scholarly journals ‘Look What We Have Gone Through’: Representation and Memory in the Bogside Murals in Northern Ireland

2014 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Aguiar
Keyword(s):  
Northern Ireland ◽  
The Other ◽  
British Army ◽  
The Troubles ◽  
The Past ◽  
Visual Evidence

Murals have been painted on the outside walls of houses and businesses in Northern Ireland and have functioned as visual evidence of people’s experiences of the conflict known as the Troubles. Created in 1994, The People’s Gallery is a series of twelve murals painted by three local artists in the Bogside district in Derry. This article examines how the murals ‘remember’ the conflict, what stories are included or excluded, how ‘Us’ and ‘Them’ are portrayed, and how the depiction of the past relates to the present. The analysis shows that the murals focus on the Bogside’s own experiences, portraying ‘Us’ as victims and as activists. The Other is represented directly by the image of the British army/RUC, and indirectly by the image of the chaos and violence caused to ‘Us’. Due to the lack of sectarian messages, The People’s Gallery can have a positive use as a storytelling tool in Northern Ireland’s current transitional scenario.

scholarly journals Memory, Trauma and Forgetting in Northern Irish Drama

2017 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 77-91
Author(s):  
Anthony Roche
Keyword(s):  
Northern Ireland ◽  
Peace Process ◽  
The Other ◽  
Northern Irish ◽  
Violent Incident ◽  
The Troubles ◽  
The Past ◽  
Irish Drama ◽  
Bloody Sunday

The ethical exhortation ‘not to forget’ runs the risk of ‘a memory that would never forget anything’. At the other extreme is the no less dangerous risk of total amnesia, an erasure of the past that immediately suggests Freud and the return of the repressed. The complex balance to be found between memory and forgetting is particularly fraught in Northern Ireland and the politics of how the past is to be negotiated in the current post peace process climate. I propose to look at this subject in relation to the trauma engendered by decades of violence in two Northern Irish plays: Quietly (2012) by Owen McCafferty, set in the post peace process climate of 2009 but harking back to a violent incident in the same location thirty-five years earlier; and Frank McGuinness’s Carthaginians (1988), a canonical play about one of the central events in ‘the Troubles’, Bloody Sunday of 30 January 1972, but set more than a decade later.

I. The Northern Ireland Peace Agreement, Minority Rights and Self-Determination

1998 ◽  
Vol 47 (4) ◽  
pp. 943-950 ◽  
Author(s):  
Colin Warbrick ◽  
Dominic McGoldrick ◽  
Geoff Gilbert
Keyword(s):  
Northern Ireland ◽  
Minority Groups ◽  
Religious Affiliation ◽  
Holistic Approach ◽  
Minority Rights ◽  
The Other ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Peace Agreement ◽  
The Troubles ◽  
The Right

The Northern Ireland Peace Agreement1 was concluded following multi-party negotiations on Good Friday, 10 April 1998. It received 71 per cent approval in Northern Ireland and 95 per cent approval in the Republic of Ireland in the subsequent referenda held on Friday 22 May, the day after Ascension. To some, it must have seemed that the timing was singularly appropriate following 30 years of “The Troubles”, which were perceived as being between a “Catholic minority” and a “Protestant majority”. While there are some minority groups identified by their religious affiliation that do require rights relating only to their religion, such as the right to worship in community,2 to practise and profess their religion,3 to legal recognition as a church,4 to hold property5 and to determine its own membership,6 some minority groups identified by their religious affiliation are properly national or ethnic minorities–religion is merely one factor which distinguishes them from the other groups, including the majority, in the population. One example of the latter situation is to be seen in (Northern) Ireland where there is, in fact, untypically, a double minority: the Catholic-nationalist community is a minority in Northern Ireland, but the Protestant-unionist population is a minority in the island of Ireland as a whole.7 The territory of Northern Ireland is geographically separate from the rest of the United Kingdom. The recent peace agreement addresses a whole range of issues for Northern Ireland, but included are, on the one hand, rights for the populations based on their religious affiliation, their culture and their language and, on the other, rights with respect to their political participation up to the point of external self-determination. It is a holistic approach. Like any good minority rights agreement,8 it deals with both standards and their implementation and, like any good minority rights agreement, it is not a minority rights agreement but, rather, a peace settlement.

Commemorating bonds of Union: remembering the Ulster Special Constabulary at the National Memorial Arboretum

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
L. J. Armstrong
Keyword(s):  
Northern Ireland ◽  
Active Role ◽  
The Other ◽  
Remote Site ◽  
Northern Irish ◽  
Local Service ◽  
The Troubles ◽  
Grant Scheme

In 2006, two acts of commemoration took place to the memory of the Ulster Special Constabulary (USC). One was staged in a public site of national commemoration at the National Memorial Arboretum (NMA) in Lichfield, Staffordshire and the other was a very local service in the remote site of Mullaghfad Church, Co.Fermanagh, Northern Ireland. Both of these events were state-funded under the terms of the ‘Victims and Survivors Befriending Grant Scheme’, but engaged in very different modes of remembrance. This chapter focuses on the USC memorial at the NMA as a strategic site of memory for the Ulster unionist community. Drawing upon interviews with members of the Ulster Special Constabulary Association (USCA) present at the commemoration, it explores the active role Britain plays as a physical and symbolic site of ‘respite’ for Ulster unionists. In contrast to the private, divisive nature of memorials to the USC in Northern Ireland, the NMA site enables the USCA to locate its role in the Troubles in terms of British heroism and sacrifice, alongside memorials to other UK police units. The chapter suggests that historians should look more closely at the active role Britain plays in commemorating the Northern Irish Troubles.

Identity on Parade in Northern Ireland

2019 ◽  
pp. 24-50
Author(s):  
Jonathan S. Blake
Keyword(s):  
Northern Ireland ◽  
Political Context ◽  
The Other ◽  
Good Friday ◽  
The Past ◽  
Marching Bands ◽  
Belfast Agreement ◽  
Political Conditions ◽  
Orange Order

This chapter introduces the history and political context of loyalist parades in Northern Ireland. It traces how parades have changed over the past two centuries in response to shifting political conditions. The chapter then shows how parades influence and are influenced by politics in the post–Good Friday/Belfast Agreement era. In the discussion of contemporary parading, the chapter presents data on the number of parades, paraders, and spectators, which demonstrate the prominence of the movement in Protestant society. It also describes the major parading organizations, including the Orange Order, the other loyal orders, and marching bands, and explains the main sources of disputes between Protestants and Catholics over parades.

scholarly journals An Acceptable Level of Violence: Assessing the Development of the British Government’s Security Approach to ‘The Troubles’ From 1969-79

2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 16
Author(s):  
Jack McDonnell ◽  
Rory David McDonald Butcher
Keyword(s):  
Northern Ireland ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
21St Century ◽  
Acceptable Level ◽  
Guerrilla Warfare ◽  
Careful Examination ◽  
British Army ◽  
The Troubles ◽  
Security Issues ◽  
Asymmetric Warfare

Those seeking to engage in warfare against organised governments in the 21st century are increasingly relying on such governments being unable to respond in an appropriate manner. The latter half of the 20th century in Northern Ireland is a perfect example of a ruling authority modifying its approach to the security issues it was confronted by throughout the conflict. “The Troubles”, as the three decades of guerrilla warfare has now become known, was dealt with by the British establishment through three specific policies – all of which saw changes implemented during the first ten years of the landmark conflict. These were: the implementation of Direct Rule, the so-called “Normalisation” of asymmetric warfare, and the reliance on the local paramilitaries over the British Army. All of these policies can be seen to have failed in particular ways, although careful examination shall explain the logic behind these shifts in British reactionary policy and their effects in the regions of the province of Ulster affected by the conflict. Being a very brief survey of this conflict, this paper does not address other policies enacted – nor does it encompass every aspect of the evidence available. It merely aims to act as an overview.

Book Reviews

Focaal ◽  
2006 ◽  
Vol 2006 (48) ◽  
pp. 158-172
Author(s):  
Christian Lund ◽  
Anthony D. Buckley ◽  
Gavin Smith ◽  
Martijn Koster ◽  
Johannes Stahl ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
North Carolina ◽  
Northern Ireland ◽  
Soziale Ungleichheit ◽  
The Troubles ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Cultural Turn ◽  
Life Politics

Deema Kaneff, Who owns the past? The politics of time in a ‘model’ Bulgarian villageWilliam F. Kelleher Jr., The troubles in Ballybogoin: Memory and identity in Northern IrelandDon Kalb and Herman Tak, Critical junctions: Anthropology and history beyond the cultural turnJonathan Xavier Inda (ed.), Anthropologies of modernity: Foucault, governmentality, and life politicsTatjana Thelen, Privatisierung und soziale Ungleichheit in der osteuropäischen Landwirtschaft. Zwei Fallstudien aus Ungarn und RumänienAndré Celtel, Categories of self: Louis Dumont’s theory of the individualGerald Sider, Living Indian histories: Lumbee and Tuscarora people in North Carolina

Twenty Years after: Statute of Limitations and the Asymmetric Burdens of Justice in Northern Ireland and Post-war Germany

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
C K Martin Chung
Keyword(s):  
Northern Ireland ◽  
House Of Commons ◽  
Parliamentary Debates ◽  
The Troubles ◽  
The Past ◽  
Balanced Approach ◽  
Post War ◽  
The Uk ◽  
British State ◽  
Reconciliation Process

Abstract In 2018, that is 20 years after the conclusion of the Belfast Agreement ending the 30-year conflict in Northern Ireland known as the ‘Troubles’, the UK Government started a consultation on dealing with its legacy. The House of Commons Defence Committee proposes the enactment of a statute of limitations to shield veterans from further investigations into Troubles-related crimes. It would represent a ‘balanced’ approach to justice, as some paramilitary combatants had also received de facto amnesty through various schemes. This article argues that given the involvement of the British state in the historical conflict, a ‘balanced’ approach to dealing with the past is inadequate. Drawing on parallel parliamentary debates in Germany that began around 1965, that is also 20 years after the end of conflict, the article makes the case that an asymmetric approach is both promising and necessary for the reconciliation process to move forward.

scholarly journals Something Happening Quietly: Owen McCafferty's Theatre of Truth and Reconciliation

2017 ◽  
Vol 47 (supplement) ◽  
pp. 531-548
Author(s):  
Connal Parr
Keyword(s):  
Northern Ireland ◽  
Truth Commission ◽  
The Troubles ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation ◽  
The Past ◽  
Elected Representatives

This article concerns the Belfast dramatist Owen McCafferty (1961–) and his play Quietly, which debuted at the Abbey's Peacock Theatre in November 2012. Considering antecedents in McCafferty's earlier work, it illustrates how the play reflects a longstanding and contemporary condition whereby individuals in Northern Ireland deal with the legacy of the Troubles on their own terms, essentially bypassing elected representatives engaged in polemical disputes over the past. Based on a real bombing in 1974, the production's development is outlined prior to discussions of the play's depiction of violence, racism, women, and the prospects of an independent truth commission and ‘healing’.

scholarly journals Island cities: the case of Belfast, Northern Ireland

2015 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 5-8
Author(s):  
Stephen A. Royle
Keyword(s):  
Northern Ireland ◽  
Peace Process ◽  
Ways Of Knowing ◽  
The Troubles ◽  
Contested Space ◽  
The Past ◽  
Belfast Agreement ◽  
The Future ◽  
Briefing Document

Abstract The paper considers Belfast as an ‘island city’ with reference to issues of identity and economy and especially in connection with a series of statements from the ‘Futures of Islands’ briefing document prepared for the IGU’s Commission on Islands meeting in Kraków in August 2014. Belfast as a contested space, a hybrid British/Irish city on the island of Ireland, exemplifies well how ‘understandings of the past condition the future’, whilst the Belfast Agreement which brought the Northern Ireland peace process to its culmination after decades of violence known as the ‘Troubles’ speaks to ‘island ways of knowing, of comprehending problems - and their solutions’. Finally, Belfast certainly demonstrates that ‘island peoples shape their contested futures’

‘Truth recovery’ and the role of the security forces in the Northern Ireland Troubles

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aaron Edwards
Keyword(s):  
Northern Ireland ◽  
Three Dimensional ◽  
Peace Process ◽  
The State ◽  
Security Forces ◽  
The Troubles ◽  
The Past ◽  
British State ◽  
Peace And Reconciliation

In light of the controversies that remain about Bloody Sunday and other violent episodes involving the state, this chapter examines three important aspects to the debate around truth recovery and the role of the Security Forces in the Troubles. First, it asks what role the Security Forces played in the conflict according to official state narratives. Second, it examines the apparent obfuscation of security forces’ experiences by an anti-state republican agenda. Here the chapter makes the case that republicans do this because of a need to reinforce tropes of meaning that preserve the integrity of the killings carried out by the Provisional IRA, while justifying continued hostility to the British state as well as their commitment to a peace process. Lastly, the chapter asks what consequences these official state and anti-state representations of the past have had on attempts to ‘give a voice’ to Security Forces victims (particularly those from Britain) amidst the apparent obfuscating of terrorist violence. By marginalising the experiences of those who soldiered during the Troubles we risk skewing our understanding of the three dimensional nature of the conflict and further postponing the opportunities to move towards meaningful peace and reconciliation.

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