We live in a world where fact has been displaced by made up stories, where propaganda is used with impunity, and where bare-faced lies are deployed for political advantage.
In the midst of a fog of disinformation, Éamon Phoenix dedicated his life to uncovering the truth, sifting his way through the detritus like a miner panning for gold. It was an unenviable task, but one he did willingly.
Truth is so precious that we cannot afford to lose our historians. And Éamon’s untimely death has robbed us of one of the most knowledgeable, passionate and articulate scholars of modern Irish history.
The history of these islands has been told by many. But Éamon was one of a very small group of men and women whose work was focused on nationalists in the north of Ireland. And if ever a group of people needed their story told, it was them.
Trapped in a state which was contrived to marginalise them; in a country taken from them in the treaty which partitioned Ireland; and whose plight was ignored by successive British and Irish governments until the 1960s and the campaign for civil rights; northern nationalists were an afterthought in the history books.
Éamon righted that injustice.
After studying history as an undergraduate at Queen’s, he earned his doctorate with a thesis on Irish Nationalism. What followed was a classic career as an academic, and Éamon looked the part. He was a research fellow at the Institute of Irish Studies and a senior lecturer at Stranmillis University College.
His meticulous research came across in his publications – not least the magisterial Northern Nationalism: Nationalist Politics, Partition and the Catholic Minority in Northern Ireland 1890-1940, published in 1994 by the Ulster Historical Foundation.
There was little he did not know about his subject, and what he did not know he loved discovering.
But more importantly still, he loved sharing his knowledge. And that, I believe, is one of his biggest contributions to the history of this island. He had a sort of messianic gleam in his eye when he talked about the history of this place. And he spoke with infectious passion.
Éamon was a natural communicator, and he put his skills to the service of history. Knowledge is nothing if it is not shared; and he could hold an audience.
When I arrived at the Irish News in 1990, Éamon was a fixture, and one of the paper’s true assets. On this Day is a simple format, but Éamon found stories from the past which shed light on the present in an uncanny way. And his excavations when the latest papers from the public archives were released, regularly produced exclusives during the quiet news days of new years.
One of the books I treasure is a signed copy of A Century of Northern Life, The Irish News and 100 Years of Ulster History 1890s-1990s, published by the Ulster Historical Foundation in 1995. Éamon was its assiduous editor, and wrote the chapter on the paper’s history.
Éamon was fully signed up to the paper’s hope for a new chapter in Irish history as the peace process unfolded.
The late Jim Fitzpatrick, then the paper’s chairman, wrote in the Foreword to that book: “By contributing to a greater understanding of our shared past, this volume will make a positive contribution to that peace process.”
And that’s what Éamon’s true contribution was, “a greater understanding of our shared past”.
The Irish News family will mourn his loss, as will the world of scholarship. But he was a family man too, and our thoughts will be with them.
He expressed his love for them beautifully in the acknowledgments for Northern Nationalism: “My greatest debt is to my wife, Alice, without whose inspiring influence, unfailing faith and unremitting support it would never have been written. This book is dedicated to her with my affection. I must also thank my daughter, Mary-Alice, who, despite her natural inquisitiveness about ‘Daddy’s book’, observed the sacrosanctity of his cluttered study.”
His legacy is immense. May he rest in peace.
:: Tom Collins was Irish News Editor 1993-99