I am pleased that West Cork, Skibbereen to be precise, is to have its first history festival next July. The inaugural festival will see such subjects as the Knights Templar, and the Irish revolutionary period in West Cork included, as well as archaeology, political, literary, and military history up for discussion and debate.‘West Cork has a compelling history of its own,’ said festival organiser Simon Kingston. ‘It also has a population of informed and outward-looking people interested both in local and global affairs. I have a feeling that these ‘informed and outward-looking people’ will be disappointed.
I am concerned that the speakers chosen to discuss the War of Independence period express a narrow range of opinions. It might more accurately be renamed the West Brit History Festival. The Festival opens with a keynote address by Roy Foster, authorised biographer of Yeats and the “leading Irish historian of his generation”. Eoghan Harris and Kevin Myers require little introduction. They have expended acres of newspaper print extolling the merits of a historian who claimed he spoke to a participant in the November 1920 Kilmichael Ambush, six days after the last (97-year-old) veteran died. I refer to the late Peter Hart. Another participant, Eve Morrison, supported Hart’s claim and stated she was on the trail of the mystery man. That was five years ago. Appropriately, Ms Morrison is speaking on ‘Cork Ghosts of the Irish Revolution’.
The combined efforts of these four to undermine the standing of ambush commander Tom Barry, and of the IRA generally, reduced academic history (and ‘historical’ journalism) to a laughing stock for a considerable period. Roy Foster, who spoke for himself when he said in 1986 ‘We are all revisionists now’, is giving the introductory lecture. He presumably will set the tone at this cosy get together. The festival will resuscitate the sectarian theory that the IRA was sectarian during the War. Eoghan Harris will show his incompetent 2012 documentary, An Tost Fada (The Long Silence).I hope festival-goers will be informed of at least one serious error, admitted by RTE after I complained.
The programme stated that two Protestant farmers Matthew Connell and William Sweetman were killed in a sectarian attack in April 1922 after the Truce and Treaty, whereas they were actually killed beforehand, in February 1921, for reasons that were not sectarian. There are other howlers in the programme which contemporary Protestants would have recognised as propaganda. The decade of remembrance needs broad discussion and a fair representation of opinion. This event is one sided, with one partial exception: Andy Bielenberg. He was subject to a Harris/Myers mauling when his analysis, and that of John Borgonovo, on conflict deaths did not reproduce their imaginative views. I hope he is not subject to more trumped-up fake-history claims. I suggest that the organisers broaden out the discussion, even at this late stage, so that more historical and less hysterical analysis is advanced.
PROGRAMME OF EVENTS
Session 1 (The Arena & The Secret Garden): Friday 28th July 2017, 18:30-23:00
The West Cork History Festival opens with a keynote address by Roy Foster, authorised biographer of Yeats and the leading Irish historian of his generation. The Festival opens at 18:30, with Roy Foster’s lecture beginning an hour later.
19:30-20:30 – Introductory lecture by Professor Roy Foster (The Arena) on ‘”A Fair People”: antagonism and conflict in Irish history’
21:00-23:00 – Screening of the film Rebel Rossa, the recent biopic of O’Donovan Rossa (The Secret Garden)
Session 2 (The Arena): Saturday 29th July 2017, 10:00-13:00
10:00-11:00 – Dr William Sheehan on lessons in counter-insurgency from Ireland
11:00-12:00 – Dr Eve Morrison on ‘Cork Ghosts of the Irish Revolution’
12:00-13:00 – HE Ambassador Dan Mulhall ‘War & Peace: two Irish writers in 1917, Francis Ledwidge and AE’
The Skibbereen and District Historical Society’s Journal 2017 will be launched at 13:00 in The Arena – no ticket is required for this event and all are welcome.
Session 2 (The Secret Garden): Saturday 29th July 2017, 10:00-13:00
10:00-11:00 – Dr David Edwards on the Great Earl of Cork
11:00-12:00 – Dr Patrick Little on the second earl of Cork and his children
12:00-13:00 – Screening of the film An Tost Fada (The Long Silence) and post-screening discussion with Eoghan Harris, the writer and narrator
Session 3 (The Arena): Saturday 29th July,14:00-17:00
14:00-15:00 – Dr Andy Bielenberg on spies and informers in Cork in the War of Independence
15:30-17:00 – Professor David Fitzpatrick on ‘Protestant depopulation and the Irish Revolution’
Session 3 (The Secret Garden): Saturday 29th July, 14:00-17:00
14:00-15:00 – Dr Terry Barry on Tower Houses in Ireland
15:00-16:00 – with a local dimension provided by Finola Finlay on Tower Houses in West Cork
16:00-17:00 – and in contrast Richard Butler on the architecture of Bishop Lucey’s churches in Cork
Session 4 (The Arena): Saturday 29th July, 17:30-19:00
Panel discussion on the War of Independence, chaired by Mark Hennessy of The Irish Times. Panel: David Fitzpatrick, Andy Bielenberg, Eve Morrison, William Sheehan, and Kevin Myers
Session 4 (The Secret Garden): Saturday 29th July, 17:30-19:45
17:30-18:30 – Dr Dominic Selwood – The Knights Templar and Ireland
18:45-19:45 – Connie Kelleher on piracy off the West Cork coast
Festival Dinner (The Arena): Saturday 29th July, 20:30-24:00
Festival dinner in The Arena with dinner provided by one of West Cork’s best restaurants, The Good Things Café, and a chance to meet some of our speakers. The three course dinner has been especially created for the West Cork History Festival by the inspirational Carmel Somers, owner of Good Things, and will include wine with each course.
Session 5 (The Arena): Sunday 30th July, 11:00-13:00
11:00-12:00 – Panel session on the First World War and Ireland Part 1 – Participation with panellists HE Ambassador Kevin Vickers, Lar Joye, Heather Jones, HE Ambassador Dan Mulhall
12:00-13:00 – Panel session on the First World War and Ireland Part 2 – Commemoration with Ruth Dudley Edwards, Eunan O’Halpin, Julia Neuberger, Nigel Biggar, Kevin Myers
Session 5 (The Secret Garden): Sunday 30th July, 11:00-13:00
11:00-12:00 – Pat Crowley of Durrus History Society on ‘The O’Donovan Family of Muintervara, Durrus: Early Nineteenth Century Catholic Magistrates, Landowners and Political Activists
12:00-13:00 – William Casey on early Fenianism in Skibbereen
Session 6 (The Arena): Sunday 30th July, 14:00-16:00
14:00-15:00 – Kevin Vickers on Irish-born Canadian Soldiers in the First World War
15:00-16:00 – Professor Eunan O’Halpin on commemoration 1919-1923
Session 6 (The Secret Garden): Sunday 30th July, 14:00-16:00
14:00-15:00 – Professor Marianne Elliott on ‘Sectarianism in Ireland: Its History and Impact on the Northern Ireland Peace Process’
15:00-16:00 – Lar Joye on duelling in Ireland
Session 7 (The Arena): Sunday 30th July, 16:30-17:30
The closing speaker of the West Cork History Festival is Michael Dobbs, creator of House of Cards
Michael Dobbs on Life, Lust and Liquor: how House of Cards wrote itself
It is hard to imagine that a history festival in Skibbereen could omit reference to the Famine, but looking at the stellar line-up of speakers it is hardly surprising. This is a brazen revisionist love-in rather than a genuine attempt to understand history.
Those eminent West Brit Corkonians, Tweedle-Dum and Tweedle-Dee of the Irish News letter columns, Maurice Fitzgerald and Robert O’Sullivan will, no doubt, wend their weary way to it.