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Northern Ireland: The Fragile Peace

Feargal Cochrane

(Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 2020)

A WELL RESEARCHED BOOK THAT RATHER LOST ITS WAY!

In this centenary year, informed commentaries on Northern Ireland’s troubled genesis, history and recent agonies have been few enough. Everybody seems to have his/her own axe to grind. Either we get mutiple English academics playing up John Bull as some sort of ‘fair-minded’ schoolmaster keeping Unionist and Nationalist rivals apart, but also overlooking past sins of his own Empire; or Unionists like Paul Bew and the late ATQ Stewart saluting a century of survival, or Nationalists like Eamon Phoenix and Enda Staunton utilising Irish history to demand justice and recognition. Either way, none of those historians provide entirely neutral accounts, because the historical narrative forms a key part of the Ulster story in which all are players - academics, politicians and lay people alike! Indeed, finding a truly detached historian might be a task beyond the limits of this world!

Fergal Cochrane, Belfast-born and from a middle class nationalist background, now lecturing in England, initially makes an honest effort at presenting the roots and nature of the conflict fairly and without prejudice. For the first two thirds of this 11 chapter book, Cochrane lucidly describes and analyses all relevant historical factors with the empathy that an Ulsterman really brings to recalls of the North’s history. I was genuinely impressed.

Unfortunately, somewhere around the 1998 Belfast Accord, Cochrane appeared to lose his bearings. His information became less academic and ever-more impressionistic, while he substituted important facts about the Good Friday Agreement’s impact for his own ‘pet’ interests, eg. the murdered journalist, Lyra McKee (to whom he co-dedicates his book), favoured community projects and revered American politicos like former President Clinton. Also, do readers really need to know where his family took holidays or what differences he had with his bishop over Catechetical teaching? It would certainly have been helpful had he outlined the the revival of Gaeil Ulaidh (Gaelic Ulster) in terms of the language, Gaelic sports, broadcasting and the arts – all of which may be connected to the 1998 Belfast Accord, as well as its 1985 Hillsborough Anglo-Irish predecessor, both of which emphasised cultural parity of esteem. Additionally, the author is fixated on lead personalities (eg. Hume, Adams, Trimble, Paisley etc) more than the parties they led.

My overall impression was that a worthy academic treatise had by its final stage descended into a personal manifesto more familiar to the world of journalism than academe. The author, quite properly, thanks numerous contemporaries for their feedback on his pre-publication drafts. What a pity that none of them summed up the courage to tell Dr Cochrane frankly what he needed to know!

DR VINCENT McKEE

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‘Sliabh Crub’, 3 Hanbury Place, Cubbington Road, Coventry, CV6 7BN, UK