Belfast Project



The Belfast Project was an oral history project on the Troubles based at Boston College in Massachusetts, U.S. The project began in 2000 and the last interviews were concluded in 2006. The interviews were intended to be released after the participants' deaths and serve as a resource for future historians.

Ed Moloney was the project's director. Anthony McIntyre conducted interviews with Irish republicans (including Brendan Hughes, Dolours Price, Ivor Bell, and Richard O'Rawe ), while Wilson McArthur interviewed loyalists. The two interviewed more than 40 people.

Interviews with Hughes and David Ervine were used (after their deaths) as the basis for Moloney's 2010 book Voices From The Grave: Two Men's War in Ireland, drawing attention to the archive. Subsequently, interviews dealing with the murder of Jean McConville were subpoenaed by the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI). Moloney and McIntyre filed a lawsuit seeking to block this request, arguing that it placed project participants at risk. The ACLU filed a supporting brief. However, the PSNI ultimately won the resulting court battle, with a United States appeals court decision stating, "The choice to investigate criminal activity belongs to the government and is not subject to veto by academic researchers."

In 2014 these interviews were used to charge Ivor Bell with soliciting McConville's murder. Bell was acquitted—the court found the tapes to be unreliable and they were not admitted as evidence. These tapes are also thought to have contributed to Gerry Adams' 2014 arrest, in which no charges were ultimately filed.

The project's interviews with the loyalist Winston Churchill Rea were later subpoenaed by the PSNI and used to prosecute him for murder and other crimes in 2016. Rea's trial was delayed repeatedly due to his failing health and the coronavirus pandemic. He died in 2023, before the trial could be concluded.