Owen Polley: ​The Rest is History podcasters got balance wrong when they tackled the Troubles

The podcast has been part of my routine since the Covid lockdowns, when it helped put the inconveniences of the pandemic into perspective. Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook are disarming hosts, with a habit of puncturing historical myths and ideological takes through playful humour.

The RiH’s latest series on ‘the Troubles’ in Northern Ireland claims to present a ‘balanced’ account of that period. Unfortunately, this time, that boast is overstated.

The presenters’ usual wry scepticism has not extended to some well-entrenched Irish nationalist myths. The first episode essentially built a case that Ulster unionists, the government and loyalist paramilitaries were chiefly responsible for triggering the Troubles.

This is the version that Irish republicans like to tell, casting the IRA’s campaign of bombing and shooting as primarily a defensive struggle for fair treatment and rights, rather than a murderous attempt to force a majority into an all-island state.

This slant is partly corrected across the four-part series, but not effectively enough.

The podcast at least provides a candid picture of the civil rights movement, not shrinking from its links to the IRA and some activists’ desire to provoke violence. And the episode on the development of the Provisional IRA challenges its current self-image, as something like an armed human rights organisation.

Its rise, though, is still cast, essentially, as a reaction to Army misbehaviour.

The problem is not that the show fails to give a pro-British, pro-unionist version of the Troubles, which would also be flawed. However, it ignores much of the evidence that undermines the view that Northern Ireland was irredeemably anti-Catholic.

There was little mention, for example, of the fact that the state was besieged from its formation by the nationalist minority’s hostility to its institutions and Irish republican violence.

In his book, ‘A Difficult Birth’, published for Northern Ireland’s centenary, the historian Dr Alan Parkinson sets out this context; including how the IRA’s campaign in the 1920s was enabled by Michael Collins and the new Free State government in Dublin.

Tom Holland’s suggestion that Northern Ireland’s borders were ‘gerrymandered’ was almost a laugh out loud moment, though not in the way that we have come to expect from RiH. Would it have been preferable to include more disaffected Irish nationalists in a state set up to allow unionists to remain part of the United Kingdom?

The hosts quoted the former UUP leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner, David Trimble, who acknowledged that Northern Ireland at the outset of the Troubles was a ‘cold house’ for Catholics.

This observation is no longer seriously disputed. But there is ample evidence that the scale of gerrymandering and discrimination was grossly exaggerated, particularly by those who wanted to provide a justification for Irish separatist terrorism.

The podcast made claims about housing stock in Northern Ireland in the 60s that have been repeated so often that they have become accepted, but rarely with reference to data.

While there were instances of discrimination from councils run by both unionists and nationalists, statistics suggest that Catholics were over-represented in state-subsidised housing, particularly when their larger family sizes are taken into account.

The contention that Catholics were deprived deliberately of democratic rights in Northern Ireland was another idea that was not explored properly.

Our local government franchise at the time was identical to the property-based system that operated in the rest of the UK, until it was reformed in 1949.

This complaint, like other ‘civil rights’ issues, was in any case resolved before the Provisional IRA, which was by far the biggest perpetrator of violence in the Troubles, started its campaign in earnest.

Understandably, Holland and Sandbrook devoted plenty of airtime to the Reverend Ian Paisley, whose inflated rhetoric and booming voice were played for laughs.

The effect was to exaggerate the size of the extremes that would drive Northern Ireland into disorder. Holland’s generalisation that ‘Protestants’ were arming faster than republicans in the lead up to the Troubles was based on tiny groups, like the Ulster Protestant Volunteers.

Paisley’s influence was certainly pernicious, but Sandbrook’s attempt to compare him to Gerry Adams was another misstep. Paisley used language that may have inflamed hatred, but Adams led a political party that was linked inextricably to the organisation inflicting the worst terrorist violence.

There were commendable moments in the podcast, like the running observation that the Troubles were not inevitable, but were ‘willed into being’ by the protagonists.

The theory that most people in Northern Ireland wanted to get on with their lives, while violence erupted around them, was raised, but dismissed too lightly. Most unionists and nationalists continued to oppose violence adamantly through more than 30 years of terrorism, and clung to normality as best they could.

The Rest is History’s success is of course based on compelling storytelling, and listeners do not expect to hear every nuance of a complicated political struggle captured in its episodes.

Unfortunately, Irish nationalists have been so successful in projecting their version of Northern Ireland’s Troubles, and many people elsewhere in the UK have accepted it with such credulity, that British historians can mistake repeating its main points for balance.

The counter view was explored in this podcast too, but less frequently and with obvious cynicism.