scholarly journals ‘Agitate, educate, organise’: partisanship, popular music and the Northern Ireland conflict

Popular Music ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 233-256
Author(s):  
Sean Campbell
Keyword(s):  
Northern Ireland ◽  
Popular Music ◽  
Visual Media ◽  
Archival Research ◽  
Hunger Strike ◽  
The Troubles ◽  
Specific Performance ◽  
Northern Ireland Conflict ◽  
Performance Strategies

AbstractThis article explores popular-musical invocations of the Northern Ireland conflict (1968–1998), focussing specifically on the period between the IRA hunger strike of 1981 and the British Government's Broadcasting Act in 1988. Whilst most songs addressed to the ‘Troubles’ were marked by (lyrical) abstraction and (political) non-alignment, this period witnessed a series of efforts that issued upfront and partisan views. The article explores two such instances – by That Petrol Emotion and Easterhouse – addressing each band's respective views as well as the specific performance strategies that they deployed in staging their interventions. Drawing on original interviews that the author has conducted with the musicians – alongside extensive archival research of print and audio/visual media – the article explores the bands’ songs in conjunction with salient ancillary media (such as record sleeves, videos and interviews), yielding a more nuanced account of popular music's engagement with the ‘Troubles’ than has been offered in existing work (which often assumes the form of broad surveys).

scholarly journals ‘The situation over there really bothers me’: Ronald Reagan and the Northern Ireland conflict

2017 ◽  
Vol 41 (159) ◽  
pp. 97-116
Author(s):  
James Cooper
Keyword(s):  
Northern Ireland ◽  
Reagan Administration ◽  
Ronald Reagan ◽  
Bill Clinton ◽  
American Government ◽  
Northern Irish ◽  
The Troubles ◽  
Transatlantic History ◽  
Northern Ireland Conflict ◽  
The Relationship

AbstractThe relationship between the Reagan administration and the Northern Ireland conflict is a neglected area of transatlantic history. This article addresses the extent of Ronald Reagan’s interest in the Northern Irish conflict and the manner in which other protagonists sought to secure or prevent his involvement. It will examine the president’s approach in the context of different views within his administration, the State Department’s wish to maintain American neutrality on the issue of Northern Ireland, and the desire of leading Irish-American politicians for the American government to be much more interventionist. These debates coincided with significant developments in Northern Ireland. Therefore, Reagan’s contribution to the Anglo–Irish process encapsulates a variety of issues: the Troubles in Northern Ireland during the 1980s, the 1985 Anglo–Irish Agreement and the internationalisation of the conflict before the election of President Bill Clinton in 1993.

The Northern Ireland Conflict: New Wine in Old Bottles?

2000 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 307-322
Author(s):  
Sabine Wichert
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Social Identity ◽  
Northern Ireland ◽  
Internal Conflict ◽  
New Paradigm ◽  
Cambridge University ◽  
The Troubles ◽  
Northern Ireland Conflict ◽  
History Of

James Loughlin, The Ulster Question since 1945 (London: Macmillan, 1998), 151 pp., £10.99 (pb), ISBN 0–333–60616–7.David Harkness, Ireland in the Twentieth Century. Divided Island (London: Macmillan, 1996), 190 pp., £9.99 (pb), ISBN 0–333–56796–X.Thomas Hennessey, A History of Northern Ireland, 1920–1996 (London: Macmillan, 1997), 347 pp., £12.99 (pb), £40.00 (hb), ISBN 0–333–73162–X.Brian A. Follis, A State Under Siege. The Establishment of Northern Ireland, 1920–1925 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1995), 250 pp., £35.00 (hb), ISBN 0–198–20305–5.Dermot Keogh and Michael H. Haltzel, eds., Northern Ireland and the Politics of reconciliation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 256 pp., £35.00 (hb), ISBN 0–521–44430–6.William Crotty and David Schmitt, eds., Ireland and the Politics of Change (London/New York: Longman, 1999), 264 pp., £17.99 (pb), ISBN 0–582–32894–2.David Miller, ed., Rethinking Northern Ireland. Culture, Ideology and Colonialism. (London/New York: Longman, 1999), 344 pp., £17.99 (pb), ISBN 0–582–30287–0.Anthony D. Buckley and Mary Catherine Kenney, Negotiating Identity: Rhetoric, Metaphor, and Social Identity in Northern Ireland (Washington: Smithonian Institution Press, 1996), 270 pp., £34.75 (hb), ISBN 1–560–98520–8.John D. Brewer, with Gareth I. Higgins, Anti-Catholicism in Northern Ireland, 1600–1998: the mote and the beam (London: Macmillan, 1998), 248 pp., £16.99 (pb), ISBN 0–333–74635–X.During the last three decades, and accompanying the ‘troubles’, the literature on Northern Ireland has mushroomed. Within the last ten years two surveys have attempted to summarise and categorise the major interpretations. John Whyte's Interpreting Northern Ireland covered the 1970s and 1980s and came to the conclusion that traditional Unionist and nationalist interpretations, with their emphasis on external, that is British and Irish, forces as the cause for the problem, had begun to lose out to ‘internal conflict’ interpretations. He felt, however, that this approach, too, was coming to the end of its usefulness, and he expected the emergence of a new paradigm shortly.

scholarly journals ‘But then they started all this killing’: attitudes to the I.R.A. in the Irish Republic since 1969

2013 ◽  
Vol 38 (151) ◽  
pp. 439-456 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian Hanley
Keyword(s):  
Northern Ireland ◽  
Hunger Strike ◽  
Revolutionary Era ◽  
War Of Independence ◽  
School History ◽  
Political Forces ◽  
Fianna Fail ◽  
Northern Ireland Conflict ◽  
Irish Republic ◽  
History Book

This article examines one of the most intense divisions between Irish nationalists during the Northern Ireland conflict. The Provisional I.R.A. claimed to be waging a similar war to that of the I.R.A. of the revolutionary era (1916–1921); an assertion disputed by many. The argument was significant because all the major political forces in the Irish Republic honoured the memory of what they called the ‘old’ I.R.A. (defined in a popular school history book as ‘the men who fought for Irish freedom between 1916 and 1923’). They argued that in contrast to the Provisionals, the ‘old’ I.R.A. possessed a democratic mandate and avoided causing civilian casualties. Echoes of these disputes resurfaced during Sinn Féin's bid for the Irish presidency during 2011. Commemorating Denis Barry, an anti-treaty I.R.A. prisoner who died on hunger strike in 1923, Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin claimed that in contrast to men like Barry ‘those who waged war in Northern Ireland during the more recent Troubles were an impediment to Irish unity and directly responsible for causing distress and grief to many families. Yet they still seek to hijack history and the achievements of the noble people who fought for Ireland in our War of Independence … to justify their terrorist campaign.’

The Long Peace Process

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Sanders
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Northern Ireland ◽  
Reagan Administration ◽  
Peace Process ◽  
The United States ◽  
Congressional Hearings ◽  
The Troubles ◽  
Good Friday ◽  
Northern Ireland Conflict ◽  
International Fund

This book examines the role of the United States of America in the Northern Ireland conflict and peace process. It assesses Northern Ireland as both an international and a domestic issue in the United States during the years of conflict there. It looks at how US figures engaged with Northern Ireland, as well as the wider issue of Irish partition, in the years before the outbreak of what became known as the “troubles”. From there, it considers early interventions on the part of Congressional figures such as Senator Edward Kennedy and the Congressional hearings on Northern Ireland that took place in the aftermath of Bloody Sunday, 1972. It analyses the causes and consequences of the State Department decision to ban the sale of weapons to the Royal Ulster Constabulary, before considering the development of the US role in Northern Ireland through the Reagan administration and the onset of US financial support for conflict resolution in the form of the International Fund for Ireland. It then assesses the dynamics behind the role that President Clinton assumed following his election in 1992, before examining how Presidents Bush and Obama attempted to seize on the momentum of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement

Assessing the importance of ideas and agency in the Northern Ireland peace process

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. J. McLoughlin
Keyword(s):  
Northern Ireland ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Peace Process ◽  
Political Strategy ◽  
The Troubles ◽  
Good Friday ◽  
Us Government ◽  
Northern Ireland Conflict ◽  
External Actors ◽  
Political Thinker

This chapter examines the importance of ideas and agency in the Northern Ireland peace process by focusing on the former leader of the SDLP and joint Nobel Peace Prize Winner, John Hume. Hume was one of the most important and long-standing elites in Northern Ireland conflict. He emerged first as a civil rights leader at the outset of the Troubles, was a founding member of the SDLP, and was central to the negotiations that led to the Good Friday Agreement. Moreover, Hume played a unique dual role in his career. First, he was a political thinker, or perhaps more accurately an articulator, of a new approach to the Northern Ireland problem. Second, Hume was a key negotiator and political broker, most significantly helping to persuade militant republicans to adopt a peaceful political strategy, continually engaging with British and Irish political elites, and even guiding external actors like the US government and the EU in their respective inputs to the Northern Ireland peace process.

The psychological impact of involvement in the Irish Republican Army during the ‘Troubles’: Preliminary evidence of moral injury

2021 ◽  
pp. 95-106
Author(s):  
Eke Bont
Keyword(s):  
Northern Ireland ◽  
Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis ◽  
Psychological Impact ◽  
Preliminary Evidence ◽  
Phenomenological Analysis ◽  
Moral Injury ◽  
Hunger Strike ◽  
Irish Republican Army ◽  
The Troubles

To elucidate some of the psychological implications of involvement in terrorism, this study investigated whether former members of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) experienced moral injury. Ten autobiographical sources from former IRA members who were active during the ‘Troubles’ in Northern Ireland were qualitatively analysed through interpretative phenomenological analysis. The analysis yielded preliminary evidence of morally injurious experiences and symptoms. These symptoms were commonly coped with through reparative actions. Three types of morally injurious experiences were found in this population: experiences associated with the IRA’s strategy of violence; experiences of informing; and experiences during the hunger strike campaigns. Additionally, there was evidence of moral disillusionment with the IRA. The analysis also identified factors that decreased susceptibility to moral injury. How moral injury and moral disillusionment might have played a role in disengagement from the IRA is discussed.

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