Back to the present
A colossus of Irish academia, Diarmaid Ferriter has authored 11 books over the course of the past decade, including the ubiquitous feature on the reading list of every modern Irish history scholar, The Transformation of Ireland. Ciarán Galway speaks with the indefatigable Dubliner.
A prestigious UCD historian, Diarmaid Ferriter far exceeds the boundaries of unidimensionality. From his weekly column in The Irish Times, he lets fly piercing societal critique with clockwork regularity. Ferriter has also been a consistent and prominent contributor to a multitude of television and radio broadcasts. Emerging from his weekly expedition into the bowels of the National Library (alternating with the National Archives) he is a man of disarming charisma. Unpretentious and unafraid to concisely, though meticulously, unpack his assertions, there is a heightened sense of principle in his sentiment. At the same time, he skilfully refrains from straying into the territory of agonising moral hand-wringing or condescendence.
Historical consciousness
While the Ferriter name is of Kerry origins, Diarmaid grew up as one of four siblings in Dundrum where his parents, both primary school teachers, settled after securing Dublin posts. He notes: “[My parents] were rejecting a lot of their previous generation’s pieties and traditions. That was the kind of household we grew up in. They would have encouraged us to do things with a very independent mind. In relation to where the interest in history came from, most of it started at home with books. I was one of those kids that was always roaming the book shelves and getting curious about all sorts of things.”
As well as summer trips to visit sites of Irish historical significance, Ferriter highlights his grandparents, or lack thereof, as having influenced him. “I got very curious about the past at a very young age. I didn’t have any grandparents and that made me much more curious about them. I remember finding one of those old Black Magic chocolate boxes filled with photographs and there were a few press clippings in there from when my grandfather retired from Hayes’ Hotel [Thurles]. He would have been very much a de Valera man, as was my grandmother. So I was definitely interested in that because my parents were actually rejecting de Valera’s Ireland. I suppose, like a lot of people, you read your way into these things.”
Academia
“I didn’t plan for that and I was never an academic’s academic. I was a bit of brat when I was younger and remained so until relatively recently. I was often in the shadow of my older brother, he’s a great all-rounder and he was great academically in a way that I wasn’t.
“History and English were my subjects. And music. What I found with Leaving Certificate history back then, there was proscribed textbooks for Irish and European history, but you really had to do a lot of it on your own, if you wanted to roam beyond the curriculum, which you needed to do to make a difference. I did a lot of that.”
Recognising that his younger self “had no sense that I was going to be an historian or anything like that”, Ferriter surpassed his own expectations when he came top of his first year history class in UCD. It was then that he opted to undertake a pure history pathway. In final year he again came top and “I got a scholarship on the basis of that result, which took me into thesis land. That was the path and I enjoyed every bit of it”.
The past and the present
Emphasising the pervasive nature of history, Ferriter contends: “The past isn’t the past. The past impinges on the present all of the time and we do have a responsibility to try and get to grips with it in order to understand the present. That would be the most basic tenant of historical consciousness and historical awareness.
“Context is a word that we use more than anything. It’s something we’re constantly impressing upon students. Saying that the past is another country, or that we should leave it there, doesn’t get us anywhere in relation to context and it doesn’t deepen our understanding of challenges in the present.”
Centenary attitudes
Observing alternating attitudes towards commemoration, Ferriter outlines: “I think one of the successes of the centenary of the Rising was that people were able to manage the distinction between the past and the present and realise that it’s okay to be proud of certain national symbols and national narratives, whilst recognising that they can be very difficult. You don’t necessarily have to apologise, 100 years on, for what was done in the name of the Republic.”
However, he stresses: “I think there is a recognition that all those narratives are complicated and there’s an onus on people, including teachers of history and historians, to emphasise this, but then also you want to encourage a sense of public ownership. These things don’t belong to the State and I do find some of those calls to dispense with what are regarded as the difficult legacies of the past to be somewhat related to a post-colonial inferiority complex.
“I was vocally opposed to the idea that there needed to be a royal presence in Dublin at the time of the centenary to emphasise how far we have travelled. That to me exemplified an inferiority complex. It almost seemed like there was a need for external validation. That would have stopped us, I think, interrogating ourselves and our own national story. There was a need for quite a lot of domestic reflection and I think it’s one of the reasons why Michael D Higgins did so well as Head of State.”
“I do find some of those calls to dispense with what are regarded as the difficult legacies of the past to be somewhat related to a post-colonial inferiority complex…”
History and commemoration
History, however, Ferriter is keen to note, occupies a very different space to that of commemoration. They make for uneasy bedfellows. Historians must, he avows: “Resist contrived narratives and resist the State and its representatives sometimes skewing the narrative to favour their own agenda, position or particular politics of the moment.
“The 1916 Proclamation, for example, can be latched on to many contemporary causes and it can involve very selective reading. It can be completely wretched from its historic context and latched on to a variety of modern values. It’s a duty of the historian to say ‘hold on, come back to context here’.”
Northern contribution
Identifying what he describes as “a profound partitionist mind set”, Ferriter illustrates: “At an interesting round table discussion on 1916, I did recognise that there were northern nationalists who felt that they didn’t get a look in during the centenary. Whilst we were here clapping ourselves on the back about how well we did it in the Republic, they felt that they had been written out of that.”
Though he concedes: “Then of course, commemoration in the north is difficult. There were a lot of exchanges and there were a lot of symposiums that were organised, but there are limits to how far you can take that engagement for obvious political reasons.”
1916 vision
The continued partition of the island inevitably functions as a yardstick to measure the successes and failures of the vision of 1916. Ferriter contends: “National unity is always going to be seen as unfinished business and a legacy arising out of this period. It is a great tragedy. I’m not saying that to make a political point. It’s a great tragedy in the sense that, what you had was a small island that was divided. Many of those on the British side thought that this was a terrible development, including those that were diehard unionists, and that it was not good politically, economically, culturally or socially. When it came to it, Britain was looking for a solution to get out, essentially. It did kick the can down the road and it was devised as a solution to suit the time.”
He continues: “I would have disagreed, for example, this year with Ronan Fanning who said that the commemoration of 1916 should invoke a shameless celebration. The point I made being, ‘why should you have a shameless celebration about an era of history that led to the partition of Ireland?’ Yes, you can commemorate and remember it, but the legacy is very difficult, because there is also a very negative side to it. So I wouldn’t have seen that as appropriate.”
However, Ferriter acknowledges that there were many positives to be emphasised. “So people can draw on these conclusions about the failure to deliver on revolutionary promises, but the wider question is, how many revolutionary promises, nationally or internationally, are actually delivered?”
New politics
In recent times, Ferriter suggests: “There was talk about new politics. New politics in the sense that the opposition is now running the show, that’s not new politics in relation to policy or putting citizens first.
“I was involved in a television series back in 2009 called the Limits of Liberty. The very question we were asking was, why did power become so centralised in this State? Why was power exercised at the expense of citizens? A lot of the [revolutionary] promises and aspirations were dispensed with very quickly. There are some obvious reasons for that. The State, in the midst of a civil war is going to close ranks and become quite ruthless about survival if there’s an existential crisis. However, that can harden and embolden people and that sets a tone.
“We were promised at various stages that lessons would be learned, but a lot of these problems that are often lurking in structures that are designed to prevent change.”
Storming the barricades
Ferriter highlights the State’s long and unbroken association with parliamentary democracy as a safety valve which, to some degree, prevented the scenes of public unrest witnessed in Greece and other nations during recent periods of economic crisis. In addition to this: “The post-colonial explanation can be maybe too convenient, but there has to be an element of truth in it. If you look at all the upheavals that we’re concentrating on as historians at the moment, all that happened in this country between say 1913 and 1923, there was huge upheaval, there was huge protest, there was huge opposition, there was huge mobilisation and then there is many decades of compliance and acceptance.
“There is also a very strong tradition of emigration, where an awful lot of those who might naturally be an opposition constituency or a mobilised constituency, young disaffected people who don’t really have a stake, left the State.”
The best little country
Ferriter has been vocally critical of what he terms as the political establishment’s preoccupation with being ‘the best’. “The branding of Ireland is something that I find quite nauseating at times. Looking at the history of Irish foreign policy, one of the recognisable and positive elements of Irish foreign policy and sovereignty was the idea that we could be neutral. We were a small country, we could have a stake as non-aligned country and get involved in peace keeping and third world development.”
Irish foreign policy is tagged with a requirement to express our values as a people. However, Ferriter insists: “The State fails to answer the question of what those values are and what that has often been reduced to, according to the rhetoric, is that we’re the toast of Europe, we’re the pride of Europe or we have become the best country in the world to do X, Y and Z in. Projecting Ireland abroad is about drumming up business. It’s about Ireland Inc. They will talk about the need to undo the damage that was done to Ireland’s reputation abroad.”
He accepts: “I can understand that to a certain extent, but if that becomes the spine of Irish foreign policy, it’s very brittle and quite shallow. There has to be more to what Ireland is.
Society
Outlining his perception of societal priorities, Ferriter accentuates the role of education. “If there’s a message in our historical experiences, it’s that you have to keep investing in education, you have to keep prioritising education because you can’t talk about any of the other stuff unless you have that bedrock in place.”
He expands: “In relation to finances, we need to find a model that is sustainable and is not part of this cycle of boom and bust. We have had crises at 30 year intervals since the foundation of the State. We had the crisis of the 20s, we had the crisis of the 50s, we had the crisis of the 80s and we had the more recent crisis. The model that is being relied on doesn’t work to the extent that it leads to such extremities. Can there not be more modesty in striking a balance?
Furthermore, he maintains: “There is no reason why we should have a homeless crisis to the extent that we do, given our relative wealth and I’m not disputing our national debt. There is no need for a homeless crisis if our priorities were shifted. We know what the solution is because it was there at an earlier time in the State’s history. You can’t solve a housing crisis or a homeless crisis unless you have very aggressive State intervention. They are things that can be rectified if the political will is there.”
Ethics
Ferriter is emphatic in his praise of President Michael D Higgins’ consistent pronouncements on establishing an ethical society. “There’s clearly a great appetite for it. The great pity is that this comes in response to a President who doesn’t have executive powers.
“President Higgins has consistently made the point that you cannot see the economy, society and politics as being separate spheres. They’re all interrelated. The difficulty is that they have been compartmentalised to the extent that we face an awful lot of the crises that we do. To be ethical means making the links between them.
“He is saying things that other presidents, even presidents that we would think of as having been edgy, would not have got away with saying. He sees responsibility on himself, I think, to voice these things because they are not being voiced by the political establishment. There’s a feeling among the political establishment that, ‘yeah, he’s the President, he’s off on his ethical soapbox, but that it doesn’t really impinge on our day to day business’. Well it should.”
