 Here we are on Saturday the 16th of November I'm interviewing Professor Ronan Fanning from University College Dublin on the occasion of the Irish Studies Conference here at St Mary's University College. First of all Professor Fanning thank you for agreeing to speak to be our keynote speaker here at St Mary's University College. The first question I'd like to ask you relates to your most recent book Fatal Path British Government and Irish Revolution 1910 to 1922. I notice that you dedicate the book to your Irish mother and English father. Other way round English mother. I knew I'd get it wrong. To your English mother and Irish father. Yes and I wondered first of all what the significance of that was of that dedication in the context of the book you've just written. Well what put it into my head was perhaps I just say something by way of background about my parents my father was a doctor and like so many Irish doctors in the 20s he went to Yorkshire he was attached to a TV cemetery and he met my mother who was a Montessori teacher in Hull and well they ended up by getting married about 10 years afterwards in 1940 and my mother came to Ireland we lived in Ireland my father got a job he was a professional civil servant on the medical side of the Department of Health and my father was a fairly angry father was never any tension in our house Irish English kind of tension I mean we listened to the BBC rather than to Irish radio most of the time but I suppose the reason for the dedication was I remember one occasion I used to write fairly regularly during the worst of the IRA's long war in Northern Ireland in the 70s and 80s on British Irish relations I write almost every week for the Sunday Independent and after my mother read one of my articles in which I count a member of the subject was but I was castigating the British government for something or other she's gently reminded me to sit up for all her own in your half English so I just laughed I said well you know there comes a point when you have to make a choice and I see myself as Irish now so happens I have a brother my next brother Adrian who he's been he's been having in London since the early 60s and his children where he married an Irish girl who came over to London with him but he would I think regard himself as English rather than Irish certainly his children would regard themselves English rather than Irish so I don't think you can really be half anything my my own son has said to me that he thinks one of the reasons for what he was kind enough as to praise very difficult to praise from his children as the dispassion of the book was that while I might not be half Irish or half English my background did mean I had a capacity for seeing into both sides and of course the book is even though the subject is our Irish revolution the book is a study in British high politics which was my PhD thesis began as my PhD thesis in 1906 to 1911 part when I went to Cambridge in the in the early 60s in fact you've answered the other question I was going to ask you next do you regard yourself as Irish or British you've answered that oh no I would regard myself as Irish unequivocally but I don't have any I don't have any issues I mean as I say my other brother would probably regard himself as I think he'd be more inclined to regard himself as English rather than British can I ask you and my third brother who lives in Ireland is an absolutely thorough good going kind of fire and a member of the MCC right do you think in this day and age it's possible I suppose thinking in the context of novel nine and is it still possible to be Irish and British oh absolutely absolutely yes it is and I dare say if I've been born in Northern Ireland that would probably be my position but since I'm not mean I am actually because I was born before the Republic of Ireland in 1948 yes and I'm tightly to a British passport obviously of course yes yes I mean but I think if I had been brought up in Belfast as opposed to Dublin I would regard myself as Irish I'm British but it doesn't really make any sense to regard yourself as Irish and British if you've been living an independent or your life okay fine could you tell us why you became a historian and how you went about it well when I went to University University College did gentlemen in the first instance I wanted to do English there was one very fine lecturer who I still keep in touch with he still actually New York in his 80s Dennis Dino but the rest of the English department in those days in the early 60s were really pretty terrible and and they regarded lectures an occasion to read out extracts from the edition that they had produced for a Dublin publisher like Bath or the humans idea of University they just literally read chunks out of these various books which were certain texts they were terrible and there was also huge tracts you had to do of Anglo-Saxon and English so after a year of this I decided the history department was then very advanced by the standards of faculty was the only department in UCD which had a tutorial system I said would be understood later on and I suddenly realized in the end of the year that I'd been taught by three or four senior members of the department they all knew my name nobody knew who I wasn't English so I switched them to single subject history and became utterly hooked on it and then I was fortunate enough to get a first-class honors degree in history and as a result of that I was I was elected to a research studentship by Peter House which had ties with my college going with UCD going back to 1940s. Okay before I talk to you about your book your emeritus professor of history of modern history at UCD can you tell us what you do at the moment in that in that role and also what you do as director of archives at UCD? Well director of archives and I'm not really director of archives I was pretty retired five or six years ago I was director of archives acquisition and what that meant was keeping my eyes open for any collection which might be coming up and it was a very important a collection that I organized that it should go to UCD papers of a civil servant called Dermot Nalli he was the alter ego of Robert Armstrong in the so-called Armstrong Nalli talks which led to the Aguirus agreement in 1985 and we're also proud of the papers of the progressive Democratic Party for the archives at UCD but in fact that role of acquisition I'm not really involved in that very much now because I was getting paid a small amount of money part-time contract but when the recession really hit the new rubric was that if you were in receipt of a full-time pension from a public body then you couldn't also be in receipt of a part-time contract of simultaneous which of you of the crisis we've run to go in was fair enough so although I have sort of a small foot in the ring I'm not really doing anything in UCD anymore so I'm free to concentrate on my own writing in my research which is what I'm doing which is my fatal path which in various shapes and forms had been on these stocks for a very long time I finally got around to finishing right and you remember the Royal Irish Academy yes in in a practical sense what does that involve at the moment in a practical sense I was I was elected to that really on the strength of my first book which is the History of the Irish Department of Finance which was a groundbreaking book published in the 70s because of that stage nobody had been in there was no archives act there was no release of records static release of records at all and was the first time historian had ever been head into the records of the government department and that was a tremendous opportunity it was a very difficult task because I had to be my own researcher even had to be my own Hessinger and go down to the bells of the earth because Hessinger Department of Finance were not keen on being asked to bring 50-60 files a day I would only be interested in two of them so you can take the rest back so that was a extraordinary task it ended up sort of very hefty to about 720 pages and it was on strength that I began with the Academy and in the Academy I was a secretary and subsequently chairman of the Committee for the Study of International Relations I've always been interested in Anglo-Irish relations, Anglo- and Parican relations, international relations generally and again at that stage there wasn't an Institute for International Relations in Ireland so the best we could do was come up with what was called the National Committee in for the study of international relations and that was housed as a player in the Academy and as a result of that I became Secretary for the Humanities in the Academy extraordinary title that I greatly enjoyed I would say the Secretary for Polite Literature and Antiquities in the Royal Library of the Academy, title back to a few so I was involved in the and I'm still on the Publications Committee of the Academy but I'm not as actively involved in it I mean I've more or less reached the stage where I am downplaying on the administration that I get involved in I feel a bit okay and your role as a member of the Board of the Directory of Irish Biography is that still active? Well that is still active, we have meetings twice a year but the the the Dictionary of Irish Biography that came out the nine volumes came out and I was the 20th century editor and I did some major contributions I did the entries on the Devil Air about Jack Lynch, the mast Richard Malachi and I also read all the 20th century entries made some changes and some of them not that many the standard was very high and so that's much slimmed down operation now but we're still bringing it up to date online so there are online entries going in but I'm not writing any of them at the moment I might occasionally do it in the future. Okay and finally before I do move on to the book your work on the documents and Irish foreign policy well that's very much an ongoing project in fact there was an evening of the editorial board yesterday which I missed because I was coming to the London and and that's a project we published eight volumes and it comes out every two years like clockwork we've got a very good executive editor a man called Michael Kennedy Dr. Kennedy and he said he's the only full time of he and one assistant they're the only full-time members of the project so it's a run on a shoestring and then the other editors are people like myself you know help and his professor contemporary Irish history in Trinity Katrina Crows in the National Archives and it's a try there are three partners in the project really this the Academy there's the Department of Foreign Affairs which has been extraordinarily cooperative from making their records available and the National Archives and that's where the records actually are so that's what we work on so that's an ongoing thing we meet about four or five times a year and I'm very much involved in the choice of the documents for each volume as it comes out okay okay I am now going to move on to your book fatal path now I found it fascinating I'm going to ask you a number of perhaps what might be considered provocative questions what I certainly the first one is I find it quite ironic and bit of a paradox that somebody who when I was growing up academically was described as a revisionist historian should state quite categorically and obviously this is going to be the subject of your talk this afternoon that without violence or the threat of violence in Ireland north and south between 1912 and 1922 the British government of the day or British governments of the day would not have moved on from the pre First World War home rule offer as exemplified in the 1920 government of Ireland act is that not a supreme irony that you should be I don't think it is I think there's a there's certainly a misunderstanding not a misunderstanding to which I may have contributed in some degree in part but there is a misunderstanding of my position you see I think the term revisionist it was when at first surfaced and as it's as it was initially most commonly used it was basically used as a term of abuse it was used as a term of abuse in the same way the Marxist hardline Marxist use every visionist as a term of use in other words you were departing from the party line the party line was that everything was great and glorious about the revolution and that you didn't question anything about it or challenge anything about it now in the sense that I didn't buy that and I didn't buy into the Republican interpretation of the provisional IRA interpretation of Irish history I was a revisionist in that sense but I always had and you'll find this in articles I've written and essays I've written going back 15 20 years I always had sharp differences opinion with for example people like Roy Foster people like Charles Townsend but especially perhaps Roy Foster was regarded as you know the I suppose the most eminent Irish historian here and and for example one of the things I remember when New Jordan's film on Michael Collins came out which was some years ago I wrote a review of that as history and I said by and large he got it absolutely right there were a couple of things in it which he put in such as placing devil era the scene of the ambush which was nonsense the dragon northern Ireland gratuitously by the scruffling heck in one scene which was nonsense but the main pivotal point of the movie was that it was what happened on bloody Sunday in the intelligence war that that changed everything and and that it was from that point on that British government realized there was no longer any point about ending the war in a month having murdered by the throat as Lord George said at the Lord Mayor's banquet at the beginning of November there's no more talk of that after those two weekends in November 1921 plenty Sunday first and then the following began the Kilmichael ambush which is Lord George again pointed out was of a very different nature of that was a military operation rather than just so round assassinations or an ambush so I think in that sense I've always taken us to somewhat different land where I think my being able to revisionist is partly my own responsibility is that I suppose I was inhibited not quite as inhibited perhaps but I was inhibited by the fact that the release of British papers for this period and more or less precisely cones decided with the IRAs getting up and running in the war of the 1970s and therefore there was this feeling that you know you shouldn't write things which gave comfort to the provisional IRAs view of things and I may I wouldn't say I necessarily regret playing that Loki at the time because it was a very tense time it was a very difficult time it was a very difficult time I mean I remember the Bobby Sands hunger strike for example I remember it was a very difficult time to lecture on British Irish relations and Irish University feeling was running very high and I think that's one of the reasons why I tended to downplay it but when I finally retired and said I was going to put this book together I mean many of the chapters not all of them have been published in a much more academic form in journals well there was a there was a there was a volume of essays to mark the end of the Union brought out jointly by the British Academy in the Royal Irish Academy and I have an essay about which is very much about the 1920 act and which basically says I sit in the book and Roy Foster has an essay about which again the emphasis is very different so I can understand it is ironic if you think of okay Foster Townsend Fitzpatrick fanning they're all revisionist it's ironic if you put me into that category but I don't I never have put myself into that okay now I have to say at one level this is a profoundly depressing book in the sense that absolutely nobody seems to come out of it very well at all if we start with ask with them by George I mean the question I want to ask you there you state that you know they're the major concern is that they want to stay in power it's political survival and they're not going to do anything on island that's going to to undermine that or threaten that what I wanted to ask you was the they're not unique that's what limitations do exact exact so we can't on one level we can criticize them for their the lack of bravery and the lack of initiative but on the other hand we couldn't can we expect them to have done anything else in the context that was fine no no not unless you've got a much more idealistic view of politicians that than I do right but you've just said to me I suspect that you do in fact that's one of the interesting things about I was giving a talk at a book festival during this summer and I just had come on time saying the organisers I was there was a job buying a ticket in the office he said oh he said I suppose it's going to be more of the usual brit bashing and I said well no it isn't actually pretty bashing but when I began my talk that afternoon I began by telling the story and by saying quite specifically that I didn't regard the book as pretty bashing because if you see people putting things on the long finger which is thing I remind Irish audiences on which they don't like it but I take great pleasure in reminding them of it that I mean this is precisely what politicians do I mean that the default mode of virtually old politicians and parliamentary democracies is always put off till tomorrow what you don't have to do today and the more difficult and the more intractable the problem is the stronger the inducement is to kick it into touch and if it's a problem that if you get it wrong that there's a risk of imperiling your parliamentary majority well then you certainly kick it into touch and ask this was his policy I mean you can say that the the whole rule bill 1912 14 and and the 1920 bill government valve which became the government of Alda and they're both exercises in hypocrisy in the sense that the government ask within a senior ministers never anticipated that the third home rule bill would be enacted in the form in which was introduced they realized the subject of the exclusion of Ulster would have to be addressed the government about act it was the other way around the government realized before it had been introduced again before it had been enacted that there wasn't the remotest chance of Sinn Fein's ever accepting it but it got it solved the problem of Ulster and by that stage of course the Ulster unionists were in the driving seat because the conservatives and unionists now have an overall majority not just all the balance of power but they have an overall majority in the House of Commons so if they don't like what Lloyd George is doing they just for pitch them out yeah yeah and and so therefore he has to get the Ulster monkey office back but Lloyd George was prepared Lloyd George is talking before even the general election in 1918 because in those days there were no opinion polls to guide to public opinion was by elections and George and George Lloyd George saw the way the bile actions have been going in 1917-19 and he confided to some of the liberals privately see this is this disparity which comes out again and again the book between what people think privately and what they say publicly but there again I take your point I mean I don't think politics is very different I mean I don't know I like to be a fly on the wall when say Cameron and Osborne are talking about the European referendum I'm up to the one thing I'm absolutely certain of is they haven't said publicly what they intend to do I don't know what they intend to do but I'm certain they haven't said publicly but seems to me that there's a certain Irish nationalist myopia about the good intentions of in particular liberal politicians British liberal politicians do you think that they were living both the politicians themselves ask with Lloyd George were in a sense living under the shadow of Gladstone because I noticed that your first chapter there is about the clad stony and legacy and do you think people like Redmond were completely naive and unrealistic in that they believe that Asquit's role was to carry out the unfinished work of Gladstone the word that night there comes a point of where it does appear very naive and possibly by 1912 13 you could say by 1913 it was naive but the real difficulty is the the ultimate problem from the middle of the 1880s on is always going to be Ulster that's the intractable bit that's the horror bit ultimately the major British parties did not object they didn't particularly like it because no politician likes relinquishing powers over territories unless they have to but they were ready to give some kind of self-government whether you call a rule or whatever you call it the Dominion Republic they were prepared to give some kind of self-government to what you might describe as nationalist down but what they were not prepared to do was to allow nationalist out of the parliament in Dublin control bring the unionists the Protestants because the Protestant Catholic thing is very significant I try to bring that out of the book I think but one of the things I think that does come out of the book and that I tried to bring out in the book and that I think John Redmond and his colleagues didn't like to face up to was that the Liberals are just as anti-Catholic if not more anti-Catholic than the Protestants than the Conservatives sorry yes then it's more anti-Catholic than the Conservatives and if you look you see an issue like denominational education well Redmond and the Irish Parliamentary Party and the Tories are on the same side they both want a nomination education because in our that means Catholic education yeah and England means Church of England so they both want the licensing legislations the licensing acts there's a whole range of things economic policies whole range of things the only issue on which or is this alliance but it's that the most important issue because it's what's been described by one historian as a millennial issue is the issue of homeroom and ask what has inherited that but the trouble is because of what happened in 1886 and because of what happens over the next 25 years there's is and I feel this now having had various discussions of these points sits into the book's publication if I were writing it again I'd put it more forcefully than I do in the book there's almost a sort of tacit conspiracy between the major political parties not to identify Ulster as real issue and the reason for that is well in the case of the Liberals they know they're going to need the support of the Irish Parliamentary Party and they know the Irish Parliamentary Party are going to get upset if they say well you can have overrule but Ulster isn't going to be a part of it so they push that on to the back burner the Irish Parliamentary Party Joe Devlin advising Redmond say it's all bluff it's all nonsense so they don't want to talk about it but the interesting thing is that the Ulster Unionists don't want to talk about it either because for as long as they can use the ordinary process as a parliamentary democracy to defeat homeroom they're perfectly happy with that and that's the reason you see I mean the first homeroom building Gladstone was so however messianic he may have been however noble spirit he was so utterly inept he didn't even get the bill through the second reading in the House of Commons so that collapses in the very first year the Liberal Party splits out of office for 20 years asked with bright young man was brilliant member of Gladstone's kept ferociously resentful that Ireland was forced amount of office and so the Ulster Unionists until and then they see in 1893 the bill thrown out by the House of Lords and Unionists realize for as long as the House of Lords is there they're safe so there's no problem until 1911 which is why I start the book in 1910 and the Tories see the Tories are interesting too they don't want to talk about us because they want to use as Carson wanted to use failed ultimately he wanted to use Ulster as the issue to prevent homeroom being given to any part about yeah so nobody wants to talk about Ulster right and then when the war begins there's another I mean this compromise at the beginning of the war when Askworth says and Redmond actually proposes this he says okay we've suspend the Amanda we the amending act will be suspended you won't bring in the act but which had been which he promised the bill was the suspending bill which was going to provide for some form of Ulster exclusion and ask and Redmond proposes okay you won't bring that in and in return for that I'll agree that home rule will be put on the statute but it won't come into effect until after the war is over so I'll just kicked into touch once again and by the time the war is over the Ulster Unionists have controlled the House of Commons right it must be a psychological blow to Irish read Irish nationalist readers of your book for you to state quite categorically that contrary to received opinion accepted opinion Northern Ireland was not the bit that was left over after the Irish Free State was created it was the other way around absolutely the Irish Free State was the bit that was left over after the Northern Ireland Ulster issue and be resolved that that is quite it's quite a dramatic I think that is I mean I remember Julie gave a very interesting view of the Irish times I mean that that's one of the points he made very forcefully and I think that does shut people but then you see to a certain extent part of the problem remains in the Republic of Ireland today there are still people in the Republic of Ireland who don't recognize that Ulster Unionists are entitled to the same same rights of self-determination as Irish nationalist and that's where the issue lies are Ulster Unionists entitled to self-determination and basically the liberal attitude on that is not very different from the conservative attitude right right no I can see that can I go back to the revisionist controversy in your introduction there and I think you've alluded to it already you state that in the Irish context the Irish historiography context revision revisionism seems to have been perverted so to speak the definition of revisionism not just at the revising of opinions or the writing of history and the light of new evidence or interpretation but trying to pejoratively support a position which has already been lost well wishful thinking basically that a lot of revisionism in the Irish context is trying to support and promote a particular political position which has already been abandoned and I think you give us the example those who argue that you know left to its own devices without the introduction of violence home rule could have troubled through the statutory process and some form of peaceful independence or or devolution could have occurred in Ireland it didn't require violence and that's you my reading of what you've said there is that definition of revisionism is it is it is completely wrong that's my view yeah that's where I would be you put it extremely well that is where I would part company right with with the word for and it dies very hard and it's only emblematic but it's nevertheless I think very significant John Brun, when he was Thyshok, Finnaveille, looked to the Irish parliamentary party tradition the portrait he asked to have put up in his office was John Redmond, that's really quite meaningless as far as I'm concerned, what do you mean? Well I have to put you in the spot and ask you just when everything you said there I mean could you conjecture that it could have been possible to establish a devolved administration in Ireland which would have resulted in the country remaining inside the United Kingdom was about at all possible? I don't think it was possible and the reason it wasn't possible was that for 30 years I've been using a quotation itself but it's something like 30 the guts of 30 years the Irish political demand has repeated a general election after general election after general election democratic express peaceful express was from for a home rule and home rule was not conceded it just peaceful democratic means simply didn't work no home rule was given now and the nationalists I mean people I go and McNeely Patrick Percy they all started out as film rulers but when they see how effective the Ulster Unionists have been in arming themselves in gun-running setting up a provisional government and when the British government seemed to say oh yeah but pay attention to this well that penny drops pretty quickly and they start to follow suit and then of course I I think if it hadn't been for the great war I mean I think that's the imponder if it hadn't been for the but you can't just wipe the great war out of history it's rather too momentous in every sense for that if the great war hadn't come and if the crisis had to be resolved without civil war then I think some kind of compromise would have been patched up I think there would have been some kind of exclusion of Ulster may have been permanent you know I think probably more likely to be permanent certainly not five years or six years or anything like that but isn't equally fair to say that I think that might and if that had been done and if that had been put in place if a home would have been put in place but unless a home is put in place but once the once the great war begins well then all that but in 1918 surely the bulk of Irish nationalist sentiment opinion even as exhibited at the ballot box in November 1918 was not a vertically Republican when they put in the Sinn Fein on an emotional gut issue as a result of the Easter rise in the conscription controversy and all the rest of it I think good description yeah but I mean they're voting for Charles Townsend in his new vote that the Republic he's quite strong in this quite good he's been what they're really voting for his independence you see an independence repeal for Daniel O'Callaghan is a word repealed for but Redmond two words a republic is another word and Collins himself at one point there are quotations which so he says you know what we want is separation what we want is control of affairs now Republican will pitch that high pitch that demand higher than a whole ruler but the issue is can we be independent or to give us control which would never have and the answer to that is was no no no and no and then by the time the question is put in 1918 it's been with the people are putting it who have now won a Democratic mandate in the 1980 election what about the argument that basically the more extreme Republican element in Irish nationalism staged a putch as a result of the 1918 general election by then using that to stage a guerrilla war of independence which nobody voted for in 1918 and as a result the Irish National electorate found itself in effect voting for something that they never really intended to vote for in 1918 I don't buy I wouldn't buy into that I think certainly a putch in 1960 that was certainly a putch a minority of a minority of a minority the role of the IRB but it was very clear I mean from the clear by election when devil ever comes out and wins at a size of victory who were very strong Irish bombing party candidate dish clear and that was seen and it was seen by the Dublin castle as well as by Irish nationalists I mean bonfires were to the length and breadth of the land there was no overt violence but and devalera is talking in that by-election campaign he's talking about rifles he's talking about we have to resort to arms then that's what what it has to be he's talking about telling people to drill with hurlies if they don't have a rifle so the whole the whole question has changed and you know I simply don't think what was an offer I think what was an offer in 1914 has just become utterly discredited I think the one terrible mistake I think Redmond made was not agree to not say look I must have a whole new involvement immediately the reason he made that mistake was that like like so many people when the war broke out he was thinking in terms of previous European war which was Frank impressionable which is very sure and people thought it would be over by Christmas but if he'd said if he'd bargained and said look okay we're going to have to say if we sustain the extrusion of Ulster for the duration of the war for 10 years after the duration of war but if he had had a home we followed and if he jobs to give out and the rest of the paperage power but I mean they're in this limbo opposition limbo likes situation that they've achieved their objective they only one jacket their millennial party home room they've achieved it did nothing to show for it and then nothing left to do there isn't anything to do okay now I've got two more questions for you one your statement that arguably some people would argue that what occurred between 1916 and 1922 23 was not a revolution in nationalist Ireland because the promise of 1916 was still born it the final settlement fell far short of what was expected and hoped for even in 1918 and it led to fratricidal warfare and therefore some people have some block against describing what took place in that period as being a revolution do you believe it was a revolution or I think there's no question I mean power changed hands in a massive way in which power changed hands and what is more the Southern Union is the people I mean there was a very interesting book published as early as 22 and republished in 23 by the then professor of history in Trinity a man called Alison Phillips and he called it the revolution and that's what it was power changed has it when power changes hands it's a revolution now it wasn't the business about it wasn't the Republic that's true they didn't achieve but I don't think in 1918 certainly they didn't expect the where people there were people like Mary and explaining there were people like her brother were people like Colin Brewer who said when the door met for the first time the significance of what's happening here today is that we finally broken the lead link irrevocably with England nonsense of course they British army was everywhere police barracks they were an army barracks running the courts they're running everything that was the theory but Collins didn't believe I don't think he believed it for a while I think I don't think no but I mean that's one of the reasons there are a couple of reasons why Irish Nationalists are slow to ascribe the title revolution to one of those those that the Republican did to disappoint but they won't give credit for what was actually achieved in taking over power in the way which part was taken over when Devlin Castle was handed over everything else in 1922 they don't want to give credit to those who didn't go for the Republic children's civil from the beginning the other reason for it has to do with the socialist element Connelly and those socialist tradition and they don't like it being described as a revolution because it didn't have a social component right and the the real thing there in so far as there was ever as there was ever a social revolution about you know it's the land act right and that's over social revolution I mean when he was hoping what the interview for his biography was really a semi autobiography by his niece author Balfour said the island of the Irish free straight free state is the island that we in the conservative party created and in terms of the land acts the land settlements land ownership structure of local government he was right the social revolution was who right and that's why socialist republicans don't like this great okay okay you're very critical of the quality and the naivety of the Irish negotiators in the Anglo Irish treaty discussions particularly Arthur Griffith you regard him as hopelessly out of his death well it's not but I mean you know can you imagine if Martin McGinnis and Tony Blair to go back to how do you mean yeah and the good Martin McGinnis and Jerry Adams are negotiating with Tony Blair and at a critical point in negotiation Martin suddenly turns around and says well I don't know what Jerry is going to do but I'm going to sign anyway I mean vanity whatever that just disaster utter total disaster I mean they were all out of there I mean there's a colleague very good friend of mine was senior diplomat in the Irish Department of Foreign Affairs and very much involved in British Irish relations 20 years ago and and he read the book in times good when he read the chapter on negotiations he said he was embarrassed and ashamed he said yes I mean they were terrible they were just out of negotiations but you see did you never realised this was going to happen yes okay finally if we were to say to Ulster Unionists today that it was their antecedents their grandfathers who introduced the concept of violence or the threat of violence to achieve political change or in their case to retain the existing political system they would take on bridge they would be very very angry they would be very annoyed that they in some way the UVF their ancestors were the antecedents of Pearson 1916 in the IRA and all the rest of it but you state quite clearly in your book that that is the case right it's very interesting I'm going to talk in Belfast actually give me a keynote address on Monday week and commemoration stuff and you see I think if they were being intellectually honest I this would be politically very unhelpful but if they're being intellectually honest what else to Unionists if Ulster Unionists want to commemorate the events that enable them to establish a state in Northern Ireland they should be commemorating the law and the government they should be commemoration this is heading up of the provisional government they should be commemorating the mass rallies in moral and in crates has commemorating the song okay it's commemoration of sacrifice didn't have anything whatever and you have reservations about what we're about to embark upon now the decade of commemoration absolutely could you just very briefly I think there's a difference between commemoration history and I think commemoration is entirely lord perhaps rather a utopian political but commemoration as opposed to celebration by definition means taking into into effect the other person's point of view the other sides point of view and not doing anything and if you want to tell the truth about what happened in the past history you are going to say things that are going to upset me so how do you believe that 1916 should be commemorated I think it should be command I think the event should should be marked as the hundredth anniversary of the of the event that ultimately led to to a form of independence five years after it didn't achieve anything at the time I suppose from that point of view what you're commemorating is because that's what it was and it did work I mean but it becomes tricky your commemoration the I mean if that doesn't mean anything then 1916 doesn't mean anything and do I detect in your hesitation a concern that it may be used a hundred years on to justify the tactics and philosophy of modern-day Irish republicans well that's always a risk that is you know and I'm certainly utterly totally opposed to the use of politics but I mean I think you've got to recognize that it has been used in the past and you've got to recognize that when it has been used in the past against governments of parliamentary democracies it's worked