Sir,—I feel I should step in between Mr Bowman and Professor Boyce, if only to declare a ‘no contest’ (HI Winter 1994). As I said in my book on the 16th (Irish) Division (Ireland’s unknown soldiers), the formation’s infantry (as distinct from its supporting arms) was always largely Catholic Irish. Bowman should not cite my … Read more
(3:1) Reviewed by Tony Canavan In the wake of the revisionist/anti-revisionist debate in Irish history, one approaches any book with a title like The Cause of Ireland with a certain trepidation, especially when the author’s previous works include Ireland: the Propaganda War. What one is afraid of is a romanticised unreconstructed nationalist narrative of the … Read more
(3:1) Reviewed by Emmet O’ConnorIn February 1925, the Communist International activated two ‘front’ organisations in Ireland, International Class War Prisoners’ Aid and Workers’ International Relief. Their function was to channel welfare to dependants of IRA prisoners and victims of the near famine conditions then afflicting small-holders in the West. Their aim was to draw republicans … Read more
Reviewed by Michael Farrell ‘You had opponents willing to co-operate… We were willing to help…[but] you went on the old political lines, fostering hatreds, keeping one third of the population as if they were pariahs…and relying on those religious differences and difficulties so that you could remain in office for ever’. Joe Devlin, the northern … Read more
British High Politics and Nationalist Ireland: criminality, land and the law under Foster and Balfour Margaret O’Callaghan (Cork University Press, £30hb, £15.95pb) Ideology and the Irish Question: Ulster Unionism and Irish Nationalism 1912-1916 Paul Bew (Clarendon Press, £20) (3:1) Reviewed by Martin Mansergh In Ireland, history is ideology. Over the last few decades, historians of … Read more