The British National Party and Ulster

2019 ◽  
pp. 286-318
Author(s):  
James Loughlin
Keyword(s):  
Northern Ireland ◽  
National Party ◽  
Extreme Right ◽  
Front National ◽  
Electoral Success ◽  
Local Council ◽  
Nationalist Party ◽  
The Troubles ◽  
Good Friday ◽  
British National Party

This chapter assesses the attempts of the British National Party, now the major extreme Right formation to impact on the Ulster problem in the 1990s, a decade which would see the Provisional IRA and loyalist paramilitary ceasefires and the difficult and torturous process that would produce the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement of 1998, an agreement that effectively ended the Troubles. For the BNP, however, the decade would be one of evolution as John Tyndall’s control of was gradually broken by Nick Griffin. Influenced by the electoral success of Jean Marine Le Pen’s Front National in France, Griffin would begin the process of party modernisation that would see the BNP gain 60 local council seats a two seat in the European Parliament in the first decade of this century. As the BNP’s British fortunes brightened Ulster as an issue gradually disappeared from its literature. British progress sweetened the pill of failure in Northern Ireland as the previous unfruitful experience of the extreme Right in Northern Ireland was repeated; with even the White Nationalist Party failing to make a major impact even as Northern Ireland developed a serious racist problem.

Fascism and Constitutional Conflict

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Loughlin
Keyword(s):  
Northern Ireland ◽  
National Party ◽  
Extreme Right ◽  
The Troubles ◽  
Union Movement ◽  
National Movements ◽  
Post War ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Regional Interests ◽  
British National Party

This work makes an original and important contribution, both to the field of British fascist/extreme Right studies and to the Ulster question. British fascist studies have to date largely ignored Northern Ireland, yet it engaged the attention of all the significant fascist movements, both pro-loyalist and pro-nationalist, from the British Fascists and Sir Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists in the inter-war period to Mosley’s Union Movement, the National Front and British National Party thereafter. As a recurring site of political unrest Northern Ireland should have provided a promising arena for development, however this work demonstrates the great differences between Northern Ireland and Britain that made this problematic, especially the singularity of regional concerns and outlooks and the prominence of the constitutional issue, leaving little space for external parties to develop. Nor did framing the Ulster problem in a European context, such as Mosley’s post-war concept of Europe-a-Nation prove effective. for pro-loyalist extreme Right organisations during the Troubles a common allegiance to symbols of Britishness was offset not only the distinctiveness of regional interests but by the presence of Catholics among their leaders, while their failure to develop successfully as national movements in Britain meant they had little to offer Ulster loyalists. In focussing on Northern Ireland, this study provides insights, both into the strengths and weaknesses of British fascist organisations in the UK as a whole together with how difficult the region was for British organisations to cultivate; indeed, not just the extreme Right but mainstream parties as well.

scholarly journals Richard Bean’s The Big Fellah (2010) and Jez Butterworth’s The Ferryman (2017): two plays about the Northern Troubles from outside of Northern Ireland

2020 ◽  
Vol 73 (2) ◽  
pp. 115-126 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hiroko Mikami
Keyword(s):  
Northern Ireland ◽  
Northern Irish ◽  
The Troubles ◽  
Good Friday ◽  
Good Friday Agreement

During the three decades of the Troubles of Northern Ireland (1969-1998), a remarkable amount of plays about the Troubles was written and almost of them, it seems, had been ‘monopolised’ by (Northern) Irish playwrights. Recently, however, certain changes about this monopoly have been witnessed and those who do not claim themselves as Irish descendants have begun to choose the Northern Troubles as their themes. Also, there have been growing concerns about violence worldwide since 9.11. This article deals with two plays, Richard Bean’s The Big Fellah and Jez Butterworth’s The Ferryman, neither of which was written by an Irish playwright and examines whether and to what extent it is possible to say that they can transcend regional boundaries and become part of global memories in the context of the post-Good Friday Agreement and the post 9.11.

‘Britain's Irish Question: Britain's European Question?’ British-Irish relations in the context of European Union and The Belfast Agreement

2000 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 83-97 ◽  
Author(s):  
ELIZABETH MEEHAN
Keyword(s):  
Northern Ireland ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Global Perspective ◽  
Northern Irish ◽  
The Troubles ◽  
Good Friday ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Irish Question ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Eu

If students of world politics can be reasonably accused of ignoring the Troubles in Northern Ireland—in part because they seemed to have little to do with the larger East-West confrontation and partly because they were so obviously about something distinctly national in character—then by the same token specialists on Northern Ireland can justly be accused of a certain intellectual parochialism and of failing to situate the long war within a broader global perspective. The quite unexpected outbreak of peace however only emphasizes the need for a wider understanding of the rise and fall of the Northern Irish conflict. This article explores the relationship between the partial resolution of the Irish Question—as expressed in the Good Friday Agreement of 1998—and the changing character of the European landscape. Its central thesis is that while there were many reasons for the outbreak of peace in the 1990s, including war weariness, it is difficult to understand what happened without situating it in a larger European framework and the new definition of sovereignty to which the EU has given birth.

The mental health impact of the Troubles, 1969–1999

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Bolton
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Northern Ireland ◽  
Health Impact ◽  
Peace Accord ◽  
The Troubles ◽  
Good Friday ◽  
Belfast Agreement ◽  
Good Friday Agreement ◽  
The Impact

This Chapter is the first of two that describe efforts to understand the mental health and related impacts of the conflict in Northern Ireland, often referred to as The Troubles. The Chapter covers the period from the outbreak of violence in the late 1960’s up until the period around the peace accord, the Belfast Agreement (or Good Friday Agreement) of April 1998. The early studies reveal little, if any, major effects on the wellbeing and mental health of the population, but as the years go by, evidence starts to build of the impact of the violence, particularly as the ceasefires of the early and mid 1990’s take hold. The developing understanding of the impact was due in part to the evolution of methods and approaches being used by researchers - which is discussed in more detail at the end of Chapter 5.

scholarly journals The Representation and Overcoming of Perpetrator Trauma in Rachel Seiffert’s Afterwards

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-9
Author(s):  
Paula Romo-Mayor
Keyword(s):  
Northern Ireland ◽  
Structural Violence ◽  
Memory Studies ◽  
Acting Out ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Controversial Subject ◽  
The Troubles ◽  
Good Friday ◽  
Mau Mau ◽  
Good Friday Agreement

Rachel Seiffert’s novel Afterwards (2007) explores the ethically challenging and often neglected fact of perpetrator trauma resulting from sustained structural violence. This controversial subject is conveyed through the stories of Joseph and David, two British ex-servicemen belonging to different generations, who attempt to overcome their war traumas years after their respective involvement in The Troubles in Northern Ireland (from the late 1960s to the Good Friday Agreement of 1998), and the Mau Mau Uprising (running from 1952 to 1960), that ended with Kenya’s independence. The novel fittingly organises the narrative around moments of acting-out, when the protagonists feel equally disconnected from self and world, yet deal with their traumatised condition in strikingly different ways. The paper proposes an analysis of Afterwards from the perspective of Trauma and Memory Studies, with a view to exploring how the “palimpsestuous” (Dillon 4) structure of the novel, along with the repetitive use of imagery evoking holes and emptiness (Bloom 210), allow Seiffert to “perform” (Ganteau and Onega 10) the workings of the disturbed psyches of Joseph and David, so that it builds the unrepresentability of trauma into the textual fabric of the novel.

scholarly journals FEAR AND LOATHING: THE POLITICAL DISCOURSE IN RELATION TO MUSLIMS AND ISLAM IN THE BRITISH CONTEMPORARY SETTING

2010 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 221-236
Author(s):  
Chris Allen
Keyword(s):  
Los Angeles ◽  
Political Discourse ◽  
British Politics ◽  
National Party ◽  
Los Angeles Times ◽  
Electoral Success ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
The Past ◽  
Left And Right ◽  
British National Party

Following the attacks on the World Trade Centre in 2001 (‘9/11’), the Los Angeles Times wrote that the ‘next big thing’ was likely to be fear. This paper seeks to consider how the notion of fear and threat has influenced and shaped British political discourse in relation to Muslims and Islam – especially ‘home-grown’ Muslims and Islam - over the past decade or so. Considering the broad spectrum of British politics, including both mainstream and fringe, this paper begins with a consideration of the British National Party (BNP) and the way in which it has grown and gained electoral success on the back of overtly anti-Muslim, anti-Islamic campaigns. Considering the influence of this on the establishment and development of the English Defence League, the discourse of other political actors including the New Labour Government is explored to highlight the closing of difference between the left and right wings of British political discourse. To conclude, Martin Barker’s theories of ‘new racism’ are explored as a means of understanding the changes in the British political spaces before conclusions are drawn that highlight what might be evidence of a hardening of ideas and attitudes about Muslims and Islam more widely

scholarly journals From Troubles to Post-Conflict Theatre in Northern Ireland

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Phelan
Keyword(s):  
Northern Ireland ◽  
Northern Irish ◽  
Irish Theatre ◽  
Irish History ◽  
The Troubles ◽  
Good Friday ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Late Twentieth Century

The signing of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998 was a watershed moment in Irish culture, as much as in the political sphere. Up until that moment, late twentieth-century Irish history had been dominated by the conflict that erupted in Northern Ireland in the late 1960s, and Northern Irish theatre was dominated by the ‘Troubles play’—initially in the 1960s in the work of Sam Thompson, and later in plays by writers such as John Boyd, Graham Reid, and, in more complex ways, behind the formally adventurous work of Stewart Parker and Anne Devlin. However, since 1998, writers such as Owen McCafferty have inaugurated the search for a theatrical form appropriate to a post-conflict culture in which scars and divisions still remained. This chapter covers the arc of development of Northern drama over the period, leading up to some of the innovative performances of companies such as Theatre of Witness.

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