Re: Query Ireland

["Einde O'Callaghan" <einde.ocallaghan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> Date: Fri, 14 Jun 2002 10:25:44 -0700
> From: Sam Pawlett <gusm@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Subject: Query Ireland
>
> I'm looking for some good history books on Ireland, preferably ones from
> a Marxist  and/or Republican point of view. Aside from Marx/Engels who
> are the good names in Irish historiography and political writing?
>
James Connolly is an obvious place to start. D.R. O'Connor Lysaght is
(was?) a Trotskyist historian. Eamonn McCann, particularly his "War in
an Irish Town" - McCann is a leading investigative journalist in Ireland
and a member of the Irish SWP. C. Desmond Greaves is also interesting
(he writes from a CP perspective). Other socialist historians of note
are Michael Farrell, the former People's Democracy leader, and John
Gray, also a former leading PD member.

Erhard Rumpf, "Nationalism and Socialism in Ireland" (originally written
in the 1950s as a doctoral thesis) is interesting.

>From a Republican perspective you could try Tim Pat Coogan. Bowyer
Bell's book on the IRA, "Secret Army", is very informative. Memoirs of
former Republichan leaders such as Ernie O'Malley and Tom Barry are good
on the War of Independence (and the Civil War). And for the thinking of
the current Republican leadership the writings of Gerry Adams or Danny
Morrison are obvious sources.

This is only a short list off the top of my head. I don't think any of
these authors would be considered particularly controversial (by
socialists). There are of course other writers who tend to be more
closely identified with particular oraganisations, whose writings might
be considered more contentious insofar as they embody different analyses
of the current situation and the way forward.

There are some interesting bourgeois historians, although a dominant
trend Irish history writing is known as revisionism.

This seeks to do a critique of the traditional analysis of Irish history
in order to rob the Republican struggle of all historical legitimacy.
The revisionists do pick up on some of the weaknesses of the traditional
patriotic pap that I learned in school, but they often do so by really
tortuous attempts to show that the British government's policy was
benign and the Irish rebels (i.e. a large proportion of the Irish
population, sometimes even teh majority) were perverse and mistaken.

A leading figure in this school is R.F. Foster, who has many interesting
things to say, but whose most popular book, "Modern Ireland", has
several elementary errors in its remarks on the Irish socialist and
labour movement - if the other periods, with which I'm not so familiar,
are as accurate, it points to very slipshod and tendentious research.

Solidarity, Einde O'Callaghan



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