Fergal brings gaze of the Beeb to bear on our post-colonial psyche
Fergal Keane visits his ancestral home to talk to young people about their attitudes to Ireland’s past in the era of Black Lives Matter movement
A DEEP sense of the degree to which the old wounds of colonialism have healed in Ireland was eloquently communicated to millions of British viewers last week by three Listowel students.
In the second of a series of reports examining the legacies of British Imperialism globally against the background of the Black Lives Matter movement for BBC News, Fergal Keane travelled home to Munster.
The province, as presenter Sophie Raworth said in her introduction to the report, was one of the early ‘ testing grounds’ of British colonialism.
It was here the mechanics of British hegemony were tuned to brutal effect on the Gaelic and Gaelicised Norman nobility and the ordinary people across the land.
“The Irish were not made slaves, but there was massacre, dispossession and assault on Gaelic culture,” as Fergal Keane intoned in the opening of a fascinating and beautifully filmed piece.
It would have come as an eye-opener to millions of British viewers, graduates of an education system that heretofore took little stock of the dark side of British history.
Ranging across the southwest of the province, Fergal concluded the report in his father’s home of Listowel, where he interviewed Listowel Presentation Secondary history teacher Eoin Hilliard and three of his Leaving Cert students as to modern attitudes towards our colonial past.
He couldn’t have asked for a more articulate and thoughtful trio of students –a group that included his own cousin, Sally O’Flynn, and friends Rachel Costello and Mary Kate Reidy.
Eoin explained the methods of history-teaching in Ireland today are balanced. “We want to show both sides of the coin, to put people in the shoes of the participants of these events in the past.
“History is very complicated, there’s a lot of greyness, but we try to give them the facts and let them decide their own opinion on it.”
Rachel suggested the study of Irish history was less about holding modern British people to account for the actions of distant ancestors as it was about learning vital lessons:
“I know some people would love an apology, but for the likes of us we just want to learn about it and not make those mistakes again. I think it’s better than getting an apology.”
Asked as to the rage clearly felt by their contemporaries of colour in the UK and US, Sally made an extremely pertinent point revealing the healing effects of affluence in an Ireland no longer defined by poverty and emigration as it so recently was.
“We don’t suffer injustice as much as they do,” she said.
“We lead privileged lives, we’re not facing injustice every day.”
Mary Kate said he understood the rage fully, also identifying a key difference between the experience of the post-colonial young in Ireland and in the UK.
“Their roots were taken from them, so I can understand why you would be so angry. I’m very proud to be Irish, and I love my heritage and I love my roots, so I can’t imagine having that taken away from me.”
Their contribution led to a hopeful conclusion, all the more so coming from a writer who has considered the whole poisoned chalice of our shared past with the UK in such detail, not least in his recent work, Wounds. “History is no longer a gaping wound in Munster, the colonial past is distant. It really is the past,” Fergal Keane said.
Sally told The Kerryman she, Rachel and Mary Kate were delighted, with the benefit of hindsight, to have taken part in the programme.
“We’ve just finished secondary, but we all did history together in school and we had a great history teacher in Eoin Hilliard. As history isn’t the most popular choice at senior cycle in general, it was nearly better for us as the class size was relatively small and we got more out of it.
“We were always encouraged to have discussions about whatever we were studying and to give our opinion.”
That command of the subject showed no end on the BBC on Thursday, with the three students receiving wonderful feedback.