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120 Photograph: Charles Hewitt/Picture Post/Getty Images. Mapping the Narrow Ground Geography, History and Mary Burgess In 1952 J. C. Beckett wrote with a certain finality that ‘the real partition of is not on the map but in the minds of men’.1

1 J. C. Beckett, A Short Ten years later, M. W. Heslinga quoted Stewart have consistently used the past to Beckett as the epigraph to his The Irish explain and justify existing state divisions in (London, 1952), 192 2 M. W. Heslinga, The Irish Border as a Cultural Divide: A Ireland, unionist conceptions of geography Border as a Cultural Contribution to the Study of Regionalism have been decidedly unstable, leading to a Divide: A Contribution to in the (1962), a book that did curious insecurity in the crucial marriage the Study of Regionalism much to promote both the border and the between unionist interpretations of history in the British Isles (Assen, 1962). For the pervasive companion theory of two nations as facts of and the geography of the north of Ireland. influence of Heslinga, see nature and history.2 And fifteen years after Arthur Green, ‘Homage to Heslinga, A. T. Q. Stewart, in an even more From the moment the Irish border was Heslinga’, in Joep Leerssen, ed., Forging in influential book, The Narrow Ground: drawn, ‘with a bland subordination of the Smithy: Representation Aspects of Ulster 1609-1969 (1977), wrote: topography to self-interest’, it hardened into in Anglo-Irish Literary ‘The truth is that partition is not a line permanence in northern unionist politics.6 History (Amsterdam, drawn on the map; it exists in the hearts Certainly, the levels of violence and coercion 1995), 145–59. 3 3 A. T. Q. Stewart, The and minds of ’. Beckett, which attended the birth of the state did not Narrow Ground: Aspects Heslinga and Stewart were arguing against represent an auspicious beginning, or as of Ulster 1609–1969 the imagined geography of nationalism (an natural a resolution to the ‘Irish Question’ as [1977] (London, rev. edn. 1989), 157. In the 1989 island ‘limned by God in water’) and for an Stewart and Beckett, among others, would edition (159–60), Stewart alternative imagined geography of unionism have us believe. The border would become went further: ‘Nationalists in which the six would appear as a one of the most contested and militarized may or may not be territorial unit separate from the island of state-boundaries in European history. It still justified in their attempts to remove [the border] and which it formed a physical part, but closely retains the sense of unease, of impermanence annex the other six bonded to an island from which it was and of contention that characterized its to the separated by a stretch of sea.4 In Language inception. This is so in spite of a long and Republic, but there is little and Symbolic Power, Pierre Bourdieu complex effort by unionists to manufacture a point in doing so unless they can find a way to contends that geographical ‘“reality” … is sense in which the Northern Irish state has eliminate that other border social through and through’ and that ‘the always ‘really’ existed. of the mind.’ frontier, that product of a legal act of 4 See, in a different context, Oliver MacDonagh, States delineation, produces cultural difference as The potential for violence in the very idea of Mind: A Study of the much as it is produced by it’. For Bourdieu, of the border has diminished. Especially Anglo-Irish Conflict, indeed, ‘the most “natural” classifications since 1998, there has been such an 1780–1980 (London, are based on characteristics which are not in enormous increase in cross-border initiatives 1983), 15: ‘The Irish problem has persisted the slightest respect natural but which are to — educational, commercial, economic, because of the power of a great extent the product of an arbitrary cultural and political — that it is widely geographical images over imposition.’5 This essay argues that, while claimed that it is losing both its relevance men’s minds.’ partitionist scholars like Beckett and and its divisive potential.7

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One of the great ironies of this situation for of Public Records in , 5 Pierre Bourdieu, Language unionists is that, in the formative years of published A History of Northern Ireland. and Symbolic Power, ed. John B. Thompson and the state, regionalism added cultural density Unsurprisingly, since ‘Northern Ireland’ had trans. Gino Raymond and to the idea of partition. Now, in the ‘Europe then been in existence for less than a Matthew Adamson of the Regions’ this is no longer the case; decade, Chart’s book was relatively brief, (Cambridge, Mass., 1991), the border matters culturally only to an yet it managed to confer on the recently 222 6 MacDonagh, States of increasingly embattled and shrinking formed ‘Northern Ireland’ a pedigree of Mind, 21 unionist community. antiquity stretching back to the fifteenth 7 See, for instance, the large century and to make it identical with a new number of cross-border initiatives, projects and The earlier project of constructing Ulster version of ‘Ulster’, now a six-, not a publications produced by accelerated after partition and was nine-county, . The new political the Centre for Cross articulated in the works of geographers and formation became, at a stroke, ‘an old Border Studies, based in historians in particular.8 The relationship country’. Events which could properly have , and also the work of the Institute for the between regionalist geography and fallen within the ambit of Chart’s title — Study of Social Change, historiography in the construction of the violent political and sectarian events of based at University College Northern Ireland has always been central.9 1920–22, for instance, or the passing of the . 8 Relatively recent books and Geography determined the history of the Special Powers Act of 1922, or even the essays by Ian Adamson, region, and the history finally realized the wrangles over the border — made no and by two-nations geographical imperative. In 1928, a young appearance in the book. The fact of geographer Dennis Pringle, Welshman named E. Estyn Evans took up a partition was merely stated in the preface. in which the partitionist position is reiterated, have lectureship in geography at Queen’s Chart was resolutely unwilling to ‘reopen their foundation in the University (QUB). At some point in recent controversies and recall ... many work of earlier scholars. that year, Evans met with Thomas Jones, painful memories’.12 The conclusion of the See Ian Adamson, The Identity of Ulster: The sometime Professor of Economics in the Boundary Commission’s investigations had Land, the Language and university, and formerly David Lloyd changed the atmosphere if not the rhetoric the People (Belfast, 1982) George’s private secretary. Jones had been of Ulster; an editorial in the January 1926 and D. G. Pringle, One the British Prime Minister’s chief negotiator issue of the new Ulster Review declared: Island, Two Nations: A Political Geographical with Michael Collins and Arthur Griffith Analysis of the National during the Treaty negotiations which ended The signing of the Border Agreement Conflict in Ireland in the .10 The content of wipes the political slate for us in Ulster … (Letchworth, 1985) and their conversation is unrecorded. It had We are like a garrison so surprised to find ‘Diversity, Asymmetry and the Quest for Consensus’, been Jones, however, who first mooted the a prolonged siege suddenly raised, and the Political Geography, 17, 2 idea of the Boundary Commission as a enemy quietly withdrawn, that we cannot (1998), 231–37. palliative to the Irish delegation; the quite believe in our good luck.13 9 Under the umbrella of geography were also possibility that the border was moveable, sheltered a regional study even ‘temporary’, was insinuated into the Chart’s History of Northern Ireland of ‘folklife’, officially inflexible rhetoric of partition suggested that the ‘stagnant optimism’, and a nascent Ulster from the outset.11 Given Jones’s own which G. K. Chesterton had observed in anthropology. 10 This meeting is referred to interest in geography, it is possible that they Belfast in 1918, was finally producing by Evans’s widow, discussed the border. Moreover, Evans’s results.14 Gwyneth Evans, in ‘Estyn: arrival in Belfast came at a time when A Biographical Memoir’, in E. Estyn Evans, Ireland and unionists were intent on making the recently In this new mood of confidence and relief, the Atlantic Heritage: drawn border permanent; throughout his born of the apparent gift of a clean ‘political Selected Writings (Dublin, career, he remained close to the slate’, the unionist establishment set about 1996), 5, and by Matthew establishment and this central ambition. naturalizing its new state. A cancel line Stout in ‘Emyr Estyn Evans and Northern Ireland: The would be drawn through the troubled recent Archaeology and Also in 1928, only three years after the past, and an older history would instead Geography of a New Boundary Commission made the border gain prominence. Chart’s history, a textbook State’, in John A. Atkinson, Ian Banks and Jerry permanent, D. A. Chart, the Deputy Keeper produced under the auspices of the new O’Sullivan, eds., Nationalism and Archaeology (Glasgow, 1996), 111–26.

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11 Gwyneth Evans published régime, exhibits several features shared by Chart’s History of Northern Ireland was a strong refutation of many publications similarly devoted to the neither the first nor the last of its kind. Stout’s suggestion that Evans received ‘tutelage’ on naturalization of the partition of Ireland: Books with titles such as Ulster in the X- the North of Ireland from the deployment of ‘history’ to legitimize the Rays and The Soul of Ulster had Jones. See her ‘Emyr Estyn new state, a refusal to analyse too closely proliferated in the years after 1912 (the year Evans and Northern contemporary or recent political events and of Ulster’s Solemn League and Covenant), Ireland’, Ulster Journal of Archaeology, 58 (1999), a whig-unionist narrative with its and especially through the 1920s and 134–42. Interestingly, inescapable culmination in the present. 1930s.17 These books form a miniature however, she remembers genre that achieved its highest definition in Jones being a frequent 18 visitor to her family home It is significant that even in the late 1920s, Stewart’s The Narrow Ground. Stewart’s as she was growing up in when a majority of the inhabitants of the book did with more authority and style . new state believed the border would be what the earlier texts had attempted to do 12 D. A. Chart, A History of permanent, they could not fix on a name for — it ‘explained’ the contemporary Northern Northern Ireland (Belfast, 1928), 1: ‘In an old the area defined by it. That situation, of crisis by showing it to be integral to Ulster’s country such as Ulster course, has not changed in the intervening long history, a history that was interwoven there are few years. The ‘Six Counties’ are not quite with elements of archaeology and neighbourhoods that do not possess some actual identical with ‘Ulster’. Although many geography. It was part of a sustained effort relic of antiquity’, and ‘as unionists were keen to jettison any ‘Irish’ to create a unionist and partitionist Ulster is largely an connotations altogether, a movement to have hegemony. industrial country, a section the name ‘Northern Ireland’ officially has been devoted to that 15 aspect of its history’. changed to ‘Ulster’ was not successful. Partition was, amongst other things, an 13 Editorial, The Ulster Oliver MacDonagh has stated perceptively attempt to reshape Irish space. And if, in Review, 2, 8 (Jan. 1926), that ‘the Treaty of 1922 had rendered the Foucauldian terms, space is always a 337 Northern unionist view of place more instead container of social power, then ‘the 14 G. K. Chesterton, Irish Impressions (London, of less ambivalent’. Partition, rather than reorganization of space is always a 1919), 26 reflecting an already existing Irish mentalité, reorganization of the framework through 15 See Heslinga, Irish Border as later historians (Beckett, Stewart and which social power is expressed’.19 The as a Cultural Divide, 36. 16 MacDonagh, States of F. S. L. Lyons) would have it, had created a spatial structure of cultural partitionism was Mind, 26 confused, more divided new one: that of the region, a concept capacious 17 J. Logan, Ulster in the X- enough to embrace both the recalcitrance Rays (Belfast and London, The very decision of 1921, confirmed in and the political contingency of Ulster 1924); Ernest W. Hamilton, The Soul of 1925, created in its turn a new mental unionism. Irish geographical initiatives — Ulster, (New York, 1917). geography. Once painted a different the triangulation, the surveying and the Some other books of this colour on the map Northern Ireland mapping of the country — are central to the type include: C. J. C. Street, Ireland in 1921 became a pictorial entity in men’s minds, history of Irish colonization. Geographers (London, 1922); H. S. with fresh claims and counter-claims T. J. and J. H. Andrews have told, Morrison, Modern Ulster, about territoriality. This reinforced the in fastidiously impartial language, the story Its Character, Customs, real internal separation of both the Irish of the nineteenth-century Ordnance Survey Politics and Industries (London, 1920); F. H. Protestant and of Ireland and Sir Richard Griffith’s General Crawford, Why I Voted for communities, when they were divided by Valuation of Rateable Tenements the Six Counties (Belfast, the two states, and henceforth carried (1848–64); but what of the equally- 1920); R. McNeill, Ulster’s Stand for Union (London, along, to a degree, in the streams of two militarized, more recent geography of 1922); , The separate ‘national’ histories … What partition?20 History of the 36th (Ulster) Northern Unionists usually mean by Division (London, 1922) ‘place’ and ‘people’ is Protestant Ulster. The géographie humaine of Evans, who and The Birth of Ulster (London, 1936); Henry Yet — apart from anodyne ‘Northern imported an innovative emphasis on the Maxwell, Ulster was Right Ireland’, employable for official purposes longue durée from the French annalistes, (London, 1924); D. J. — what alternative do they have to provided a comfortably neutral landscape Owen, ‘Ulster’? One cannot very well write for liberal unionism. His work avoided (Belfast, 1921); H. C. Lawlor, Ulster: Its ‘Protestant Supremacy’ on a map.16 overtly political issues. Les événements, Archaeology and Antiquities (Belfast, 1928).

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including what Evans called ‘the six counties alone.25 Evans chaired the 18 Also important here is F. controversial realms of religion and politics’, S. L. Lyons, ‘Ulster: The Committee on Ulster Folklife and Traditions Roots of Difference’, in were replaced by a concentration on (CUFT), set up in 1955, and one of his Culture and Anarchy in primarily rural material culture.21 His style students, R. H. Buchanan, edited its journal, Modern Ireland was charming, elegiac, generalized; his maps Ulster Folklife. Stormont financed the work 1890–1939 (Oxford, were crude. In Evans’s work, history became 1979), 113–45. of this committee and, steered by Evans, in 19 David Harvey, The ‘heritage’, and the folk-objects and practices consultation with Terence O’Neill, it Condition of he traced — ‘plough and spade’, ‘hearth and culminated in the foundation of the Ulster Postmodernity: An Enquiry into the Origins home’, ‘turf and slane’ — were constructed Folk Museum at Cultra in 1958 under the of Cultural Change as museum objects or as dying arts in a directorship of G. B. Thompson, another of (Oxford, 1989), 255 curiously unpeopled landscape.22 Irishness, Evans’s students.26 20 See J. H. Andrews, A in the work of Evans, became a set of Paper Landscape: The innocuous rural practices whose time was Ordnance Survey in Ulster Folklife, the journal founded by the Nineteenth-Century past. CUFT, was supposed to cover the whole of Ireland (Oxford, 1979). nine-county Ulster, and yet the very first T. J. Hughes, whose There were important differences between number includes declarations of purpose scholarly reputation rested on a lifetime’s Evans’s interest in ‘Irish folkways’ and the such as ‘The collection of the oral traditions work on Griffith’s work being done on the other side of the of the people of the six counties of Valuation, never border in the 1930s and 1940s to present Northern Ireland is a work of great published a book, but the living voices of Irish speakers. No figure produced many articles. importance’ and ‘We are attempting to A list of these can be comparable to Peig Sayers appeared in record and study the folklife of Northern found in W. J. Smyth and Evans’s landscapes. His generalized, more Ireland as a whole.’27 Furthermore, the Kevin Whelan, eds., ‘scientific’ and abstract approach contrasted journal did not make a clear distinction Common Ground: Essays on the Historical sharply with the extensive, detailed, between material ‘folklife’ studies and oral , voluminous, nationally conscious work ‘folklore’, suggesting the possibility that (Cork, 1988), 320–23. carried out, after 1935, by the Irish Folklore Evans, while interested in the southern 21 E. Estyn Evans, Irish Commission (IFC).23 There were clear Heritage: The Landscape, effort, may have wanted to create an the People and their differences between the work of the IFC, appearance of difference between the Work (, 1942), 2 chaired by Antrim-born James Hamilton practice of northern and southern folklore 22 E. Estyn Evans, Irish Folk Delargy, and Evans’s concentration on studies when none in fact existed. It was in Ways (London, 1957) ‘folklife’ studies. These differences tended to 23 In 1927, the Folklore of the area of ideology that the differences Ireland Society (An emphasize, once again, ‘Ulster’s’ were clear. A comparison of Ulster Folklife, Cumann le Béaloideas separateness from the rest of the island, but and its older southern counterpart Éireann) was founded in Dublin; in 1935, it was also to distance Ulster’s ‘folklife’ (material Béaloideas (founded in 1927, with most of streamlined and culture and practice) from the Free State’s its early articles in Irish) reveals the very professionalized into the ‘folklore’ (oral tradition). Delargy, a cultural different approach to folklife/lore adopted Irish Folklore nationalist, was firmly convinced of a line of by Evans’s committee, which is notably Commission (Coimisiún continuity between Gaelic, pre-colonial folk Béaloideasa Éireann) and regionalist, and lacks the strong sense of a continued the systematic culture and that of contemporary Ireland, Gaelic national identity that governs collection, preservation, something which Evans’s folklife studies did Delargy’s work. classification and study of not acknowledge.24 Irish folklore until 1971. 24 Diarmuid Ó Giolláin, By 1948, Evans’s geography department at Locating Irish Folklore: Stormont facilitated Evans’s folklife studies QUB was the largest in Britain and Ireland. Tradition, Modernity, just as various southern governments funded He left a lasting impression on the cultural Identity (Cork, 2000), and promoted Delargy’s work. When the 61–62, discusses the map of Belfast and the North, having been differences between southern Department of Education invited involved in, among many other things, the folklife and folklore. the Northern Ireland Education Ministry to founding of the Northern Ireland Tourist 25 Ó Giolláin, Locating Irish participate in a schools’ folklore collection Board (1948), the Ulster Folk and Transport Folklore, 134 project in 1937, it declined, only to support Museum at Cultra (1958), the Institute of a similar project in the 1950s, covering the Irish Studies at Queen’s (1968), and the

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26 Writing in 1970 of Ulster-American Folk Park at (1976), Evans’s plan to transform the problematic Evans’s role in the as well as in various government rural and sectarian landscape of west Belfast into a creation of the Museum, Thompson tried — rather urban planning committees. Though he ‘peace park’ was characteristic of his career- desperately — to place played a vital role in the rural theme-parking long refusal to combine political and the museum in a wider of the province, Evans left a lighter historical analysis with human geography. cultural and political impression on Belfast’s urban landscape than It was also characteristically deterministic: context: ‘I have come to see the folk museum’s he might have wished. Former civil servant change the landscape and the ghetto- likely role as generally Maurice Hayes, for instance, recalls Evans’s dwellers will change with it. relating to the absence of involvement in the work of the Community cultural identity in Ulster. Underlying the superficial Relations Commission in Belfast in the Evans’s ‘Ulster’ was ultimately conceived as complexities of the Ulster troubled late 1960s: a sectarian landscape in which the land itself situation is the fact that had somehow shaped the politics of by virtue of its chequered In this seminal stage, we were very much division. In a lecture delivered in 1971, the history Ulster has become a community in which guided by Estyn Evans, the father figure year in which internment was introduced, political and religious of social geography and regional Evans paraded sectarian division as identity supercedes planning, who had written sensitively and indicative of ‘diversity’ and a kind of cultural identity. The abnormal prominence of perceptively about identity, tradition and equilibrium: religion and politics, and folk culture. He rather shocked me by the extent to which they prescribing the use of bulldozers which Diversity is revealed of course in many are intertwined in Ulster, would start at Castle Junction and flatten other different ways; it is reflected often have stifled the natural emergence of any sense of the segment of Belfast including the in different religious affiliations; the most regional cultural Shankill and Falls Roads; the area would fertile areas of fat have usually personality. Indeed, one subsequently be planted as an urban been occupied by newcomers. In Ulster might be tempted to forest park which would effectively where you find the drumlins you will hear conclude that no such personality exists now or separate warring factions. We never got the drums, for the Protestant planters ever existed in the past.’ far enough into the discussion to find out usually chose the most fertile lowland Perhaps sensing a mood what was to be done with the people so areas, and I suspect that people living in of intemperateness here, 28 Thompson goes on to say, displaced. such closed-in lowlands with restricted ‘I do not feel, however, horizons tend to have a limited vision and that this is a theory to which Estyn Evans would subscribe.’ See G. B. Thompson, ‘Estyn Evans and the Development of the Ulster Folk Museum’, Ulster Folklife, 15, 16 (1970), 236. The Ulster Folk Museum merged with the Ulster Transport Museum in 1967. 27 Ulster Folklife, 1, 1 (1955), 5, 7 28 Maurice Hayes, Minority Verdict: Experiences of a Catholic Public Servant (Belfast, 1995), 89

Photograph: Charles Hewitt/ Picture Post/Getty Images. FIELD DAY REVIEW

imagination. I always like to contrast that ... Now, along the southern edge of the 29 E. Estyn Evans, Ulster: kind of hidden landscape — Protestant Ulster bedrock there’s what they call a The Common Ground (Mullingar, 1988), 7. landscape, shall I say? — with the open, fault. South of that fault there’s an Lecture first delivered in naked bogs and hills which are naturally entirely disconnected type of a bedrock 1971, my italics. John areas of vision and imagination, which altogether. That’s the foundations of the Wilson Foster has more are poetic and visionary and which Free State. So the two parts of this island, recently used this formula (i.e. that is 29 represent the other tradition in Ulster. you see, are different and separate right one kind of diversity) in down in their very bones. You can’t join his ‘Radical Regionalism’, This is an ‘Ulster’ regionalist redaction of together what God has set apart. We’ve The Irish Review, 7 (Autumn 1989), 1–15. Arnoldian stereotypes in which, it appears, got British rocks under the very soil of 30 For an opposing view to the longue durée extends only as far back as this province.32 that of Stout on the work the plantations. Evans’s landscape replicates of Evans, see Virginia the religious and cultural divisions so This geologized environmental determinism, Crossman and Dympna McLoughlin, ‘A Peculiar 30 necessary to the reproduction of partition. whereby the ‘separateness’ of Northern Eclipse: E. Estyn Evans As Matthew Stout points out, ‘the Ireland is both produced by and reflected in and Irish Studies’, The unacceptable language of environmental its physical features, is also present in the Irish Review, 15 (Spring, 1994), 79–96. The determinism is heard in this grossly drafting of a regional Ulster archaeology. most sustained and oversimplified explanation of divisions During the late 1930s and early 1940s, sophisticated account of within Ireland’.31 Stewart Parker parodied Evans conducted a series of digs along the Evans’s career is Brian just such an approach (also a key element in northern side of the border with Oliver Graham, ‘The Search for the Common Ground: Helsinga’s work) in his play Lost Davies, a friend and colleague at QUB. Estyn Evans’s Ireland’, Belongings, in which an Orangeman recites Davies and Evans had embarked on their Transactions of the the geology of partition: excavations in 1932 in response to a Institute of British Geographers, New Series, characteristically partitionist suggestion by 19, 2 (1994), 183–201. The bedrock of Ulster is just a Sir Arthur Keith at the British Association 31 Stout, ‘Emyr Estyn Evans continuation of the bedrock of . meeting of 1928, that the ancient and Northern Ireland’, The rocks stretching across under the sea monuments of the North of Ireland differed 120 32 Stewart Parker, Lost Belongings (London, 1987), 50

Photograph: Charles Hewitt/ Picture Post/Getty Images. MAPPING THE NARROW GROUND

33 Evans and Davies substantially from those of the South. student who approaches the subject must assumed the editorship of Predictably, the tendency of Davies’s and pick his way delicately through the hard The Ulster Journal of Archaeology in 1938. Evans’s ‘scientific’ conclusions tended to spikes of political prejudice.’ By guiding They immediately altered emphasize Ulster’s archaeological difference Heslinga’s ‘first steps through the North of its cover logo from the from the rest of Ireland, and its links to Ireland’ in the late summer of 1959, Evans seal of Hugh O’Neill to other ‘British’ regions. The absurdity, from had helped him ‘pick his way’ and praises the state emblem of Northern Ireland, the red an archaeological perspective, of siting digs him for having ‘pursued it with a high hand of Ulster according to a line on a map drawn only a degree of objectivity’. The conclusion is that surmounted by a crown. few years earlier to demarcate a local partition is, or appears to be, a natural not See Stout, ‘Emyr Estyn Evans and Northern power-base is blatant. But the border a political condition of the landscape: ‘Dr Ireland’. marked the edge of the new political entity, Heslinga sees both sections of the Irish 34 See A Preliminary Survey and what was being exhumed was a ‘state’ border, land and sea, as in the last resort, of the Ancient archaeology.33 religious frontiers.’38 Monuments of Northern Ireland (Belfast, 1940). 35 Oliver Davies left QUB Evans and Davies also collaborated on the Heslinga combines a human-geographical for South Africa in 1945. large survey of The Ancient Monuments of definition of regionalism (the idea of 36 See E. Estyn Evans, ‘Disputing with de Northern Ireland, overseen by the regionally based imagined communities) and Valera’, in Ireland and government-financed Ancient Monuments a physical-geographical emphasis on, for the Atlantic Heritage, Advisory Council for Northern Ireland.34 instance, similarities between the geological 210–15. This survey, directed by Chart, echoed in structures of north-east Ulster and the west 37 See Marcus Heslinga, Geography and style and scale the rhetoric of nineteenth- of Scotland to reinforce the notion that the Nationality. The Estyn century colonial-antiquarianism.35 The non- history of Ulster since century is Evans Lecture no. 2 political politics of the Evans–Davies an example of a political divergence that is (Belfast, 1978), 22: ‘It collaboration re-emerged in the 1960s, founded on inescapable natural differences. was professor Evans who in the late summer of when their thesis on ‘horned-cairn tombs’ in This was the most effective declaration of 1959, guided my first Ulster was questioned by de Valera’s son, the two nations theory, and its strategic steps through the North Ruaidhri — Evans misspelled it ‘Rory’ — a geographical remit, in which the central unit of Ireland’. 38 E. Estyn Evans, Foreword Professor of Archaeology at University is the ‘British Isles.’ Irish unionists have to Heslinga, Irish Border College, Dublin. Evans and Davies, embraced this thesis, and Irish nationalists as a Cultural Divide, i, ii unsurprisingly, had argued that the tombs have ignored it. Its ideological importance were an importation from Scotland (and has always been enhanced by its claim to be were therefore implicitly ‘British’). De a ‘detached’ account by an impartial foreign Valera argued that the diffusion across observer. Heslinga’s book is a bible of Ireland of what he renamed ‘court cairns’ regionalism; Northern Ireland is the political was from west to east. The politics of this realization of objective, natural conditions debate are clear.36 for which geography and archaeology provide the scientific evidence. Equally clear is the tactic Evans adopted in his foreword to Heslinga’s The Irish Border Historical revisionism is the movement that as a Cultural Divide.37 It is a simple and derives from this view. The first issue of the well-tested approach, that always begins revisionist journal, Irish Historical Studies, with a disingenuous affectation of scholarly edited (from Belfast) by T. W. Moody and disengagement from partisan politics; ‘“the (from Dublin) by R. Dudley Edwards, border”,’ he claims, denying and asserting appeared in 1938. The policy of Irish its reality by the use of the scare quotation Historical Studies, to exclude subjects post- marks, ‘is such a lively political issue that 1900, operated as a fire-gap, ensuring that our motives would be suspect, on one side recent political events in Ireland (an IRA or the other, and probably both, if we were bombing campaign in Britain, de Valera’s to concentrate our attention on it. Any republican constitution, sectarian riots in

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Belfast) were kept at a distance. Proximity border, or even addressed the ongoing 39 See Brendan Bradshaw, would have lent disenchantment to the view debate over the issue. The discrete history of ‘Nationalism and Historical Scholarship in that sought to make ‘distance’ a Ulster was read as a fait accompli to be Modern Ireland’, Irish requirement for wisdom. This effectively examined and understood, not as part of an Historical Studies, 26, garbled the differences between distance, so unending political crisis. 104 (Nov. 1989), 328–51. understood, and objectivity. 40 For the regionalism of Moody’s The Sam Hanna Bell, in a 1951 essay on culture Londonderry Plantation, Belfast-born Moody was, from the mid- in Ulster, gave what at one level is a perfect 1609–41 (Belfast, 1939), thirties until his departure for Trinity description of the self-styled revisionist see Raymond , ‘Historical Revisit’, Irish College Dublin in 1939, in charge of Irish project: Historical Studies, 29, history at QUB. He had returned from a 113 (May 1994), 110–11. stint at the Institute of Historical Research Our history, for historical reasons, is still 41 See Ulster Since 1800: A in London with Herbert Butterfield’s warm from the hands of zealots. And Political and Economic Survey (London, 1954) rejection of the whig interpretation of here, I should like to believe, a new and Ulster Since 1800: A history as a new weapon he would deploy element enters. During the past few years Social Survey (London, to reinforce unionist rebuttals of nationalist a number of Ulster historians have been 1957), both edited by 39 T. W. Moody and J. C. claims on Ulster. The work of Moody, reassessing, and, indeed, so far as the Beckett. The two whose massive history of the plantation of layman is concerned, discovering the collections include pieces was published in 1939, ushered in a history of our country and our people. by Beckett, Moody, new era in the historiography of Ulster. It T. W. Moody, Cyril Falls, D. B. , Lyons, McDowell, Evans and others. also paved the way for a new generation of R. B. McDowell, J. C. Beckett, J. M. 42 The later work of F. S. L. northern historians emanating (via the Mogey, E. R. R. Green and Hugh Lyons on Ulster was Belfast Royal Academical Institution, or Shearman have revealed to us the calm similarly governed by a ‘two nations’ approach, ‘Inst’) from QUB — Beckett, D. B. Quinn, causality behind the frenetic story. Estyn though far less politically R. B. McDowell and later the more Evans, Professor of Geography at the complacent. See Lyons, maverick figure of Stewart, all of them Queen’s University, Belfast, bringing an ‘Ulster: the Roots of ready alternatively to use Butterfield’s anti- innate sympathy from Wales to our Difference’, 113–45. 43 Sam Hanna Bell, ‘A whig polemic to attack nationalism or to Province, has gathered into his book Irish Banderol: An abandon it to defend unionism.40 Heritage the crafts, the occupations and Introduction’, in Sam the ingenuities of our forefathers, a book Hanna Bell, Nesca A. In the mid-1950s, Moody, Beckett, and the that should be on the shelf of every Robb and , eds., The Arts in Ulster: Northern Ireland Home Service of the BBC . Here, in the work of these A Symposium (London, combined forces to broadcast a series of scholars ... is our history cooled and 1951), 17–18. This lectures on Ulster history, later published in tempered for us.43 collection of essays was produced as part of the two books of essays. These books offer a Festival of Britain history of the province since the Act of The Northern, institutionally cradled, celebrations. Union. The first volume opens with a map: element in this ‘cooling and tempering’ — ‘The Province of Ulster (Northern Ireland the ‘professionalization’ of Irish history Shaded)’. The whig-loyalist teleology of that which began to reveal ‘the calm causality map, which inscribes the relatively recently- behind the frenetic story’ in the 1930s — is invented border onto a century and a half of a neglected aspect of historiographical provincial history, also manifests itself in the developments in modern Ireland. Moody’s lectures.41 These essays epitomize the writings after 1968, for instance, show that partitionist bias of revisionist the issue of ‘the North’ persisted with him historiography.42 In the heyday of Ulster as a preoccupation. In his 1977 valedictory unionism, however, these collections lecture on the myths of Irish history — and affirmed as history the myth of the always- the necessity of demythologizing them — and-ever separateness of Ulster. Not one of there is a qualitative difference in his the essays questioned the legitimacy of the debunking of the myth of ‘the predestinate

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Photograph: Charles Hewitt/Picture Post/Getty Images. 129 FIELD DAY REVIEW

nation’ and that of ‘Orangeism’. Moody of the past’ roughly corresponded to the 44 T. W. Moody, ‘Irish describes Orangeism as ‘a rich and many- longue durée, at least as far back as the History and ’, in Ciarán sided mythology’, a ‘great popular force in Ulster plantations, and his dismissal of mere Brady, ed., Interpreting Irish society ... down to our own day’, ‘surface details’, or les événements, enabled Irish History: The Debate whose ‘distinctive role was that of a shifting of the discursive territory away on Irish Historical upholding the union as the best safeguard of from the last fifty years, and especially away Revisionism 1938–1994 (Dublin, 1994), 77–78 protestant interests in Ireland’. Echoing the from the previous decade of violence in the 45 Moody, ‘Irish History language of late nineteenth-century Ulster North. Hence, Stewart sought to elaborate and Irish Mythology’, 84 unionism, Moody writes that the strength of the unchanging patterns of Northern 46 See T. W. Moody, The Ulster Question, Orangeism ‘lay in Ulster, where protestants society, thereby showing that events since 1603–1973 (Dublin and constituted half the population and in the late 1960s and early 1970s were not the Cork, 1974). economic power were immeasurably result of the failure of the state, but were 47 Stewart, Narrow Ground, superior to the other half. Industrial simply in keeping with a much older 157 48 Stewart, Narrow Ground, , pioneered and sustained by historical paradigm. His conclusion was 185 protestant initiative and protestant capital, that ‘it’ had always been thus; ‘Whatever 49 In 1969 the RUC was added a new dimension to the the “Ulster Question” is in Irish history, it is disarmed, and its 47 notorious B-Specials distinctiveness of the north-east from the not the question of partition.’ The disbanded, as a result of rest of Ireland.’44 A far more historical narrative of the north of Ireland, the Hunt Report. straightforward — and longer — attack on on the contrary, ‘amounts to … the 50 Stewart, Narrow Ground, the mythology of the Provisional IRA delineation of patterns which cannot be 184–85, italics added. follows. ‘This myth,’ wrote Moody, changed or broken by any of the means ‘identifies the democratic Irish nation of the now being employed to “solve” the Ulster nineteenth century with pre-conquest question.’ ‘Neither pressure from London,’ Ireland, incorporates the concept of a seven Stewart warned in 1977, ‘nor pressure from (now an eight) centuries’ struggle with Dublin, can alter them.’48 Thus the strange England as the central theme of Irish historical narrative of ‘Northern Ireland’ is history, and sees the achievement of put firmly beyond the reach of independence in 1922 as the partial contemporary interventions, and the fulfillment of a destiny that requires the maintenance of the status quo defended as a extinction of British authority in Northern permanent and desirable goal. Ireland to complete itself.’45 Moody’s politics, kept in abeyance in his early, Perhaps the most tendentious conclusion archive-based work, came increasingly to reached in The Narrow Ground is that the the fore towards the end of his career, disarming of the police in the sixties was the particularly when he wrote on reason for the return to what Stewart calls contemporary Ulster.46 ‘the inherited folk-memory of what had been done in the past.’49 The disarming was As already noted, Stewart’s The Narrow ‘in itself a profound shock to society,’ he Ground constituted a culminatory moment claims. As a consequence, ‘the state had lost in the project to naturalize partition. the capacity to safeguard life and property, Stewart sought to unearth the deep and, stripped of that protection, the civil structures of Ulster’s history, to trace what population turned instinctively to the only he called ‘the shape of the past’ as opposed source of wisdom applicable to such to mere ‘surface details’. This adoption of circumstances’.50 That is to say, for as long the rhetoric, if not the practice, of the as the police remained in control, ‘the French annalistes was a key innovation for monsters which inhabited the depths of the those historians, geographers and community’s unconscious mind’ were kept archaeologists involved in the cultural in abeyance; as soon as Westminster took reinforcement of partition. Stewart’s ‘shape away RUC guns (and disbanded the B-

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51 Stewart, Narrow Ground, Specials) those monsters were let loose on Although they were enacted on the same 16 the streets of Belfast and Derry.51 The streets, he claims, there were clearly 52 Quoted in Tom Paulin, Ireland and the English almost explicit claim here is that only when different reasons for the riots of 1886 in Crisis (Newcastle-upon- the established élite in Northern Ireland is Belfast and those of 1921–22, 1935, 1969, Tyne, 1984), 155 wholly in control of ‘law and order’ will the or 1972. But by grouping these instances 53 Stewart, Narrow Ground, re-emerging patterns of sectarian violence be into a general ‘pattern’, he makes the 17 contained. Thus, Stewart claims that it is the specific problems induced by fifty years of dissolution of ‘Northern Ireland’ that will Stormont rule disappear. Invocation of the release sectarian violence. The clear political seventeenth century to explain the present bias of such a belief governs Stewart’s difficulties of a modern state, on one level treatment of Catholics in the North between perfectly legitimate, is on another little more 1920 and 1969 and fails or refuses to than a decoy. For Stewart and other address their belief that sectarian violence unionist historians of the North, the past is was made institutional by the creation of not so much a foreign country as a place Northern Ireland. ‘Brothers and sisters in which bears an uncanny resemblance to Christ,’ advised the Reverend ‘Northern Ireland’ itself. Ultimately, Ulster’s after he had read it, and much to Stewart’s violence must be seen as another, and chagrin, ‘here is a great book that tells the legitimating proof, of Ulster’s difference Truth about Ulster. Go home, friend, and from the rest of Ireland. The Hidden Border, read it.’52 Stewart’s book has rarely been long-concealed, becomes visible to the out of print since its publication in 1977. historian, who ‘like the aerial archaeologist … may glimpse the distinctive patterns of The real problem with Stewart’s historical the past below the surface’.53 The method is that it underplays the ‘distinctive patterns’ reveal Ulster’s organizational and ideological structures difference; they coalesce in one line, the which have maintained the forms or border. But now that it has been so seriously conventions of ‘Irish disorder’. challenged, it can scarcely again rely on the Notwithstanding his professed concern with arguments that attempt to assert its deep structure and its inevitabilities, Stewart inescapable inevitability. In the case of is paradoxically engrossed by the contingent ‘Northern Ireland’, there appears to be less features of local violence, such as urban ‘there’ there than we were led to believe. streetscapes and rioting techniques.

Photographs: Charles Hewitt. At 6.15 pm on Friday 14 December 1956, a ‘person unknown’ crossed the border into and fired six .303 rifle bullets into the Clones Customs Post. The unidentified gunman was presumed to be a unionist, protesting against a series of gun and bomb attacks by the IRA and the breakaway republican group Saor Uladh. Later that night, the IRA attacked an RUC barracks in Lisnaskea, , injuring a policeman. The photographs show the damaged window in the Clones Customs Post and the RUC preparing to start a patrol in front of the battered barracks in Lisnaskea; also shown is RUC Head Constable Leslie Singer questioning an unidentified suspect after the Lisnaskea attack. See Gavin Lyall, ‘Assassins on Britain’s Border’, Picture Post, 31 Dec. 1956.

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