Well, this has potential to be quite the debate. The latest Hedge School from History Ireland takes place this Wednesday at the National Library, it’s likely to fill-up and places are first come first served. Here on the site you can find audio from previous Hedge Schools, on topics such as Brian Boru and the Battle of Clontarf and also a previous Hedge School in the National Library at which I spoke around the Animal Gang.
We’re now into the ‘decade of centenaries’ of course, but just what we’re commemorating is going to be the subject of great debate. It’s a debate we should all involve ourselves in.
History Ireland Hedge School in association with The National Library, Kildare St., Dublin @Wednesday 11 January 2012, 7pm
The War of Independence: ‘four glorous years’ or squalid sectarian conflict? Was historic objectivity the real victim?
The War of Independence 1918-1921 will be commemorated later this decade. Was it ‘Four Glorious Years’, as one protagonist called it (Frank Gallagher, the deputy director of the first Dáil’s Department of Publicity). Or was it a sectarian conflict darkened by ethnic cleansing, as historian Peter Hart has asserted (The IRA and its Enemies. 1998)?
Speakers: Historians John M. Regan (University of Dundee), David Fitzpatrick (TCD), Eve Morrison (TCD) and John Borgonovo (UCC).
You neglected to mention ‘historian’ Peter Hart interviewed people after they had died to back us his claims. What an amazing talent.
This Thursday (12th January) 7 pm*
The Little Museum of Dublin
Lecture: Dublin 100 years ago.
Catriona Crowe of the National archives revisits Dublin at the beginning of the last century with old ads, census forms, photographs, etc.
*(IMT, which is usually a half hour later because no one ever turns up on time)
After they died? Was he the famous journalist who used to be seen around Dublin with a big notebook, a trilby hat and a shovel behind his ear?
Sad to say FXR, it seems they’ve moved the talk 😦 I emailed them asking to attend and they said as much. Rescheduled down the line. It’d be up here otherwise!
“s. Incidentally, the Catriona Crowe talk is being rescheduled, I’ll let you know when a date is finalised.”
Thanks DF. It’s not on their website but they sent me a letter with a list of talks for the whole year. I’m glad you told me. I was even going to have a shower before I headed into the Southside..!
@FXR
Yep, sources used for the Peter Hart book mentioned were dead when he claimed to have interviewed him. Still defended by Harris, Myers et al mind you because his works suits their revisionist agenda.
See here (last couple of paragraphs in particular) – http://www.indymedia.ie/attachments/dec2006/replyto_harthi_mayjune_a.gif
Six veterans of the Kilmichael ambush gave statements to the Bureau of Military History. None of them mentioned a ‘false surrender.’ None of the veterans interviewed by Liam Deasy mentioned one either. I wouldn’t be so quick to denounce someone as a fraud unless I was an expert on west Cork myself.
Thanks Luke. It’s very like the male of the species to engage in the savagery of killing and make up rules to make themselves feel better. I’m sure hands up or down didn’t made a big difference to orphans and widows.
It should be called the War for Vatican Dependence. Rome’s clerics were the real victors. The children of Ireland were the losers.
Although I be a dub, ive family connections in west Cork, and many of the previous generation would have been land league, excommunicated by the church for republican activity and although i appreciate if fxr you are an out and out pacifist, rememberin some of the stories from them ,they had not the luxury of pacifism when faced with the brutality of the tans and auxies down that neck of the woods so excuse me if i dont want the name of the people who stood up to that be sullied by refering or suggesting to them as sectarian, catholic, reactionary etc. It should be a good talk all the same. I know all history is up for debate but it gets my back up when the loaded line is shoved in my face repeatedly.
Hold on there a minute Ragman! I’m not a pacifist. Ask Bertie. He called to my door once looking for a vote.
Ragman the hands up hands down thing is over rated. Dead is dead. If I was trying to wipe out an opposing force it wouldn’t make much difference what they were doing with their hands from one minute to the next.
Peter Hart has been completely discredited as a historian. There are numerous questions of the veracity of his sources, he has been shown to be very selective in taking pieces out of existing primary sources, disregarding them, in favour of secondary sources, even though the primary data, contradicts him. To call them man a historian is an insult to all who do that job in a professional manner.