 Fel bod yw i'n gweithio'n gweithio ac yn ystod i yw hynny yw i mi wneud am ymlaen i'r hyn y gweithio'r lechau hynny. Fe ddechrau i gyd yn ei gweithio, mae'r cyhoedd yn rhan oedd yn gweithio'r cyd-igelach gyda'r pandemig. Mae'r cyflaen o'r cyhoedd sydd wedi'i gweithio'r cyfan o'r dynnu, ond mae'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio ddweithio hi'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio ar y rhan o'u gweithio'n gweithio. Not on screens. So long way that last. It seems that absence has made us all the more eager for these things and it's really nice to see the rooms are full. Really looking forward to lively and fruitful discussion and I'm sure you have plenty of questions for our distinguished speakers this evening. So for those of you I haven't met before my name is Maeve Ryan. I'm a senior lecturer here here in Kingston's Department of War Studies and I'm also the co-director of the Center for Grand Strategy. In a moment I will introduce our distinguished guests on our speakers this evening, Dyna'r cyfle o'r cyflwyfridd, ond rwy'n dechrau'r ysgolion o'r programe ac rwy'n cyfnod o'r anod ar gyfer y llwyth. Rwy'n cael ei wneud yn ymgyrch yn ymgyrchio'r Llyfrgell Cymru yn 2016, fewn i'r pryddffiliadau cyffredinol yng Nghymru a'r ddysgu'r oedden nhw'n ddysgu'r cynnig yn ei ddechrau'r ddylch yn Aberchillol Bryddol. While brought it in how foreign policy was being understood, imagined, formulated and pursued and to bring a greater degree of particularly historical and strategic expertise into the modern practices of state craft diplomacy and foreign policy So in essence the Centre for ground strategy started life as a group of 19th century historians with notions that we could change the world and make a difference And since then as we've been pursuing that core mission Myelwyd yw'n dweud i rywun iawn i ddim yn gwiaith o'r ffordd o'r ddod am y panhraith i Loxon Lywodraeth a Loxon Lywodraeth Ffaldigol Ffaldigol i Loxon Lywodraeth. Loxon Lywodraeth Wfaldigol yw unrhyw o ddefnyddio'r ddod yn ddim yn gwylwg, a'r hysrwydd o'r cyfgatwch, y rewant, y cyfweldau, i pattern i gwybod i hyn o rewant o'r poddiad idgwdau i gweld iddangos, Ieithio ei wneud o felwyddiadau'r cyfleoeddion i'r gwirio a eto anghyddio cyflym hwn, a'w rwy'n ei wneud newyddau ilaywnahol. Mae'n ffodus am y cyflwyno cyflwyno ychwaneg iawn, amdapsion, ar ffrwyng o'r holl, oherwydd mae ar怎f ymwynd yn y tyn nhw, mae'n mewn cyflwyno ar wych, mae'n mewn cyflwyno ar wych, ac mae'n amlwg gyda gŵr hwn o'r heddiw ffoxod cyflwyno cyflym mewnvanol. Felly, roedd y ddweud y cofnir o'r gwaith ymdweud yng Nghymru, ac yn gofyn i ymddeithasol yma o'r chyfnodau, ar gyfer y cyfnod yma, ymdweud y cyfnodau yma i'r ddweud yng Nghymru, ymgyrch o'r unig sydd yn Cymru, ac ymdweud ymgyrch o'r oedd ymgyrch. Ymhyf, mae'n fwy ymgyrch. Fe wnaeth i ni i gael gweld i'r ddwyf yn gweithio'r ddechrau, dr Mathias Hesrys, oedd yr unig ymdweud ymgyrch, Rhefn, dwi'n gweithio gyda来, a fy wnaeth am yr adnoddau iawn i amser ac ar draws iawn. Dauf am y cerdис mewn 2018-2019, yng Nghymru yma, y bydd yn gofnoddau am hawdd ddechrau. Mae'n ffond o'r ffordd iawn i'r ffordd iawn i'r ffordd iawn, rydyn ni'n gweithio, adon o'r gwaith. Mae'n credu rydyn ni'n pobl yn bwysig y gennyddiol, yna yn 모 wneud y bydd yn cyneptau unighaf. ond le foldwch a'r wych yn y gwneud, yn yr ysgolion yng Nghymru, i'r bwysig o esonimwch a choglau'r holl hwnnw i'w gweithio yn ddraweroedd i'ch barni, yn dda i'n gyfer y gyffredinol. Yn gyfleoedd gweithio, dyma'r pryd o'n siŵr, dyma'n hwnnw, o gyflafodau gwahanol y dyfodol argynigau ynghyd i'r preffsio ymddiff passengersio yn dyda'r boedd, a'n edrych yn y ddweud ar fynd y cyfrifol ynghylch, i'r ymdd番er oしwn, o'r proses eu cyflwynol, gan ymddangos i arferwadau cyfleadiaeth ar ganferwadwyr i datblygu chynllunol a chyflwynol ei wneud i'r wych yn yng Nghymru. Fyット y proses o'r cyflwynol yn ysgolog iaith yng Nghymru a'n enw i ddiwedd y ffellywnol. Rydyn ni'n rhoi gallwch chi'n ei fellywn i'r hyn, bod yma'r hynny yma yw ymddangos i'r ysgolog iaith ar llach perthyg sydd o'r proses ac oedol iaith. I motion to our second year of this programme, and really enjoying that in fact earlier today Professor Gagin had the opportunity to meet with these students and I think had a really interesting two way conversation about perspectives on implied history. Of course, another major pillar of the programme is the Engelsburg Applied History annual lecture. Delivering this year's lecture, very pleased to welcome Professor Patrick Hagen from Trinity College Dublin, he will be speaking to us today on the career and life of Dr Martin Manser. Professor Gagin is Professor in Modern History at Trinity College Dublin, an expert on the British-Irish relationship in the late 18th and 19th centuries. He probably needs a little introduction, but a very eminent historian whose books on the 1801 Irish Act of Union, The Lives of Robert Emmett and Daniel O'Connell have been landmarks in Irish political history. Overall, his work addresses those complex competing themes of constitutional nationalism and republicanism, explores the tensions that led to the creation of a new political relationship between Ireland and Britain in 1800, the attempts to overturn the settlement by force thereafter, as well as the campaigns to transform the relationship through constitutional means. Professor Gagin has served as President of the Irish Legal History Society from 2018 to 2021, I think, and is Chair of the Advisory Board of the Royal Irish Academy's Dictionary of Irish Biography Project. He also presents the award-winning, very popular, long-running weekly radio show Talking History on News Talk Radio, which is, I think, one of the most downloaded podcasts in Ireland, and if it's not already on your subscription list, you should add it. Because it covers all aspects of history from ancient times to the present day, and for me is a bit of a master class on how you very quickly have to master a topic so you can talk about it, and as an undergraduate, I could never understand how people could do that, and Professor Gagin has been an inspiration in that regard. He's also served, I think, very pertinently for the topic of today's discussion as a special advisor to the Taoiseach, the Irish Prime Minister, Lee of Radker, from June 2017 to June 2020. I suspect this has created some interesting perspectives on what it means as a historian to apply history in the real world, to apply some of those understandings and insights, and at least a perspective on the insight of the political machine and what the political machines of government may be looked like now in the past, and some probably interesting reflections that will inform your work since returning to academic life, I suspect, although I'm not sure how candidly you can speak about some of those things today. Looking forward shortly to welcoming Professor Paul Byw, he will be joining us shortly. He's very sorry to be delayed in a sense of apologies, but he will be with us momentarily, and will be offering a response to this evening's lecture, and I think contributing also his own insights from being closely involved with and observing events as they unfolded. Lord Byw is a professor of politics at Queen's University Belfast. He's formerly a historical advisor to the Bloody Sunday Tribunals across Bench Pier, who served on the London Local Authority Bill Select Committee in 2007, for example, acted as secretary to the All-Party Group on Archives and History, and is a member of the British Irish Parliamentary Assembly. He also served on the Select Committee's of Both Houses on the Defamation Bill and has spoken a lot on issues around academic freedom. He's an honorary fellow at Pembroke College in Cambridge and a member of the Royal Irish Academy. Also the author of many works, too many to name, but including Enigma and New Life of Charles Stuart Parnell, which was named by the Sunday Times as Bargrapher of the Year. Finally, as you all know, the topic of today's lecture, of course, is the life and career of Dr Martin Mansour, and we're very pleased to welcome as our guest of honour this evening the man himself. Welcome, Dr Mansour. Sorry, I'm losing my voice. I'm reluctant to give too much of an introduction here because I don't want to steal Patrick's thunder, so I'm going to confine myself to say that Dr Mansour is a historian by training, whose subsequent career as a diplomat and adviser played a crucial role in helping to bring about the Northern Ireland peace process. Directly involved, of course, in the negotiations that led to the Good Friday Agreement, and for anyone who hasn't read this book, The Legacy of History for Making Peace in Ireland, it is a must-read for anyone who's interested in the questions of applied history and, of course, the history of modern Ireland. As we're here today, his unique approach to the application of history, historical method and some of those historians' way of thinking about problems has proved invaluable across three decades of public service. And I would say he's made a profound difference to the story of Ireland, being involved in laying the foundations for a whole new generation who were born since the Good Friday Agreement, who don't remember the troubles and who see the island through completely different eyes and who see an imaginary future that is entirely different to what seemed possible certainly when I was growing up and I suspect others in this room too. So delighted to say that we will have some closing reflections from Dr Mansur later this evening. We'll also have some time for questions later on. So please do think of some nice difficult ones and save them up. I'm sure our guests would like to get their teeth into those. And I'll hand over to Professor Gagan now just a quick housekeeping thing. Please make sure your phones are on silent. Please note that the lecture is being recorded and the questions later too. And finally, there will be a drinks reception after. So please do stay for that. So with that, I will hand over to Professor Gagan. Thank you. Thank you. Before I begin, just to say that it was a great honour to have been asked to deliver this year's annual lecture on applied history. And my thanks to Dr Mae Vryne and the team, Abbie Bradley, Andrew, Ollie. My thanks also to the Exxon Johnson Foundation for doing so much to support and promote the work and the study of applied history. Two notes before I begin. As Dr Ryan said, I was, for three years, an advisor to an Irish head of government or a Taoiseach. It was an advisor to the head of government of the opposing political party to the one that Dr Mansur worked for over three decades. So in some ways we approach the history of the past and some of the politics of this period in different ways. The other note to say at the start is that I regret the title because it should really, of course be, three Taoiseach and a peace process, but that didn't work as well, I thought. So I made it Prime Ministers and it was an attempt to show the length of his public service across three decades. Whereas, of course, then serving for three Prime Ministers would give that appearance of longevity. Whereas, of course, perhaps more recent events makes it. But if I was to have given it a different title, it would have been this one from an article in an Irish newspaper in 2000. And it's the historian who makes history and I think that's a very suitable title as well. On the fifth anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement in 2003, the subject of this evening's lecture, Dr Martin Mansur, published a volume of essays entitled The Legacy of History. The title was taken from the very first sentence of the Downing Street Declaration ten years earlier, which had been agreed by the Taoiseach, Albert Reynolds and the British Prime Minister John Major, and published on the 15th of December 1993. This document was a major breakthrough in the peace process and became the catalyst for the IRA ceasefire eight months later and the loyalist one which followed after. It also helped make possible the landmark historic agreement signed in Belfast on Good Friday in 1998. The declaration opens with the striking sentence that the most urgent and important issue facing the people of Ireland north and south and the British and Irish governments together was finding a way to remove the causes of conflict, to overcome the legacy of history and to heal the divisions which have resulted. Writing in the foreword of Mansur's book, the Taoiseach Berthierhearn began by acknowledging that in Ireland history is rarely far away. The foundation of the state was the culmination of a long historical struggle. The historical resonances of the conflict in Northern Ireland, which had deep roots in the past, were equally pronounced, but there can also be moments of historic liberation. The Belfast or Good Friday Agreement of 1998 was one such moment. A key figure in that story, whose application of history helped liberate communities bound by their histories for too long and who was able to use history to repair what had been fractured for centuries, was Dr Martin Mansur. Through virtually the entire length of the peace process, Mansur served as a political adviser in Northern Ireland to the Free Thysig, or Heads of Government, Charles Hoy, Albert Reynolds and Berthierhearn in 1982 and between the years 1987 and 1994 and 1997 to 2002. A hern who did so much to make the Good Friday Agreement a reality, credited Mansur with bringing to the peace process a strong sense of historical responsibility and a deep familiarity with the long-standing issues that have required resolution. The historian who makes history was how Mansur was described in the headline of this Irish newspaper in 2000 when he announced his attention to run for election to Parliament. It described him as an extraordinary man and an unsung hero and credited him with researching and defining the terms that were to become the basis of the Good Friday Agreement. Two years later, in 2002, there was a general election and Mansur became a politician in his own right, serving in the Arachdis or Irish Parliament first as a senator for five years and then in the Dall where he was elected TD for Tipperary South in 2007. He became a minister for state from 2008 where he had arranged responsibilities, the office for public works, finance and the arts until he lost a seat in the general election of 2011. Mansur was also appointed by President Mary McElise to the Council of State in 2004, a select group of councillors to the president and in that capacity attended many of the events during the visit of Queen Elizabeth II in 2011 including the visit to the Garden of Remembrance and the historic dinner at Dublin Castle, both significant moments in the story of peace and reconciliation between Ireland and Britain. Since 2011, he has continued to be an influential and respected figure and was appointed by Teshawch Enda Kenney from Finnegale, the rival party to Finifol as deputy chair of the government's expert advisory group on centenary commemorations. In that role he has helped guide the commemorations of the events leading to the foundation of the Irish state 100 years ago with considerable skill and ability. Although the cover of Mansur's book reads The Legacy of History, the full title appears on the inside page and provides a revealing insight into his philosophy and approach. The Legacy of History for Making Peace in Ireland. In giving his book this title he was recognising how history had weighed heavily on the people of Northern Ireland, indeed on the people of the whole island. But he was also indicating his faith in how a historical legacy could become a positive force. Instead of ignoring the past or attempting to rewrite it to suit a present day agenda, Mansur was suggesting it should be encouraged and embraced. The genius of Mansur was the way he was able to take the contested legacies of the past and find a new way forward, imbued with his own spirit of idealism and hope. There are no statues to special advisers. The most important work happens behind the scenes and while fingerprints and influences can sometimes be detected, they often fade away in the glare of the spotlight. Historic documents such as the Downing Street Declaration have many hands. An attribution of specific lines is a risky and uncertain business. But the nuanced language about history in the Declaration, from the opening sentence to the final point, very much reflect the thinking and outlook of Mansur and it was his historical perspective which shaped and informed the text. For someone like Martin Mansur, the motivation has always been public service, not public credit. This year's Engelsberg Applied History annual lecture is on the career of Dr Martin Mansur, not because he deserves public recognition for his remarkable contribution to public life and to peace on the island of Ireland. It is because his career offers a perfect example of how historical thinking can be applied to the problems of the present. It also shows how intractable issues with long standing roots can be resolved by embracing the legacy of history and not running away from it. It is a story about how thinking through time allows time to finally move forward after being frozen for far too long. It is a story with lessons for all of us today. There have been many descriptions of Mansur presented over his career and they provide different insights into his image and contrasting perceptions of his influence. Charles Hohe, he was the original untidy academic but someone he could trust with the most sensitive of responsibilities. To Albert Reynolds, he was someone whose philosophy was rooted in history. As Reynolds wrote in his autobiography, Mansur had constantly looked back to go forward, drawing strength and wisdom from the likes of Parnell and de Valera and Le Mas at Protestant Republican and a dedicated soldier of destiny within Finifol. To Bertie Ahern, he was quite simply a brilliant guy and absolutely 100% a straight talker whom everyone trusted. Outside of Finifol however, many struggle to understand where Mansur, this Oxford educated son of a Cambridge Don, was coming from. The Ulster Unionist MP, Ken McGinnis for example, once described him as someone who articulated the diehard Republican agenda in a posh English accent. Garnesford Sturald, Peshawch in the 1980s and a determined opponent of Hohe, described Mansur in his autobiography as a man whose views seemed at times to be even more rhetorically Republican than those of his boss. This was a prevalent view in Finigale at the time and yet in 1994 when John Bruton of Finigale became Peshawch, he asked Mansur to stay on as a special adviser on Northern Ireland though Mansur declined. Figures on the British side appreciated his value as well. On hearing the news of his departure in 1994, the British Prime Minister John Major wrote to Mansur praising his profound historical knowledge as an invaluable asset in the ongoing search for a peaceful settlement in Northern Ireland. Senior figures in Britain were always aware of Mansur's influence and significance. Shortly before Tony Blair became Prime Minister, he spotted him at an event and wanted to know, is that guy Mansur? For Bertie Ahern it was confirmation that they knew of him, of his position and of his influence. Mansur was frequently portrayed as some kind of Richelieu figure in government buildings in Dublin. In a profile in the Belfast Telegraph in the 1980s, he was described as Hohi's Man of Mystery, something of a shadowy figure around the corridors of power. The Belfast newsletter paid Mansur the following tribute a decade later. There are some capable people at the Northern Ireland office, but if their brains are land rovers, solid and reliable, then Mansur's is a port. In Dean Godson's Major Biography of David Trumbull, the leader of the Ulster Unionist Party between 1995 and 2005, he is described as the Anglo-Irish Eminon Screased, a successive phenofoldthysig, and as being so formidable an adversary. Noel Doar, the former Irish ambassador to Britain, who is Secretary General of the Department of Foreign Affairs between 1987 and 1995, and once described as the most universally-admired Irish diplomat of his generation, acknowledged that initially some of those Mansur had dealt with over the years in Dublin, Belfast and London found the intensity of his commitment disturbing. However, Doar recognised that it was that very commitment which over time won him the trust of the Republican leadership in Northern Ireland. To his Sinn Fein IRA contacts during the peace process, there was only one name used to describe him. He was referred to quite simply as the man. An occasional criticism of applied history is that the professional historian can be too preoccupied with the rarefied ideas of the past and can over-intellectualise political problems, forcing links with historical events even when they do not exist and falling to different biases in defending the connections. Mansur, perhaps even more than other intellectuals, inhabits a rich intellectual world, and he quite naturally sees illusions and connections between events across centuries and different countries. But they are never forced, they are never inauthentic, and they are never aimed at closing down a question, but rather at opening it up. One government press secretary who worked closely with him described him in his memoir as a savant, and there is something extraordinary about the range and breadth of his historical knowledge and his incredible powers of recall. To give an example of how his mind works, on the 27th of January 1983, there was a serious challenge to the leader of the opposition, Charles Hohe, the third in 11 months, and there were rumours that he was preparing to resign. Mansur's mind on the day was, by his own admission, full of historical parallels, and he wondered whether it would be remembered as another day of jubes, a reference to the 10th of November 1630 when Colonel Richelies' enemies mistakenly thought they had removed him. That morning, Hohe came to Mansur and asked him his advice on what he should do. According to a note Mansur made at the time, he said he thought there was still a faint chance of winning over the wavering middle ground, and he cited the Gaul's position in 1968 and Frederick the Great's in 1761. Hohe seemed reassured by these historical parallels and replied that if he thought that, then he would fight. And fight he did defeating the confidence vote on the 7th of February by just seven votes. Hohe went on to be re-elected Peshawch in 1987 when he made the historic decision to begin contacts with Sinn Fein. One of the most important qualities in any political adviser is good judgement, or, or indeed mixed with, what can be best described as common sense. Some have mistakenly underestimated Mansur because of their own preconceived ideas about the intellectual in politics. This is a criticism that can sometimes be levelled more broadly at applied history itself. The belief sometimes justified that intellectuals can be too rigid, too inflexible and too unwilling to modify their approach to take into account the political realities of the day. This is not Mansur. As one unnamed colleague told the Irish Times for a profile in the 1990s, he is highly political and not an academic foody duddie. From my own three years as a special adviser to a Peshawch, in this case a Fina Gaol leader, it is my belief that not every historian can be an applied historian. Too many are either not willing enough or not agile enough to adapt and adjust to secure a political result and move things forward. Sean Dignan, the government press secretary I referenced earlier, recognised that although Mansur was cast primarily as a theorist, he was also one of the most practical persons he had ever met. Whatever the problem or calamity, he never wasted time bemoaning fate or seeking to apportion blame. Instead he would immediately set about identifying countermeasures to try and nullify the setback or, if possible, actually turn it to advantage. Mansur's career offers many practical examples and perhaps the best one is the formation of the Fina Foll Labour Coalition in 1992. In the general election that year, following the acrimonious collapse of the outgoing coalition, Fina Foll had, in the words of Mansur and Nightmare, losing nine seats and looking unlikely to stay in power. However, attempts to create a rainbow coalition between Fina Gael, the Labour Party and Democratic Left floundered for personality as much as for policy reasons. A tentative approach was made by the Labour Party to Fina Foll as much to put pressure on Fina Gael as in any expectation of an agreement. What they didn't know as Albert Reynolds later wrote in his autobiography was that Martin Mansur was prepared. All good historians are experts at documentary analysis. It is a fundamental skill and integral to any attempt to analyse and interpret the past. It is here that we see how Mansur was able to apply his considerable skill with texts and documents to produce a deal for Labour that was impossible to refuse, making it very difficult for them to avoid a coalition, even though it had won an historic result on the basis of removing Fina Foll from power. Within a few hours of contact being made, Labour received a response, drafted by Mansur, about how a coalition with Fina Foll could work. An adviser to the Labour leader later admitted that we were sucked in. The draft prepared by Mansur, in a way, trapped us. In Bertie Hernd's first government, Mansur was the sole adviser on EU matters and attended all summits and bilaterals. In this his knowledge of French, German and sometimes more importantly Austrian history was constantly drawn upon. One example of this was when a way was being sought around the diplomatic blockade of Austria during the first Austrian People's Party, Freedom Party coalition. This approach to thinking in time was embedded in government buildings. In 2002, Bertie Hernd had five special advisers. Four of them had carried out graduate-level historical research and one of the group has told me that it led to fascinating office dialogue with Martin at the centre of it. This adviser believed that the specific benefit of their background in history was twofold, perspective and method. He told me it reinforced an openness to seeing issues outside of the current news cycle and it very strongly biased us towards having a respect for researching topics properly. The career of Dr Mansur is a good way of exploring the operation of applied history for a final reason. A trained historian in his own right, he is also of course the son of Professor Nicholas Mansur who between 1953 and 1969 was the first Smuts professor of the history of the British Commonwealth at the University of Cambridge before being elected master at Cambridge. His works included studies of the political relationships and challenges on the island of Ireland including the problem of partition as well as studies of Irish and Indian nationalism. One distinguished Irish historian has described Nicholas as the supreme authority on the Government of Ireland Act 1920. Another has called him one of the finest historians of Ireland. Martin has always acknowledged the influence of his father on his thinking and he is the advantage of being able to apply two generations of historical thinking to the challenges of the day. Speaking at the launch of the collected Irish essays of Nicholas Mansur in Dublin on Friday 11 April 1997 Martin admitted that his various employers had perhaps a hopeful assumption that some small part of his father's expertise had rubbed off on him. This was a difficult day in the peace process With the front page of the Irish independence running the headline Calus IRA attack ends hope of a ceasefire following the non-fatal shooting of a 46-year-old police woman and mother of three in Derry the night before. Mansur ended his speech on a note of hope calling for new skills and techniques new forms of creativity and pulling back from confrontation and brinksmanship and bridging narrow but deep and tractable differences and he suggested that the opportunity for a statement ship from within and between the strength of the main traditions remains wide open. From an Anglo-Irish Protestant family Nicholas Mansur grew up in County Tipperary where as an eight-year-old boy he heard the first shots at Solahead Byog in January 1919 which killed two policemen and which marked the beginning of the Irish War of Independence. In his magisterial work published posthumously the unresolved question the Anglo-Irish settlement and its undoing the events of Irish history were experienced as near realities not as distant phenomena or as issues in high politics. In Mansur's entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography it is noted that although Mansur was able to maintain an Olympian detachment writing about Commonwealth history in Irish history this was much harder. The entry concluded that Mansur will be remembered as a scholar who tried to bring reconciliation to Ireland. Hailed as an unrivald and humane analysis of contemporary problems in his beloved Ireland the unresolved question left a challenge and a series of signposts for his son. Martin Mansur inherited a broad imperialist outlook on his father and, as his biographer Kevin Rafter has recognised his father's writing on Ireland had a profound influence. Like Nicholas, Martin became an historical realist who recognised that political independence in Ireland would simply not have happened without violence by such incidents as the solohead Björg Ambusch. As Rafter notes Martin became a passionate and committed Republican but a non-violent one. It was a position which often confused and bewildered those he dealt with from those involved on the British side to nationalists and unionists of all extremes in Ireland. During the difficult days of the peace process Mansur was occasionally portrayed as a pawn of the provisional IRA. This was a failure to understand Mansur's nuanced reading of Irish history and the complexity of his approach one that believed in a nationalist ideology which whatever its faults had a place for all the people on the island rather than one built behind a smoke screen of pluralism as the ideology of a permanent 26-county state. This was not an endorsement of political violence to resolve the problems on the island. As Mansur explained in a public lecture on the value of historical commemoration and its role in peace and reconciliation in February 1998 to be a player in democratic politics requires a definitive renunciation of physical force vetoes. Sean Dagonon recognised that Mansur's insistence that he was unalterably constitutional made not a wish of difference to his detractors, although he conceded he was every bit as Republican as portrayed by admirers and critics alike. This lecture could easily have been subtitled Parnell and the Man because the 19th century Irish nationalist leader Charles Stuart Parnell had a huge influence on Mansur's thinking. We are therefore fortunate to have in Lord Bew a respondent to as one of the preeminent scholars on Parnell as well as someone who played a significant role himself during the peace process most crucially as an advisor to David Trimble. It is fascinating to study how two historians were able to apply historical thinking to the greatest of challenges that they succeeded in making history. They were not always in agreement. They often interpreted the evidence in very different ways and reached different conclusions. Both were all the time working towards peace and reconciliation and deserve the title of peacemakers. It is revealing that Mansur began an essay taking an historical perspective on the peace process published in 1996 with the words I've always found Parnell a particular inspiration not so much because of the shared background but because of the exceptional vigor of his leadership. Between 1878 and 1886 Parnell had demonstrated how it is possible to build an extraordinary coalition of support channeling the constitutional nationalist and republican traditions backed by the resources of Irish America and use it to make substantial progress. In 1986 Mansur delivered a paper at Avondale, Parnell's home to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the first home rule bill and he used it to express an idea that drove his thinking in the years ahead. It was the idea of a political compact between different strands of nationalism in place of violence on the lines of the new departure a democratic nationalist consensus rather than pan nationalism. This was to drive his thinking on the peace process in the critical early stages backed up by his reading of Irish history which led him to conclude that the root cause of the conflict was a series of historical wrongs inflicted on the island by the British Empire. Mansur believed that there were significant problems with the Government of Ireland Act of 1920 and the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921 which had to be resolved and that fixing these would help make peace possible. Born and Surrey in England on the 31st of December 1946 Martin Mansur was descended as he described it himself from the class of those who were the principal beneficiaries of the political setup that existed from the mid 17th century to the early 20th century. In other words, the Protestant Unionist landlord class in Ireland. From an early age Martin wrestled with problems of destiny and divided identity. It was not entirely clear to him whether he was English, Irish or Anglo-Irish or where his allegiance lay but as time went on Irish history, Irish poetry and the considerable time he spent in Ireland shaped his sympathies and his outlook. From school at Canterbury Mansur went to Christchurch at Oxford where he studied PPE. At the Oxford Union he saw Ian Paisley the Unionist politician and firebrand deliver a crude assault on Catholicism and he noted the way it played shamelessly to prejudices not too far below the surface of English life. He read the Irish Times almost every day at Oxford keeping up with events in Ireland and he found Irish politics more appealing than British politics because it was more pragmatic and less ideological. Less congenial was the tendency of some contemporaries at Christchurch to get embarrassingly drunk late at night and sing lands of hope and glory and rule Britannia. Even more irritating, a junior member of the Cecil family once stopped him to interrogate him about his loyalty. After his BA, Mansur completed a PhD in pre-revolutionary French 18th century history which was submitted in 1973 as the Revolution of 1771. After deciding against a career in academia Mansur joined the Irish Civil Service believing it was the next port of call for people of an academic frame of mind. He came first in the assessment process and was given a role in the political division of the Department of Foreign Affairs. In 1975 he was sent to the Irish Embassy at Bonn as third secretary in his first and only diplomatic posting. This was a hugely influential period both in terms of the way the Federal Republic was run in a broadly social democratic way and also the relationship between East and West Germany. After notes, in later years when discussing the peace process in Northern Ireland Mansur would frequently make references to his experience in Germany where unity followed the collapse of communism in 1989. In 1977 he returned to Dublin where one colleague observed that he was always seeming to be churning out stuff. Ideas seemed to be always coming from him. A successful career in the department culminating in an ambassadorship seemed inevitable but in December 1980 Mansur made the decision to leave foreign affairs and worked for the head of government, Charles Hohi, in the Department of the Tishock. This astonished many of his contemporaries even more so when he left the civil service in the summer of 1981 following a change of government after the general election. Giving up any work security he became the head of research for Ffina Foll in opposition and Hohi admired him for taking this risk as much as for his Republican and nationalist outlook. For his part Mansur admired the pragmatism of Ffina Foll a party which had been founded in the 1920s following the split over the Anglo-Arsh Treaty of 1981 a 1921 which had opposed. Mansur's belief in social democracy and his desire to do something substantial on Northern Ireland drove his own new departure. He later said that he did so motivated as much by the desire to see Ireland avoid having to take the Thatcherite Road as by any desire to promote a more assertive and thought out democratic Republicanism. Over the next two decades he played a significant role behind the scenes for three leaders of Ffina Foll. A journalist later suggested in print that because Ffina Foll has never been overburdened with academics and intellectuals his knowledge and scholarly skills made him almost indispensable to the party and this was certainly the popular perception. Some in Ffina Foll struggle to come to terms with their new recruit especially with his accent and intellectual demeanor. Frank Dunlop a Ffina Foll strategist said that when he first met him and heard the accent he nearly collapsed thinking this is going to go down a fucking treat with the lads. Seamus Brennan a Ffina Foll politician admitted that Mansur has started off on the back foot with them but that as soon as they met him they realised they were dealing with someone very different a person with an intellectual understanding of the Northern Ireland issue. Jokes that he was a cross between Dr Strangelove and Dr Mengele never caught on and very quickly they would broke no criticism of him from outsiders. Ffina Foll briefly returned to power in 1982 before the government collapsed and Mansur spent the next five years in opposition before Charles Hohi returned to power in 1987 as the head of a minority government. Throughout this time he was, as Rafter has noted the principal speechwriter for all important Ffina Foll speeches as well as the unofficial party historian. The origins of the peace process is hotly debated but from Mansur it began in 1986 when Father Alex Reed a redentorist priest contacted Hohi. Two years later Hohi asked Mansur to be part of a secret Ffina Foll delegation to meet with Sinn Fein to complement the talks which were ongoing between the SDLP and Sinn Fein. On 2 May 1988 Mansur travelled to the redentorist monastery in Dundog alongside Dermot Arhearn a newly elected Ffina Foll TD and Richie Healy, a party official. By this time Ffina Foll were back in government and it would have been fatal for the government if the meeting became public. Hohi Arhearn for example believed that the minority government wouldn't have lasted five seconds. The solution was in Mansur's own words to send a low level delegation and this offered a number of benefits. First it could be a deniable contact if things went wrong to borrow the title of a recent study of the back channel negotiations which took place at this time. Hohi told Dermot Arhearn quite bluntly that if things went wrong he was on his own. Second the strategy also allowed a defence that this was a meeting between party figures and not officially sanctioned government talks. Finally Mansur believed that his own background made him a good choice as he felt it would be hard to portray him to the public as quote shall we say a crypto-provo. It is important to remember just how risky these meetings were in the context of Irish politics at the time and long held views about talking to terrorists. Section 31 of the Broadcasting Act prevented the media from interviewing figures in Sinn Fein or the IRA and any engagement was seen as an endorsement. Gerry Adams, the President of Sinn Fein who headed up the Republican delegation in 1988 and Martin McGinnis who headed up the talks between 1992 and 1994 were described in the most popular weekend newspaper The Sunday Independent in 1988 as two leading Northern terrorists and political gangsters. A front page story a year earlier suggested that Adams was not a psychopath but someone who would send out psychopaths to do their worst and it was Gerry Adams who Mansur set out to meet in 1988. Mansur's instructions from Hohi was to see what Sinn Fein had to say but as he later admitted this was an instruction I completely ignored. I'm afraid I did a great deal more than just listen. At a crucial point in the dialogue a hern made the point that violence was unacceptable as a route forward and Gerry Adams responded with the question if you had British troops on the streets of Dundog term it a hern's hometown what would you do? It was here that Mansur decided to apply his historical understanding of Irish nationalism and discussed Parnell. Mansur put forward the argument that nationalism was strongest when it was politically united as in the new departure of 1878 between the Irish parliamentary party the land league and the Finians and that the use of violence weakened nationalism in the north between north and south and indeed in Irish America. The delegations met again a second time on the 24th of June. At both meetings there was no formal agenda these were exploratory talks and Mansur got the impression that Chin Fane was trying to break out of the extreme political isolation they were in especially after the atrocity of the Enes Gillan bombing the year before. Mansur's approach was different to John Humes the leader of the SDLP. Hume believed that since the Anglo-Irish agreement of 1985 Britain was politically neutral with regard to the future of Northern Ireland. At one of the meetings Mansur made it clear that he didn't agree with that because you have to distinguish between the rules of the game and what you are actually trying to achieve in the game. Mansur did this deliberately to show the Chin Fane's allegation that he was a realist and that he believed it was important for him in this and subsequent dialogues not to engage in anything which in the medium term will undermine your credibility. The Chin Fane talks with the SDLP had broken down between the first and second meeting but this and other political considerations the direct meetings came to an end. There had been but the meetings continued then I'm sorry resumed in 1992. By this time there was no change to the principle of not talking to terrorists and Mansur knew that if it came out in the wrong way at the wrong time he would be out on his ear within 24 hours. It should also be noted that at these meetings they contained a considerable personal risk especially as Mansur used the train to travel and there were serious security concerns about him becoming a loyalist target in the 1990s and indeed this is something that Martin McGinnis reminded them of and advised them of at this time. The meetings resumed again in 1992 usually in Dundalk sometimes in the redemptress house in Dublin except this time Mansur met with Martin McGinnis who had taken over as the chief Chin Fane negotiator and who was always accompanied by a second person. It was widely understood that McGinnis wielded considerable influence over the IRA and so these meetings were of a much different tone and significance. Mansur and McGinnis met regularly from October 1992 to June 1993 and worked on developing a text that Republicans the SDLP and the Irish government could sign up to and which could form the basis of a joint Irish British declaration that could secure an IRA ceasefire. A draft agreement was finalised in June 1993 and presented by Albert Reynolds to the British Cabinet Secretary. As Mansur recognised it was not ideal from the point of view of the Irish government but it formed the basis for future discussion and negotiation. Mansur kept working on a text that might satisfy all sides stretching things as he later admitted to the outer limits of what was acceptable. None of this was public knowledge until in December 1993 shortly before the Downing Street declaration was signed a BBC panorama programme outed him as the government's link with loyalist and Republican paramilitaries. As one newspaper reported there were gas of astonishment in the British media as the shy and bookish academic who acts as a one-stop historical interpretive centre for Tishok Albert Reynolds was acknowledged as a consultant architect of the Irish government's plan for future peace. He could so easily have slotted into the British team. There were many people involved in drafting and reworking the text which became the Downing Street declaration of December 1993 but Mansur was a crucial figure in bringing it all together. The public criticisms however continued. In the summer of 1994 there was an Irish television primetime story about Mansur's continuing direct and frequent contacts with Sinn Fein. Following on from this the Sunday independence as I mentioned the best-selling Irish newspaper and probably the most influential at this time attacked Mansur for pursuing a ceasefire suggesting that it might be a short-term political gain for the Tishok but a long-term setback for peace. It accused Mansur of talking to the wrong people giving its own opinion that he should be mending fences with unionists instead of making a clandestine pact with terrorists. Not for the first time the newspaper had got it badly wrong. In August 1994 an IRA ceasefire was announced and this was followed by a loyalist ceasefire and although they would break down they paved the way for the agreement which was to follow. Albert Reynolds governments collapsed in controversy in November 1994 and a rainbow coalition was formed. Mansur chose to follow the new leader of Finifol into opposition a decision that maintained his credibility and position of trust with his own party as well as with those outside although Jerry Adams was furious. In May 1997 there was a change of government in the UK with the landslide victory of Labour that saw Tony Blair become Prime Minister a month later Finifol returned to power following its own election victory. The change of governments created a new momentum in the peace process. The story of the making of the Good Friday agreement has been well told. There were many people who risked their reputations for peace and who deserve credit and recognition. As this lecture is on the application of history I will confine myself to those specific examples and there are a number of occasions where Mansur applied history to help advance the process. Upon returning to government buildings Mansur resumed his work as the back channel to Sinn Fein and worked to restore the ceasefire which was announced in July 1997 so that talks could resume. Most crucially in the lead up to what became the Good Friday agreement Mansur worked with the Irish Attorney General to find new language for articles two and three of the Irish constitution lines which asserted that the national territory was the whole island of Ireland and which were anathema to Unionists and articles of faith for Republicans. Mansur presented his thinking to the Feneffold Parliamentary Party in the early months of 1998 because he and Ahurn knew that giving them up would be huge for everyone and that they all needed to be clear why this constitutional change was on the negotiating table. Ahurn later praised Mansur for the mastery of the historical sweep and dimensions of the whole area and his acute sense of strategy believing that this had made it politically impossible to get agreement both within Feneffold and within the country for those changes. These changes were later ratified in a referendum by 94.4% of the people in Ireland. As we know an agreement was signed on Good Friday in April 1998 which achieved the historic breakthrough dreamt about for so long. It was by no means the end of the story. There were other issues still to resolve but it did mark a new beginning and it has rightly been seen as a landmark in the history of the island of Ireland and of relations between Ireland and Britain. An Irish Times profile of Mansur published us three days after the signing of the Good Friday Agreement in April 1998 began by admitting that he was once depicted as an out of date nationalist before recognising that he was now widely acknowledged as one of the most important contributors to the historic rapprochement between nationalism and unionism. Around the same time, President Mary McElise, the Irish Head of State sent Mansur a handwritten note to recognise the role he had played behind the scenes. With greatest respect and admiration for the work of your patient scholar lead genius. Well done. On 2 December 1999 the British Irish Agreement came into effect and the Government of Ireland Act of 81920 was finally repealed. The Guardian newspaper ran an article on the different unsung figure who slipped into the back of the Irish cabinet room for the formal signing ceremony which saw articles 2 and 3 amended. In the article, Mansur was acknowledged as someone whose laborious efforts helped transform the political climate on both sides of the border and laid the basis for the constitutional changes. The journalist noted that another Irish Protestant also had a ringside seat. The 19th century nationalist leader Charles Stuart Parnell his portrait looked down on the table. Given the role that Parnell had played in Mansur's own thinking and in his very first meeting with Jerry Adams it is appropriate that he was represented at the ceremony where the unresolved question finally received an answer. Peter McDonough who worked closely with Mansur in Government Buildings under Bertie Ahern has told me that he was not just big on peace he was even more committed to reconciliation. In the aftermath of the Good Friday Agreement Mansur did a huge amount of outreach to unionist loyalist groups and on one occasion in his office introduced McDonough to David Irvine who would help bring about the loyalist ceasefire in 1994 and Billy Hutchinson an important loyalist figure in decommissioning. They were in Dublin seeking reassurance about the direction of affairs. As it happens McDonough is a grand-nephew of one of the leaders of the 1916 Rising indeed one of the signatories of the famous proclamation and Mansur always introduced him as such. It seems Mansur loved introducing him to the hardliners on both sides in the north through this perspective making the team in Dublin look like an even more exotic Republican enclave. Looking back on those meetings McDonough has recognised that a detailed knowledge of the histories of movements which were marginal but violent was essential when advancing the peace process. Mansur was able to apply his historical expertise to the finer points of Republican and loyalist theology and he was able to do it with an empathy a deep understanding and a respect for the legacy of history. In doing so he made a new future possible. Professor Nicholas Mansur believed that the historian cannot stand above events but can only stand aside from them. As the distinguished Irish diplomat Noel Dore wrote 20 years ago his son did neither. Instead he played a part in shaping events which could ultimately bring lasting peace to the island. Growing up I never believed that we would have peace in Northern Ireland. I was convinced we were condemned to endure a permanent cycle of killing, retaliation and hate. Working behind the scenes a great personal risk to his life his reputation and his career Martin Mansur helped to rescue us from the nightmare of history. At a moment when profound change was possible a moment when history itself could be applied to repair the damage of centuries we were fortunate to have people who believed we could achieve the impossible. Cometh, the moment Cometh, the man And I'm very pleased to welcome Professor Croydwyl to you now for a response. First of all thank you to Patrick for a brilliant lecture first five minutes I missed because of a late vote in Parliament down the road I'm delighted to be here and what I heard was really stunning and very precise and very accurate in terms of the significance of my friend Martin Mansur's career it's my job as a discussant to expand on it but the first thing I want to do is to comment on one of the points you're making about Martin's conversation talking about a narrow vote and about the intellectual politics and Martin giving a number of historical analogies to the beleaguered Prime Minister of Ireland but the thing about this is when you're a historian intellectual politics the advantage you have is you can talk to people and you can talk quite a long time all the time you're counting the votes as the adding up people assume that you're thinking about George III or some other thing because you will talk and we do talk and we can talk about all these historical analogies but actually anybody who wants to play this game has to be thinking all the time about the votes and the counting and it's going on all the time while you talk about historical analogies great moments what would panel have done now you're actually thinking do we have the votes tomorrow or today and I think this is the point everybody knows that Edmund Burke is in terms of the history of political thought the greatest Irish one the greatest figure entirely in the history of political thought Martin worked for a long time alongside a rather prosaic less enlightened perhaps figure of Irish politics called Ray Burke and I want to say now if you want to be an intellectual politics sometimes you have to say better Ray Burke than Edmund Burke sorry about that some of you in this room might know that occasionally Ray Burke could take shortcuts you know and rather brutal shortcuts at times but you know actually if you do this it's quite a lot of the time it's better Ray Burke than Edmund Burke so I just that initial story struck home to me I want to claim credit I think in public for the first time and I was actually in part behind the fact that Martin was offered a job at a crucial moment by the Bruton Government there was a coalition which is the great John Bruton whom I knew established but I was then one of the parties in that I was supposed to connect to involved in the Democratic Left which was in that coalition led by Francis de Rossa and Professor Henry Patterson my dear friend and I went to Francis de Rossa and said actually at this point it would be desirable in the peace process if Martin answers stays and plays a role and that was part of the reason why the offer was actually made so I want to claim to claim that now after all these years it doesn't matter to anybody except perhaps to Martin or to me this does not mean that I share Martin's world view or there are problems with Martin's world view and the first thing I have to say is I am much more a child of the plain people of Ireland my mother is an Irish Catholic I'm not from any kind of a sentency world but respectable Irish Catholic who actually disliked intensely Sinn Fein Republicism and so on so I'm also on the other side one quarter English, one quarter Patterson so I do say to my friends and Sinn Fein as my fathers my mother from Cork I do say this is what a United Ireland looks like me and they don't seem as pleased about it as they ought to be for some reason they just don't seem to be as pleased at all about what a real United Ireland actually is but this is why I have a slightly different take on all this and I accept everything that Patrick said and you would expect it from Patrick he has brilliant books brilliant volumes on Daniel O'Cogel I've written about it some length everything he said is precise and true there is another problem and it's a darker side to it and the darker side to it is legitimisation in Irish culture of a violent campaign which took the lives of thousands of Irish people and on a sectarian basis largely and the legitimisation of it and indeed the fact that it has now become more fashionable than ever and that is the problem and I speak as somebody who is a child of a the sort of Irish Catholic family who is not comfortable with this and it's a real problem and we did this and I was part of this on the other side I remember Martin very very kindly arranging a meeting with Bertie Ahern about six weeks before the Good Friday agreement maybe two months going to Dublin and it was held in the not in government buildings but in Bertie's constituency office and at the end of it Bertie was a lot of people a lot of his constituents in Anorax and so on and then there was me I really brushed up for the day nice suit and so on to come down from Belfast and it was first of all, Martin Cavedown agreed to be said that he should be finished in a few minutes and you can go in and talk to him the idea was to provide the sort of language from Bertie that would make it easier for David Trimmel to make the deal that he eventually made in 1998 and a part of the interview was published to key bits in the Irish edition of the Sunday Times but a longer version is in the magazine Parliamentary Brief and the longer version is very interesting for historians at any rate and so Martin I was absolutely sure because I didn't know Bertie at all I was just assuming that Martin would stay in the room and he said to Bertie, this is poor view and he walked out and he was like oh my gosh what's going to happen here because Bertie is actually quite shy Hale fellow well meant after a couple of pints or whatever and could work himself up to it but there's a shy side to Bertie so the teacher looked at me tried to remember who I am what relationship I have to the Anarac people who had just been going in and out with their children and so on because all Martin said well this is poor view so the teacher was struggling now why is he here, he said don't take him long to remember so I sit down and I said what am I going to talk about now I did know something about Bertie will actually out you quite a lot but in that part of Dublin you're close to Home Farm which is the junior football team which produced Liam Brady and Frank Stapleton and I knew a lot and I've been dying I've watched football matches in Dublin so I'm a soccer person as is Bertie and I said we looked out the window and I said Home Farm we talked a bit about Liam Brady, Frank Stapleton which those of us in the room will remember and we talked about this for a couple of minutes Bertie is gradually Cahuins this fellow why is he here, why is Martin just brought in and is the cogs are wheeling around we then move on to something that Bertie and I have in common which is Manchester United and it's a result of the previous night when my wife is from Manchester just beside the ground and we talked about this for a minute he then said something which just tells you something about Bertie as a politician I then said well you know Home Farm and so on lots of very good soccer players come from this part of Dublin and he said yes he gave me a precise figure I've not forgotten what it was maybe 24 or currently with English clubs I said oh they were English clubs and I said yes and I said Tishuck I said why do you have a precise figure why don't you say dozens or there are a lot of them and he said well actually I have to know precisely who has gone to be with an English club because most of them will fail most of them will not make it as frag stable as they have already and they will come back and they will be disappointed and they will hang around on street corners and they will engage in burglaries and there will be trouble so I have to know as the TD for this constituency exactly who has gone and who is likely to come back and be a young man on the street corners making trouble on this part of Dublin I think it's actually quite really really interesting if you think of why Peter Ford became a great party in terms of its respect for detail and understanding of people's lives and we got off that and we finally did the interview which Martin had said and Bertie by the way was superb at the interview and finally worked out what always knew what was about kind of connected and everything he said there wasn't a word wasted in terms of what you had to say to make it easier for David Trimble to do a few weeks later what she did which is support the good Friday agreement in terms of inspired by democracy, pragmatism and so on but to go back to my problem and I will conclude the difficulty that I have with this and as I say in many respects I have a lot in common with Martin when I arrived in Cambridge his father was still teaching he supervised still as master of John's the great David Fitzpatrick's PhD a colleague of yours and one of many books and Martin's father was for a long time a force in my life do you think there's something that has to be added to this one that in terms of Irish nationalism Martin's father worked for British intelligence he worked for British permission service during the war for any Irish nationalist that's British intelligence one of his job was to encourage Irish support in the British war effort worked very well my mother and Irish Catholic joined the British army which have enormously pride up in the spot why I'm here is that in those days the Protestants from Belfast did not marry Catholics from Cork unless they happen to find themselves both my father and the RAF doctors in the other side of the world in Delhi that's where those sort of people got married which is why I'm here Martin's father's job was to encourage British support Irish support for the war effort now it had to be done tactfully and I've seen documents or letters from him which are in the public record of North Island on this point but the job was fundamentally to ensure as much as it was recently possible Irish people and by the way Irish people in my view had a legitimate influence in the outcome of that war and I absolutely I have a real problem as always with the whole doctrine of Irish independence not that to say it was the only choice given the history that I could have taken just that it was somehow the morally superior choice that I've just always gagged on not that there was no other primatic choice and what had had to happen is the people my mother I think joined British Army quite close to the day when Charles Hockey Trinity College was pulling down the flag which went up and she decided to make sure who had actually won slightly quick but very near the day and Charles Hockey with Martin workforce dragged down the union jack which Trinity College people put up because if they were pleased they thought it was a good idea controversial I know they had never been defeated difficult one to take in but from a certain time of Irish point of view and my mother went the other way and signed on the dotted line and was then in the army for the next two or three years my father had been there for some time in India now a whole question of the war in Japan and in Australia for a while so I'm coming to this from a very very different angle I'm not talking as Martin is from the Protestant descendancy and a view of that history and possibly a degree of guilt which is reflected in things he's written I'm afraid I'm talking from the plain people of Ireland and here is the outcome this is the dark side of the great achievements what Martin did saved many lives what Martin did established a stable he was more important I think that any other official behind the scenes of either government established a stable Ireland until Brexit which indisputably destabilisings but the stable Ireland in which the long term future was there for a democratic resolution between the two communities and the evil and that is this great achievement Brexit has upturned everything I voted against it I don't share my colleagues in the house of lords are absolute horror of it I just think it was not going to be good for Ireland and it most certainly has not been good for Ireland there's just no question about that and it is unleashed again at the angophobia of the main Irish media now it was not something we worked with when Martin and I were involved the Irish media's view was the English are wonderful they prefer us to those terribly boring Ulster Protestants in the North and this is that we are the civilised people and we are too and we must somehow get them to see that these Ulster Protestants in the North must be brought to heel this is now totally changed Ireland now believes it has only one university in the top 200 but it believes it's far cleverer than the UK which is three in the top 10 no problem just amazing the general tone of derision towards the neighbouring Ireland it will be harder to sustain now but nonetheless the general tone of derision has created the context in which the republican movement has returned it is forgiven for everything and the real test is this Jerry Allen's and Peter Felio there's no question of Jerry covering up his brother's Peter Felio and doing exactly what many a Catholic Bishop fell on which is moving around priests around the country because they were guilty of it and in Ireland now that is sin of sins there's just no historical argument Jerry's brother has now gone to a better place but Jerry's brother was involved in Peter Felio on a fairly significant scale and Jerry did exactly the same thing he moved him around the country just as a Catholic Bishop did and out of the firing line but there is no question there is no answer but you see it's the one remaining clinical murder is not a crime unforgivable in the world we live in I fully accept that but Peter Felio is but if you are in such a position at your public position even though this is a thing the last remaining sin you are not burnt for it Martin will remember a ffinaff old government falling because of the most indirect connections with the then t-shirt between toleration of Peter Felio a very complicated story legal case and so on and it not being pursued properly etc but this tells you we are in a new space that the rules don't once you are in a new space the rules even the last remaining moral rules we have and there aren't many left don't apply that what we have what has happened is we did it and by the way I am as guilty we legitimise it up we said that bygones be bygones we said this must be sorted we must make a break we must have this peace process many people are alive today because of the work of Martin and doing it and I am not even saying what is happening now necessarily means that other people will die although we are heading into a very tricky period in relations between north and south and between the two communities but if you legitimise it if you don't say there must be an accounting why did you kill those thousands of people for a cause which could never have succeeded why did you believe even at the time of the Good Friday Agreement to these political arrangements that were going to lead to United Island by 2016 why did you say all these things why did you do all these things and there is no accounting and there is nothing and the Irish women's football team sings songs in favour of the IRA and so on when they brilliantly qualify for a major competition and when the Sinn Fe now is so far ahead in the polls and Dublin it will certainly form the next government possibly without any what you might call coalition with other parties when you legitimise it there is a price to be paid so I am here to support Mark Martin and what he's done in the peace process and the really great brilliance look and there have been certain times during this period in the last few years when to be honest the Irish Foreign Minister he's put this gently doesn't have a tone of voice for the north when I'd have given anything to have Bertie back anything, when Bertie I've talked to and I've heard anything to have somebody who actually was half way listening to another tradition and I would have given anything to have at Martin in the Taoiseach's office in the last couple of years anything at all as the things slid down and Anglo-Irish relations hit there given anything to have him there and to have Bertie back anything at all or even Albert back anything at all to have them back to have kind of relatively normal human being so I could put it like that of people who are flexible and not high on the new the vanity of the new Dublin I would have given anything and that's part of my esteem for Mark but we have to face up to this I'm hoping there is a problem with what we did and I'm as culpable as he is we just said that bygones be guygones we can't bring those thousands of people back to life and we never said really properly excuse me your honour Mr Jerry there are all these dead people everywhere their ghosts are all around us they died whatever about the justice or otherwise of Irish history they died in the campaign which was irrational which could never have actually delivered in its own terms never could have and without Brexit by the way the stability arising from the good Friday will be entirely solid now that's already been said by others but this is a problem there's a problem about what we did and I'm going to shove about it but just to say it doesn't take away anything at all from what has been said about Martin and there's a problem about what I did as well but my gratitude to Martin is massive and I do wish we could have had him back in the T-shirts office in the last two to three years I really, really do Do you want to go at the end? I thought I was going to say that Do you want to do it at the end or now? Do you want to do it at the end or now? Would you refer? I think I'd rather do it I'll go now, perfect Do you mind if I just have a glass of water? I appreciate that I'll be short because time for questions and discussions Not the man himself I'm being surprised being a delegate in the Clinton White House a man introduced himself who said he was the full-time historical advisor to the president Now, I'm sure most PM's and presidential offices have one or more people who are familiar with history I mean, it's undoubtedly best to avoid howlers like I always remember Jack Lynch in 1978 claiming that a leading activist in the Third Tipperary Brigade old, well, IRA Sean Tracy shot dead and it was an apostle of peace and reconciliation and similarly though I entirely exonerate Patrick from this there was that wonderful Ender Kenny claim that Leonard had called it by colleagues to seek a spot of advice I do remember being taken aback in the mid 1970s when Marshall Tito he was still alive his interpreter claimed that Tito had studied de Valera carefully in his youth as he was the first leader of a modern terrorist movement When I was first employed by Charles Hohe I bought second hand from Westport House an original edition of the autobiography of Wolf Toll United Irish leader and drew from it every October for many Bowden's Town speeches bit of a lad wasn't he Hohe remarked early on I'm somewhat abashed at today's lecture and indeed a response not sure I deserve the degree of attention but anyway thank you very very much I'd like to pay tribute to both speakers for their contribution to Irish history Patrick Gaghan his two volume life Daniel O'Connell and to my mind he's still the most important figure in Irish history Catholic Emancipation unlocked the rest though I do take note what are the picture you have downstairs the Duke of Wellington does also involves some credit for persuading stroke forcing George IV and of course he was a founder co-founder of the college with George IV in 1829 but O'Connell mainstreamed the constitutional tradition and I actually think the constitutional tradition in the Republic is more robust than people give it credit for I think if necessary we will see that in the future and it was something to which Ireland reverted very quickly past the Irish Revolution 1916-23 Paul Bew has made a terrific contribution to Irish history the book funnily enough was one of you that has had most influence on me was I don't know if I have the title exactly right but Le Mas and the Making of Modern Ireland with Henry Paterson and in which he drew distinctions between a politician like Le Mas and our most famous civil servant Cain Whitaker there is also actually a Patrick Mayhew dimension to this in that he debated with Le Mas of the Oxford Union and in this of 1959 and in a way Mayhew's arguments had some force so he criticised the Republic for being politically diplomatically isolated and for being economically backward and I remember reading this in the Charwell newspaper of the time and I did actually send a copy of my remarks much later on to Patrick Mayhew who was a colleague in the British Irish Parliamentary Assembly and he was quite quite interested but anyway Le Mas took steps to correct both those deficiencies Paul has also been at I don't know how many conferences, association meetings leading interpreter of what's happening in Northern Ireland as we know he was a friend of David Trimble who I must say is why even his friends admit was often a difficult person had made a historic achievement and he exemplified the dictum if you want things to stay the same then things have to change now unfortunately I think you're not able to be with us tonight Paul's son John Byw I remember reading with great interest his book on castle ray which went well beyond previous biographies and did proper justice unlike them to castle ray's period as chief secretary in Ireland it might surprise him and Paul can pass this on to know that Charles Holly once read the Wendy Hind biography of castle ray though indeed over its summer holidays and though indeed a staunch Republican he once said to me obviously privately the British would be mad to get rid of the monarchy history has been a great help to me historians have been a great help to me and I've tried to be of assistance to them it was served on the 1798 commemoration committee and for the last 10 years on the decade of centenaries from the third home rule bill to in fact we're finishing off with Ireland's getting admission to the league of nations in September 1923 and perhaps two of the things collaborations I'm proudest of was one with helping with some co-financing Edith Johnson Nick to complete and publish her sixth volume history of the Irish parliament this is the old Irish parliament from 1692 to 1800 and also helping Angus Mitchell publish a volume of casements voluminous Amazon diaries Patrick raised the question of identity and that's always a difficulty for second generation choice but as the t-shirt pointed out in a recent speech many Celtic artists that made replicas of the tar approach for daughters of Cweed Victoria in the late 19th century did not conform to notions of a narrow Irish identity and Daniel Corkery agonised in 1945 over the centenary celebrating the centenary of the death of Thomas Davis because he was the son of a British soldier and a Protestant but I'm certainly glad to consider myself as having a broad Irish identity and I think the Anglo-Irish tradition which is certainly what I come from but I would like to think that I have never been a prisoner of it and being brought up mainly in England may have helped in that regard children usually react against parents I have huge regard for my father's input to straddle the Irish sea and indeed the old and new Commonwealth one of his favourite sayings was from Tallyrond Padazell, not too much steel which I think is always good advice for those involved in politics I was keen as a young person to play a part in the events of my own time I did PPE at Christchurch I think there are maybe a few question box for various reasons over PPE these days but never mind but I find economics is essential for the bread and butter of modern politics but philosophy is an excellent training for drafting texts and dealing with ideological arguments I did historical research that had nothing to do with either Britain or Ireland pre-revolutionary French history and I can remember reading a six volume diary in a charming French shadow of what's belonging to a president of the parliament of Paris in a shadow about 30 miles outside but someone I did identify with French was Charles François Le Brun and 1739 to 1824 he was speechwriter a powerful but not very popular last chancellor of Louis XV who destroyed and reformed the parliament and it was primarily that I identified with rather than his later role when he took the tennis court oath became a finance expert Napoleon's third consul and eventually the real governor of the Netherlands for Louis Napoleon who was the father of Napoleon the third certainly in the peace process I won't go over again the importance for me of the Parnell's new departure which I really studied in 1986 the first centenary of the first home rule bill and funnily enough I remember Peter Brook telling me in 1989 after he'd been elected Secretary of State that he had reread the debate on the first home rule bill as one of the ways of of getting into getting into the subject our family lived just two miles away from Thollahead bag where the first shots of the war of independence took place two RAC men both Catholic one and Irish speaker had found influence on my father probably my grandfather's house wasn't burnt because of the Belfast CEO of the third Tipperary IROG shameless Robinson who took the view about six sort of poor people's houses if you like to put it like that had been burnt in the neighbourhood by the black and tans is we shouldn't stoop to their level 12 years later in 1931 guard a superintendent John Curtin renting what became my father's house but he was young and lived up the road was shot dead at the gates and it was part of the commemoration to my surprise came out of the blue of Angardaithshire corner their centenary celebrations this year and interestingly enough Angardaithshire corner and National Police force is headed by commissioner Drew Harris who began his career in the RUC I see to conclude two challenges however Ireland constitution I'm talking about the island of Ireland constitution evolves we have an absolute duty to make sure that it is peaceful and there should be no gratuitous ratcheting up of tensions the other important thing is to maintain Ireland border free at least in the physical sense and the all Ireland economic dimension was behind the idea of a council of Ireland which originated with Carson to appease Southern Unionists for the convention in 1917 and it should be perfectly feasible to have for this to be compatible with Northern Ireland having its processed economic links with GB and I hope now that the protocol will be largely depoliticised and appropriate technical solutions found predictions are a mugs game I once played a part in a minor part in Shakespeare's Henry IV part 2 in the Archdeacon's Garden in Canterbury where John of Lancaster son of Henry IV turns to the rebel hastings and tells him you are shallow much too shallow to sound the bottom of the aftertimes and I think it's very very difficult for any of us because there will be things as Donald Trump as well said, unknown unknowns happen that can have a big influence of events all we can do is say where we are now but anyway I would like to thank finally both speakers for their tributes I think if I were asked to do it myself I might be more critical but anyway anyway thank you very much three excellent presentations so rich and full of reflections obviously on some really consequential periods in the past but also some provocative ideas to chew over in terms of where we go next and some of the ongoing challenges perhaps even building challenges that face us now we have time for some questions before we retire to the other room for our reception so any questions please please read your hand yes a lot of people were surprised that something could happen in the Republic that could drive together Fina Falun Finnegale which was the strengthening of Sinn Fein do any of you do you see anything that could be such a trigger for driving together the unions the nationalists in Northern Ireland let's take two more questions and then we'll go for a bundle together yes just curious to know if we have a historical reference point that we can draw upon as we kind of move into the future around the rhetoric around border pole reunification that's a lot in there together to countries that have really formed over a hundred years it might not be a long time in Irish history but it is a long time and I think bringing two people together has its own challenges of course but we always in Irish like to look to our past to see what has happened before that we can use as an example of hiding out a rank or pitfalls to avoid and getting it wrong so I can't think of one in the last five years by the way but I'd be curious if the panel can well thank you that's a gauntlet thrown down to our historians you have to think of something great thank you and one more question before we let's take a oh no okay no one's got a burning question let's take those two oh sorry yes okay I'd like to ask you to and I'd also like part of the column to elaborate on your point about Southern Irish Angliconia because I must say I don't recognise that and if you read the Southern Irish press and you pair it to the French press or the German press you would find that Southern Irish commentary is anything but Angliconia I mean that's a sort of rift running through Irish historical commentary for the last 40 years inaugurated by Lord Foster but Southern Irish policy is somehow driven by Angliconia actually there are differences in policy and it's understandable therefore that you're going to get some kind of standard Angliconia seems to be too strong am I missing something and Patrick do you also say that I'm missing something that was quite awesome of me okay great three excellent questions Patrick would you like to go first? yeah and there's some excellent questions there like I think in a way the first two are almost answered by Lord Buton that very profound thing he said at the very beginning about it all being about numbers and about counting and politics ultimately comes down to that and of course the Fina Folf and the Gael coalition is precisely because they both suffered in that election and the numbers they still needed the Green Party to come in and then there was Covid and all of that and three parties Sinn Fein, Fina Folf and Fina Gael all getting roughly the same amount and it ties into the border poll question as well because there you see the more almost you talk about it the less likely you make it about to happen because that just increases tensions and inflames but of course it's difficult to talk about it because it benefits them to look like they're developing so I think sometimes if you were interested I think on the Anglifobi one I think I think I'll take maybe a middle position because I do think you see British Irish relations at the worst since Brexit than they've been for you know quite a while and I do think Brexit created all kinds of problems and tied into that I think when you look at the rise of Sinn Fein I think it's maybe a reassurance of someone who my time as an advisor was involved in trying to fight both Fina Folf and Sinn Fein and if I go back in six weeks time the big challenge would be trying to stop Sinn Fein leading that government is to recognise and this might reassure Paul it's that the rise for Sinn Fein really has very little to do with Northern Ireland and very little to do with a legitimisation of Ireland it is all to do with what are seen as the failures of Fina Gael and Fina Folf over so many years especially when it comes to housing but also when it comes to health but also a range of other things so in a recent Sunday independent poll aged those aged 25 to 36 which is that crucial constituency and they're all going to Sinn Fein now someone 36 they were nine when the ceasefire the final ceasefire came no experience really or memory of violence on the island but 51% of actually these figures for the whole population but 51% of those polled who didn't own property were going to vote for Sinn Fein and of that number only 9% were going to vote for Fina Gael and 6% for Fina Folf and it's seen as especially with the young it is seen as just a massive failure now Fina Folf would say you know it was terrible because of Fina Folf and they've been doing great work the last two years Fina Folf Fina Gael would say they've been doing great work but of course there was Brexit and the crash calls by Fina Folf and like there's all the apportioning of blame but like a poll mentioned to region I think there was a certain amount of raw humour at observing the events of the last few months in Britain but I think and this is where I maybe disagree with Rich there has been a certain amount of anger with what was perceived as maybe bad faith in terms of some of the things that happened that a deal like the only thing that really annoys me about my children is if you agree something and you have a deal and then that deal is not followed but you have examples where an agreement was reached that allowed a Prime Minister to have his election that was Brexit Revy and Ovan Reddy but then afterwards the very people like Lord Frost saying oh no we didn't realise it was this and we didn't think it was this and you had the very people who had agreed to a deal now reneging on it claiming that they didn't understand it and I certainly felt a certain amount of anger at that and and certain times when a certain ignorance when it came to Ireland and a certain devil may care attitude when it came to Ireland we have the current Home Secretary glad to see back after a short absence but previously the Attorney General but talking about the UK withdrawing from the European Convention on Human Rights that convention is mentioned four times in the Good Friday Agreement and there are elements that underpin the Good Friday Agreement that people don't seem to have any concern about it or care about it and these are things that I said I wouldn't get into but in any case there's a certain amount of I think I think a certain amount of anger that I think a certain amount is justified because of the way and I think it is about reconciling and resolving these and about moving beyond these and about restoring some of these things but I certainly don't think it was all on one side and I certainly think a rock was thrown through this but that rock was not thrown from Ireland The phobia question I, unlike Richard you were lucky enough in this case not to live on the island and I do and it's very there are no at the time for example when Martin and I were really at this and you could hear it by the way in Patrick's paper there were important organs in the Dublin media in ways which I'm certain that rightly annoyed Martin because I absolutely respect his good faith in what he was doing in the 1990s but saying this is making love to terrorists it's ridiculous and so on that's now entirely disappeared from the culture now there is no terrorism and that's part of the reason there is a dominant attitude at explanation of Brexit which I happen to be against was against largely because I could see if it made trouble in Ireland frankly it's made a lot more trouble in the history or I expected but there was no way what's going to make trouble but the that having been said the dominant Irish analysis this is Colonel Blimp who is the old fashion imperialist nostalgia etc Vincent O'Toole is the most brilliant Irish journalist who wrote them a totally redemptive piece in the last two weeks on this business of IRA songs a brilliant, brilliant piece chorus game acceptable this was to him but Finton endlessly writes books and they're all to the eye the basic dominant concept is Colonel Blimp emerge from somewhere in Kent waving his union jack and imperialist nostalgia and that's what I've written about Brexit it is in fact an anti-elite anti-old ruling class revolt it's so obvious that anybody lives here that it represents an anti-elite revolt I used to in a previous life of chairman of the committee on standards of public life we used to look at the polling and in the months after Brexit we looked at satisfactory political institutions social classes A and B quite happy with the political institutions of Britain before Brexit C and D most not it's all a fraud, it's all a cheat and the months after Brexit it reversed completely social classes A and B it is outrageous who are these morons who are intervening with our latte culture and on the other hand C and D last there's some justice in this referendum our irritations, our exasperations are respected Ireland completely chooses to believe but it's the dominant Irish meme no I'm not saying that I'm saying it's just different and that is the context I absolutely accept everything that Patrick has said about the polling shows the housing and other questions between the key issues and Owen O'Bryn who is my student is the most brilliant of the Sinn Fein TDs and issues like that but the truth is modern Ireland is materially a success this is so obvious by any standards in Irish history it is materially a success and it was not through much of my adult life and Martin's a material success now it is and there's a paradox here it may be that it's a less serious place actually than it once was and the decline of the Catholic Church which was one area which I never thought I'd find myself saying is one area of a decline in a capacity to actually think seriously and morally about the political issues I'm partly influenced by the fact that during Covid as we all did we played our computers and family history and I discovered that my great uncle when I knew to be a Catholic priest was actually the longest serving Catholic chaplain in the First World War in the British Army from beginning to end and think how many men died in his arms if you think of that so I've now started to think perhaps slightly more sympathetically as you can find in my book I can't mention more sympathetically and I realise all the dreadful things about old school poor Catholic Ireland and so on but there's a part of me which I have to say I don't recognise how deeply unserious the place now is more prosperous more modern and absolutely I quite understand there's lots of things that British government I think this phase is over to be absolutely honest it was over under Liz Truss and I am bearable it was for Liz Truss Mrs O'Leary to be lectured by Irish American politicians who are learning about have distinctly low real Irish inheritance in most cases distinctly low and she is Mrs O'Leary but nonetheless today assume a moral superiority on this issue and the games of the players so absurd and Mrs O'Leary began the process historians will be kinder in that respect and the new tonight I think there's a first conversation between the Prime Minister and the T-shirt the new Prime Minister and this will be continued and certain aspects of this recent problem will disappear and I absolutely accept Mrs May's case she'd started off by saying it's an important place why I might be bothered about it and then she collapsed completely and if you know and you're an Irish negotiator when she's lost the election they had her on the floor and that's why she took it and frankly I know perfectly well that Lee in Dublin because I'm part of the Irish official classes at one level part of me is part of that world that Lee at the 2017 negotiation the joint agreement and the collapse of the British negotiating team which then led which is basically sets the terms I mean how delighted must you be when you get the British Government to sign up an agreement which says it's going to respect the Ireland economy at that point all Ireland trade was 2% how delighted you must be to kind of get these formula in which are very Irish nationalist formula the Ireland economy and so on and the risen economy and the Ireland of Ireland it's just more than that there are two economies that the British Government to sign at that point all Ireland trade was 2% you know this is a squeezing down of a weak prime minister by a temporarily stronger Ireland now at this moment the conjuncture is different the UK is stronger the Ukraine war has made it more more wider I've got quite the word is you could talk about the French I'm sure they're full of things but the matter is UK has been central to Europe and has led it and that has consequences in terms of where the UK now is and it is stronger than it was then and we are going to see a recalibration of the deal I hope exactly along the lines I thought Martin's phrase what did you say Martin the Deeplyns size settlement of compromise I thought your wording was absolutely superb in that respect and Anglifobia is there in Dublin and I do go back to what I originally said in Martin's time of my time Dublin people, Dublin 4 the great thing was I remember James dining do the English know the intelligent conversations we have in Dublin 4 that's what he wanted as a top Dublin journalist the English knew that we too are civilised and read books that's what he wanted the irritation was he suspected there were lots of English people who didn't know that that question would never be asked by any Dublin political writer today they don't care what the English think about the conversations in Dublin 4 they know the conversations in Dublin 4 are brilliant, scintillating and can't be beaten anywhere else in the world it's a different entirely different mindset thank you we are slightly over time would you like to offer a final few words well when it comes to the relationship there's also a certain sense of shame that people in Ireland feel when they see certain things that are said by the nearest neighbour when you hear a home secretary saying all seriousness that her dream is to see the front page of a daily telegraph saying that the first flight has taken the refugees off to Rwanda there is a sense of deep shame at that that a civilised country could have a home secretary say that that is her proudest moment we had her predecessor as home secretary say before she became home secretary that a way of preventing Ireland, stopping Ireland from pursuing the backstop was food shortages bringing up echoes of the great Irish famine and when you hear things like that then there is a certain amount of feeling on the subject I have to say and it is not anger at England but it is a sense of disappointment that history has been forgotten it is a sense of deep and profound sadness it is a real sense of upset that we on the island of Ireland north and south are being caught in the crossfire of conservative politics over here and the reason why unification is on the agenda in Ireland is because what has become absolutely clear to people in Northern Ireland nationalists, unionists and people who describe themselves as neither is that Britain, the British government does not care about them does not understand their position and does not have any interest in their future and that is why they are forced to reluctantly think that perhaps their future lies elsewhere and I have to say as someone who is a huge admirer of Britain and its history and its traditions and its people I feel a huge sense of sadness at the things that have happened since 2016 Thank you, on that note I think we will draw things to a close Thank you so much to our speakers giving us a huge amount to think about and to reflect upon Thank you all for your attention and your excellent questions and please do stay and join us for the reception afterwards so thank you Thank you