Journalism, according to the cliche, is the first draft of history. In reality, the two are completely different kinds of writing about the world, and indeed of experiencing it. The historian knows how things ended up but the journalist doesn't. The historian can see what was and was not significant but the journalist can see only the rapidly approaching deadline. The historian looks down from the great heights of the future and discerns the large shapes and the hidden patterns. The journalist is stuck in the present, wading through the immediate flow of events. The private papers and secret diaries that inform the writing of history are almost always beyond the reach of those who write newspapers.
And yet, in one sense, the journalist is closer to the actual texture of historic events than the historian can ever be. For history is experienced by those who live through it as a shapeless mass of possibilities. What will seem obvious, even inevitable, in 20 years' time, is now open, unpredictable and infinitely complex. As time passes, we come to assume that everything is moving in the same direction and that things happened because they had to happen. Looking back, for example, we think that everyone must have known that the execution of the leaders of the 1916 rising had to shift the mood of nationalist Ireland in fundamental and fateful ways. At the time, though, very few people thought that things would turn as they did. Or it may seem logical that, in the circumstances of Germany in the 1930s, a monster like Hitler would come to power. In fact, until it was about to happen, nothing seemed less likely. In the way people experience history, there are no foregone conclusions.
This, essentially, is the point of looking at the 20th century in Ireland as reflected in the pages of a newspaper, as I have done in The Irish Times Book of the Century. The aim is to give some sense of the flow of events as it was perceived and experienced, without the benefit of hindsight.
Inevitably, the selection of material is influenced by a knowledge of what would later turn out to be significant. But running throughout the book is an awareness that reporting is always influenced by the perspective of the reporter. In the case of The Irish Times, that perspective is an utterly unstable one. Arguably, of all the public institutions of Ireland in 1900, The Irish Times is the one that mirrors most starkly the huge shift from an imperial British Ireland to an emerging independent nation.
On New Year's Day 1900, The Irish Times led its front page with the news that "Her Majesty the Queen sent a Christmas greeting to all the troops in South Africa." Developments in the Boer War, the appointment of a new commander of Her Majesty's forces in Ireland, the New Year Honours List and the operations of the Irish Regiments' Widows and Orphans Fund dominated the front page. In an item on the "marvellous growth of the National prosperity", it went without saying that the nation so blessed was the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. And it was a nation at the height of its fortunes. With stirring optimism, the story pointed out that "the progress of the United Kingdom has been of a steady and sterling character and never at any time in the course of all British history, have Imperial interests been founded upon so strong and solid a basis."
It seemed inevitable then that the new century would be dominated by a few great empires, and that all of humanity would eventually belong to one or other of them. The conquest of Africa by Britain, France, Germany and Portugal was virtually complete. In South Africa, the Boer War in which the United Kingdom was engaged was a struggle, not between natives and invaders, but between rival groups of European colonists, the British and the Dutch. Even the greatest of republican democracies, the United States of America, had joined the imperial game in the previous few years, replacing Spain as the overlord of Cuba and the Philippine Islands. With the Turkish, Russian and Austro-Hungarian empires dominating much of Europe and Asia, it seemed clear that whatever change the 20th century might bring for small nations such as Ireland would take place within the context of the steady and sterling progress of the British Empire.
In Ireland, the general expectation of continuity was so great that, as The Irish Times reported, "New Year's Day was not very extensively kept in Dublin as a holiday." Even the usual Lord Mayor's Parade was not held. The years were passing with such untroubled equanimity, indeed, that the paper speculated that "it would seem as if New Year's Day runs a close chance of becoming extinct altogether."
Looking back on the century just passed, the leader writer drew certain lessons for the future. One was that England had now emerged victorious from a prolonged struggle with "nearly all the Powers of Europe" and that such a nation would never "yield to threats what they deny to justice".
Another was that "England has lost many delusions in dealing with this country and not the least of these was the idea that the vapourings of windy orators had behind them any real body of public opinion." The Irish Times was sure that the pro-Boer agitation of a small but energetic and inventive group of Irish nationalists was no more than vapouring and that the "flotsam and jetsam" who engaged in such protest "need not disturb the equanimity of those who desire for us a period of peace and progress".
From this kind of perspective, an event such as the reading of the 1916 proclamation, afterwards enshrined as a sacred historical moment, seemed almost as absurd as it was outrageous: "At 1.30 there came from the Post Office a small man in plain clothes with a bundle of papers under his arm. Escorted by a guard of revolutionists, he made his way to Nelson's Pillar, and . . . launched into the well-worn theme of Ireland's wrongs and England's oppression. The subject was evidently equally familiar to the orator and his hearers. As he gained fervour and thundered out the phrases he had used so often before his audience became progressively bored. A sweet shop was broken into and nearly all rushed across the street to join in the spoil. A few old men and women who had lost their desire for sweets remained."
Yet if hindsight can make a nonsense of contemporary reporting, journalism from the past can also undermine perceptions of the present. In 1999, for example, it is a commonplace that sexual morality was once very rigid and is now far looser. But this perception itself is shared by most people at most times. An Irish Times editorial in November 1925 remarked that "Democracy is more prudish in Ireland than, perhaps, anywhere else in the world." Sex was seldom discussed in public and "for the most part, Press and pulpit are content to respect this conspiracy of silence". Yet, the writer was sure that "the national morals" were considerably looser than they had been 20 years before, particularly because of "the effects of our recent years of social and political disorder".