions it contained.

The Northern Ireland PRO plays an important and substantial part in illuminating history both here in Northern Ireland and across these islands. My father, who wrote a good deal on Ireland and Northern Ireland in their most formative years from 1900 to 1949 in particular, also used the PRO here when it was in different premises in Balmoral Avenue in South Belfast, which I also visited on at least one occasion.

Back in the 1960s, history was treated more warily than it is today, and viewed as potentially containing a lot of hidden landmines. There was a caution about recent documentary materials and who might be fit and trustworthy persons to view them. Even today, with certain categories of material, that attitude can still persist. This relates not just to files on past matters of high security. It is only very recently, south of the border, that a decision in principle has been taken to release the Land Commission files, and it may be a while yet before this actually happens.

The PRO NI’s founding director D. A. Chart as a scholar produced a first edition of the invaluable Drennan correspondence, since hugely expanded as part of the Women’s History Project in partnership with the Irish Manuscripts Commission around the time of the bicentenary of the 1798 rebellion, partly because they wished to highlight the excellent quality of the letters written by Martha McTier, writing from Belfast to her brother Dr. William Drennan, first chairman of the United Irishmen, who was for some time based in Dublin.

One of the annual highlights of the release of British Government papers was the well-informed commentary of Éamon Phoenix on those dealing with Ireland, Northern Ireland and British-Irish relations. The archive and website contains many of his analyses of years between the mid-1980s and the 1990s. One can also watch some of his great lectures. Anyone writing about that period would do well to refresh their memory of his output, in case they might miss some angles.

Government papers may only cover part of the story, generally omitting what was conveyed verbally often in conditions of extreme discretion. I will give one example. On the website, in the context of the 1994 State papers, there is a report that in the autumn of 1994, weeks after the IRA ceasefire, John Hume suggested to a British official that the Irish Government was going too fast with prisoner releases, which was part of its confidence-building measures. John Hume was expressing a perfectly legitimate political point of view.

However, in November that year, in a quiet bilateral chat at the end of an evening in the British Ambassador’s residence in Dublin, a most senior officer of the Royal Irish Constabulary, admittedly not from Northern Ireland, told me that they approved of what the Irish Government was doing on prisoner releases, but explaining that they were not in a position as yet to do the same.

The release of the UK papers under the 20-year rule now occurs significantly ahead of the Irish papers, which some see as giving the UK perspective a head start. But the remedy is in the hands of the Irish authorities, with important refurbishment work to expand holding capacity is underway at the National Archives of Ireland. In the past, papers would not normally see the light of day during the lifetime of a senior official and politician.

Nowadays that has all changed, but there is a comfort for an Irish official that the emergence into the light even of a disapproving personal comment made 20, 30 or 40 years ago by a senior British official or diplomat can sometimes seem an almost positive addition to one’s CV.

I first came across Éamon’s work, before I knew him. His 1994 book Northern Nationalism: Nationalist Politics, Partition and the Catholic Minority in Northern Ireland 1890-1940 was a masterly account of the impossible dilemmas facing the nationalist community. The most memorable passage in that book for me was Nationalist leader Cahir Healy’s critique in early 1925 of the entire Southern leadership, naming Griffith, de Valera and Collins for failing to understand the northern situation or the northern mind, though he also blamed northern Nationalists for failing to agree a position amongst themselves. Of course, the one leader who had been based in Belfast for a number of years and who did understand the situation was James Connolly executed in 1916.

Éamon would have enjoyed the letter in the Irish Times yesterday by educational authority Áine Hyland explaining in detail why the Collins-inspired policy of the Provisional Free State Government meeting the salaries of any teacher who refused to recognize the Northern Ireland Department of Education did not continue for long. That this was happening was never formally acknowledged and involved circuitous routes, and, according to Áine Hyland, was a fiasco with long-term disadvantages for Catholic education, despite being swiftly abandoned after Collins’ death.

One of the most valuable services Éamon provided to the reading public was his column in the Irish News entitled ‘On This Day’, which picked out from that paper some aspect of its political coverage on the same day of the year, mostly but not always from the first half of the 20th century. Very often, he added a comment of his own or background explanation at the end. There is a sample of these articles in the archive and website, but the Foundation may want to consider over time a much more extensive collection and issuing it in book form.

I would have to declare an interest at this point, as on 30 January 2007 Éamon published a column with the rather grandiloquent heading: ‘Mansergh puts Craigavon right on the history of Northern Ireland’, quoting from the edition of 30 January 1938 reporting a letter he had sent to the Daily Telegraph and Morning Post in response to one from Craigavon rebutting criticisms of another Oxford don of Anglo-Irish background Frank Pakenham, later Lord Longford.

Nicholas Mansergh was my father, a young Oxford don from Tipperary, who had published The Government of Northern Ireland: A Study in Devolution in 1936 as a sequel to his 1934 book on The Irish Free State. In the course of research for the Northern Ireland book, he was able to interview the Minister of Labour J. M. Andrews and the Attorney General Anthony Babington. Mansergh was critical of Craigavon’s statement that he valued being Grand Master of the Orange Order more than being Prime Minister of Northern Ireland, and more specifically of the abolition of PR, which had the effect of preventing smaller groups such as Labour and Independent Unionists from emerging, thus perpetuating stark Unionist-Nationalist divisions as well as facilitating gerrymandering at local authority level.

Thankfully, PR has been restored in Northern Ireland, except for Westminster elections, and that is not the fault of Northern Ireland. I noted with interest an editorial in this week’s Sunday Times, Irish edition, advocating PR for the US as a means of reducing polarization. The argument has considerable force, but it is hard to see it being adopted any time soon, if ever, by either of the larger parties in either the US or the UK.

Éamon won recognition and public awards for his exceptional services in advancing community relations and peace-building, with an annual lecture and a bursary named after him. An excellent example of this was the exhibition he curated up at Stormont, when neither the Assembly not the Executive were running, which commemorated 100 years of parliamentary life in Northern Ireland. One might have thought that uniting the parties on this would be a near impossible task, yet he succeeded in doing it, while being honest about the history.

Back in 1998, at the time of the Good Friday Agreement, it was conventional wisdom that the Nationalist and Republican parties would never go into the Stormont building and that some other venue would have to be found. On Good Friday morning, after an hour’s sleep in an uncomfortable chair in Stormont Buildings, I went out for a breath of fresh air and was walking close to the Parliament Buildings, when a passing car stopped. It was a senior civil servant who worked in the building, and who had once attended Irish special subject lectures given in Cambridge by my father in the 1960s.

He asked me had I ever been in the building, and when I said no, he asked me if he could give me a tour. I accepted, admired what I saw inside, and rapidly reached the conclusion that an alternative seat for the Assembly was not a last ditch that anyone needed to die in, not that I played any part in the subsequent decision of the Nationalist parties to go along with Stormont. Indeed, I am convinced of the likelihood, irrespective of other changes, that the building will serve as a parliamentary seat for a long time to come.

While doubts are frequently expressed, not least in opinion polls, that the institutions will survive even in the short term, this leaves out of account the absolute determination of the British Government that I have observed over 40 years that the elected representatives of Northern Ireland, since 1999 like those of Scotland and Wales, will play a part in administering their own country, and that Britain will not permanently relieve them of that responsibility. Ireland may have been threatened with crown colony government back in 1920, but that is not the vision for Northern Ireland today.

In 2012, the Irish Government decided to establish an Expert Advisory Group on Centenary Commemorations under the chairmanship of Dr. Maurice Manning to ensure that a whole series of important but potentially divisive commemorations would be conducted in a dignified non-partisan spirit. Éamon was a vital voice from Northern Ireland, who could advise on what was planned here, and on the different currents with regard to commemoration.

He was also instrumental in bringing many northern groups to meet and exchange views with the Committee. I remember one time a debate about whether the publication of the 1926 Census could be brought forward to illuminate, post-revolution, demographic change. Éamon was able to tell us that individual returns from the first NI Census had not been retained. Éamon also played an important part in ensuring that what was going on in the North at the time was incorporated into the overall narrative of the island’s history. There were fears that the decade, which ran to twelve years, would be divisive, but with one or two exceptions there was very positive public interest and buy-in in the Republic.

I was at a four-day conference on the civil war in Co. Kerry, where some of the worst atrocities took place, and was pleasantly surprised that all points of view were listened to and that there were no raised voices. Cork University Press has produced tremendous historic atlases of the Irish revolution and the civil war, following the format of the much earlier Great Irish Famine Atlas, following the 150th commemoration.

I was very sorry to learn yesterday of the early death of Gabriel Doherty of UCC, who was one of the editors. I understand Éamon was involved in the Famine commemorations, which of course involved what today is Northern Ireland as well. Éamon’s involvement in the decade of centenaries is well reflected in part of the website and archive. One of the main objectives in terms of legacy was to invest in making documents, particularly in the Bureau of Military History more accessible to researchers, school students, and the general public. People are much better informed in depth about what family members or Volunteers in the community were doing during the period.

Amidst all that was serious, there were some amusing and interesting asides that came to the surface. In 1914, Trinity College Dublin seriously suggested that they should be exempt from Home Rule, till this was shot down by Francis Sheehy-Skeffington and friends. His widow later claimed that the younger Seán Lemass regretted that votes had been given to women, and I am not aware of any denial.

However, he did appoint a first woman to be Secretary of a Government Department in 1959 Thekla Beere, who was also a Protestant. Much is made of Constance Markievicz being the first woman minister in the revolutionary Dáil government. But when things became settled, the North was way ahead, when Dehra Parker was appointed a Minister in 1949. Much was made of a lone woman army officer appointed in the Free State Army. Nearly 60 years were to pass before there was another one.

The rebels in the GPO were largely cut off from the outside world. A rumour circulated mid-week that the Germans were on the Naas Road. A Volunteer asked Patrick Pearse, when they were standing on the top floor of the GPO, whether he should fire some shots to bring down the head on Nelson’s column. Pearse said no, first, because it would be a waste of ammunition, and secondly because it might kill or injure someone standing below. Prime Minister Asquith came across to Dublin and visited Richmond Barracks where the prisoners were held. He asked a young Dubliner what he thought of the Rising now.

‘Well, I think it was a great success, Sir’. Asquith frowned, deeply puzzled and wanting an explanation. ‘Well, if it wasn’t, you wouldn’t be here, Sir’, came the reply. The devout W. T. Cosgrave wanted bishops in the Senate, or the Catholic hierarchy to have oversight of legislation, but Collins ruled that out firmly. Éamon in one of his ‘On This Day’ contributions referred to rival visions, neither of which came to pass, one that Ireland would become an example and friend to Catholic peoples everywhere, and on the other hand a Protestant Home Rule clergyman, who thought that if the South would throw off the yoke of Rome there would be nothing to stop Ireland being united. Recently, one Belfast Church of Ireland rector argued that it would be impossible to have anything to do with the Republic, because it was now a pagan country.

More seriously, there were woeful misapprehensions with potentially serious consequences. During the First World War, influential Unionists were constantly pressing the British Government to introduce conscription across Ireland. Many southern Nationalists woefully underestimated Ulster Unionist determination to remain apart, and thought they could be influenced by economic boycotts or damage to Orange property in Dublin. The British Government simply did not care how many big houses in the South were burnt. However, brought into a wider European perspective a lot worse happened, and a lot more lives were lost in parts of Europe after the First World War, than happened here.

Éamon’s role as a historian was wholly constructive. He understood the need for a tempered and empathetic understanding of where each side, and there are often more than two, was coming from. One of the aims of the decade of centenaries, in the words of the Expert Advisory Group of which he was a member, was ‘to broaden sympathies, without having to abandon loyalties, and in particular recognising the value of ideals and sacrifices, including their cost’.

To sum up, Éamon was a superb historian and a wonderful daily communicator. His work underlined the importance of the maximum achievable balance and objectivity, particularly where historical perspectives can be very conflicted. He made a major contribution to the success of the centenary commemorations of the new political landscape that emerged in Ireland in the period between 1912 and 1923, bringing people with very diverse backgrounds and outlooks together.

I have great pleasure in launching the Éamon Phoenix website and archive.