Fake history is every bit as bad for society as fake news

ASOCIETY needs an accurate grip on its past to protect itself from those who want to hijack history for their own ends.

But we don’t have that grip thanks to Ruairi Quinn, RTE and politicians who play the green card.

Ruairi Quinn removed compulsory Junior History from the curriculum — and opened the door to the fake history peddled by Sinn Fein trolls on social media.

RTE, which should be redressing the balance, prefers hagiography to history — as in the case of John Hume in America — and avoids people like me who ask awkward questions.

Finally, we have a few politicians like Leo Varadkar playing with fire by playing to a green gallery. Two pieces by Kevin Doyle in the Irish Independent last week should cause soul-searching in Fine Gael.

Last Monday, Doyle reported that Simon Harris and Eoghan Murphy were eager for an early general election because both are desperate to get out of the twin gulags of health and housing.

This poses two big problems for Leo Varadkar. First, Harris and Murphy have to be heard as they function like a witch’s familiars, perched metaphorically on the Taoiseach’s shoulders and whispering in his ear.

Second, as against that, the Taoiseach knows that no matter what the polls say, if he calls a general election that the public don’t want, he risks a bad voting reaction followed by a backlash in Fine Gael.

Hence the Taoiseach’s fruitless efforts over the past few months to provoke Micheal Martin into an election. But that’s like trying to provoke a rock.

Caught between that rock and the hard place of Harris and Murphy, the Taoiseach’s fall-back plan, as I predicted over a year ago, is to do an electoral deal with an emollient Sinn Fein.

That’s why the Taoiseach put up with the IRA flags at Feile an Phobail recently. They are part of the price he is prepared to pay to deliver a Fine Gael-led government.

But Doyle’s second report, on the adverse reaction to the Taoiseach’s presence while Provo flags waved, showed there might be a FG downside to that strategy.

But I only say “might”. Charlie Flanagan can fulminate sincerely about there being no deal with Sinn Fein but he belongs to a dying breed in Fine Gael and could be simply shunted aside by the Jim Dalys.

Basically I believe Fine Gael is so deeply invested in Leo Varadkar that they are trapped by their own lust for power — a lust far greater than that of Micheal Martin and Fianna Fail.

Dara Calleary’s clever kite that Fianna Fail might support one more Budget clearly has Martin’s imprimatur.

It’s clever for three reasons. First, it’s a good idea in itself and one that will be popular with the public.

Second it’s tactically and strategically clever in party terms because it cuts the ground from any attempt by Varadkar, Harris and Murphy to call an election soon or continue trying to provoke FF into one.

Finally it makes FF look relaxed and magnanimous which always goes down well with the political middle ground.

Killing three birds with one stone is senior hurling.

******* Last Tuesday, RTE followed John Hume in America with 1968: The Long March about civil rights in Northern Ireland that could have been called ‘Miriam O’Callaghan in America’.

But while the Hume film was a gush-fest, O’Callaghan’s film was a Trotfest dominated by two republican socialists, Eamonn McCann and Bernadette McAliskey.

McCann was given the second last word and summed up by making the following incredible statement which must have pleased Sinn Fein no end.

“Who created the IRA and the armed struggle? The RUC and the unionist government at Stormont, that’s who. It wasn’t people like me.”

Niall O Dochartaigh, the film’s historical adviser, allowed that to pass without challenge — which argues that he needs a historical adviser himself. And not only on Northern Ireland.

Because I believe it was shamefully self-pitying for O’Callaghan to compare the suffering of southern blacks in the USA with the situation of Catholics of Northern Ireland in the 1960s. To take just one example, blacks could not enrol in white universities. Northern nationalists had free university education.

Bernadette McAliskey, who bittered her way through the film, used her free university education to support People’s Democracy — which pushed through the provocative Burntollet march against the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association’s advice.

How do I know that? Because on August 12-14, 1966, two years before either McAliskey or McCann became active, I was present at a weekend meeting in Maghera that, according to most histories of the period, set up the nucleus of NICRA.

At the meeting, attended by Cathal Goulding of the IRA and a cross-section of Belfast trade unionists, academics and lawyers, I read a proposal for a broadbased civil rights movement on behalf of its author Anthony Coughlan of the Dublin Wolfe Tone Society who could not be present.

Cathal Goulding strongly supported the document’s stress on not alienating progressive unionists with provocative posturings — such as the later Burntollet march.

Anthony Coughlan, the real architect of NICRA, is still alive — and an articulate critic of the EU. So why not ask him his views?

Naturally, I can’t be asked as I am an unperson in RTE. Also I am too effective making a case — as an RTE director general told an Oireachtas Committee.

But at least I can reply here. Let me tell Eamonn McCann that the rise of the Provisional IRA had plenty to do with the ambition of Charles Haughey and the even more atavistic ambition of Gerry Adams.

******* Last week, Fine Gael junior finance minister Michael D’Arcy defended so-called vulture funds, saying they are more interested in doing deals with homeowners than the big Irish banks.

Anecdotal evidence agrees with the minister that vulture funds are preferable to dealing with the BoI, AIB or KBC.

Irish banks borrow money from the European Central Bank at rock bottom rates of 1pc and loan it to us at sky-rocket rates, sometimes over 4pc.

In contrast, vulture funds buy up mortgages in bulk and make their money from small margins on a massive portfolio. They don’t want hassle and are less likely to repossess your house.

The brute fact is that the Bank of Ireland, Allied Irish Banks and KBC are more likely to gouge you for every last penny and get you out rather than do a deal.

Central bank figures for early 2018 show banks are nearly five times more likely to repossess houses than socalled vulture funds.

Prof Martha O’HaganLuff, of Trinity Business School, also says vulture funds are likely to do a deal.

Some of us in banking chains are looking up at the circling vulture and hoping it will descend. ******* Those of you in the West Cork area who buy the Sunday Independent early, still have time to make two interesting talks at the West Cork History Festival on Sunday afternoon.

Cal Hyland is giving an eagerly awaited talk titled ‘Considering the situation of West Cork Protestants 1920-25’. Few people know as much as Cal and his wife, Joan, about the details of the difficult daily lives of Protestants in that period.

Ronan McGreevy, who always writes accessibly about modern Irish history, will be screening his film United Ireland: How Nationalists and Unionists fought together in Flanders.

Finally, if you want to watch a video of my talk on the Duke of Wellington and Daniel O’Connell at the Kilkenny Festival you will find the link on the West Cork Festival website.

‘Banks are nearly five times more likely to take your house than are vulture funds...’