Revisionism 2.0: The Royal Irish Constabulary Commemoration Controversy of 2020

This article explores the Royal Irish Constabulary Commemoration controversy of 2020. It argues that the Irish government’s attempts to separate the ‘good’ (Irish) recruits from ‘bad’ (British) recruits to the force can be linked to longer-running trends in Irish collective memory, and is an example of what has been termed ‘commemorative memory’: where historical narratives are used (instrumentally) ‘to legitimise collective identities and social institutions’. The RIC commemoration, it is argued, bore resemblances to the revisionist controversy of the 1980s, which saw debates about the morality of violence where the (legitimate) campaign of the ‘old IRA’ was contrasted with the (illegitimate) campaign of the Provisional IRA. The result, it contends, was that the government’s attempt at an inclusive commemoration in a ‘post-imperial’ setting inadvertently pathologised those of British heritage in Ireland.