Appendix 3

Appendix 3: The Oral History Archive Storytelling and oral history initiatives have long since been acknowledged as an important and distinctive element of peacebuilding and reconciliation. They have assumed added significance in Northern Ireland where a lack of consensus on the causes of conflict and the appropriate mechanisms for dealing Continue Reading

Instant History: Ulstermen at the Somme, July 1916

By David Fitzpatrick What historian of revolutionary Ireland can claim to have remained utterly impervious to seduction during the current orgy of centennial commemoration? The study of how distant events have been remembered is suddenly both popular and profitable, offering almost irresistible attractions. The core documentation for public commemorative practices Continue Reading

Revisionism Revised – by Revisionists

By Jim Smyth [full_width] [/full_width] In 2011, deploring the ‘fundamental hypocrisy’ of official Ireland’s attitudes towards the 1916 rebellion, the (self-described) revisionist, and polemicist, Eoghan Harris, questioned the wisdom of any centennial ‘military display’; ’the republic has no right’, he declared, ‘to parade troops past the GPO’. In 2015, however, Continue Reading

Democracy and the Right to Resist in the Ulster Covenant and Proclamation of the Irish Republic

By Colin Reid [full_width] [/full_width] In the hours before becoming First Minister of Northern Ireland in January, Arlene Foster, the leader of the Democratic Unionist Party, caused a political storm by announcing her refusal to officially mark the centenary of the Easter Rising. ‘Easter 1916 was a very violent attack Continue Reading

Why every school in the Republic of Ireland should be presented a copy of Eoin MacNeill’s 1916 Memorandum

By Matt Kelly According to Circular 0047/2015, issued in September 2015 by the Department of Education and Skills, every primary and post-primary school in the Republic of Ireland was to be presented with the national flag and a copy of the 1916 Proclamation in England and Irish. ‘It is intended’, Continue Reading

‘The Darkest Blot on Ireland’s History’: the Easter Rising, the Executions and Scottish Newspaper Reportage

By Helen O’Shea The execution of the Easter Rising rebels has been pivotal to a widely accepted, yet rarely questioned narrative in the Irish and British popular historical imagination – that initial widespread condemnation of the rebels’ supposedly futile actions gave way to a surge of sympathy in the wake Continue Reading