The Role of History & Historians in Dealing with the Past after the Stormont House Agreement #ImagineBelfast15

Today’s lunchtime debate in the UU’s Belfast campus was the best attended of the week – so far – and also the most fractious. Grainne Kelly chaired a panel of Adrian Grant (historian), Cillian McGrattan (politics) and Susan McKay (journalist and writer) who discussed the Role of History and Historians in Dealing with the Past after the Stormont House Agreement. Adrian Grant started by looking at definitions of history (objective truth? or an artform based on narratives of the past?) …

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Boston College: “risk could have been managed without abandoning ethical and legal considerations”

“As with any source, historians must exercise critical judgment when using interviews–just because someone says something is true, however colourfully or convincingly they say it, doesn’t mean it is true. Just because someone “was there” doesn’t mean they fully understand “what happened.” (Frisch, Michael. A Shared Authority: Essays on the Craft and Meaning of Oral and Public History. Albany: SUNY Press, 1991.) What we have now with the Boston College Belfast Project is mass misattribution that is, nobody wants to …

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Daithí McKay: Sinn Féin will not be deflected by ‘old guard’ within the police

Slugger is pleased to host a piece on the recent arrest of Gerry Adams from Sinn Fein’s Economy spokesman, Daithí McKay MLA Last week those who have opposed the Peace Process and Sinn Féin got what they always wanted – the arrest of Gerry Adams. It served a number of interests, those anti-Sinn Féin voices who have sought to undermine the Good Friday Agreement; the selfish and strategic interests of the NIO who want to distract public attention from the …

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Boston College Archive and the maintenance of our “collective dissociative amnesia…”

Ahead of tonight’s Spotlight programme a good report from Greater Boston and Emily Rooney talking to Jack Dunn of Boston College on the controversy over the Belfast Archive and the sequestration of some by the PSNI… There was always a possibility that it would come to this. But after the 1998 peace accords there was such good will that emanated from Northern Ireland that no one thought that British Law Enforcement would take that step… Interesting perspective, and it pinpoints …

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“Unlike Gerry Adams & Mary Lou McDonald…”

In a follow-up to a previous post on his Broken Elbow blog, as noted here, Ed Moloney has “an answer to Gerry Adams, Mary Lou McDonald and other critics of the Boston archive“. Aside from myself and Anthony McIntyre there is only one other person who has read all of the interviews lodged in the Belfast Project oral history archive at Boston College and that is Judge William Young of the Federal District Court in Boston, Massachusetts. Judge Young got to read …

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“when a major political leader tells such an obvious falsehood about a defining part of his life…”

Also for the record, Ed Moloney has responded to Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams’ attack on the Boston College oral history project.  From Ed Moloney’s blog I don’t intend to spill a lot of ink responding to Gerry Adams’ recent statement taking yet another swipe at the motives of those who were interviewed and who did the interviewing for the Boston College oral history archive. That is because I have already answered a very similar charge from Mary Lou McDonald. …

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Secrets From Belfast: a definitive guide to the Troubles (troubled?) oral history project

Beth McMurtrie has published an extensive and well-researched article for The Chronicle of Higher Education. It examines how the Belfast Project oral history project at Boston College was established and how it has fallen apart in recent years following the PSNI’s request for access to the archive (two months after the British government had “given the college highly sensitive papers related to the disarmament process, to be kept locked away for 30 years”). What sets Beth’s article apart from much …

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Matt Baggott on flag protests, Boston tapes, G8 summit, drones & social media

It’s all looking a bit fraught. We need a recovery plan. The words of the Chief Constable Matt Baggott describing the fortunes of his football club rather than the PSNI’s response to the flags crisis. Though the words must echo what went through the PSNI senior officers’ minds when the flags crisis didn’t abate before Christmas. Monday’s post covered PSNI transformation, regulation and vocation. Remember that blogs aren’t newspapers, so not every post has to try to make a news …

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Dolours Price “fresh interviews” on Adams contradicts Ed Moloney – Sunday Telegraph

 “A convicted IRA bomber (Dolours Price) claimed that Adams had sanctioned a series of attacks on London in 1972, including the bombing of the Old Bailey, which killed one man and injured 200 more, according to the Telegraph. Price has given a fresh series of interviews in which she makes claims about Adams, which she says are the same as she made in the tapes being sought by the police. The bomber, who served eight years in prison for playing …

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“I believe the time is apposite to reveal what the interviewees did not disclose”

Eating dinner in the Burns Library of Boston College last night, I glanced around at the old manuscripts sitting on the shelves, knowing that the now infamous oral history tapes from the “Belfast Project” must be stored within a room or two of where were sitting. On Friday morning, researchers Ed Moloney and Anthony McIntyre were back in Belfast High Court seeking a judicial review of the “decision of the Police Service of Northern Ireland to request the United States …

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Boston College looking for applicants for its Arts and Business program…

Interview with Robert Mauro, the director of the Irish Institute at Boston College on the history of the college, the State Department funded programme aimed at bringing people from both sides of the border on a subject focused (and very intense) fortnight long courses… They are currently looking for applicants for a limited number of places on their Arts and Business… A big focal point will be meeting up with the organisers of the Milwaukee Irish Fest… Mick FealtyMick is founding …

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Approach to Northern Ireland’s bloody past remains ad hoc and most of all unpredictable…

There is much wringing of hands at the latest turn in the story of the Boston archives. Henry McDonald has a good round up of some of it. As it stands, US law, it seems, affords US institutions of Higher Education little protection against an incoming subpoena. The College is folding on this case, but fighting an attempt at a wider trawl through archives. The two researchers, Ed Moloney and Anthony McIntrye are considering further options in this case. In …

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Boston College: “No pledge of privacy nor oath of secrecy can avail against demand for the truth in a court of justice.”

The Boston Globe reports on the Court of Appeals for the First Circuit ruling in the PSNI/HET’s attempt to access some of the material in the Boston College Belfast Project archive.  The project director, Ed Moloney, and researcher Anthony McIntyre had been trying to head the US Government off at the pass.  And they’ve already opened another legal front…  From the Boston Globe report A federal appeals court has upheld a lower court’s ruling ordering Boston College to turn over confidential materials …

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#BostonCollege and the clash of law with the covert politics of peace…

The Boston College tape court case is reaching an interesting pass, though it’s unlikely to be the final decisive stage. The circuit court hearing is worth listening to (takes about 45 seconds before anything happens) for a number of reasons. One, it’s an, albeit brief court room drama featuring what must be the most comprehensively qualified brief in western jurisprudence (Eamonn Dornan of New York and Belfast)… And two, it demonstrates the utility of having court cases recorded and made …

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Boston College: A glimpse of the archive…

Let’s keep the dialogue ‘hinged’ this time.  With Ed Moloney and Anthony McIntyre aiming to try to head the US Government off at the pass, the legal battle over each ruling along the way continues in the PSNI/HET’s attempt to access some of the material in the Boston College Belfast Project archive. In the meantime, however, Boston-based lawyer, Ted Folkman has been following the legal arguments.  And he’ll be live-blogging today’s hearing [7pm GMT – Added link]. He’s already noted …

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Boston College: “an example of just how unhinged the dialogue has become in some quarters.”

I had mentioned in the comments on a recent post that there was little threat of the pre-emptive destruction of the Boston College archive material which is being sought by the Historical Enquiries Team.  As Thomas E Hachey and Dr Robert K O’Neill of Boston College point out in the Irish Times There have been people who have faulted Boston College for not adopting this or that particular stratagem, and we appreciate how expressions of concern have sometimes been prompted by …

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Boston College: an end of history

Slugger readers will be familiar with the ongoing saga around the content of, and, access to the archives of the Belfast Project which were deposited with Boston College (where Irish government documents on decomissioning have also been deposited). The outworking of the litigation by which the PSNI’s Historical Enquiries Team are attempting to gain access to some of the material may now even lead to the intentional destruction of the archive by it’s creators. So, methodologically, the Belfast Project is now close …

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Boston College to hand over Dolours Price interviews

According to Kevin Cullen, reporting for the Irish Times, US district court judge William Young is continuing his in camera review of the Boston College archive material.  And he has already ordered the college to hand over the recorded interviews of former Provisional IRA member Dolours Price.  From the Irish Times report College officials said Ms Price’s interviews will be turned over to US prosecutors acting on behalf of British authorities, believed to be the PSNI, by today. US district …

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