Conclusion

Abstract

As the narrator of Javier Cercas’ novel, cited above, points out, changing circumstances in the present affect our ideas about the past. However, he also recognises that the notion that the past is malleable can be misleading; and in fact, the past impinges on the present — often in a constraining and highly restrictive fashion. This study has claimed that the release of new archival material allows us to explore in greater depth than was previously possible the various ways in which the early years of the Northern Ireland conflict affected later events. In particular, it argued that the Northern Ireland conflict did not occur simply because of the presence of two distinct communities; although ethno-national differences were a distinctive characteristic of the Troubles, they did not in themselves perpetuate the conflict. Instead, political conflict in Northern Ireland emerged due to specific historical decisions and omissions, and the persistence of policy goals and exclusivist communal sentiments drove that conflict forward. In other words, the Northern Irish troubles occurred and lasted so long not because perennial ethnic sentiments caused a breakdown of rationality or because it took too long for the relevant elites to work out how to cooperate; rather, the conflict persisted simply because a long-term process of political entrenchment worked too well.

… at that moment, for the first time, I had the deceptive intuition that the past is not a stable place but changeable, permanently altered by the future, and that therefore none of what had already happened was irreversible.¹