Elaine Byrne: Decade of Commemorations is the story of individual suffering

As we face into the centenaries of the creation of Northern Ireland, of Partition, of the Anglo-Irish Treaty and the end of the War of Independence, is it possible to agree that all those who were killed should be remembered?

President Michael D Higgins has called on the 2021 commemorations to shine a light on marginalised voices and in particular that ‘driving influences of class, power, violence and restraint must all be laid bare’

Time bends and doubles back. Memories are buried and resurrected. Their colour and form dependent on the shadows and perspectives of those who view them.

In the words of Gearóid Ó Tuathaigh, the formidable Galway history professor, commemorations tend to be “contentious and controversial, contested and divisive”. There is an inevitable complexity about the relationship between memory and history, especially when it comes to the problematic concept of collective or social memory.

Ó Tuathaigh believes ...