The Aubane Historical Society (AHS) is a historical society of amateur historians based in Millstreet, County Cork in Ireland, focusing on local history and the Irish revolutionary period. Brendan Clifford and Jack Lane, members of both the AHS and British and Irish Communist Organisation (BICO), grew up in the Aubane area of North Cork. The AHS has published a number of pamphlets on local history matters, including several on the Home Rule politician William O'Brien, the novelist Canon Patrick Sheehan, and the local poet Ned Buckley. According to Jack Lane, the AHS was originally intended to be a local history organisation, but later expanded into the role of opposing the "revisionist" movement in Irish history."BICO Is Dead—Long Live BICO!" by Jack Lane, A Review of What? Irish Political Review, Jan. 2009, pp. 36–37 . The society has been critical of Peter Hart, whom it has accused of falsifying interview material,An Phoblacht "Hart Trouble Diagnosed" Review of the AHS' book Troubled History, which is critical of Hart with denunciations of Roy Foster, Brian Hanley, Paul Bew and Henry Patterson. The AHS has also attacked Hubert Butler (whom it accuses of being a quasi-racist defender of Protestant Ascendancy) and Elizabeth Bowen, whom it has described as a British spy in Ireland during the Second World War.For the AHS' criticism of Bowen, see "The Dubliner:The Life Times & Works of James Clarence Mangan", Clifford 1988, "A North Cork Anthology" by Jack Lane, 1993, and "Notes on Eire" by Clifford & Lane 2008. The AHS has worked with some writers who might be seen as representing a more traditional Irish republican perspective, including Desmond Fennell, Eoin Neeson and Meda Ryan.See, for instance, Myths From Easter 1916 by Eoin Neeson (AHS, 2007), and About Behaving Normally in Abnormal Circumstances by Desmond Fennell (Athol Books, 2007).
The AHS has also stated that the killing of two young Cooneyite Protestant farmers at Coolacrease, County Offaly in 1921 was not sectarian (it has statedCoolacrease: The True Story of the Pearson Executions edited by Philip O'Connor, AHS, 2008. they were properly executed for attacking the forces of the legitimate, democratically elected Dáil government). It has been associated with commentators and the Roger Casement Foundation who argue that the diaries ascribed to Roger Casement were forged by British Intelligence while arguing that Casement's published opposition to England and participation in the First World War was a correct position for Irish people to take.
The society has presented itself in populist terms as a group of amateurs speaking for the "plain people of Ireland" as against academic historians, whom it has presented as "elitist snobs" with "sinister political agendas".Coolacrease Book has Numerous Axes to Grind , Sunday Business Post. Spring 2009.
Dublin Review of Books published a response by two of the book's authors in Autumn 2009.
The AHS's interpretation of Irish history has been criticised by a number of Irish academics.See, for instance, Jeffrey Dudgeon, "He Could Tell You Things", Dublin Review of Books, and W.J McCormack's article "Harnessing the Fire" in Books Ireland, Dec. 2004, both critical of the AHS' position on the Casement Diaries.Anthony Coughlan reviews the AHS' book James Connolly Re-Assessed. Irish Democrat
See also List of historical societies in Ireland
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