Irish Studies in 1980s Britain [1988]

[Editor’s Note: This “Comment on Irish Studies” in 1980s Britain was written by Desmond Greaves in the May 1988 issue of the “Irish Democrat”,
three months before his death. There had been a proliferation of Irish Studies courses in British universities in the previous years and Greaves queries their political purpose. Note that he puts the words “Irish Studies” in quote marks in the heading to the piece. The article was meant to give early notice of a conference which the Connolly Association had decided to call for the following November on the theme of “Irish studies and revisionism”. This was to be held following the Association’s 50th anniversary jubilee conference in September. Desmond Greaves died suddenly just before that event. The article below illustrates his concern for ideological attitudes amongst the Irish community in Britain.]

Greeks Bearing Gifts: A comment on “Irish Studies”

By C. Desmond Greaves

There is an old saying, “Timeo Danaos, et dona ferentes”, which translates “I fear the Greeks, and they carrying gifts.”

The Thatcher Government has decided to give a grant of £30,000 to the British Association for Irish Studies (BAIS). This is to assist in raising further funds from private sources such as business, banks, foundations and academic bodies. The Rowntree Trust has provided BAIS with a rent-free office in London for the next three years.

What’s the explanation? On the one hand “shoot to kill”; on the other handing out largesse to educate people on the Irish and related questions.

For years British management of Ireland was based on Stormont. Its infamies were known to those who suffered them, but not the British public. So the essence of policy was to keep the truth dark, to stifle discussion, and for years on end there was not a single question in the Westminster Parliament related to the Six Counties.

When the Twenty-Six were referred to, it was to express envious feelings over the deepwater ports of the South which Irish national feeling was preventing Britain and NATO from utilising. Hence the other arm of policy, to foster anti-national brainwashing in the Republic, availing of the “educated flunkies of the ruling class” in the various universities.

The plan of campaign was discussed in the London “quality” newspapers. The target was the nationalist education given by such as the Christian Brothers. It was clear that this would not respond to direct attack. The method adopted was to start at the top, infiltrate Englishmen, or Irishmen who had adopted English ideas, or alternatively “European” ideas, and provide a body of material whose anti-national content would, it was hoped, seep down into the lower levels of Irish education. The name of this tendency was “revisionism,” and Irish academic life has been dominated by it for three decades.

The crisis of Unionism however changed things. In 1968 the BBC had no Irish desk and used to telephone the Conolly Association in Gray’s Inn Road – on one occasion (Bless us) to confirm that Belfast was not in the Republic!

The principle of meeting the Irish question with “know nothingism” was obviously out of date, particularly after the prorogation of Stormont and the imposition of direct rule from Westminster.

The British ruling class possessed a clear enough objective, namely the integration of all Ireland into the financial feudalism they were building up with their “partners” in Europe, maintaining as well as they could their own positions within the conspiracy. Irish neutrality was the great bug-bear. They wanted to get rid of it. They couldn’t achieve such an object by force. Could the Irish be coaxed into it? This was difficult because of British policy in the Six Counties.

The result was a crisis of policy. How could the great object be achieved? It obviously could not be achieved by people who knew nothing about Ireland. The universities were stuffed with experts on a range of countries from China to Peru. But opinion on Ireland, insofar as it went beyond “know-nothingism” – reflecting the anti-Irish prejudice that had been fostered among the people – was basically plebeian. Its vehicle was the largely working -class immigrant population and their children, who participated to some degree or other in the traditions of republicanism and nationalism.

Go into the lecture room in the old-established Irish Centre in Liverpool and you see a display of the seven men who led the Easter Rising in 1916. This was not a Republican institution. It was simply common ground among the ordinary Irish that these men were heroes to be placed alongside Tone and Emmet and the Manchester martyrs. In more recently established centres you see a picture of President Kennedy.

If the British Government were to get their way they must subvert tradition, and accustom the Irish to accept their opinions from respectable pro- British sources, armed with the fancy titles, the caps and gowns, the aura of middle-class respectability inherent in academia.

The policy had been to discourage the study of Ireland. Now it became to encourage it. One of the first institutions to be established was the British-Irish Association. This was “impartial”, “objective” and most respectable, holding its genteel seminars in Oxford Colleges and drawing its finances from various “foundations” – laundering agencies for British and American Government finance – and the business community. Some people detected the hand of the Foreign Office.

Clearly, a broader base was required. In the United States where the brainwashing of the large Irish population was even more important, an immense “Irish Studies” industry has grown up. Every little item was used, for example O’Casey was set up against Connolly, and there was finance for it. But of course a number of genuine friends of Ireland were inevitably drawn in.

The years of the Garret FitzGerald government were those when “Irish studies” began to expand in Britain. He was the man who legitimised – or tried to legitimise – Britain’s occupation of the Six Counties. Universities began to compete as to which could provide the best departments. Pioneers in the field were Keele. Now Liverpool claims to be to the fore. One of the summer 1988 seminars there is entitled “Hillsborough and after: Anglo-Irish relations in the late 1980s”.

Professors are being brought over from that hive of republican activity, University College Dublin, and it will not fail to be noted that careers are to be made in this field. Labour History, if it has not been completely taken over by the academics, is largely in their hands, and the working class have been robbed of their tradition. A similar job is to be done, and is well under way, on the Irish tradition. The formerly voluntary sector of Irish activity is to become salaried and its activists tamed by the power of money. The great ideological weapon is the absurd pretence that anybody can be impartial when dealing with a struggle in which his community has an interest.

What should be done? We would suggest to our friends among the republicans and other nationally-minded Irish people that they should pay very much more attention to ideological questions and not assume that those within their ranks are immune to revisionist infection. The tradition must be defended, not taken for granted.

On the other hand, as in the United States, genuine friends of Ireland for various reasons are participating. It would be self-defeating to refuse to have anything to do with a movement that does have the advantage of permitting Irish questions to be discussed.

Obviously there is a wide field for discussion here, and important decisions to be made. It is for that reason that the Connolly Association, as soon as its jubilee celebrations are over, is calling a conference, to be held in London on November 20th on the subject of “Irish studies and revisionism”. The Celtic League has agreed to be co-sponsor.