Historians and the Stormont House Agreement
Report on a Workshop held at Hertford College, Oxford, 19 October 2016
Introduction
This report considers the contribution that historians and social scientists can make to the task of ‘dealing with the past’ in Northern Ireland. Specifically, it examines the role of academics as envisaged in the Stormont House Agreement from the perspective of experienced practitioners of the relevant disciplines.
The report is the outcome of a workshop held at Hertford College, Oxford on 19 October 2016. Recognising the need for clearer information about the potential contribution of historical research to reconciliation in Northern Ireland, we have set out:
1. informed comments on the proposals in the Stormont House Agreement for (i) an Oral History Archive;(ii) a timeline and (iii) statistical analysis; and (iv) a report on themes and patterns;
2. ways of distinguishing between problems that historians and social scientists cannot solve and those matters of public concern where academic research and analysis can bring greater clarity and understanding;
3. recommendations on how to ensure that the overall process is ‘conducted with sensitivity and rigorous intellectual integrity, devoid of any political interference’.
Three Key Points
- The proposals for an Oral History Archive, for further statistical analysis of the conflict by academics, and for the examination of ‘themes and patterns’ present valuable opportunities for promoting a fuller understanding of the conflict in Northern Ireland, including its wider British and Irish contexts.
- If the academic components of the legacy process are to enjoy public confidence their development and implementation must involve independent researchers who are recognised as experts in their fields.
- If the process is to meet the highest standards of academic rigour and to be free from political interference, we recommend that the selection of academics, or teams of academics, be made in consultation withindependent scholarly bodies with a proven record of promoting high-quality research and thereby contributing to public debateand policy making.
The Hertford workshop included a dozen established scholars working in departments of History, Politics and Sociology in Northern Ireland, the Republic of Ireland and Britain:
Dr Huw Bennett (University of Cardiff); Dr MaireBraniff (University of Ulster); Dr Anna Bryson (Queen’s University Belfast); Professor Marianne Elliott (University of Liverpool); Dr Katy Hayward (Queen’s University Belfast); Professor Ian McBride (Hertford College, Oxford); Professor FearghalMcGarry (Queen’s University, Belfast); Dr Marc Mulholland (Oxford); Dr Niall Ó Dochartaigh (NIU Galway); Dr Simon Prince (Canterbury Christ Church); Professor Jennifer Todd (University College Dublin); Dr Tim Wilson (University of St. Andrews).
For further details of the participants please see Appendix 1.
1. Responses to the Stormont House Agreement
In the Stormont House Agreement (December 2014) Northern Ireland’s political leaders renewed their commitment to dealing with the legacy of the Troubles. The Stormont House Agreement (SHA) proposes the establishment of an Oral History Archive relating to the conflict, and envisages that academics will be involved in producing ‘a factual historical timeline and statistical analysis of the Troubles’ to accompany it. The SHA further provides that, after five years,‘independent academic experts’ will be commissioned by the Implementation and Reconciliation Group to write a report on any patterns and themes that emerge from the various legacy mechanisms designed to examine Troubles-related deaths. This process is to be ‘conducted with sensitivity and rigorous intellectual integrity, devoid of any political interference’. We turn now to examine these provisions.
(i) The Oral History Archive
Storytelling and oral history initiatives have long been acknowledged as an important and distinctive element of peacebuilding and reconciliation. In the absence of a formal truth and information recovery commission, academic and community oral history and ‘storytelling’ projects have provided an important outlet for victims and survivors. The creation of an Oral History Archive presents an opportunity to capture unheard voices – to reach out to a wide range of victims and survivors in Ireland, North and South, and throughout Britain. In time these individualperspectives can illustrate wider patterns and themes including gender, mental health, intergenerational dynamics, and rural perspectives. Providing opportunities to hear other voices can ultimately contribute to the complex work of reconciliation.
Numerous challenges must first be overcome. The Boston College Tapes affair continues to unfold, fuelling cynicism and fear. The default position of many individuals and groups is to reserve judgement and ‘say nothing’. In order to address these fears and to facilitate comprehensive engagement it is vital to ensure that the Archive is ‘independent and free from political interference’ – as stipulated in the Stormont House Agreement. Unlike the other historical components of the SHA, the proposal for an Oral History Archive has already been the subject of academic discussion, as detailed in Appendix 3.
The development of an Oral History Archive offers a potentially important means of bridging scholarly understanding and wider public engagement with history. In particular, an Oral History Archive offers a more inclusive means of addressing the pastthan a body of research narrowly focussed on state security forces and paramilitary groups. The stories of those who have suffered bereavement, injury and intimidation as a consequence of the conflict must be central to the project.
The aim of historical research is to construct as complete a picture of the past as possible. If we are to understand what happened in Northern Ireland we need to explore not only the dynamics of conflict but also those individuals and organisations who worked to restrain violence, to overcome division and to improve trust and cooperation between communities. A comprehensive account of the conflict would include the experiences of nurses and surgeons, community workers, school-teachers, the clergy of all denominations, lawyers and journalists – of all those whose occupations and social positions brought them into contact with the consequences of violence. The oral history of the Northern Ireland conflict must encompass the various ways in which people dealt with civil breakdown, polarisation, violent upheaval and militarisation in their everyday lives.
Academics have a vital role to play in outreach – in drawing on Irish, British and international precedents to engage the public in an oral history enterprise that must belong to everyone. In this respect, and in others, valuable lessons can be learned from the successful commemoration of the centenary of the Easter Rising in the Republic of Ireland. The Irish government framed historical reflections on the centenary in a pluralistic fashion, and worked with the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland governments to ensure that commemoration occurred ‘in a spirit of historical accuracy, mutual respect, inclusiveness and reconciliation’.[1] Widespread public engagement was enabled by museum exhibitions, community research projects and public talks and conferences. The digitisation of archival sources, such as the Bureau of Military History and the Military Service Pensions and Census, proved a successful means of promoting public engagement by democratising historical research.
It should be noted that organisations such as the Community Relations Council, and local government Good Relations bodies, have developed considerable experience in Northern Ireland in dealing with the ‘Decade of Centenaries’ that could form the basis for community engagement with the far more contentious history of the Troubles.[2]
(ii) Timelines
The purpose of ‘a factual historical timeline’ isunclear. The CAIN web service already offers a detailed ‘Chronicle of the Conflict’ along with many other resources for those who wish to understand the causes and development of the Troubles. Another detailed timeline can be found in Paul Bew and Gordon Gillespie, Northern Ireland: A Chronology of the Troubles (2nd edition, Dublin, 1999). Richard Deutsch and Vivien Magowan produced a four-volume work entitled, Northern Ireland, 1968-73: AChronology of Events(1973-75), while Fortnight magazine ran a monthly chronology throughout the conflict. David McKittrick and David McVea’sMaking Sense of the Troubles: A History of the Northern Ireland Conflict (2012) is a widely admired, concise textbook, with a chronology stretching over 79 pages.[3]
Greater clarity about the purpose of a timeline is necessary. Otherwise we risk creating misunderstandings among the wider public about the nature of academic research. One advantage of historical scholarship is precisely the lack of importance attached to polemical arguments over ‘who fired the first shot?’ Dealing with the past in Northern Ireland will require engaging with more complex questions of causation and responsibility.
(iii) Statistical Analysis
Alargevolume of statistical analysisrelating to the conflict is already available. An excellent example is Marie-Therese Fay, Mike Morrissey and Marie Smyth, Northern Ireland’s Troubles: The Human Costs (1999) which categorises the victims of the conflict by religious affiliation, social background, geographical location, gender and age. The authors also examine the perpetrators of violence, identifying the organisations responsible for deaths. One difference between Northern Ireland and other divided societies is that extensive research was conducted in Northern Ireland from 1968 right through to the aftermath of the Belfast Agreement. The results of many attitude surveys and participation observation studies were summarised in John Whyte’s concise Interpreting Northern Ireland (1991). More recently Bernadette C. Hayes and Ian McAllister have produced a systematic analysis of academic public opinion surveys during the entire span of the Troubles, in their bookConflict to Peace: Politics and Society in Northern Ireland over Half a Century(2013).
Much work nevertheless remains to be done. Almost all statistical analysis so far has focused on the number of deaths because they provide a clear and unambiguous measure of conflict. It is likely that a systematic mapping of other indicators of violence, using newly-available archival sources, including military situation reports, will contribute significantly to understanding the context for individual attacks, and the intentions and strategies of the various parties involved. Other important areas in which our statistical data is unsatisfactory are on levels of detention, charging, conviction and imprisonment for offences related to the conflict, and on levels of participation in the security forces over the course of the conflict. These new possibilities for statistical analysis will provide valuable background and context for the writing of the thematic reports.
(iv) Themes and Patterns
The Stormont House Agreement does not offer examples of the themes and patterns likely to form the subject of inquiry. But the final draft of proposals given to the parties by Richard Haass and Meghan O'Sullivan suggested the following possibilities: alleged collusion between governments and paramilitaries; alleged ethnic cleansing in border regions and in interface neighbourhoods; the alleged UK ‘shoot to kill’ policy; the targeting of off-duty UDR soldiers, prison officers, and reservist RUC officers; the degree to which, if at all, the Republic of Ireland provided a ‘safe haven’ to republican paramilitaries; intra-community violence by paramilitaries; the use of lethal force in public order situations; detention without trial; mistreatment of detainees and prisoners; the policy behind the 'disappeared'; and the sources of financing and arms for paramilitary groups.
Many of these themes are already being addressed albeit in a piecemeal manner. A historical report on patterns and themes can accommodate multiple voices while at the same time testing assertions in a disciplined, evidence-based way. Such an approach will avoid constructing hierarchies of victims or implying a simplistic equivalence among all the protagonists. As Michael Ignatieffhas remarked, ‘the function of truth commissions, like the function of honest historians, is … to narrow the range of permissible lies’.[4]
The themes outlined by Haass and O’Sullivan are urgent and important precisely because they are so central to the struggle to establish and undermine the legitimacy of key parties to the conflict. It is important that thematic analysis be more than simply a matter of fighting old battles in a new arena. Issues such as collusion or ethnic cleansing require detailed factual investigation. But they must also be understood in relation to the broader forces of violence and legitimacy, coercion and order, territory, nation and state, culture and identity.
2. Academic Research and the Northern Ireland Conflict
(i) The Limits of Historical Research
It should be noted at the outset that many of the difficulties Northern Ireland faces in dealing with its past do not derive from deficiencies in academic understanding of the Troubles. The problem is rather the strength with which partisan narratives are held by the public and, in many cases, promoted by political actors invested in one-sided interpretations of the conflict. Previous attempts to deal with the past have been obstructed by fundamental differences over the legitimacy of the campaigns of paramilitary organisations, with most attention focusing on the IRA. No amount of archival research or academic analysis will resolve those disagreements. Attitudes to paramilitary violence are in turn shaped by differences over how far Northern Ireland was undemocratic or incapable of peaceful reform. Once again, it is hard to see how deeply held political beliefs about such matters can be either proved or disproved by historical research. What divides the people of Northern Ireland is not so much disagreement over particular facts as clashing perceptions of the responsibility for violence, the motives of the principal agents in the conflict, and the meaning of victimhood.
There are disagreements over the nature of the conflict within the academy as well as in public discourse. Historians and social scientists work with concepts and categories that have an inescapably political dimension. One outcome of academic training is precisely the realisation that there is no neutral definition of the political concepts we all employ. In all societies the meaning of key political terms – democracy, nation, self-determination, terrorism – is contested. Consequently, as the historian and literary critic Stefan Collinihas observed, ‘all attempts to understand aspects of human life, no matter how disciplined they may be in their analysis of concepts and their handling of evidence, will reproduce some of this fundamental lack of agreement’.[5]
We share the general wariness among historians and other academics of proposals for ‘official’ or ‘agreed’ histories. Indeed the manipulation of the past by political and social elites has been a major theme of historical study since the 1980s.[6] Scholars understandably fear that in state-sponsored history the complexities of past experience are liable to be sacrificed in the interests of political expediency or therapeutic goals. One of Ireland’s most respected historians reminds us ‘to avoid the use of simplistic and exclusive dichotomies, or facile attributions of motive’; the task of the historian is rather to ‘raise awkward issues and, above all, seek to broaden the terms of debate’.[7] The purpose of academic research is not to close down public debate but to inform it.
(ii) Objectivity
All writing in History and the social sciences embodies assumptions about the nature of political and social life. But a fundamental part of the training of historians consists of adjudicating between competing accounts of the same event or phenomenon, and defending such judgements on the basis of rational, evidence-based argument. Most historians would recognise Mark Bevir’s description of objectivity as resting upon ‘a combination of agreement on certain facts, an extensive use of criticism, and a comparison of rival views in relation to clearly defined criteria’. These include the traditional criteria of accuracy, comprehensiveness, and consistency, but also – and crucially – a refusal to avoid uncomfortable facts.[8] Professor Bevir is a philosopher who teaches Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley. But his views correspond closely to those of Mary Fulbrook, a historian of modern Germany based at University College London. In her book, Historical Theory (2002), Professor Fulbrook identifies three essential precepts of good historical practice:
- commitment to basic honesty and integrity rather than deceit;
- absence of wilful distortions or omissions;
- commitment to accepting the possibility of revision of particular interpretations in the light of further evidence.
It will be apparent that these principles resemble a code of ethics rather than a scientific procedure for determining the truth. Detachment is vital to all of them. These values are sustained by the process of peer review used by academic journals and publishers, by promotion panels, by national research councils and international funding bodies.
(iii) Resolving Conflicts over the Past
Establishing facts and assessing the veracity of competing accounts is an essential aspect of the discipline of history and the related social sciences. Empirical research is the foundation ofhistorical inquiry. Often the kinds of events that interest historians are mental events: they ask not only what happened, but how contemporaries understood their actions, and how far the meanings of those actions changed over time. But the assembling of factual information from source material, archival or otherwise, is fundamental to historical understanding. Historians are accordingly trained to ask questions about the institutional and political contexts in which sources are produced, about the ideological assumptions embedded within source material, and about the intended and unintended processes of destruction that have created imbalances and gaps in the surviving evidence. The compilation and critical evaluation of evidence is an indispensable part of confronting the legacy of the conflict. It enables historians to test the claims and categories employed in the public sphere, particularly where they depend on simplified or distorted representations of the past.
But the most distinctive concern of historians and social scientists, separating them from other fact-seeking enterprises such as journalism and the law, is to bring fresh analytical perspectives to bear and to unsettle simplistic and entrenched narratives of the past. Scholars are at their best disaggregating the assumptions and beliefs that underpin rival perceptions of the past, and in breaking controversial questions into their component parts. On some questions – such as the extent of discrimination that existed under the old Stormont government – academic research hasachieved a measure of consensus.[9] Even in the more heated debate concerning the role of sectarianism in the IRA’s campaign academics have brought the key issues into sharper focus and narrowed the scope of disagreement.[10]