Henry McDonald has revealed that a parallel academic project to capture to oral history of security personnel working during the Troubles collapsed when the PSNI won their case to get access to ‘Boston Tapes’ interviews with republican and loyalist paramilitaries.
Ahead of tonight’s Spotlight programme a good report from Greater Boston and Emily Rooney talking to Jack Dunn of Boston College on the controversy over the Belfast Archive and the sequestration of some by the PSNI… There was always a possibility that it would come to this. But after the 1998 peace accords there was such good will that emanated from Northern Ireland that no one thought that British Law Enforcement would take that step… Interesting perspective, and it pinpoints …
Beth McMurtrie has published an extensive and well-researched article for The Chronicle of Higher Education. It examines how the Belfast Project oral history project at Boston College was established and how it has fallen apart in recent years following the PSNI’s request for access to the archive (two months after the British government had “given the college highly sensitive papers related to the disarmament process, to be kept locked away for 30 years”). What sets Beth’s article apart from much …
It’s all looking a bit fraught. We need a recovery plan. The words of the Chief Constable Matt Baggott describing the fortunes of his football club rather than the PSNI’s response to the flags crisis. Though the words must echo what went through the PSNI senior officers’ minds when the flags crisis didn’t abate before Christmas. Monday’s post covered PSNI transformation, regulation and vocation. Remember that blogs aren’t newspapers, so not every post has to try to make a news …
The topic of the Belfast Project – an oral history of republican and loyalist paramilitaries that is archived in the Burns Library at Boston College – is one that Slugger O’Toole posters have been tracking for some time. Taking a step back from the latest developments to look at the project as a whole, and exploring beyond the normal 2-3 minute media soundbite, I spoke to Anthony McIntyre (who conducted many of the republican interviews) about the original purpose of …
Dolours Price – sister, mother, bomber, prisoner and a thorn in Gerry Adams’ side – died in her Malahide home on Wednesday night. The Guardian’s Ireland correspondent Henry McDonald writes: Price was involved in a car bombing at the Old Bailey in 1973, which injured more than 200 people and may have led to one person’s death of heart failure. The ex-IRA prisoner, who went on hunger strike with her sister Marian in the 1970s and was subjected to forcefeeding …
Eating dinner in the Burns Library of Boston College last night, I glanced around at the old manuscripts sitting on the shelves, knowing that the now infamous oral history tapes from the “Belfast Project” must be stored within a room or two of where were sitting. On Friday morning, researchers Ed Moloney and Anthony McIntyre were back in Belfast High Court seeking a judicial review of the “decision of the Police Service of Northern Ireland to request the United States …
The Boston Globe reports on the Court of Appeals for the First Circuit ruling in the PSNI/HET’s attempt to access some of the material in the Boston College Belfast Project archive. The project director, Ed Moloney, and researcher Anthony McIntyre had been trying to head the US Government off at the pass. And they’ve already opened another legal front… From the Boston Globe report A federal appeals court has upheld a lower court’s ruling ordering Boston College to turn over confidential materials …
Slugger readers will be familiar with the ongoing saga around the content of, and, access to the archives of the Belfast Project which were deposited with Boston College (where Irish government documents on decomissioning have also been deposited). The outworking of the litigation by which the PSNI’s Historical Enquiries Team are attempting to gain access to some of the material may now even lead to the intentional destruction of the archive by it’s creators. So, methodologically, the Belfast Project is now close …
