ABSTRACT
In the UK, 2014 marked the beginning of the Conservative-led government's four-year programme of commemorative events, including TV programmes from the BBC, concerts and a revamp of the Imperial War Museum in London, to mark the centenary of the First World War. A number of different actors are, therefore, involved in the production of the Decade's 'public transcript'. The local authority 'good relations' departments, funding bodies, arm's-length agencies and charities in receipt of state funding that constitute Northern Ireland's community relations 'sector' are chief among them. According to the terms of the Decade's 'public transcript', as Edna Longley has identified, 'commemoration functions as a contradictory site of conflict and conflict resolution'. The onus is on mitigating this contradiction through investing in commemoration's reconciliatory potential. It is this 'telescoping' of history that the proponents of the 'public transcript' on commemoration in Northern Ireland seek to censure or circumscribe through the assertion that it has no basis in fact.
