Examining Peter Hart

Accusations of academic fraud have been levelled at The IRA and its Enemies: Violence and Community in Cork, 1916-1923 (1998), a brilliant, prize-winning monograph written by the Canadian scholar Peter Hart. The controversy turns on Hart’s depiction of Irish revolutionary violence, and in particular upon a chapter entitled ‘Taking it out on the Protestants’, which is in many respects the climax of the book. This article aims to set the Peter Hart affair in a wider context by comparing it to two similar controversies over provocative monographs, one American and one Australian. All three cases raise questions about professional ethics, methodology, and the use of evidence; all led to vendettas in which accusations of fabrication and dishonesty were pursued in the public sphere and rejected by most, though not all, academic historians. In each case it has been assumed that the demonstration or allegation of specific factual errors invalidates a complex argument - which in reality depends on diverse insights and many, many, pieces of evidence. The object of the article is not to enter the controversy over what actually happened in the ‘Bandon Valley massacre’ but to encourage a more comparative, theoretically-informed perspective on the debate.

"An analysis and critique of the controversy and debate surrounding the publication in 1998 of a history of the War of Independence in West Cork. The allegation that sectarianism was a feature of Irish republican ideology and action during the period 1920-22 is examined in the context of claims made in Peter Hart's 'The IRA and its Enemies' (OUP 1998). Niall Meehan's essay examines problematic anonymous interviews. By comparing Peter Hart's 1993 PhD thesis 'The Irish Republican Army and its Enemies' (TCD 1993) with Hart's 1998 book 'The IRA and its Enemies', some anonymous interviewees cited by Hart may be identified. Problems arising out of this identification are discussed, for example whether two IRA veterans of the the November 1920 Kilmichael ambush were alive when Hart claimed to have interviewed them anonymously. The cover of 'Troubled History' features the 18 November 1989 'Southern Star' coverage of the death of Ned Young, the last Kilmichael veteran to die. Hart's thesis and book claim an interview with an anonymous Kilmichael veteran one day later. On the chapter, 'Taking it out on the Protestants', questions are posed with regard to information in the thesis that is withdrawn from the book. For instance a possible perpetrator of the 'April killings', April 26-29 1922 near Dunmanway West Cork, is named in the thesis, but excised from the book. Other significant changes are noted, also. The essay is part of a projected larger study, examining the effect of the Troubles post 1968 in Northern Ireland intruding on the history of the War of Independence between 1919-21. In addition, the ramifications of censorship perfected by Conor Cruise O'Brien in the 1970s in southern Ireland will be examined in this wider context. [See also, under 'papers': Distorting Irish History [One], the stubborn facts of Kilmichael: Peter Hart and Irish Historiography, Nov 2010 Distorting Irish History Two, the road from Dunmanway: Peter Hart’s treatment of the 1922 ‘April killings’ in West Cork, May 2011] [Download PDF below]"

Niall Meehan analyses some aspects of the late Professor Peter Hart’s treatment of the 1922 ‘April killings’ in West Cork (aka, 'The Bandon Valley Massacre'), confusion created by Hart and by his PhD supervisor on the question of 'ethnic cleansing', and errors of elision, omission and distortion that gravitated from Hart's PhD thesis into his book on the subject. The Year of Disappearances, Political Killing in Cork, 1920-23 by Gerard Murphy, published in November 2010 by Gill & Macmillan, excited considerable media and academic interest. It attempted to document in extensive detail a previous historian’s assertion that the IRA ramped up a campaign of anti-Protestant violence beginning in the summer of 1920. Despite an impressive initial flurry of favourable commentary from Eoghan Harris in the Irish Examiner, Kevin Myers in the Irish Independent and from Oxford University based historian John Paul McCarthy in the Sunday Independent (on 5,7,12 November, respectively), the book fared less well subsequently. A problem for Murphy was that, aside from documented errors, most of his disappeared Protestant victims were unnamed. They had no known prior existence. No archive reveals them, no relatives searched for them and no one cried wolf. At the time of writing, Professor David Fitzpatrick’s commentary in the Dublin Review of Books (DRB) is the sixth consecutive considered response to argue that it cannot be seriously taken as historical research. Mine was the first to make this point. However, I expressed a similar conclusion about aspects of pioneering work by the late Professor Peter Hart, Fitzpatrick’s much-celebrated former student, and also the historian whose book, The IRA and its Enemies, Violence and Community in Cork, 1916-1923 (1998), inspired Murphy. Perhaps for this reason, Fitzpatrick’s review went some lengths to separate what he termed Gerard Murphy’s ‘disorganised dossier’ from the ‘intellectual power and academic skill’ displayed by Peter Hart. Even some of Peter Hart’s harshest detractors concede the attributes Fitzpatrick rightly awarded him. Hart was capable of combining gifted and imaginative scholarship with exceptional powers of exposition. At its best, his work demonstrated a masterful integration of archival detail that drove forward a clearly structured and an elegantly composed narrative. However, while Hart’s academic skill and narrative presentation was superior to Murphy’s, problems associated with Murphy’s book have also been identified in Hart’s scholarship. This is most evident in the selection and presentation of sources appearing to imply that ethnic and sectarian hatreds drove the quest for Irish independence during the period, 1919-23. In that sense, Murphy’s book represents a kind of continuity with Hart’s work, rather than the binary Fitzpatrick suggested. For those who question Hart’s historical scholarship, Murphy’s book represents a logical, and a significant, decline in Irish historical standards. This is a subject I would like to further develop here. For more, download the PDF [See also in 'Papers': Distorting Irish History [One], the stubborn facts of Kilmichael: Peter Hart and Irish Historiography, November 2010 A response on use (and non-use) of sources to Professor David Fitzpatrick (TCD), HIstory Ireland, July August 2009]

"""The Newfoundland historian Peter Hart, who died recently at the age of 46, stimulated a debate on sectarianism within Irish nationalism and on the nature and conduct of the Irish War of Independence (WoI). He provoked controversy and subsequent research that has helped to clarify differences over the interpretation not only of Irish history but also of Irish society. Professor Paul (now Lord) Bew of Queen's University Belfast (QUB), said of Hart’s landmark The IRA and its Enemies (OUP, 1998), ‘The first work on the Irish revolution which can stand comparison with the best of the historiography of the French Revolution: brilliantly documented, statistically sophisticated, and superbly written’. The weight of academic opinion afforded Hart numerous prizes and plaudits. Critics emerged, also, however, who concluded that Hart’s methodology was quite often slipshod, unreliable, and, in places, unbelievable. When the detail was published it was characterised within the academy as inappropriate. QUB’s Fearghal McGarry put it, ‘Some of the resulting controversies fell within the realm of legitimate debate, but a lot didn’t’, but without informing us what, in his view, either did or did not (Irish News, 28 Aug 2010). Hart’s argument provoked a debate on the conduct of academic historiography in Ireland and a perceived interrelationship with the requirements of public policy on the conflict in the North of Ireland. Consequently, Irish Historians divided in Hart’s wake, into pro, con, or (more often) wary of venturing above the parapet. In this essay, I examine: (a) the political context within which Hart's research was promoted and the reaction from within the academy to the emergence of a critique; (b) the basis of Hart's interpretive framework; (c) how evidence was shaped to fit that framework. (See Also: Troubled History - a tenth anniversary Critique of Peter Hart's 'The IRA and its Enemies', http://www.academia.edu/166387/; and 'Distorting Irish History Two' on the 'Bandon Valley Massacre', http://www.academia.edu/612672/) [To read on, download PDF below]"""

Crime, Histoire & Sociétés/Crime, History & Societies, 2002

Terror in Ireland, 1916–23 is the fifth Trinity College Dublin History Workshop publication. Edited by Professor David Fitzpatrick, who also contributes a chapter, this well-presented volume publishes research from 14 undergraduate and postgraduate students, doctoral researchers and established historians. The book examines British and Irish violence (mainly the latter) from the 1916 Easter Rising through the Civil War. The terms ‘terror’ and ‘terrorist’ are loosely, often selectively, applied. According to Fitzpatrick, ‘Terrorists are those who perpetuate any form of terror; Terrorism implies a sustained and systematic attempt to generate terror’ (p. 5). This conceptualisation is not so much taut as tautological. It is difficult to envisage military or quasi-military activity that does not induce terror among combatants and an affected civilian population. Brian Hanley’s compelling first chapter exposes the problems in Fitzpatrick’s construct. Hanley notes that even under current US State Department categorisations, IRA attacks on Bloody Sunday (21 November 1920) and at Kilmichael (28 November 1920) cannot be defined as terrorist (p. 11). Nevertheless, two chapters are devoted to Bloody Sunday and one to Kilmichael. Throughout the collection republican forces are often ‘Irish terrorists’ or simply ‘the terrorists’. Their British opponents are not similarly identified, suggesting that the words have a pejorative rather than descriptive function. Drawing upon the work of the late Peter Hart (who died in 2010 at the age of 46), whose analysis ‘called into question the morality and sincerity of the republican movement’, the editor asserts that republicans set out ‘to threaten and marginalize “deviants” within the community that the terrorists claim to represent’ (p. 6). Their suspicions were ‘based on categorical assumptions’ (p. 4). As the volume is dedicated to Hart’s memory, Fitzpatrick is intent on defending his reputation from ‘outraged readers’ for whom ‘the integrity of the revolutionaries from 1916–21 was an article of faith’ (pp. 4, 6). The ‘article of faith’ formulation is carefully chosen. ...... For more.... click on title, go online, or download attached PDF Review includes separate responses from Editor, David Fitzpatrick (p.19), and Eve Morrison (pp.20-26, author of chapter on Peter Hart's treatment of the Kilmichael Ambush of 28 November 1920.) See also: Reply to Professor David Fitzpatrick and to Dr Eve Morrison’s response to criticism of Terror in Ireland 1916-1923 (plus consideration of Dr Brian Hanley on 'The Good Old IRA'), http://www.academia.edu/1994527/

"I reviewed an edited collection, Terror in Ireland, 1916-23 (Lilliput, 2012) for Reviews in History (published 16 August 2012); available, with responses, here (https://www.academia.edu/1871818/, plus at http://www.history.ac.uk/reviews/review/1303). The book was dedicated to the memory of the late Peter Hart who died in 2010. Hart had been a member of the Trinity History Workshop, under whose auspices the book was conceived and published. My review highlighted several key failures of the edited collection. The Editor Professor David Fitzpatrick and Dr Eve Morrison responded to my review. I think it would be of value to continue the discussion, not least since debate may clarify the wider issues surrounding approaches to and controversies in modern Irish history. Reviews in History does not permit continued discussion beyond review and response. Hence its publication on Spinwatch. I also include here a section omitted from the original review, concerning Brian Hanley's discussion of a 1985 Sinn Fen pamphlet called The Good Old IRA, and also further discussion this point on CedarLounge.wordpress.com. See also: Why Spinwatch is Publishing John Young’s Statement: http://www.spinwatch.org/-articles-by-category-mainmenu-8/52-northern-ireland/5516-why-spinwatch-is-publishing-john-youngs-statement Review of Terror in Ireland, 1916-1923 and responses (16 Aug 2012): http://gcd.academia.edu/NiallMeehan/Papers/1877653" and (also reproduced here) The 1985 Sinn Fein Good Old IRA pamphlet and historical revisionism – a response to comments: http://cedarlounge.wordpress.com/2012/10/16/the-1985-sinn-fein-good-old-ira-pamphlet-and-historical-revisionism-a-response-to-comments/ Which links to (main text in PDF): http://cedarlounge.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/1985-sf-pamphlet-b-cedar-lounge-discussion.pdf""

This is a review article on David Fitzpatrick's edited collection, 'Terror in Ireland, 1916-1923'. It features an extended discussion of Eve Morrison's article on Peter Hart and the Kilmichael Ambush controversy.

Twentieth Century British History, 2009