IT is over a month since the co-chairpersons of the expert advisory panel of the British government’s “independent public history” project, Lord Paul Bew and Dr Caoimhe Nic Dháibhéid, were pictured with Lord Caine, one of the sponsors of the Legacy Act, at its public announcement.

There has been much discussion and debate since then about the project but the two fundamental problems many people have – its links to the Legacy Act and the ethical implications of historians accessing files denied to families of victims – remain unsatisfactorily answered.

Some would have us believe that this history project was spawned in Oxford in 2014 and has nothing whatsoever to do with the legacy legislation.

Others bemoaned the timing of the announcement, which coincided with the enforcement of the reviled Legacy Act, thus “confusing” both with each other. Even the Northern Ireland Office, who you’d think would be proud of both of its endeavours, was quick to claim that the history project had nothing to do with the Act.

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However, Lord Bew backed an amendment from Lord Godson in the House of Lords that would have included the history project in the legacy legislation. Although not included ultimately, much of the debate on the Act focused on this history project, which in many ways was centred on what Baroness Kate Hoey believed was “the one-sided nature of much of the academic research........

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