Remarks by President McAleese at the Inauguration of the Research Institute
Remarks by President McAleese at the Inauguration of the Research Institute of Irish and Scottish Studies (RIISS)
Lord Provost, Secretary of State, Chancellor, Principal, Distinguished Guests.
Is cúis mhór áthais dom bheith anseo libh inniu ag an ócáid speisialta seo. Go raibh míle maith agaibh as fáilte fíorchaoin a chur sibh romham.
The inauguration of a new Research Institute is a red-letter day for any University. But to be asked to do the inauguration and on the same day to become an honorary graduate of this, one of Scotland’s four ancient Universities, makes it a very special day also in my life. I owe a debt of gratitude to those whose generosity allowed my life to be woven into the centuries old tapestry of the life of the University of Aberdeen and into the smart new webworld of its Institute for Irish and Scottish studies.
We find ourselves meeting in remarkable times for Irish- Scottish studies, in fact remarkable times for Ireland and Scotland. These are watershed times when the usual slow grind of history is suddenly accelerated and we feel that instead of being driven by the inexorable, we can write a fresh new script and make possible that which seemed impossible. There is the feel of a fresh start about these times. It’s a feeling that this University’s founder, Bishop Elphinstone, would have recognised and celebrated. Today’s growing confidence in Irish and Scottish culture, the developing European consciousness which is a growing part of our landscape, these were things of remarkable familiarity to him. He was a man with an extensive knowledge of the Europe of his day who, with his Aberdeen Breviary and its list of Scottish saints, also made an important contribution to this country’s separate sense of identity.
The establishment of King’s College 500 years ago made the northeast of Scotland part of a Europe-wide network of higher learning, a position Aberdeen has retained across the centuries. It is particularly gratifying that this ancient institution should now turn its attention to the study of Scotland’s links with Ireland, which are older even than its continental European connections.
Never having lived at the end of a century before, I had little basis for comparison but these are heady times with little about them of doom or foreboding and much to look forward to. The University of Aberdeen deserves great credit for striding so confidently into the next century by establishing this Institute with its unique academic brief. It captures a mood, has its pulse on the times but importantly it will now help feed and sustain that mood, root it in scholarship, measure and report it, analyse this new and emerging story and be at the centre of its telling.
In Professor Tom Devine, the Research Institute has at its helm someone who is in the front rank of modern historians. Aside from his qualities as a historian, Professor Devine is himself a product of one of the most significant demographic developments of modern times, the emigration of millions of Irish people over a period of 150 years. The departure of so many people from Ireland profoundly influenced Irish society. Their arrival on near and distant shores helped shape the destinies of their host countries.
So it was in Scotland, where throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the immigrant Irish formed a major component of an expanding urban population as this country was transformed from a predominantly rural society into the workshop of the world. The Irish were the first significant outside group to settle in Scotland in modern times. I think it is safe to say that they and their descendants helped to make Scotland what it is today. With his roots in this Irish emigrant diaspora and his deep understanding of Scottish history, Professor Devine is ideally placed to preside over a research agenda that sets out to straddle our two countries. Fittingly, the Institute has already embarked on a Diaspora Project aimed at a better understanding of Irish and Scottish emigration.
In recent years, Irish studies have become something of an academic growth area on our neighbouring island. Earlier this year, 9 third-level institutions, including the University of Aberdeen, received allocations of funding for Irish studies projects. The University of Aberdeen was a founding member of the Irish-Scottish Academic Initiative which, with the participation of Trinity College Dublin, Queens University Belfast and Strathclyde University, has been active in building a productive network of academic links between Ireland and Scotland. In Ireland, University College Dublin has just established a Centre for British Studies.
These developments are no academic accident. They echo what’s happening in the relationship between our two neighbouring societies. They reflect a desire to know more about each other, to point the benign light of scholarship at the many past misunderstandings that have come between us and complicated our relations.
This Research Institute is the first body to be given a specific brief to examine Ireland and Scotland. While it is still early days, the Institute’s founding aspirations are impressive: a special interest in comparative and interdisciplinary themes; a focus on contemporary issues at a time of constitutional change in both our countries; and a desire to promote wider public understanding. All of this augurs well for the Institute’s future as a vibrant and outward-looking academic resource.
This Institute comes on stream, as I said, at a most opportune time. Developments in both countries have given us a renewed incentive to look afresh at each other. As we seek a better understanding of the great changes currently affecting us, Scotland and Ireland offer fertile ground for students and researchers alike. In Scotland, devolution has created a novel set of political institutions that require exploration and analysis. We are quick to recognise the significance of the fact that, for the first time in 300 years, our neighbouring island now has centres of political responsibility outside of London.
These developments have coincided with rising hopes for a brighter future for Northern Ireland. The successful implementation of the Good Friday Agreement will represent a huge step forward for Northern Ireland and for the peoples of our two islands, who have lived in the shadow of this conflict for far too long.
Since Ireland gained its independence in 1922, the relationship between Britain and Ireland has been bedevilled by continuing tensions over Northern Ireland. By removing this source of discord, the Agreement promises to clear the way for an exciting new beginning. It establishes the British- Irish Council as a forum within which a more satisfactory set of relationships can be cultivated. Scottish and Welsh devolution has the potential to influence British-Irish relations in a positive manner, creating new kinds of partnerships involving Edinburgh and Cardiff as well as London, Dublin and Belfast, within the British-Irish Council.
Scotland has a potentially important role to play in building bridges of reconciliation across political or sectarian divides, for Scots have a unique position and unique historical links to Ireland, North and South. The narrow stretch of water between Antrim and Scotland has been for many centuries a busy passageway for the traffic of people, products and ideas. 16th and 17th century settlers from Scotland brought to Ulster a political and religious tradition that took root there. Many Ulster Unionists describe their identity as Ulster-Scots. Their sense of Britishness has a strong Scottish component.
In the late 18th century, Ulster Protestants, who studied and lived in Scotland, returned to Ireland equipped with radical ideas derived from the Scottish Enlightenment. These combined with influences from revolutionary France and America, to inspire the establishment of the United Irishmen, who are regarded as the founders of modern Irish nationalism. The monument in Wexford that commemorates the United Irishmen’s Rising of 1798 acknowledges the inspiration drawn from Scottish ‘New Light’ Presbyterianism. In a further acknowledgement of inspiration from Scotland, the text of Robert Burns’s poem on ‘The Rights of Man’ is chiselled into the footpath beside the monument.
The comparative approach to Ireland and Scotland favoured by the Institute promises a rich harvest of scholarship and mutual understanding. There is much to compare. Scotland and Ireland are countries of a similar size and population occupying roughly the same part of the world. Important aspects of our culture overlap. Our history has been dominated by our respective relationships with England. Our economies have similar strengths and face the same challenges in an increasingly competitive global business environment. Seen through the eyes of potential investors in Japan or on the West Coast of the United States our similarities must be greatly magnified, the differences between us comparatively trivial. Shared membership of the European Union creates another important contemporary bond between us.
As we look forward to the development of wider and deeper relations between Ireland and the new Scotland, I have great pleasure in formally inaugurating the Research Institute of Irish and Scottish Studies. Its work will contribute to our rediscovery of each other, giving us the knowledge to understand our similarities and appreciate our differences. It will look afresh at the myriad of historical connections that bind us. Moreover, its work will facilitate the building of new ties relevant to the future of our two Atlantic islands in the uncertain waters of the 21st century. The field of learning you are about to explore rhymes beautifully with the mood of this moment of renewed hope for an end to old animosities and a restoration of interrupted friendships. I wish you well or, as we say in Irish, “Bail ó Dhia ar an obair’. Go raibh míle maith agaibh.