Virtual History: Virtual or counterfactual history has been around for a long time but received a new lease of life in the 1990s with the BBC radio series What If? and a collection of essays, Virtual History, edited by Niall Ferguson in 1998. In 2003 RTÉ broadcast a series of 35 radio programmes, also called What If?, with alternative views of 20th-century Ireland. Given that counterfactual speculation has been a perennial sport of Irish historians, it is surprising that such a series, the basis of this book, wasn't produced earlier.
Diarmaid Ferriter, the series presenter, has selected 20 of the programmes as chapters for his book. The subjects divide loosely into events (the 1916 Rising, the return of the Treaty Ports in 1938, the pro-life referendum in 1983, the 1990 presidential election and the closing of the Irish Press in 1995); people (de Valera, Beckett and Joyce, Noel Browne, TK Whitaker, Donogh O'Malley, Eamon Casey, Ben Dunne, U2) and institutions (The Late Late Show, Magill, the Legion of Mary).
However, a subject like emigration sits uncomfortably in this volume. Pauric Travers argues that if there had been no emigration Boy George would have played hurling for Tipperary and we would have had a better underground transport system. He might be right but emigration is too complex to explain in counterfactual terms because of the way political, social and psychological factors interact. In a volume dominated by politics, religion, the media and culture, the absence of any chapters on science and technology, which have radically changed the Irish economy over the last two decades, is regrettable. What if Microsoft had not come to Ireland in 1985?
Ferriter has done a fine job of converting the programmes from radio to book and has retained much of the informality of the studio discussion. The chapters work best when there is a genuine debate among the contributors, notably Margaret MacCurtain and Catriona Crowe on Eamon Casey. It is less effective when contributors are set in their views, for example John Cooney on Archbishop McQuaid and David Neligan on Noel Browne. In the latter chapter one senses an increasing desperation in Ferriter as he tries to extract more nuanced reflections from Neligan, who was an unswerving admirer of Browne. When Ferriter remarked on Browne's lack of party loyalties, Neligan retorted: "Why should he have stuck to one of them? Some of them are the greatest collection of dossers ever to hit this earth!"
Some contributors would have been interesting on other topics, Joe O'Toole for example. In the discussion on Donogh O'Malley and free secondary education he criticises TK Whitaker as "a sort of permanent Taoiseach" who often objected to bold moves by ministers. These comments would have been a welcome breath of fresh air in the rather deferential chapter on Whitaker.
Ferriter has elicited fine contributions from younger historians such as Brian Hanley and Marnie Hay. In the chapter on the Blueshirts there is a profound divergence between Hanley and Maurice Manning who first wrote about the Blueshirts in 1970. Hanley is disinclined to play down their fascist elements, and also emphasises the importance of class among Blueshirt supporters who were furious with Irish voters for electing Fianna Fáil in 1932.
One of the most thoughtful chapters is on the 1983 pro-life amendment, for, as contributor Ann Marie Hourihane observes, the question "what if" goes to the very heart of that campaign: what if a girl is raped? Hourihane is also critical of the mistakes made by the anti-amendment side, saying they became too embroiled in minutiae and let the bigger picture evaporate. The one group of people the campaign didn't make any difference to are the women who still go to Britain for abortions.
The funniest chapter is on Vincent Browne and Magill. Contributors John Waters and Fintan O'Toole are former editors still evidently reeling from post-traumatic stress. They compare Browne, with his "magnificent obsessions", to an absentee father reappearing from time to time to berate the baby's upbringing. For him journalism is the first draft of history but O'Toole doubts if the investigative journalism pioneered by Magill in the 1970s and 1980s could be replicated: "The power of the secret has been disarmed by the Tribunal culture".
Magill didn't survive and neither did the Irish Press. The chapter on the Press raises another intriguing "what if". What if Douglas Gageby had stayed with the Press group and reinvented the Irish Press rather than The Irish Times in the 1960s? Would it then have been The Irish Times was hurtling down the slippery slope in 1995? Maybe that's one counterfactual too far.
Deirdre McMahon is a lecturer in history at Mary Immaculate College, Limerick
What If: Alternative Views of Twentieth Century Ireland By Diarmaid Ferriter Gill & Macmillan, 288 pp. €14.99