Confronting the Past for the Sake of the Future

Confronting the Past for the Sake of the Future1 Séamus Murphy SJ (bio) The 1998 Good Friday or Belfast Agreement outlined structures of power-sharing in Northern Ireland and supporting roles for the British and Irish governments. It also contained something new in Irish history, namely, a commitment by unionist and nationalist representatives to the following principles: • recognition of the 'legacy of suffering' arising from intercommunal political violence; • dedication to the 'achievement of reconciliation and mutual trust'; • commitment to 'partnership, equality and mutual respect as the basis of relationships within Northern Ireland, between North and South, and between these islands'; • 'absolute commitment to exclusively democratic and peaceful means' of addressing political differences; • acknowledgement of 'the substantial differences between our continuing and equally legitimate political aspirations'; • recognition of the right of 'people of Northern Ireland to identify themselves and be accepted as Irish, or British, or both, as they may so choose.'2 The signatories knew that the Agreement was not a conclusion but a beginning, since it meant working towards major cultural change. Can this change be grafted onto our respective identities? Can we change the pattern of history? The uses of history Hannah Arendt, the Jewish political thinker who survived the Nazis and wrote on totalitarianism, held that certain parts of history needed not just to be understood but also to be confronted.3 Nietzsche said people need history for three purposes:4 (1) to preserve knowledge of the past (the historian's role); (2) to provide inspiring heroes [End Page 362] and founders, meaning and identity (the leader's role); and (3) to confront history's dark side (wars and oppression), resisting fatalism5 about seemingly eternal ethnic conflicts, and giving voice to history's silenced and erased victims (the critic's role). Without falsifying it (1), the historical narrative should be reconstructed and re-membered so as to be life-giving for the needs of the age (2, 3). In 2007 then-President McAleese expressed a hope for a changed attitude to our history: 'Where previously our history has been characterised by a plundering of the past for things to separate and differentiate us from one another, our future now holds the optimistic possibility that Ireland will become a better place where we will … revisit the past and find there elements of kinship long neglected, of connections deliberately overlooked.'6 While academic history deals with the past, memory concerns the present. We – not just historians – choose our historical heroes, choose the historical victims to redeem from erasure, and choose whether our choices will be exclusive and bitter or inclusive and forgiving. The 1998 principles' inclusivity challenges us to confront our history and convert our memories. The Decade of Centenaries The recent 'Decade of Centenaries' commemorations marked the events of the fateful 1912–1923 period: the third Home Rule bill in 1912, where Britain committed to devolving government; the formation in 1912–1914 of armed unionist and nationalist militias; the 1916 Rising, Sinn Féin's victory in the 1918 general election, and the 1919–1921 IRA war; partition and the establishment of a northern Home Rule government; the Anglo-Irish Treaty, the 1922 general election in the south, and the 1922–23 civil war. Endorsed by referenda in Northern Ireland and the Republic, the 1998 Agreement has overriding moral and political authority underwriting its principles as establishing an ethical framework for the future nationalist–unionist relationship. Accordingly the post-1998 historical narrative must not ignore the principles' normative force. That implies interpreting Irish history since 1600, and particularly the decisive 1912–1923 period, within the framework of the principles. Sadly the Republic commemorated the 1912–1923 events as if nothing in the 1968–1998 period challenged traditional interpretations of the earlier events. The two sets of events are part of the same history: what happened [End Page 363] later cannot be understood without knowing its causes in the earlier events, and what happened later casts light on the earlier events. Quarantining interpretation of the earlier events from the later events treats them as (in Nietzsche's term) an antiquarian's collection of pious relics, irrelevant to contemporary life. The 1998 retrospective The Agreement's principles...