Two flags in the sand: anti-Communism in early Cold War Northern Ireland

2021 ◽  
pp. 97-127
Author(s):  
Stephen J. Goss
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Northern Ireland

Engendering transitional justice: questions of absence and silence

2007 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 173-187 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eilish Rooney
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Northern Ireland ◽  
State Formation ◽  
Transitional Justice ◽  
Social Stability ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Good Friday ◽  
Women's Equality ◽  
Belfast Agreement ◽  
Practical Implications

The globalisation of transitional justice as a framework for the resolution of conflicts is a remarkable phenomenon of the post-Cold War era (Bell and Craig, 2000). In different contexts this framework has significant consequences for women’s equality. This article asserts that a conceptualisation of gender that intersects with other dimensions of inequality in state formation provides an important tool for understanding contemporary transitional justice processes. This complex tool of intersectional analysis is used to explore the issue of women’s equality in Northern Ireland’s transition. This is applied to the problems of women’s absence from negotiations and the silence in these negotiations on matters to do with women’s day-to-day lives. The Good Friday/Belfast Agreement and the enactment of the equality legislation enacted in the Northern Ireland Act 1998 are the textual sites of analysis. These documents comprise the formal transitional framework for Northern Ireland. The article examines the theoretical tensions and practical implications inherent in universal claims for women’s equality in a situation where recognition of ‘difference’ is enshrined in both the equality legislation and the mechanisms for future democratic representation. The article concludes by suggesting that transitional justice discourse can benefit from the theoretical challenges posed by intersectionality and that social stability in NI and in other conflicted societies may be strengthened through addressing the corrosive impacts of inequality.

scholarly journals Tribeca Belfast and the on-screen regeneration of Northern Ireland

2020 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 11-26 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Baker
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Northern Ireland ◽  
Media Representations ◽  
City Centre ◽  
Global Competitiveness ◽  
Marginalized Groups ◽  
Professional Class ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The City ◽  
Mobile Professional

This article looks at media representations of the projected regeneration of Northern Ireland, paying particular attention to a recent promotional film made to elicit support for the redevelopment of a part of Belfast’s city centre. Commissioned by Castlebrooke Investments, ‘Tribeca Belfast’ offers a future prospectus of the city that is as superficial as it is bland. It is, however, illustrative of two influential ideas and strategies that took flight at the end of the Cold War and the ‘triumph of capitalism’. One seeks peace through the application of neo-liberal nostrums; the other combines brand theory with state-craft in pursuit of global competitiveness. Both propose models of citizenship that are politically benign, either preferring middle class solipsism or demanding brand loyalty. In Castlebrooke’s projection of a future Belfast, this translates into a city peopled by a mobile professional class, waited upon and entertained by servile locals. But such a sterile vision is inimical to building peace and political progress because it underestimates and downplays the significance of marginalized groups who through their activism and expressions of solidarity can lay better claim to the ‘heart and soul’ of Belfast evoked by Castlebrooke.

Communists: Ireland’s ‘Fifth Column’?

2019 ◽  
pp. 17-46
Author(s):  
John Mulqueen
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Great Britain ◽  
Northern Ireland ◽  
Communist Party ◽  
Trade Union ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Cold War

This chapter discusses perceptions of Moscow’s ‘fifth column’ in the Irish state. While the communist party amounted to little more than an insignificant cult, not all communists declared themselves openly. Significantly, other political strands, particularly the IRA, were seen to be susceptible to communist manipulation. During the Cold War this gave rise to exaggerated fears about communism and its agents. Dublin officials co-operated with the British, and the Americans, in combating communists and their left-wing republican allies. In Northern Ireland, the Communist Party (CPNI) remained extremely weak, but retained influence of some significance within trade union officialdom. And, in Britain, the Connolly Association attempted to organise Irish exiles under the tutelage of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB). The US embassy in Dublin was sensitive to any suggestion of communist activity; Irish and American officials placed intelligence co-operation on a formal footing in 1954.

Conclusion

2019 ◽  
pp. 245-248
Author(s):  
John Mulqueen
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Northern Ireland ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Communist Party ◽  
Church And State ◽  
Department Of Justice ◽  
The West ◽  
Peace Activists ◽  
Republican Movement

‘Military neutrality’ and ‘political neutrality’ are not the same. The Irish authorities did not allow the state’s non-aligned status to prevent them joining the crusade in the West against communism. They had a Cold War agenda. In the 1950s, leading officials such as Colonel Dan Bryan in G2, the Irish army intelligence directorate, believed that Ireland should assist the NATO powers in their global struggle. So, too, did Peter Berry, the Department of Justice secretary in Dublin. They supplied detailed information on the tiny communist organisation to the ‘hypersensitive’ Americans, for example, and provided intelligence on ‘peace’ activists to the British. Details on suspect activists ended up in the files of the Church’s ‘vigilance’ committee – a clear breach of the separation of Church and State. As functionaries in what Berry termed the ‘communist international’, Michael O’Riordan in Dublin and Desmond Greaves in London were seen to be taking directions from the British communist party, the CPGB. The communists had their own Cold War agenda to follow, with ‘world peace’ Moscow’s priority. But this issue did not capture the imagination of the working class, as a frustrated Roy Johnston discovered. Nevertheless, orders were orders for Ireland’s ‘fifth column’. Some communist-led organisations, however, were believed to have recruitment potential. Could the CPGB-directed Connolly Association, and its equivalent in New York – both ‘dangerous’ in Bryan’s view – convert Irish exiles by highlighting issues related to Northern Ireland? Was there any possibility that communists could succeed in infiltrating the Irish republican movement?...

Left-Wing Republicans Align with Moscow

2019 ◽  
pp. 139-168
Author(s):  
John Mulqueen
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Northern Ireland ◽  
Foreign Minister ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
Security Issue ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Republican Movement

In 1974 the Russian embassy opened in Dublin and the Irish foreign minister visited the Soviet Union in 1976. The American ambassador to Ireland used a Cold War prism when he expressed concerns that the Soviets in Dublin might pose an espionage threat to NATO. This chapter focuses on the increasingly pro-Soviet Official republican movement and its relationship with the Russian embassy in Dublin. Northern Ireland’s Troubles in the mid-1970s constituted the most pressing security issue for those concerned with Irish affairs, and inter-republican violence, involving the Official IRA, contributed to the crisis. The Northern Ireland Office (NIO) perceived the left-wing republican movement as being linked with Moscow-backed ‘terrorist organisations’ worldwide. The northern secretary, Merlyn Rees, described the increasingly peripheral Official movement as posing the most serious subversive threat because it had a ‘coherent philosophy’, unlike the Provisional IRA.

Global Interventions

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Debbie Lisle
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Northern Ireland ◽  
Military Interventions ◽  
Dark Tourism ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Tourism Revenue

Complex military interventions throughout the 1990s sought to redress the violence of previous R&R experiences by re-orienting soldiers through humanitarian and egalitarian values. Changing post-Cold War geopolitics also led to the rise of ‘Dark Tourism’ as places like South Africa, Israel, Palestine, Cyprus and Northern Ireland tried to increase tourism revenue at the same time as commemorating and exhibiting their difficult pasts.

Britain's ‘Vietnam syndrome’? Public opinion and British military intervention from Palestine to Yugoslavia

2000 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 99-121 ◽  
Author(s):  
PAUL DIXON
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
Northern Ireland ◽  
Civil Wars ◽  
Military Intervention ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
British Military ◽  
Vietnam Syndrome ◽  
New Generation ◽  
The Impact

There have been calls for policymakers to draw ‘lessons’ from Britain's experience of Empire and Northern Ireland to inform a new generation of post-Cold War interventions by the international community. This article emphasises the role that domestic public opinion, galvanized by the impact of casualties and the plight of military relatives, has played in shaping Britain's experience of ‘military intervention’ in the ‘civil wars’ of Palestine, Northern Ireland and the former Yugoslavia. Three principal arguments are put forward.

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