What would the academic world have done without the Troubles? I can think of a number of university profs (well, they weren’t profs when they started out but they soon became same when they got going on the Troubles) who made a comfortable, sometimes star-quality career out of the Troubles. Writing papers, organising Peace Studies departments, delivering lectures lamenting the existence of ‘sectarian schooling’ here. People say that for glaziers, the Troubles was a golden era. Peace studies profs made glaziers look like paupers.
None of this, of course, applies to Prof Henry Patterson, who is the Emeritus Professor of Irish Politics at Ulster University – and, if we can trust the internet, a Global Expert who provides Analysis on Demand. Prof Patterson had a letter in the Irish Times the other day headed ‘Blind Spots and Northern Ireland’. In it, he gently takes to task his fellow-unionist, commentator Alex Kane.
Alex apparently claimed that liberal unionism (among whom he would number himself, I imagine) finds it impossible to separate Sinn Féin from the IRA, just as Sinn Féin people can’t help but see unionists as “illegal occupiers”.
Prof Henry begs to disagree. He claims that it’s not just liberal unionists who can’t decouple Sinn Féin and the IRA –the same is the case with “many Catholics, Protestants and non-believers, unionist, Alliance and SDLP supporters.” Prof Patterson allows that unionists contributed to some extent in causing the Troubles and in keeping the pot boiling (he identifies Rev Ian Paisley in particular). “However, we would not have had devolution if unionists had all displayed a reluctance to accept that the other side have a valid point of view”.
Prof Patterson ends with a ringing paragraph: “If the price supporters of the Belfast Agreement have to pay for the return of devolution is, among other things, to shut up about the republican movement’s past at the same time as Sinn Féin is demanding full disclosure on the crimes of other agents in the conflict, then the prospect is even bleaker than the one painted by Alex Kane.”
See what he did there? As I read it, Prof. Patterson is saying that we really must keep reminding “the republican movement” of their past – in other words, Sinn Féin and the IRA are indissolubly linked, and all right-thinking people of all political persuasions know it is so.
At this point you may be throwing your arms in the air and wondering if there’s any hope. The Prof has accepted that unionists may have created conditions where republican violence erupted and continued for decades, but it’s now a question of republicans wanting full disclosure about the past while they escape all investigation.
Perhaps the Prof is right. After all, as a Prof of Irish Politics he must have read a lot of books and written umpteen articles on the Troubles, so he’s probably very wise. At the same time, I don’ t recall any republican saying that past republican actions must not be investigated. And to be honest I’m also a bit uneasy with his insistence that the IRA’s past deeds should continue to be kept stage centre.
As a friend of mine observed, this civilized difference of view between two liberal unionists comes back to one core claim: it was the IRA wot dun it. That, if true, to borrow the Prof’s terminology, is one bleak prospect.
Maybe someday a unionist apparatchik will draw up two lists, showing us the difference between liberal unionist thinking and red-neck unionist thinking. Assuming there is a difference, of course.
Incidentally, how many republican Professors of Politics are there in the Ulster University? Queen’s University? Only askin’ , like…
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