For those of us in the UK, this week saw the end of wildly-loved sitcom, Derry Girls, after a perfectly-judged run of three series: out on a high it went, with praise from all quarters.

So – saying it was great is hardly news (though it absolutely was, and I aspire to be somewhere on the Michelle-Sr Michael spectrum, though fear that the Clare-Jenny Joyce continuum would be more like my teenage self …). And I don’t have particular personal connections to vaunt – have in fact never been to Derry (though, if ‘being a Derry Girl is a fucking state of mind’, as Ms Mallon so memorably put it, then maybe we all have a little …) so why muse about it on a supposedly legal history-themed blog?

For anyone working on recent legal history, of course, the relevance is obvious. Working backwards from the last episode, there are all sorts of insights into  legal rules and law-enforcement or law-breaking situations – from the Good Friday Agreement, British-Irish citizenship, release of paramilitary prisoners, British military activities, the RUC,  Orange marches, canon law procedure for recognition of miracles (the crying BVM statue one…) and no doubt much more.

There is also the ‘past meets present’ point made by many, that we (and by ‘we’, I mean in particular the current, appalling, UK government) run the risk of allowing things to descend into bitterness and violence once more, unless we have a mind to the troubled past of Northern Ireland, and the huge change represented by the GFA, and Derry Girls did a massively effective job of fixing that in current consciousness.

But it’s probably the more general lessons/reminders about history which hit home the most for me in my capacity of scholar of legal history. Like the fact that the bits professional historians (legal and other) focus on – the big changes, the high politics and economic generalisations, for example – are not necessarily the main concerns of most of the people at any given time. I mean, it may even be the case that, while the Statute of Uses was being prepared, or while assumpsit was storming the great citadel of debt, teenagers of the past were more bothered about their equivalents of Take That, Fatboy Slim and finding ‘massive rides’. At times, we may all need to ‘catch on to ourselves’ and realise that, unless we are prepared to put a bit of life, good stories, and even humour into our history,  we risk sounding rather more like Uncle Colm than any of the others. For my part, I shall be endeavouring to infuse this summer’s conference paper with something of the spirit of Aunt Sarah –

possibly not at the peak of academic rigour, but, I hope, some memorable lines. Should get back to it, I suppose.

GS

21/5/2022

Main Image: everyone has heard of Derry Girls, right?