THE KEE QUESTION

HISTORY, WE are told, is written in four drafts. First, there are daily news reports, then come the opinion columns and periodicals, then the diaries and memoirs of protagonists, and finally, there’s the release of official archive material. Censorship and a censorship mentality sullies and distorts every stage of this process.

Robert Kee knows all about this. As a historian, he has spent much of his professional life endeavouring to explain and elucidate this island’s past both to the British and to the Irish themselves. It isn’t an easy job. There are all sorts of obstacles that render the painting of a full and fair historical picture more difficult. And, one of the latest and most pernicious of these, says Kee, is the banning of Sinn Fein from the airwaves, whether under Section 31 in Ireland or its equivalent in Britain. He describes both measures as “pretty mad and rather dangerous.”

From a practical perspective, however, he also sees them as ultimately absurd and self-defeating. “I do a radio programme every year in which we cover every decade of the century using BBC archives,” he says. “We were doing the twenties last year and we had some archive of De Valera talking in New York but we weren’t allowed to use it because of this broadcasting directive. I had to say what he said. Of course, he was saying that the British troops must get out of Ireland and he was in the IRA at the time, but it just shows you how mad this ban is. I think it really undermines the authority of the people who impose the ban.”

More importantly, such censorship contributes to what Kee sees as an amazing level of ignorance at all levels about Sinn Fein, the IRA and their place in the Irish historical context.

“I’m amazed when I talk to people, especially in Britain, and find that they don’t know the simplest things,” he insists. “The number of intelligent and well educated people who say you can never talk to terrorists as if this were some immutable law of history. I sometimes wonder whether Major knows what happened between 1919 and 1921. The ignorance is incredible. I often ask people how they think the twenty-six counties of Ireland which is now a free and sovereign State, how they think that came about. And they don’t know.

“I also remember when the Pope came to Ireland in ’79. The Irish army were there in full formation to greet him and he made some speech on the spot about how violence was always to be abhorred. I felt like saying to him ‘how do you think this guard of honour got here in the first place’.

End Solution

“Having said that though, you have to be careful with drawing the analogy between then and now. The IRA of that day was a different thing. It had the same aims but, in the context of the time, it had the vote of 1918 to substantiate it a bit and it had far more popular support. However, I don’t think anyone can start laying down laws for what should happen now if they aren’t familiar with what happened then.”

Kee believes that there is a tremendous onus on the media to constantly educate the general public about the historical setting in which the current conflict is occurring. His own acclaimed series, Ireland – A Television History, was first broadcast in 1979 and has only been repeated once in Britain, in 1983, and there is now clearly a case for it, or something similar, to be shown again.

“It always sounds so self-interested to say so,” defers Kee, “but I can’t help thinking it would be a good idea. The series would have to be updated of course. The twelfth and final programme covers from 1921 to the present day and so much has happened in the last ten years that you could almost fill an entire other series. But it would be worth doing. Most television reporting of the North lacks any sense of context and in Ireland, often above all else, context is what matters.”

Robert Kee was in Dublin recently to promote his latest book, The Laurel And The Ivy, a detailed biography of Charles Stewart Parnell and a study of his role in the history of Irish nationalism. Inevitably, however, his interviews and speaking engagements were overshadowed by the unfolding news of the latest bloody chapter in the Northern story.

“The most hopeful thing you can say about the recent ghastly happenings is that, unfortunately, it is often only in times of crisis that any real progress is made,” he states. “At the very least, the British, with whom after all the primary responsibility for change must lie, do now seem prepared to consider the possibility of change in some way. It’s not much but it’s something.”

Though loathe to speak in terms of ultimate “solutions”, Robert Kee himself has postulated the idea of an independent Ulster state. If nothing else, he says, it would be the kind of compromise from which both sides could find some sense of vindication.

“Don’t make out that I’m madly keen on this idea because I’m not but we have to start looking at fundamental ways of changing what we don’t seem able to change otherwise,” he says. “Whatever else we leave behind, I can’t see us leaving a united Ireland in the old traditional sense behind. At least, with an independent state you’d get an Irish Ireland out of it. As long as there is a British presence in Ireland, there will always be people who can look to Irish history and find some justification for violence.

“It’s wrong and even quite disruptive to think in terms at all of any end solution. But what we must start doing is look for ways in which we can even start talking about talking. We must even try to identify things about which we could begin to talk. Even that would be a breakthrough.”

• The Laurel And The Ivy is published by Hamish Hamilton, price £20