No such category as revisionist historian

IN his article headlined ‘Sectarian wind up’ (Irish Examiner, June 26), Niall Meehan continues a regrettable tendency in referring to the historian Peter Hart as ‘revisionist’, a word having derogatory implications.

Illogically, but significantly, Mr Meehan does not use a comparable qualifying adjective (‘nationalist’, ‘traditionalist’) in describing historians Meda Ryan and Brian Murphy.

In truth, there is no such category as revisionist historian, presumed to engage in some kind of anti-nationalist enterprise.

Or to put it another way, every historian worth the name is a revisionist, that is, committed to reviewing the received historical version in the light of fresh evidence and/or new perspectives and insights. A historian has, or should have, no other allegiance than to the investigation of the past. In this pursuit, the verdict is never final, the jury is always out.

That is why it was so silly of the Taoiseach to predict that future historians will arrive at a preordained (and favourable) assessment of Charles J Haughey. That is also why the meaningless description ‘revisionist’ should be dropped — unless, of course, it is intended by the writer to be a term of abuse.

John A Murphy

‘Dún Chaoin’

Rosebank

Douglas Road

Cork