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A newly published paper takes a look at the issue of \u2018rewriting history\u2019<\/a>,\u00a0<\/em><\/strong>reformulating the past to present political agendas, and concludes that in respect of matters of Legacy in Northern Ireland this has resulted in a scandalous sanctioning of a narrative that ignores the entire purpose of which murder and bombing was a part, but not the whole story. <\/em><\/p>\n The paper suggests that the issue of the moment is not that \u2018history\u2019 is being \u2018rewritten\u2019. It is that the past<\/em> (the recent past a nebulous idea of \u2018memory\u2019, the distant past a story of \u2018oppression\u2019) is being recruited to serve an agenda and historical thinking dismissed if it prevents one – and only one – moralising political whippet winning the race and becoming the undisputed champion.<\/p>\n It views the \u2018legacy process\u2019 as being:<\/p>\n \u201c\u2026based on assumptions and methodology \u2018structurally\u2019 biased against any other view of the past \u2013 in short, one structurally biased against the British \u2018state\u2019 and yet (remarkably) one sponsored by the British government.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The paper questions whether the major problem with this approach lies in: \u201cthe statistics of murder \u2013 the cold, bloody, evidence contained in, for example, the book <\/span>Lost Lives<\/em>.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Believing that approach of be one of profound error it points out that this ignores the purpose of which murder and bombing was part:<\/p>\n It ignores the declared campaign objectives of terrorist organisations to wage economic war, to undermine the rule of law as well as to subvert democratic politics.<\/p>\n Most fundamentally, it ignores the voices of democratic politicians across the spectrum, those who throughout the decades of sectarian terrorism were adamant and courageous in their unstinted opposition to and condemnation of both republican and loyalist terrorism. If one cares to look at it historically<\/em>, the democratic political parties, the British Government, the Irish Government, the churches, \u2018civil society\u2019, public opinion, the \u2018international community\u2019, all condemned the use of violence by republican and loyalist terrorists.<\/p>\n It is remarkable today how this truth has become discounted. The Spanish academic Rogelio Alonso asked presciently in The IRA and Armed Struggle (2007)<\/em>:<\/p>\n \u2018What place will be occupied in history by those who, with immense civic and human virtue, have resisted using violence, in spite of having the same grievances as those who resorted to terror?\u2019 The answer seems to be they will be written out of any place in \u2018dealing with the past\u2019.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n While it seems more recently there is some evidence of pushback by the British Government on others\u2019 efforts to \u2018write the past\u2019, it isn\u2019t clear whether this is a conscious decision or a political choice in response to political pressure.<\/p>\n