The British radical left and Northern Ireland during the ‘Troubles’

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Finn
Keyword(s):  
Northern Ireland ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Labour Party ◽  
British Politics ◽  
Northern Irish ◽  
Left Turn ◽  
The Troubles ◽  
Irish Republicanism ◽  
Radical Left

Britain’s radical left influenced the Northern Irish Troubles along two separate tracks: through its impact on British politics, and through its contacts with Irish republicanism and the Irish far left. The idea for a civil rights movement in Northern Ireland came from the far-left milieu, and was put into practice by activists who had cut their teeth on the British leftist scene. When conflict between the IRA and the British Army took centre-stage, sections of the British far left provided advice and encouragement for the Provos as they executed a left turn under the leadership of Gerry Adams, and Irish Trotskyists argued for a broad campaign of protest in support of republican prisoners. But despite their best efforts, left-wingers in Britain were unable to shift the Labour Party away from its position of support for the ‘bi-partisan’ consensus on Northern Ireland.

‘Communists’, the IRA and the Northern Ireland Crisis

2019 ◽  
pp. 47-74
Author(s):  
John Mulqueen
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Northern Ireland ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
National Liberation ◽  
The Troubles ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Us ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Rights Issue

At the beginning of the 1960s, the Soviet Union decided to support national liberation movements to undermine the US and its allies worldwide. Concurrently, the IRA leadership began to emphasise socialism and co-operate with communists in various agitations – the most significant would be the Northern Ireland civil rights movement. This chapter discusses perceptions of the republican movement’s ‘new departure’. William Craig, the Northern Ireland minister of home affairs, contended that the communist-influenced IRA aimed to manipulate the civil rights issue as a prelude to another armed campaign. In 1969 Northern Ireland’s prime minister, Major James Chichester-Clark, warned that some civil rights protesters aimed to create an ‘Irish Cuba’. The civil rights campaign inadvertently worsened sectarian tensions in Northern Ireland, leading to the outbreak of the Troubles.

Northern Ireland: A Very Short Introduction

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marc Mulholland
Keyword(s):  
Northern Ireland ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
21St Century ◽  
Home Rule ◽  
Northern Irish ◽  
Short Introduction ◽  
Irish History ◽  
Pivotal Moments ◽  
State Of Affairs

Northern Ireland: A Very Short Introduction explores the pivotal moments in Northern Irish history: the rise of republicanism in the 1800s, Home Rule and the civil rights movement, the growth of Sinn Féin and the Provisional IRA, and the DUP, before bringing the story up to date, drawing on newly available memoirs by paramilitary militants to offer previously unexplored perspectives, as well as recent work on Northern Irish gender relations. This VSI also includes a new chapter on the state of affairs in 21st-century Northern Ireland, considering the question of Irish unity in the light of both Brexit and the approaching anniversary of the 1921 partition, and drawing new lessons for the future.

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.

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.

Northern Ireland

2019 ◽  
pp. 191-217
Author(s):  
James Loughlin
Keyword(s):  
Northern Ireland ◽  
Public Support ◽  
British Politics ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Law And Order ◽  
Public Figure ◽  
The Troubles ◽  
War Of Independence ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Enoch Powell

This chapter assesses comparatively the attitude to Northern Ireland of Oswald Mosley and Enoch Powell, both seen as right wing politicians, if of varying degrees of extremism. For Mosley Powell was seen as a threat to his own position as a public figure, one whose controversial speech on immigration at Birmingham in 1968 attracted the kind of public support long unavailable to him, a pariah figure in British politics. Yet both were authoritarian figures, convinced of the certitude of their own opinions and with little time for dissentient views. On Northern Ireland, however, they exhibited significant differences. Mosley’s experience of British policy during the Irish War of Independence gave him an informed outlook on the kind of repressive and morally reprehensible measures it was necessary to avoid, and that a solution to the problem would require some kind of constitutional modification. Powell, in contrast, developed a paranoid conspiracy mindset, seeing the United Kingdom under threat from enemies within and without and with Northern Ireland just the latest site of conflict; and like the extreme Right offering a limited ‘law and order’ solution to the Troubles.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document