Ian McBride

The Shadow of the Gunman: Irish Historians and the IRA

This article explores the ways in which Irish historiography has been shaped by paramilitary violence, counter-insurgency and the intimate, close-quarter killings that characterized the Troubles. Irish historiography, as a professional or academic enterprise, had long been committed to ideals of impartiality influenced by Herbert Butterfield and Michael Oakeshott. It was also acutely conscious of its proximity to violent political upheaval, and during the 1970s would display a heightened sense of the urgency of dispassionate historical inquiry. Prominent scholars believed that professional research would dispel the ‘myths’ that sustained the gunmen of the Provisional IRA. In the aftermath of the Good Friday Agreement, however, historians face the challenge of explaining the militant republicanism which they had previously sought to defuse. This article considers several recent analyses of the Provisional movement. It reveals the extent to which the most vociferous criticism of the Provisionals descends from the far Left of republicanism itself — from those who belonged to the Official IRA or its successor organization the Workers’ Party, or from the ‘dissident’ republicans of the 1990s.

Ulster Presbyterians and the Confessional State, c. 1688–1733

Historical research on Ireland between the 1690s and the 1730s has usually concentrated on two themes. First, these were the years when Protestant ascendancy was consolidated: the penal legislation enacted between 1695 and 1728 formally excluded Catholics from political and social influence, closing off the channels which had permitted their resurgence in the past. Secondly, this period also witnessed the first stirrings of Protestant patriotism, as William Molyneux and others demanded constitutional equality for the kingdom of Ireland within the British multiple monarchy. It has often been pointed out that a third source of conflict — the political and social rivalry between the Anglican establishment and the Presbyterian population — provoked so much bitterness during the reigns of William and Anne that it sometimes threatened to overshadow the central divide between Protestantism and popery. Until recently, however, the antagonism between church and dissent, so alien to twentieth-century Irish politics, has remained a curiosity rather than a subject for serious investigation.