The Irish Rebellion of 1798 is invoked in the novel as a contested historical inheritance rather than presented through a direct account of its events. Its significance emerges through Michael Agnew’s documentary and his reading of Betsy Gray: both make the past a way of arguing about political identity and liberal principle in a society still marked by sectarian division.

Appearance in the Novel

Michael’s film about the rebellion has caused public controversy. He is also described as outspoken against internment and as a barrister willing to defend members of the civil-rights movement when few others would take their cases. The novel places his engagement with 1798 alongside these contemporary commitments, establishing that his interest in the past is part of a present-day political identity, not simply antiquarian study.

The rebellion also enters the story through a worn copy of Betsy Gray, which Michael retrieves for Cushla Lavery. Its green leather cover is split and furred at the corners, and he says that he reads it often to remind himself that he comes from a great liberal tradition. The book makes historical memory tangible: an old volume carried into the present and offered as evidence of a political inheritance.

Michael’s Interpretation and Cushla’s Doubt

Michael’s appeal to liberal tradition does not settle what that inheritance means. As Cushla considers his claim, she recalls that Gina Lavery’s brother, a Catholic shipyard worker, was attacked after his workmates learned his religion and was left with a lasting impairment to his hand. The remembered discrimination sharpens the contrast between Michael’s ideal of a liberal past and the sectarian realities around them. Cushla’s response is not a direct refutation of his reading of 1798, but the juxtaposition makes his assurance feel incomplete.

Michael offers another historical explanation when he says that sectarianism was used to divide workers during industrialisation. Cushla wonders whom he means by those who did the dividing. Her uncertainty leaves the explanation politically charged but unresolved: the novel records Michael’s account without treating its agents or implications as self-evident.

Historical Memory and Political Argument

The rebellion’s place in the story is therefore mediated by competing forms of remembrance: a controversial documentary, a repeatedly read novel, Michael’s account of liberal inheritance, and Cushla’s recollection of discrimination. These references do not supply a chronology or description of the 1798 uprising. Instead, they show how a historical event can be recruited into arguments about present loyalties, civil rights, class, and sectarianism.

That gap between the event and its later uses is central to its narrative function. Michael’s invocation of 1798 offers a language of liberal continuity, while Cushla’s doubts and the remembered experience of Gina’s brother expose the distance between principle and lived conditions. The rebellion remains largely offstage, but its contested memory helps reveal how claims about the past are judged in the pressures of the present.