The past as a political minefield: public memory, politicians and historians RÓISÍN HIGGINS
Introduction1 As the centenary of the Easter Rising approaches in 2016 this article examines its place within the Irish imagination and considers what we might learn from previous commemorations. It also suggests some of the tensions which exist between politicians and the public over ownership of the memory of iconic historical events. Two thousand and fourteen had barely begun before politicians in Britain had waded into the debate about how Britain should best remember the First World War. On 2nd january Minister for Education, Michael Gove, wrote an article for the Daily Mail that challenged the left-wing myths about the War. He claimed that these myths thrived in the national psyche because they had been peddled through fictional dramas such as ‘Oh, What a Lovely War’, ‘The Monocled Mutineer’ and ‘Blackadder’ which, he argued, portray the First World War as “a misbegotten shambles – a series of catastrophic mistakes perpetrated by an out-of-touch elite”.2
— 1. This article is based on a talk presented at the Irish Museums Association Annual Conference, Museums & Memory: Challenging Histories on 22nd February 2014, Waterford 2. Daily Mail, 2 January 2014 ‘Michael Gove Blasts “Blackadder Myths” about the First World War spread by television sit-coms and academics’,. 3. Clarke, A. (1961) The Donkeys, Hutchinson, London, See also Todman, D. (2005) The Great War: Myth and Memory Hambledon and London, London, and Reynolds, D. (2013) The Long Shadow Simon & Schuster, London
It is not difficult to see why Conservative politicians might want to challenge a version of the First World War which depicts it as a series of catastrophic mistakes perpetrated by an out-of-touch elite. But Gove was also attacking a historiographical approach which, while present during and after the war, came to dominate in the 1960s, heavily influenced by the publication of Alan Clark’s ‘The Donkeys’ published in 1961. The First World War in the British imagination since has largely been characterized by mud and futility both of which underlined the innocence of the dead and the heroism of the sacrifice.3 yet, Gove’s intervention prompts us to ask what else is at stake in these competing versions of the war? The ‘Lions led by Donkeys’ view of the First World War provided a way to talk about the benefits of a
The past as a political minefield: public memory, politicians and historians
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