 Well, good evening everyone and welcome to tonight's British Academy lecture. My name is Lindsay farmer and I'm a professor here at the University of Glasgow I'm also the Vice President of the British Academy. And it's a great pleasure to welcome you here on this beautifully sunny evening I'm very impressed that so many people have turned out, given the, the temptations of the Glasgow weather. The lecture tonight is a partnership between the British Academy and the Royal Philosophical Society. And it's wonderful that we can partner in this way to organize the lectures. The British Academy for those of you don't know is the UK's National Academy of the humanities and social sciences, and it mobilizes the disciplines to understand the world and to help shape the future. The British Academy is an independent fellowship of world leading scholars, a funding body for research and a forum for debate, as such our lectures program curated by a fellowship aims to stimulate discussion and debate. The British Academy lecture series reflects a wonderfully broad breadth of our subjects on academic perspectives, perspectives within them, and I'm very much looking forward tonight to hearing the lecture from Lord view, but to introduce Lord view at one and from the world. What in here. Well as you know this lecture was postponed from March so it's a great pleasure that Paul view has been able to come and give us a lecture this evening. Lord Professor Paul view or no Professor law. Academic titles come first so Professor. Lord Paul view is a historian. And he's been Professor of Irish politics at Queens University in Belfast since 1991. Irish politics which we're going to hear a bit about this evening is of course complex and turbulent. Paul has challenged some of the traditional views of the clashes between different sectors of society in Ireland and we'll hear more about that I'm sure he's written several books including land and national question in Ireland and Ireland. The classics of entity, and many of us will remember the troubles as they were and how they were experienced across the United Kingdom. Paul, as well as being a historian is in a sense, living history and influencing it also in many different ways he was a historic advisor to the inquiry into bloody Sunday. He was also an advisor to David tremble at the time that the good Friday agreement was being drawn up. He was appointed to the House of Lords in 2007 as a partly as a consequence of his contribution to the good Friday agreement and other aspects. A member of the committee on I think the chair of the committee on standards in public life between 2013 and 2018 I bet he's glad not to be doing that job at the moment. However he has another job which is to be chair of the House of Lords appointment committee so. I'm going back to the fire. So Paul, you're going to talk to us on why have the British never understood Ireland. Thank you. I'd very much like to thank Pat for the invitation to that British Academy also for the invitation. A society like this is tremendously important and now to the historian ideas. And, for example, of unbounded British cultural right and these societies we have as a Belfast natural history, the reciprocal society, it's not as August as yours or as long in existence, but they're tremendously important in the history of British British cities. And I'm proud is a great honor to be asked to speak here tonight and I'm also very grateful to you for coming out, because I was joking beforehand that I'd be tempted to say in a beautiful day like this in the back of the garden with a glass of prosecco in my hand, and I'm quite, I hope not to disappoint you a bit more of a burden in view of the fact that you've given up that option. I'm very grateful. And that is right to say I have tried to challenge many of the norms of explanation Irish history as they were when I first became a graduate student we're both mid 70s PhDs. And there's a certain world of that type of research which I might recall with some sentimentality as this proceeds. But the whole purpose of everything I've written is to try and get people to look at it differently. Even put tonight, when I look forward in the description for the talk that quote for the spectator in 1998 97 that the problem with Britain governing Ireland is a problem of a slow at it. People trying to govern a quick with it one. And I believe that for two reasons, actually concerned spectator that is now was a right of center, critical journal. Not quite so formally Tory but certainly liberal unionists and certainly to the right of center and the spectrum of British politics at the time. And I think that's why I grabbed is prepared to put forward an idea of that sort, whereas there's a very conventional wisdom that British thinking about Ireland is so doused in ethnic superiority or sense of ethnic superiority and it isn't quite as simple as that it's a much more complicated story in the 19th and in the 20th century and why Britain gets it wrong is not because it didn't always have people be prepared to say well hold on a minute. Maybe they've got a point. We should be thinking about this what's really going on here. There was always a debate intense debate in British pretty good. I know one of the things I want to begin with is the disappointments of my professional life and trying to challenge these conventional narratives. And it's, I should explain perhaps just for me to be honest about where I'm coming from I'm actually a child of a mixed marriage. My mother was from a strong Catholic, both my parents were doctors, and I'm not a recent religion. They were practical people that so many doctors are not all of them. But somebody are that got broken leg. It's a problem problem with your soul. Not a problem. Work that out for yourself. And that was that that was the approach of both of my parents. But what I did know, and it does influence the first book landed a national question, which is about the language revolution which transformed Irish nationalism into being a serious force in the mid 80s. In the mid 1870s, no British politician had to spend more than an afternoon thinking about occasionally in the 1880s, every senior British politician, both by the island, probably more than any other single topic. And the land league movement was at the heart of this, but it was very clear to me immediately because I came on one time I found the strong Catholic bourgeoisie of Ireland, that this was not a movement, simply of the poor oppressed peasantry was a movement of strong farmers. I recognized the people immediately it was in the book of my grandfather, my grandfather actually named his house, Avondale, and, which is a now listed house in Ireland, after a homage to panel, the great leader of nationalism at that time. And that was very simple thing, because so many people in Scotland and so on in particular but also in England, in Boston come from poor sections of our society, Ireland has always had a stable Catholic bourgeoisie. My uncle was the longest serving Catholic chaplain in the First World War, safe and winning to the end. And this is a world that I've tried to lead these two worlds, and the world of my father's Protestant family and whatever I try to respect and hold intention, these two worlds. But there are disappointments in the effort to do it. I'm running this slightly blacked out nature of English thinking they want to go for a simple solution. I want to give you an example of something which I'm sure people in this room will recognize in the last few weeks. I remember that Laura Trevelyan who worked for the BBC initially announced that because her family had a responsibility for slavery and she was making a payment from a family school to resort. People that immediately popped up and said, I, yes, what about Sir Charles Trevelyan who was the senior British administrator during the famine. And who is said by many to be guilty in a major way for the deaths of almost a million people. Why aren't you so concerned about that. Why are you picking one cause one another. Those of you who are regular tellers of pop head will know. You know, I think I don't think a week goes by without star civilians being referred to and not very flattering songs in terms of the corn to millions corn leaving Ireland and so on. In every single non tabloid newspaper times 70 times I count them all up. Observer, Guardian, Sunday telegraph, every telegraph in the last few weeks, every single one has said about Sir Charles Trevelyan that he believed that the Irish was reckless that they bred too much that they were lazy. God was just to fire the punishing them. And you can find a good if every single one you want every single person in this room is like you do read that quote to Charles Trevelyan. This is the kind of thing which brings you up against the limits of being a professional historian. Just at the time of the century, I went to the University of Newcastle Library to look at Sir Charles Trevelyan's papers. And there is a correspondence in October 1846 with the father Matthew, some of you in the room are lucky to know that father Matthew was the great temperance. He used to be great, but he did believe the Irish dragged too much. And that was his great campaign who's also a friend of Sir Charles's. And it's the beginning if I'm never just beginning to work out that this is going to be terrible. That the failure of the potato crop is really bad and they're just beginning to get the kind of scientific information to come in that's credible and not necessarily exaggerated. So the course they write about this to each other. It's father Matthew in this correspondence who speculates that God may be punishing the Irish if anybody does, because, as you know, father Matthew thought the Irish did drink too much. I'm reflect this and that to that degree. I would quite explicitly says no. I do not expect it is not the. This is not a punishment from God. This is the dangers here are the weaknesses and failures of man and human beings in terms of how bad this gets or not. Now, it's just remarkable. I mean, so I've read this and I knew that it's in this and many, many books, and it starts with an article by Jennifer Hart, partner of HLA Hart person who first I'm not going to say an important moment as, as I've learned in life and I'll leave it there, but Jennifer Hart, and it's, it was a quite a serious historian Oxford historians and English historical review 1960. The actual ACME a professional history. Not not a casual app with a journal not by any means. It just isn't true. I read the letter she has said, he says that she would have read again in the papers. God was punishing the Irish of the perfect list and so on. And she, I've read the papers and I gasped and the library and a very nice woman, as he Gordon came down to me and said yes and there was an Australian scholar here a month ago and he burst out gasping as well, because it was the exact opposite. So, when I came to write doctor to I said it, more importantly, Robin Haynes who wrote a 500 page book on rebellion. The Australian scholar in the airline before me, says it in some detail. Now, to determine believe God's I was at work here. Yes, he did. He just didn't believe that the Irish are being punished for the sins of laziness, having too many children drinking too much or whatever. He didn't believe that at all. When he did believe was that God was saw that the having a certain of the population dependent on the potato crop. And the world that was developing. Now, this is where you're at a lot because we're going to be dependent on crop potatoes are a really good one to be dependent on this you treat us and so on and so forth. And then runs out of rock all Europe does. He didn't believe that God was really, you know, looked at this situation which was lead to subdivision, particularly in the west of our tiny or tiny plots, even lonely surviving because they could provide on potatoes. He just was condemning our into a was a way to ride our sector a low standard of life, and it was, you know, just shifting our into a higher level of civilization. Actually, a large part including I suspect my own Catholic family believed that as well. But it was the duty of all the reason to suffer the blow, be the people. Now, there's a problem. How much can the state do all the recent book sets the level of financial constraints, which are real on the British economy. Gladstone when he became thought to be a great friend of our money became Chancellor in the 1850s maintained all these financial constraints and believed that there were pressures on the Treasury. It definitely meant that you had to be charged with yourself. And there were great efforts in the early phase to raise a charitable level on English mental process pay. You've got to pay, you've got to help these people through this crisis, and it's going to be better, because it was a hopeless system around shackle system, why'd you collapse someday anyway. You've got to help them through the crisis. The way that I believe church money collected for the first year was on for four years. And it's absolutely true family fatigue takes over the London papers are full of stories about which farmers. They were told of the relief that was said from from London, not reaching the poorest or stories you will have heard from any form of family relief that you pay the attention to in the modern world. And so people first are generous and then they discover over they were not arising with Ireland. So what they've got no money to feed the four people that they've got enough to buy guns, and so on and so forth, and gradually English is a humanitarian concern, which to me is it is utmost to promote gradual fades away. And it's a huge problem isn't in human terms, much worse than what happens with every family we hear about anywhere in the world and how react. But it is if you decided that Ireland is part of your union. Politically, that's your problem. You have said, on the basis of prosperity, we are making our part of the United Kingdom we want to create one people across two islands, one a maximum of identity. And in that sense, it is an absolute disaster. And rather than did not believe God was punishing the Irish or their children for too much or whatever, there were lots of English politicians and opinion for which we did. And for example, the other of the London Times, who is raising this issue against rebellion in the last couple of weeks, which really is that the owner of London Times did believe it. There were a number of times that God is punishing the Irish for that. And for sure is the Trevelyan, because why is Trevelyan trying to give them money? Why is he trying to raise money for them in one form or another, because you know, they brought it on themselves, why should we be bothered. And there is that strain in English, but it's not the dominant strain, but it's certainly a serious strain in the public opinion. And there was no question about the project of the union as envisaged by Pitt and envisaged by Burke, because the people across two islands, the famine is an absolutely disastrous moment. I'm not in any way taking my revisionism to the point that I want to question that because it's simply true and it's unavoidable. And the horror of it, all of this is unavoidable. But the reason why I'm saying, or drawing attention to what I'm saying, is the limits now. There are two books that I've published around. I'm going to go back to Robin Small's book, neither of us need to have written the word, because the company that tells you if you can write, if you can write the sort of pieces and the times, and the observer and whatever are not job hacks. These are the more literary types of journalists, and it was just such an appealing line. Gosh, he thought that so you go back to heart, and a number of books carry arts, which would spoke on the panel and so on. A number of book carry Jennifer Hart's version, and it's just so appealing. But what it brings up to me is, you can write the opposite around. It's not that you expect your judgments to be, this is where I come back to, after I published our PhD's, I just expect everybody to say, oh, you've got that completely right. What we do think was that people would take account of what we tried to say, and if they thought there was something wrong, that would let you know that this is not the case. In Irish history, in Irish history, people wrote that, you know, they wouldn't study, wouldn't look at carefully at what you've tried to argue. And, you know, this chance being in the University of Newcastle Library, or the first people to look at two millions papers for about 25 years. And he's, another scholar has done the same and so that the views attributed to the charge civilian are not the views attributed to the pocket, and the role attributed to a pocket every other week is not actually the case. And, you know, there's no, nobody need Boris to stop and say, Oh, I think I've checked the letters or something like that. There's nothing like that. It's just it's so appealing. It's so wonderful to have that sentence, which is wonderful to sing the song. And that's that this which says that the man who was at the heart of the policy of power and really in the United Kingdom of the scheme on believed that the, that the Irish were being justifiably punished by God, or factlessness, or tricky too much, and so on. And that's just not a trauma to many of the very sharp critical of Irish landlords, you want to criticize to value. It's he's constantly criticizing Irish social system, because he thinks he says it doesn't work. That's a very, very dry comment in one of his books. Irish gentleman can't be the marriage that his daughter married without calling any committee from Dublin Castle to help. His idea is that this is a society with a normal springs of self help in all the classes are broken down the normal things are self activity. And after that, I just have questions, but listen society with the rules of which are ultimately determined over time by British policy. So there's a kind of emptiness at some level and the way of trying and thought about it, even if you even if you understand it. But there's another reason why people love it, because the more that people accept the market, which we do all of us as God. Then the money you want to bring the family on racism, or an ideological defect or religious bigotry. Actually the real trouble with the family, and James commonly is right. It's the market. The real trouble is the laws of the market, and the acceptance of the laws of the market, including the fact that strong and this is why emphasize these point of coming from two different Irish traditions, including the fact that the strong farmers are not ready to send the call, they want to take what the coin, because they wanted to do what my family did, create priests and Bishop in the next generation and so on. And that and they want to know that they also are participants in this market, and these are comfortable facts, but they are very, very real facts. Many of the leading families in national asylum to generations later, I'll come from the families, which play a decisive role in consolidating land in the control of more than because the people who are previously there died. And that's just, you know, these are, this is just a comfortable realities of Irish life. It's no simple tale of, you know, that can be covered up in a sentimental you. But I talked about that for trying to say the whole question of judgment is much more complicated right first appear. Now, I want to come to because I want to do, I do want to leave time for questions. I want to come to the more modern period and generally British failures or policy. There is a problem with Britain, which is self image. There's a problem which is an inability to think seriously about political violence, because it's not an important part of the tradition, even in some of you might have noticed, Michael barely a very distinguished scholar, just recently a London scholar, which brings out become called the dare the assassin. And the dare the assassin doesn't include assassins in England. So the great European assassinations, but actually assassination and violence is a very important part of British on how you handle it is very important but it's not reflected upon. And the preference is always to push it to one side in a way which is, I mean, you might have noticed in recent days, I guess you were very simple example, because again it will be in your mind from recent days because the committee on standards of public life will be chairing up and I do notice these things, but your sense of public life is only established as a result of John major you may remember there were issues of concern to MPs who were allegations of corruption. And he had very few votes. So couldn't get rid of these MPs, his majority was fading. But what he could do is set up a committee on standards of public life. The values of, you know, what were they, I do know them selflessness, objectivity, openness, honesty, leadership integrity. Gosh, I do know them for five years. I tried desperately to insert them and by the way I could say something almost what worried me towards that. That's exactly what I thought he delivered. That's exactly what. He was totally selfless. Objective. I was certain, haven't you read my hand. I mean, the point about it is, I've been saying something, most principles are only valuable in the context we have a functioning liberal democracy with a free press parties voting alongside those, those, those, those. They're not functioning of liberal democratic institutions. They are valuable, but they've got some stage now, where people just talk about them as if there were some, as if the 10, 10 commandments. Actually, they're not quite. And in John major's case, of course. The most starting example of the city of the commons is when the margin 1999 what 1993 in fact, about the, the, the city of the commons is where he said it would turn his stomach to engage in negotiations with the pressure and documents were published. And he was engaging with the very point he would say there's nothing right there ever since it's such it's a matter of public policy. It's not a matter of where I went to this party at party. It's massive. I actually believe he was right. I think I support completely what he did. There was a review of what's at stake there, which but nobody will reflect on it. Nobody will say, honest, John said that the returns, what do we mean, do we really not think about this the right way. What I think about English life is that the only one you and the sort of campaign that the iron with both 1920 and 1921 and for 25 years in Northern Ireland is actually by methods of a dirty war combined with offers of political seductions nice sweeties. And you end your war. This is horrible. This man, you know, absolutely horrible. I've let you refer to another frustration that I have Peter Taylor's book operation she found run. Again, people in this room will have had over 10 bbc running with Peter's report, but Peter Taylor was a good square and a good man. It's an obvious question. So we're going to hear this great spook who had got to talk to Martin McGillis and that help that's the peace process behind the seeds without political support that's the essence of the story. Wonderful man, Robert who died without any recognition. There is a real question here, which is an obvious one. In 1975, the Irish leadership called the ceasefire. And then so Frank Cooper, who was a really serious British official and very serious seven to the British state. So Frank, so Frank Cooper, went to see the Ireland with Roy Liberty. It's a few structures of disengagement. Please stop your campaign. Listen, there is how I was with the Prime Minister Bernard Donahue tells me, and I call you in the North. I wasn't in the second phase of Prime Minister didn't care whether Britain was or was not in what we call the European Union today. He did not care whether Britain did or did not have a incomes policy, which was the big economic issue of 74 76, but he did care about was the British a guy of Ireland. By the way, it's a hugely worried thing for the Irish government. And the Irish cabinet secretary a very little man called David Nally, right at this time, there was no price to hire that I should pay to keep Britain a normal amount. Now, what I'm trying to tell you is the variety is now about all this. I just completely thought this is the Irish cabinet minutes. This is the real truth. The real truth. People prefer the parties. They don't ever want to be beneath the surface. So they're going to say in 1991, isn't it wonderful that this chap, this Robert, as he's called it appeared up here tellers right spray man does this thing without really much political support. I don't know why, why did they, why were they interested in 1990s the idea to show a lot of security to 75 leadership, like literally it's up because we're doing exactly the same thing. There are some fancy documents which do not talk about British withdrawal, something you might notice not happened, which do not talk about that. I've given no hint of that. And the previous leadership were swept aside for being so gullible, so I determined some red Cooper. As I said, I don't think they were that gullible in a way because I think that there are people in the British cabinet that actually did want to leave. I think the majority of the cabinet didn't, from what we need to would not have supported this. Well, there was certainly reason for running a building in the old school of the hour and 7576. It believes that they were getting significant messages. There's no reason to believe that the run this on locally junior official turns up and dairy with the messages which have now been published. Why do they believe it. They're moving it because for different reasons are exhausted. The head of the internal security square has been a regulation for 10 years. She has been in the region for 20 years. It's a dirty room. The key trap in the agent of the head of the internal squad in place to security squad in place. There's no question the bridge didn't collide to murder. Because they didn't you have a spy at that level and I'm not going to keep on his job is to informers. You know, some of our informers were called that exactly what is said by operation when the voucher completes his inquiry. There is no question that agents are playing at God and so on. This is dirty war. When I am saying to humans, we don't have a language to talk about it. We don't acknowledge what is the truth that the combination of dirty war, but traditions. But he's coming away. That's how it was done. The first time and I was done the second time in 1921. And we don't have a disc. The second time they didn't even know they were popping the first time. There is a, you know, a version to the mainstream bridge between combined understandable maybe, but it is absolutely inferiority. And there are some things that don't discuss it with my degree and very proud of the role that I had in parts of that. There was a special where after we should come semi religious. Actually, there was no religious turnabout. On the side, and no particular great improvement of deep break through a human decency. What there was was a clinical struggle in which both sides were winning, not trying not to get a knockout this time at least a technical knockout. That's what was going on there. The world's been presented in the last week or two weeks. I speak as the person who turned up country cathedral to be grateful to accept the prize of Mark Durkin for my role that last Friday. I'm very happy to do it and the touch to do it. Nonetheless, I will do it all again. Nonetheless, it was not as it was portrayed in the last few weeks. It was a hard political struggle and the context is the one I have just described dirty war, and by the carrots, the peace process, producing a view that ultimately, if you're, if you know that your head chief of staff has been for 20 years informing the British, if you know that your head of internal spirits and there were loads and loads more. If you know that the game is up and you better take the opportunity to swat around in the television studios and so on. It was clearly simply the British state to the Republic of leadership. If you do that, we'll forget about all this other nasty cell. This is how it happened. We just need to talk honestly about these things. I believe John Major was right to do what he did. But then we need to say there are circumstances in which you may not tell the whole truth to Parliament at this moment in our current climate, nobody would dream of saying such a thing for totally different and other reasons. Perhaps that's right. I'm sure it's right that nobody would dream of it. But having said that, there is a way of thinking about our problems, which are, which are unrealistic. I don't know what to put it, well, I'll take that to some mind and English mind. I say, not just in English, but I say, I know I'm speaking in Zasko. Revolts from these tough and unpleasant conclusions. I'm going to put one hour motif here, because I do want to leave time for questions. And that is the case of Mr. Drabstone. And there are two, Drabstone's conversion to home rule has fans on the liberal historians to say, even at right, so the need for home rule, so there was a very large and this is completely true democratic demand for everyone in Ireland. What else will a decent man do that to say there must be a home rule for Ireland. That's, and there's a school of thought that says it. And by the way, if you look at the evolution debate for Scotland, it is fuel by people say, we missed the opportunity in Ireland, and we lost Ireland. And the evolution for Scotland. It will work. It will be fine. And it would have been fine in Ireland from the short side of men, selfish Tories begin it also unionists stop that stone doing the good and Christian thing. There is a different and conservatives group thought much more cynical about why Gladstone did what he did. And they were convinced in their work and they're even up to this day. I was to cook now Lord Lexan sustains that more cynical line of bloodstone. But the evolution for Scotland, you go back to debates, people again and again referred to that so an example, the evolution was right when you're confronted with a natural question. And it will work. I now know we all know in this room nobody quite knows where it's gotten now it's going at the events were out few weeks. I've been very dramatic. This is not my point. My point is that nobody if you read the debates from that 97. There's not a single wise speaker who says that you're going to have devolution for Scotland and the next thing over the next 20 years is quite surprising whether the leading party, nobody. It's because we don't have a way of thinking about things, particularly in the liberal mindset, which is just over simplistic. So Gladstone was right. Wasn't applied then when I'm trying to write a lot about that. It must actually work. There's a huge number of problems about this. I should explain very late in the day on the same second home rule that so does suddenly say oh there is a problem by Ulster. We should have thought about this earlier. Again, he's totally forgotten a liberal tradition. One of the stories you're not right about the fact that that so gets up in their OT 93 empowerment says, yeah, maybe we've, we've pushed that problem too easy to one side also unionism. And something of Churchill. And he comments on really rather brilliantly in his brilliant essay on parallel. So, there's this gladstone liberal sentimentality in turn, but into a looking, looking at debate on Scotland, which actually just looks whatever you think whether you like Scottish National Party, whether you don't. What is devolution or whether you don't, what is not in doubt is that the entire event was constructed in a unreal just read those passages and a rosy tone. And it is because of the inheritance of an ability to think seriously about about nationalism and what it what it means and a sentimentality around from the idea that if only that sort of been allowed to do what you want to do and would not be separate. And, you know, you will surely. I was a Polish country was a social radical based a double working class. Most of the nationalities were conservative and right of center, we're sure that a homeroom elite, what we're talking to very conservative lines, would actually not have produced a revolt internally and now, at least at the level of what you've seen in France, which you can't be sure it's all, but everybody decided that they were sure that of course, if Mr Redmond, I've been delivered home real front of me the right to do it. Everything would have been fine. And I would still be in the United Kingdom. Something which I personally, which could have happened, but it's long gone. And by the way, it's long gone partly for the reasons to do with the family. I'm a bit of this left behind which I discussed in the earlier part of this talk. But what I want to comment on is also not just the rosy a few of liberalism, a lack of tough mindedness in dealing without legacy. But I want to look at the great political assassination, the fascination which is the heart of this period which is the assassination of Lord Frederick Cavanich and the Phoenix Park. At the beginning of May 1882. This is a key, key moment, because a few days before that stone is decided to end the policy of internment of the land league organizers release panel from jail and his friends. I said that sort of letter say I'm going to use the guys. If you're a guy called PJ show them who the brothers but this is the key name at this point, who were doing the violence in the west of Ireland. You let us I'm going to count the time. I was totally sincere in that so this is the deal in 832. That's what it is. It's a totally. Talks about there's just no question what it is. It's a deal with men and violence. All right, we're out of jail. You stop your guys and that's sort of piles layers and that's all in the days before. And he mentions particularly PJ show them. PJ show them is the pay master for the assassin group that kills Lord Frederick Cavanich, who is putting is the new liberal. And he said to them. Foster who own type authoritarian liberal says I'm not very well with this policy it's totally shady it's totally crap out he goes. And he sat by that stone, the new young guy is actually a relative of that so probably goes in Christian. And you just as well turn the page. No more retirement, which is a disgrace to Britain with its liberal ideals right Europe. We've locked up a thousand people. Absolutely not we're getting rid of all that you can see the appeal who disgraced ourselves. Let's get rid of it. The only problem is that the assassin group, which have been set up the invincible is still active. And no sooner does Lord Frederick Cavanich or at least he's actually sliced a little bit. In sharp knives and in the Phoenix Park. So how you behave here, you've got letters from Gladstone saying to do that sort of five or six days for saying, I'm going to go to show them. There is some considerable evidence that the day before the murders are actually ready to share them with a view to say to have a guy now guys new situation stop it, but this assassination was already in play. It's the biggest assassination in 19th century British history. The point that you have to understand that the arrival of conservatives, that sort of is going to have to put out this policy it's too embarrassing. It's too much covered in blood. That sort of is always a major thing. I was thinking about that every day in the light of recent program with the camel about with Jerry Adams and so on. The camel did in the Blair period during the process, you'll never see a picture of Jerry Adams and Tony Blair. Why, because of a bomb went off. There will be a very bad the next day. There is no picture in that period. You know what's up in the modern Dining Street, you don't have a picture of the two of them together. There is none. And that is because there's press advisers quite right to take the risk. What's the point. If this goes wrong. And you'll never see a picture. But what I'm trying to sell to you is now this is these kind of calculations are coming to the dross of humanitarian gap, practically last two or three weeks but that was the reality at the time. So this, but to go back to Trump, so he's trapped. That's the thing about it. I was going to quote. There's an article, most people written that more things think about a read an article left behind by Jasper Tully who was the MP for us common this time, publish my son in the Roscoe and Harold, who just grabs this moment, telling me that the panels a week were close involved in violence. He knew what to call it all. But he knew this he describes the connections the weapons brought into the country everything. And he says what he actually trapped that stone. I borrowed in the tent at that perhaps so because you didn't know where it was happening. That stone was trapped. Because I knew you said, you didn't turn around and say, I can't rewrite history. I'll let you out. You wrote to me and said PJ Sheridan would stop this violence and so on. That was the basis of the deal the so called command treaty. This is saturation is that I'm not really I can't rewrite it. I'm trapped. I'm not in this process. That's where the peace process means you're trapped. And you can be very and that's why Blair was always living in terror, the one will go off when he began this thing because he was afraid that he will be trapped quite well. He was similarly terrified, but that stone was trapped into this alliance with national asylum, and at the heart of it is a really brutal assassination, and coming out on the connections between partners without cessation. This is a very reliable connection from violence point of view and stresses his conservatism. And he's a very attractive figure in many ways that new book coming out of this ancestral voices and politics, which try to talk small about these difficulties or Oxford University press later this year. But this is not meant to be anti panel. It's meant to say that it is time that we started facing up to the role of violence. I really handle it in British political history, that the liberal, agreeable liberal cover ups work and several collusion, and it won't work either. Because in the late 80s, the cathedrals would give it this and give it this. And part of it say, Well, actually, yeah, they're digging at this and part of us tacitly say I know why they're digging at this because there's something there. So we're quite prepared to do deals with me as well in 85. So if there's so much of a set of what they think is this dead to meet the surface, why would they have to do a deal with me to take you five. So I shouldn't overuse the word liberal here. But what I do think is that one of the problems in British thinking that I like to do with this is an inability to talk honestly about violence. Today I write nationalist violence, but as Pat said, I was a historical advisor to bloody Sunday Tribunal, I've written in some way to my British violence, and at questions I will talk about that. But for an audience like this, it wasn't done, I probably changed the emphasis. But nonetheless, for an audience like this. I think the point is, is to stress the lack of tough mindedness by which in the way that we kind of see look at these things. And we're at few weeks about the good father woman, the sentimentality to which I have contributed. I'm guilty as charged at certain points. The sentimentality about what happened 25 years ago is also fundamentally anti truth in its bias. And the best way to preserve peace and an understanding between the two islands is to actually be as truthful and as accurate as we can and acknowledge the difficulties and acknowledge some of this story is actually really quite unpleasant. Thank you. I do want to give time for questions. Thanks very much. I was going to ask if you haven't, if you're offered to join the future to add violence in our island as constitution. Thank you. So, a few years ago the answer would have been an easy one, you know, in terms of making sure that the Catholic arts of the Irish constitution are changed. The truth is I understand. I mentioned that, you know, I'm one side of my family, my, my, my great uncle's the longest serving Catholic chaplain, the British Army, the world that he and other priests in my family. You, when I up to well into the 80s it's just disappeared just like that. And what we and this is our problem with us, what we have discovered is that Catholicism is an essential part of Irish tribalism. If you said that at any point between 1830 and 19 and the present day, if you said at any point, people would have said nonsense. It's gone. But one of the things that you know, probably in the back of your mind is securities to us. You know, in terms of the offer of the Catholic State Church, no longer relevant. I wouldn't even bother. There is a real problem here about where things are going and you will be well aware that the first time the Unionist focus less on national spoke units were struck 10% in five years. And it's turned out, basically, nobody knows where it went to in 2017 when it was a huge vote. And nobody knows where it came from rather nobody knows where it went to. And nobody knows, well, everybody does know part of the reason DEP said several psychotraumatic breakdowns in the period of 10 in the last five years, and Brexit, but Brexit was already in play profoundly destabilizing of Irish politics. And now it really is when we're talking about Robert talking about those peace process of secret negotiations. Robert Stocksman says, well, both Britain and Ireland is in the European Union guarantees Irish unity. In fact, we didn't with 25 years since Robert saying no 35 years since Robert's little intervention. No sign of it. Right. Britain really European Union undoubtedly strengthened nationalism. Undoubtedly, in all types of ways, including a significant minority of Northern Brunswick, you know, we thought it was a really bad idea. I personally was against Brexit purely because they thought it would make trouble and I have to say it's made 10 times more trouble. And it's actually meant that I actually thought it by worst nightmares. It's it could be the right to come to an end. And I don't think that nationalism, not proven is that the DEP will join the part sharing government in September that a new game starts. Nobody knows, was this radical decline in the Unionist vote continue or not. This level of democratic factors are not really relevant in this period of time. And nobody knows whether restabilize unionism and start getting that inspiring it's electorate the way it did, even into a phase of Brexit so nobody know. So it's a slightly hypothetical question. Finally about frozen working class. It was a hegemonic class a bit like Catholic priests on the other side. It was a hegemonic class when I was growing up in Northern. It's no longer that it's as simple as that. It is actually, and I don't say this with any pleasure, but it is no longer the hegemonic class within unionism. What it thinks will not determine the outcome to sort of questions that you that you're raising just no longer the hegemonic class. Thank you very much for an enjoyable stroll through history. However, I, I thought tonight's lecture might deal much more with current affairs, and even affairs of the last half century. Because you're quite right about Blair and Jerry Adams, a handshake would have resulted in a bomb. Wilson talked to the IRA nearly came to a deal. And 10 years later, the writing bomb happens. Why? Well, I mean, I did try to have to say a bit more about that. I wasn't saying that he was right. I'm just saying they were consistently honest to Campbell was was they were consistently nervous. I'm quite rightly embarrassed, but they're also good explode. And they did a lot. Something something's not terribly ethical behind the scenes to make sure that nothing exploded. They're quite right to have that concern, because the embarrassment will be totally unavoidable. And that means you are to a degree trapped. You have to move into jail will say I'm somewhere but a decommission I can't tell you when but you know my position by next year. I mean the two governments say 1993 both governments the Irish government as well. This peace process depends on the IRA don't have a temporary ceasefire refusing to decommission. The IRA responded eventually to that demand. It took 14 years before they actually did it. That's how long they struggled out. Victory was by the way in that area, the politics of the gun and holding on to the gun and the latent threat, not on the constitutional political questions, whether or not at the races in those talks. And Dr Durbin, well I would make him a first minister or that was within conflict. You can see on Friday night was in total control of all the constitutional political aspects of the settlement, along with David tremble. But the victory was in the politics of the gun, which was in turn the stabilizing because the thing that kind of shows that should never happen did happen. And Dr Durbin said they shouldn't be able to call it up and then retain the right to retain war against their fellow Irish women for the next 10 or 15 years and use it as a negotiating lever. Actually, we did. That's exactly what did happen. What the Irish Prime Minister said should never happen. Precisely what did happen. 206 is an Irish statement threatening British government with a return to violence and threatening Blair. Now it worked. Blair made a gamble that it would actually work. And it's a normalcy to his credit. And I always admired the way he and Jonathan power handled it, which is a really, really high risk. And if you're looking back at what Wilson did we mean to do all this, as you rightly say, and so, you know, and so, and so it was Jake and I think actually nobody else in Wilson's cabinet was sympathetic to this point of view. But what really, really matters here is what the Irish government thought. And it just people have got what I talk about the Irish boys was a, which I'm partly a child, respect them around. It really does matter. It really does exist. And it knows there's something more important than I've been in Boston Irish bars and the latest song that night and the latest cherry blood. It knows it. There's a man there with a checkbook. It goes how do we pay for this. There's a man. That's why the family secretary says, in the minute which is in my book, there's no place too high that I would compare to keep Britain in Northern Ireland. No price to high is what the Irish window found out that that power was was playing these games. And he was run up by the Irish cabinet secretary. And he said, Irish cabinet secretary, we hear you're thinking you're something very radical. That's withdrawal. And Bernard said, yes, well, what do you think. And they're both carrying one one removed from, but it's also carrying our generation. And the Irish have said no, no, we think this is far too premature. And this is what you've really got. When people think in this side of the Irish sea about Ireland, they actually don't think about respect to my island. Now, one of the problems is respect around is a bit in retreat, because part of what respect to my was was old school Catholic Ireland. Nobody knows how I've said to you I could stand old school Catholic Ireland. The tourism is still there. Absolutely. You know, these things are still are still rare in the culture, and nobody quite knows where this is going. But it is worth remembering always that there is an object Ireland, which is determined to make our work which does know what the bottom line is financially. I was still asking what I'm just so rich today, how do we replace the 15 billion British invention. Even now an hour now is rich and it's ever been in my lifetime by some long way. There is still somebody I can assure you, sitting in the Department of Finance doing the calculations. I used to meet them during the negotiations a good Friday agreement. One reason why I was so sure that it would work in constitutional terms. Now you, if you want to know about that one thing, you find the people around the economy. You don't find the foreign secretary in Boston in a Boston bar, who will be telling you the story of Ireland. I'm about to give you everything tonight. The absolute importance of the officials of the Departments, the Department of Finance, and their ruthless realism. The scale of a child, by the way, you're covered from its enormous financial collapse 2008 to 2010. You know the Germans, you could do anything you like, impose anything on us at all, but we will not change our tax breaks for international companies. Anything else you want will do, but not change the tax breaks. That was brilliant. It worked. Now look at the scaling of our investment hours on the scale of the recovery. These are tough, shrewd people. Ireland has tough, shrewd people, not just people with, you know, guitars and machine guns. I quite like this questionnaire and some at the back, but I quite like to ask you a question myself for you. What is the term dirty war? And of course people like Jerry Adams at the time they considered themselves at war. What is a clean war? I'm using the word dirty war to describe what British government did both in 1920, 1920 to 21. And without any sense, I knew the practitioners in the next phase were repeating something that was in the history books. There was no sense whatsoever. It was just stumbled into it, and we stumbled into it because there's only one way of dealing with the terrorist movement. It's not a real war question. I was having a bad issue of surprise, right? When you decide when to attack, you've got to have a little bit of penetrator, which to a very considerable degree, not inside on that by the way, but certainly in Belfast. Jerry Adams in the end comes to the table is he well aware of how penetrated they are, right? So the dirty war is that you penetrate. There's no other way of dealing with it. It's not like the Second World War where you don't rig up the Germans and say we're attacking tonight or whatever. It's nothing like that. There's no, there's no signalling. And what goes on in shooting with policemen in the case of the IRA war, 19, 19, 21, 300 Catholic policemen, essentially. In northern later, it's also about 300 policemen. There were mostly going about their normal policing business and some of these steps I provide the internships and debt. That's what it was. That's the nature of this conflict. You could say that's a dirty war. I take it, but it is. It is. There's no clean war. That's what you're right me to say, but I'm saying the UK has to face up to the fact and just say that, you know, the truth is there was no alternative. But penetration, or if you penetrate, for example, in the case of Freddy Scavici, he was head of the nothing squad, the internal IRA security squad. During his time for the last 10 years, he was in that road, he was a British spy. During his time, he continued to shoot people are also British spies to preserve his cover. And by the way, the Irish police did some of the things. And this would have been known by his handlers. That people would know that one of their other spies, let's look down the food chain was going to be shot tonight by one of their senior spies. That's the stuff. It is truly, truly terrible. But I do think that some way I can do much to the semi religious nature of the 25th anniversary. But I do think that people have to face up there really really doubt about this. And when you console voucher produces report that will become quite clear. What was done. Now, I mean the person who appointed. Freddy Scavici, the head of the nothing squad was Jerry Adams. That's the key appointment, the key initiator in this process, apparently through other members of nothing squad and I send the papers were through other people busy shooting our unfortunate low grade spies discovered or their spies. But this is this that there's a significant number of bodies there, at least more than 20. And it's horrible and there is, and the British government makes a decision, which is Freddie is so valuable. We need Freddie, and this is my other point about, you know, this particular guy, Robert. He didn't need there wasn't just Robert who was going back and forth. They were coming down and information about the Iran you haven't said she has some. You know, coming down. There was. Turn around the stuff we were so and so to the peace process so it's so isn't and so on. I don't interpret it. There's even an argument by some that some of the people who died in this period were selected by British government agents either agents or whatever, because they were known to be against the peace process. I don't believe they would have but they come through as beginners were protected. Basically, certainly, they try to do the same in 1921. And sometimes they go around, by the way, who do you protect, who's the one who's really got it. Your George's face was delivered. Who's going to deliver the goods. Peace. Tony Blair, John major. Harold Wilson, Churchill, Cornell, Glaston, you haven't mentioned Margaret Thatcher. Good. I mean, what, there were 35,000 British troops in Northern Ireland. Yeah. Is there. Is there any effect. Is there a factor effect and all of this that you might have identified. I think I have. I do discuss that but actually it's a very true point. And to be honest, the thing about that sure is that there's one policy. There are many policies connected with our life and show their world memories in the room for the poll tax in Scotland and so on. If many policies in our life, the only public policy that she said I got it wrong was our Irish policy. You read her memoir, she's very explicit that the agreement of 85 which she went for was a mistake. She did. There's, there's no question about having taught that that agreement is in demoralising units of all time and so facts can still be felt today, even though she herself. And the reason why by the way that she thought it was a mistake was that she didn't let her return in terms of cross border security cooperation that she had expected she says in a memoirs. And that's not that agreement which I had signed a great expense in terms of trouble with the unionists and for years after that I had the worst security cooperation with our than any other country in Europe. And that's something she says in a memoir. So that is a capture story the undue that's her which is the thing everybody, you know, he and me say iron pick. It's the one area of our life that she wasn't. It's the one area for political life where she expressed doubts later on about how she's handling. And again my point about assassinations advisor. In opposition was every need, and he was assassinated and by removing airy need. Actually in the assassinated Jerry need in the Palace of Westminster by blowing him up. They actually removed a source of advice to her, which would never have tolerated the agreement of 85. Now I need is extraordinarily interesting. I don't know anybody in the room is read needs your book. But if you think it's a kind of public school boy book about, you know, somebody, you know, we've been a cultist and so on, around, you know that kind of kind of public school or a kind of thing. And he was actually really he was it as a junior officer, then, then I don't call this the words he actually spends during all the trials with the Nazis. And this is the map of really considerable moral sentiment. The people who blew them up, but they were terribly radical, they're anti fascist. His Nuremberg book is one of the great anti fascist books, but you sitting by a British officer, and there's no public school brain at all. There's no English urbanism at all. He's just grimly facing every day dealing with these people goables and talk, going through a separate and writing calmly about the situation. It's a deeply moving book. He was a really a serious, a moral person of that there is no doubt, again, is assassination, like in guys on assassination frequently works. But Michael Burns would know I'm not mentioning it. The assassination. Cavendish assassination work. The one that didn't work is Henry was 1922, because that provoked Churchill to say to Michael Collins enough is enough. And either you start the civil war now, or we're coming back. We would have done this another thing, but that the cessation training was is the one of all the political assassinations that I've seen, in terms of Irish political life in my lifetime. Historically, and I'm not talking about it or not, but at a minimum by removing a significant element against the Irish Republic of consensus of those people who carried out the assassination. Assassinations actually work. Another thing, in most cases, it's only by accident that he didn't answer Henry Wilson is by the moment of history was that it didn't work. It was backfired. But mostly they don't. Mostly they don't. We've got a couple of online questions from our audience online. And the first of these. The accused defense of Charles Trevelling is fascinating, but relies on one exchange of letters, which contradicts a number of references in the Wikipedia page on traveling. Is it not true, for example, that in a letter to Lord Montego Trevelling refers to the famine as the judgment of God, and refer to the real evil as being the moral evil of the selfish perverse and turbulence character of the people. I mean, he's completely true. He does use it, but I said that in what I said just I said, the Trevelling and don't talk about the judgment of God. And it's a judgment of God on a fairly social system. You can't play on like this with a third of the population. You know, smaller and smaller farms. A third of the population is of eight billion, but about a third of the people depend on the potato alone. It's romantic social development and someone shouldn't be allowed to die. He says that again and again, we, the English people have a right of duty because of the union to intervene to make sure we don't die. You can't get them through this transition, but the transition is a good transition. I did say that. And when you said to the system, well, I refer to that as well. I said that he did have a rather, in my view, rather abstract view, but our social system the landlords are incompetent, incapable, etc. Everybody was homeless. You've got a bit of a responsibility. These are political structures and social structures, which the union was born. And you can't just say, oh, I'm very furious. These people, the springs of self activity don't exist in our society, which is strikingly didn't. In my way with Ira, and in Drasko at the time or London, the springs of self activity did exist. I'm not going to say so I'm, I'm, I'm actually, I'm not sure I said I thought there was a strong case for James Connelly's view of the fabric. But the reason why you won't go from the Travian. Why don't you know it so much, because it's everybody's overnight those five. We know it's really just pick a trick. We know it's cruel publishing probabilism. That's the explanation. It's so neat. It's so lovely. It just is not true. And it's very clear when he writes to, to Father Matthew that he is not in that place, but it's so seductive. I mean, for a minute, when I complain about that people can see anything different about portrait. The next time, next season, I don't assume for a minute anything should be different. Of course, it's going to be like that. And was enough truth really in the song, or rather fallen for it for it to be as that sort of political historical song goes to be credible. But I do find it exasperating that quality papers without exception. And every time I read this passage. And I knew it was the heart of the one passage that they want to go around with is the one passage which is directly demolished as something that Travian never had said. Thank you. And the second question we've got online. Will we see a United Island before we see an independent Scotland. I want to say that I'm very second to say, well I used to talk a lot to now dead to Patrick Bayhute. Patrick Bayhute always used to say to me that the test for the union was going to come first in Scotland on the island. Well at the point he was saying it to me, it was long before the SNP became the force to have been in the last several years. He was Secretary of State for that. So that was a cease to be Latin when Blair won the election 1997. In 1996. And in a way, even the fact we were a referendum, we've had to strike in a way I think you could argue in history, as, as, as, as, as, as, at least gives him some credit for talking like that. I've never had any other answer was, he said it's going to come first the big challenge. It's going to be a referendum did come first here. And the survival of the union is going to be tested and it could still be the case. Now we have a situation that unionism has had a nervous breakdown over the last five years. It can't mobilize its vote. And as I said, people forget that in 2017, it had a huge vote. And at various, it's showing all kinds of macabre neurotic symptoms. The reaction to the winter framework was ridiculous. No, that's wrong. It was not ridiculous, but it was deeply flawed and unserious. There was no sign of, I shouldn't use these free phrases of Jack Melody. There was no sign of the ceiling's engagement with a complicated document. There's no question that is an improvement in that position. There's just no question that it responds very substantially to the critique, the valid parts of their critique. There are definitely several problems, still things that they don't like. And I understand that completely, but the reaction was weak. There was a, intellectually weak. There is a sense that somehow or other by September, the evolution will return to know that it is a co-premiership. It's not an issue and I'm deeply critical of the DPS behavior last few weeks. But what is not an issue is the issue of serving it said under her under Sinn Féin. It is a co-premiership. It's quite simple. There is no difference at all. There's a kind of prestige bit, but it is not an issue. That is not what will stop them in going into September. In the universe is anybody on the inside track, you know, that will tell you coming back in September. I'm not sure I haven't seen the public evidence for that so far. And there's a section of the party officers the DEP were determined not to go back. There's one question. There is journalist and RTE correspondent Tony Conley a man from Terry who studied in Dublin knows the island well and it's relationships wrote a book about Brexit where it happened, explaining not just the politics but the economics of the complicated flows and borders, not just the Irish border, but the border between Britain and Ireland. Why do you think and many other people writing similar things in Ireland. Why do you think that the British Conservative Party, which claims to understand business wasn't hearing those kind of messages. I mean, it's a very bad point. And I've said myself that I was against Brexit because I could see what I don't understand business. I could see it with great trouble in Ireland. But it is important to understand. I mean, basically a simple short answer is most of the Tories even those who were pro-Brexit never thought they'd win. It's very, very simple. Nobody thought they'd win. And those on the remain side have to really come to terms of why did they fail to convince people. What was its sake here. And I've never been happy with the attempts of the Isle of Lords to try and pretend as if a referendum result hadn't happened. But the short answer is they didn't devote much thought because they never thought they were going to be tested on this question. It's very, very slow. Tony Connelly's book's a very good book, but it's only really the beginning of the story as regards and there needs to be another book about Ireland and Brexit. The crucial thing is tools in mind and managing to lose the election effectively to Corbyn and the running the election, the run into the election, and then she was so desperate for anything that she could present department for a deal. She just her previous commitments that she'd given about Northern Ireland just collapsed. And Theresa May, I don't blame where the woman was on her knees, but the negotiation, both in the 2017 joint report, and then the first iteration of her withdrawal agreement is a huge intellectual collapse by the British side. By the way, I don't think that we just don't deal with failures. We just never have to say I'm exasperated by the innovative discussed violence. There's a more general aspect. The people face up to intellectual failures. This was intellectual failure. The leading Irish official in these negotiations said he was embarrassed by the collapse of the British negotiation. He couldn't believe it when he says taxi, they collapse. He said, we're allowed us to interpret the good Friday agreement. We're allowed to interpret the good Friday, which pays for and is hard to guarantee. You are not somebody else to take over the top. This is the reading the Irish official saying, I couldn't believe it and it went too far. So losing the election, political conjuncture is very, very, very important. And Boris's deal is slightly better actually from a more balanced, because it brings in the northern assembly. Theresa May, we all now accept, please share in this room, there's a problem with democratic deficit in on that these things laws are coming from Europe. The assembly must have some discussion role play in any democracy. You can't just impose top down from outside. Everybody accepts this. It's not in the main agreement. There was no rule for the northern assembly. And perhaps you begin the process of giving it a certain role. The agreement now, which gives a very significant role, it's not perfect. It's a complicated term interactions. But we need for an assumption that democratic deficit is very important that something significant has to be done about it. And the other thing that we need to pay attention to is that there is a civil hands and don't pay attention to the back because there's not really perfect outcome for anybody here. But it was clearly wrong that this was a total top down in position. I think Theresa had lost the election. She was on her knees. And that's what happened to politicians. But that's what I wanted to say about that. So that's not an answer to your question by the Conservative Party and Brexit, and you can't really defend it. You're right. So this will be the last question. Well, I didn't, I didn't remember. I said, I said that there's an argument that the world that the Travelling's accused of blaming God, which he didn't believe God was punishing the Irish. And so that the world to be fair, you know, I'm a huge politician who actually didn't think God was punishing the Irish for their fexuses and all our failures, right? I wasn't mad at that blaming God at all. I wasn't mad at God at all. Well, I did operate. I was not very well as a man. And as the juxtaposition of our, the special sentence was something that I think is the way to my character in the pragmatic school of doctor who said to me, he just heard the radio program, I double shot them on and others, or radio for all the unions about this, and he listened to it. And he said to me, just as I was going on there, he said to me, we're going to put people in the room. And I was really asking, where are they? I'm not sure. I'm just kind of struggling with this and they're right. They're right. They're still not doing a question. But you know, we're very excited about that. Well, it could take one more. I do very quick. Yeah. Yeah. He was talking about government in Dublin. Yeah, he was talking about government in Dublin and Ireland at the time and in terms of his politics. Yeah. And was he kind of trying to get away from those seas of division just after the war with Churchill, because most of them were having a good tether tether after the war and before the war. Well, I mean, I, I, I want to make the answer I've written a book about Churchill, which discusses those relations. So I want to hear something just one single. Never had a good time magazine at the time of the IRA campaign of 1956 in Northern Ireland. And he said that you were in the IRA. And he said, look, there'd be a democratic basis. There was an election result, which there was, which you can argue by interpreting, but you can interpret it if you want to say, right. He said, we were involved in a democratic Irish struggle. The reason why I completely died on this IRA campaign in 1956, 57 in Northern Ireland is because it's inter Irish. It's an inter Irish conflict, and I'm not prepared to stand over a campaign, which is going to be very stable. As the British Irish campaign, they are responsible for 60% of the deaths. The lion's share of them. It was mainly about killing of some people in British streets, but mainly about killing. It's not about other Irishmen who live not far from them. And there in a sense that this is not something I can tell our council, and it is not an equivalent with the 1990 to 21 and large war I was part of. Right, I'm going to draw it to a close. I was tempted as well so that it's not time for sound bites, but I feel the hand for God. I know it's history for Tony Blair, but following the God questions, I think it's God telling us it's getting a bit too hot in here. I'd like to just of all first like to remind you that there are refreshments available, alcoholic and non alcoholic. They're across because there's nowhere nice to have that in this building. The refreshments are you just cross the road to the glass building the Wilson medical building, and you'll find George there with some through or warm drinks or whatever you like but before. But before you go. I just like you to join me in thanking Paul for such a robust and interesting way of dealing with such a complex topic as Northern Ireland. And in return for that here is a world philosophical society of people wait and you can. Thank you.