Northern Irish Politics

Although intergroup contact is one of the most prominent interventions to reduce prejudice, the generalization of contact effects is still a contentious issue. This research further examined the rarely studied secondary transfer effect (STE; Pettigrew, 2009), by which contact with a primary outgroup reduces prejudice toward secondary groups that are not directly involved in the contact. Across 3 cross-sectional studies conducted in Cyprus (N = 1,653), Northern Ireland (N = 1,973), and Texas (N = 275) and 1 longitudinal study conducted in Northern Ireland (N = 411), the present research sought to systematically rule out alternative accounts of the STE and to investigate 2 potential mediating mechanisms (ingroup reappraisal and attitude generalization). Results indicated that, consistent with the STE, contact with a primary outgroup predicts attitudes toward secondary outgroups, over and above contact with the secondary outgroup, socially desirable responding, and prior attitudes. Mediation analyses found strong evidence for attitude generalization but only limited evidence for ingroup reappraisal as an underlying process. Two out of 3 tests of a reverse model, where contact with the secondary outgroup predicts attitudes toward the primary outgroup, provide further evidence for an indirect effect through attitude generalization. Theoretical and practical implications of these results are discussed, and directions for future research are identified.

Trauma demands a melancholic orientation to the past, a wish to recover what is lost. In conflicts located in long histories of political difference, a focus on the traumas acquired through the violences of the past is crucial, but this focus may do more than inform the politics of the present. The risk is that the symptoms of the trauma become the symptoms of policy. The political environment that emerges lacks the maturity to understand the ordinary emotions of politics and this further limits the possibility of creative political horizons. In short, in the interests of placating trauma survivors and sometimes in the interests of ensuring no issue gets left behind, politics can be trumped by trauma. Here, we discuss how this has occurred in Northern Ireland and how the 'trauma' of non-indigenous Australians has trumped the possibility of addressing the 'unfinished business of justice' for Indigenous Australians. Conflictual societies attempting to deal with troubled histories through legal and political reform often have to confront the residues of trauma that accompany protracted violence and bloodshed. On one level, moves towards political transition can be seen as a means of moving these societies beyond conflict into a new phase where old enmities, and the events they gave rise to, can be consigned to the past. More practically, however, conflict-ual histories usually give rise to political debates about how to manage conflict in the present. That is, there is often recognition that the past cannot be forgotten and that the best that can be hoped for is the discovery of a means of helping divided people to live together peacefully in the future. The orientation towards peaceful coexistence is particularly the case where societies are populated by a range of individuals who have experienced deeply traumatic events

The goal of ‘learning’ from peace processes is widely expressed in conflict resolution scholarship and practice but inadequately understood. This article investigates what kinds of knowledge can be learned from a peace process, the theoretical and methodological bases of such learning, and what impact it may have. The article begins with an interdisciplinary discussion of reasons to learn, the kinds of lessons proposed in the peace process literature and how theories of learning may be applied to a peace process. Following this is a case study of the sharing of the Northern Ireland peacemaking experience with other conflict-affected societies, especially through facilitated dialogues between decision-makers. This contributes to a comprehensive ideal model of learning from peace processes – something which, it is argued, may result in ‘transformative learning’ and a ‘policy paradigm shift’ towards de-escalatory conflict management. A definition of a peace process ‘lesson’ is offered to guide future research.

The former Maze Prison / Long Kesh in Lisburn, near Belfast, is one of the primary sites associated with the ‘The Troubles’ in Northern Ireland. Controversy about the site’s future makes it clear that the redevelopment of contested heritage cannot be divorced from the policy process of a negotiated settlement between opposed communities and parties. However, research indicates that, despite the stated ‘inclusive’ intent of the Maze / Long Kesh redevelopment, decision-making about the site is often viewed as removed from stakeholder interests and input. Instead many see plans for, as well as ongoing arguments about, the site redevelopment as determined by party politics, as well as parochial interests pitting those based in Lisburn against others in Belfast. Thus community level and other stakeholder interests are often perceived to be ignored. Findings are informed by in-depth interviews with representatives from two loyalist and three republican ex-prisoner groups each representing different paramilitary factions, as well as a loyalist cultural organization, a cross-community victims/survivors group and a community relations charity. The material is balanced by further interviews with senior civil servants and politicians from both nationalist and unionist parties.

In 1980, three Republican women prisoners held in Armagh prison in Northern Ireland joined the hunger strike being conducted by male Republican prisoners in Maze Prison. Overshadowed by the fatal 1981 strike, the 1980 strike involved these women in Armagh, who challenged the traditional nationalist notion of the strong male warrior, while generating sympathy and solidarity across the globe, including with the far left and the women’s liberation movement in Britain. This article will look at how the left and the women’s liberation movement in both Britain and Ireland looked to portray these women within their competing narratives.

The problem of how to deal with weapons held by paramilitary groups looms large over recent Northern Irish history. It delayed power-sharing for nine years after the 1998 Agreement and contributed to seismic change in the political landscape, but existing research has failed to adequately account for decommissioning’s massive political impact. This article addresses this topic. It probes how the main parties handled the issue of decommissioning after 1998 and how that issue, in turn, affected the parties and party system. A theme throughout is how the parties’ contrasting approaches to
decommissioning reflected their divergent perspectives on one of the peace process’s central, and most controversial, structural features: the inclusion of paramilitary-linked
parties. This theme is taken up more directly in the concluding discussion which strives, with the aid of some of the theoretical literature, to tie together the threads from the main analysis and explains why decommissioning had such a dramatic impact on peace implementation in Northern Ireland.

ABSTRACT
Given the relative lack of research on sustainable development in Northern Ireland, this paper focuses on the tensions between environmental governance and regulation on the one hand, and the ‘post-conflict’ imperative for Northern Ireland to compete and grow as a regional economy without continued British state subvention and subsidisation. The paper outlines how this ‘trade-off’ between ‘environment’ and ‘economy’ is essentially misplaced. It argues that this trade-off can be avoided if there is a shift in focus from an ‘environment versus the economy’ policy position to one in which the ‘triple bottom line’ (social, economic and environmental) of sustainable development becomes the over-arching policy agenda. Sustainable development, unlike either orthodox environmental or economic policy, also connects centrally with the unique ‘post-conflict transformation’ agenda of Northern Ireland. For example, promoting a human rights civic culture, tackling socioeconomic inequality and social exclusion, and building a shared future based on supporting sustainable communities and an innovative model of a ‘green(ing) economy’ goes beyond orthodox economic growth. However, it is clear from the Executive’s Programme for Government, failure to support the creation of an independent Environment Protection Agency, and above all the prioritisation of orthodox economic growth based on foreign direct investment that neither environmental protection nor sustainable development is or will be high on the political or policy agenda in Northern Ireland.

This article examines the concept of photographic iconicity in relation to Italian Press photographer, Fulvio Grimaldi's photograph of the Derry-born marcher, John [Jackie] Francis Duddy at Bloody Sunday, 1972. This historical photograph continues to instigate remembering and forgetting among nationalists and unionists in the context of Northern Ireland. It uses, in state-led government inquiries, among nationalist communities and the form of artistic intersessions, are demonstrated to be consistent with the hallmarks of iconicity, particularly the ability to situate viewers close the the events in an historically specific moment. Additional factors, such as the significance of the photographer and the materiality of the image and objects in the image are also considered, in relation to Grimaldi's image, for the ways they instigate recall, compel contestation, and maintain the photograph's iconic status.

This article examines the role of ‘constructive ambiguity’ in the 1998 Belfast Agreement and in its implementation, and demonstrates how it offers a particularly illuminating
lens for analysing the persistence and then conclusion of political instability during the years 1998–2007. It begins with a description of what constructive ambiguity is and how it
works. After outlining how constructive ambiguity featured in the Agreement, it then explores the manner in which the main political parties fashioned constructively ambiguous implementation strategies in response to the ambiguities of the post-Agreement context. The conclusion discusses the legacy of constructive ambiguity in Northern Ireland, noting how it has aided political progress whilst being unhelpful to the improvement of inter-communal relationships.

The article seeks to demonstrate how marchers in the annual LGBTQ Pride Parade strategically contest and reclaim heteronormative public spaces in Belfast, Northern Ireland. There is an exploration of participants adapting transnational symbolic representations and discourses to the distinct national-local cultural milieu in which they are scripted and performed. The discursive frames, symbols, and performances of Belfast Pride are compared to those of sectarian parades in the city. The subaltern spatial performances and symbolic representations of Belfast Pride are depicted as confronting a universalized set of heteronormative discourses involving sexuality and gender identity, while at the same time contesting a particularized set of dominant local-national discourses related to both ethno-national sectarianism and religious fundamentalism in Northern Ireland.

We empirically identify the considered views of the Northern Ireland public on the relative merits of two possible models of a united Ireland: an integrated united Ireland in which Northern Ireland is absorbed into an all-island polity, and a united Ireland in which Northern Ireland continues to exist as a devolved entity. We use data from a specially designed one-day citizens' assembly. We report analyses based on quantitative examination of pre-and post-deliberation surveys and qualitative analysis of the transcripts of participants' deliberation. We find that, after learning about the different two models, citizens' support for the devolved model declined, particularly among Protestant participants. We elaborate the implications of our findings for any referendum on the constitutional future of Northern Ireland.

More so than other regions within the United Kingdom, Northern Ireland’s deep-seated religious traditions, Catholic and Protestant alike, have shaped the roles and structures of both the public and private lives of men and women.  Within the legal and political spheres, both religions (and governments) find common ground on issues such as abortion and contraception, which is evidenced in the strict controls placed on abortion in Northern Ireland (the only region in the UK to have such limits) and the late arrival of legal contraception in the Republic of Ireland, where it also remains illegal to perform abortions, and until recently to even disseminate information on obtaining an abortion.  In addition, reforms to domestic violence legislation in Northern Ireland in 1980 was applicable to “married couples only and not to cohabitees, since the latter ‘chose to live in sin they would have to face the consequences’”, though this legislation was subsequently amended to include those women cohabitating with their partners (McWilliams in Hughes, 83).  In essence, such laws place a woman’s bodily and reproductive rights second to men’s, a legal status that echoes the domestic reality of many Northern Irish homes.  While the rest of the UK was moving forward (the Abortion Act was passed in 1967 and the workplace became more female-friendly with the Equal Pay Act of 1970 and the Sex Discrimination Act of 1975), Northern Ireland lagged behind with regards to prioritizing issues concerning women.  While similar legislation was passed in Northern Ireland soon after the British originals (with the aforementioned exception of the Abortion Act), the sectarian nature of the Troubles meant that “[s]ubsequent legislation in the field of employment rights has shifted the emphasis to tackling religious and political discrimination”, rather than gender discrimination (Mahon and Morgan in Galligan et.al, 61).  Such legislation perhaps further discouraged working-class women from speaking out for their own rights, as it would have significantly affected their working-class male counterparts.  Thus, the struggle simply to gain an active role in the male-dominated political process has meant that raising women’s concerns is often postponed or avoided: for example, the Northern Ireland Women’s Coalition (NIWC) put such issues as abortion on the backburner, seeing their priority as solely “woman’s participation, and campaigning on reproductive choice would not have contributed strategically to that end” (Fearon 27).  The odds have surely been stacked against the women of the province.
Following from this, my paper will consider the policing of women by men within the home and the workplace, as well as the policing of women by other women, in three plays by Gary Mitchell: As the Beast Sleeps, The Force of Change, and Loyal Women.  Within these plays, it is evident that Mitchell ultimately reflects distinct and separate spheres for men and women in his drama, as gendered space exists both within and without of the home.  There also exists an underlying desire, on behalf of the male characters, to keep the women confined to the private, domestic sphere, rather than the public, political sphere.  Within the home of Kyle and Sandra in As the Beast Sleeps, Sandra reigns supreme, though she is firmly excluded from the paramilitary undertakings of her husband; in the Antrim Road Police Station, the setting of The Force of Change, Caroline comes up against one obstacle after another as she tries to navigate her male-dominated workplace and maintain order in her own home; while in Loyal Women, the Women’s UDA is shown to have no autonomy from its father organization, and wind up perpetuating violence against their own at the behest of men.  But although these women are constantly met with challenges from male, as well as female, characters, they remain determined, strong, and resilient. Indeed, when considering the majority of female characters in Gary Mitchell’s plays, it is hard to imagine that he “‘found it hard to take women seriously. […] I took years fighting against it in my own psyche, this thing of not respecting women’” (quoted in McKay, 117).  If anything, the women in Mitchell’s plays are more deserving of respect than the men, as they constitute some of the strongest characters in his oeuvre. 

Works Cited
Fearon, Kate. Women’s Work: The Story of the Northern Ireland Women’s Coalition. Belfast: Blackstaff Press, 1999.

Galligan, Yvonne, Eilís Ward and Rick Wilford, eds. Contesting Politics: Women in Ireland, North and South. Oxford: Westview Press, 1999.

Hughes, Eamonn, ed. Culture and Politics in Northern Ireland: 1960-1990. Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 1991.

McKay, Susan. Northern Protestants: An Unsettled People. Belfast: Blackstaff Press, 2005.

In the spring of 2002 Israeli flags began to appear in loyalist communities in Northern Ireland. The appearance of these flags was in one respect explained as a response to the increased prevalence of Palestinian flags in nationalist neighbourhoods. However, the appearance and continued display of the Israeli flag can be seen to extend beyond a “wholly relational” dynamic to encompass the connotations this flag has come to possess for those who fly it in regard to the contemporary political situation within Northern Ireland and events on the international stage in the context of the United States' post-September 11 “War on Terror.” At the same time, the flying of the Israeli flag in Northern Ireland provides a graphic demonstration of the increased prevalence of political symbolism in the post-Troubles era and the way in which groups in Northern Ireland have sought to reference and draw upon similar conflict situations for their own agendas.

Given the potential importance of television in divided societies, it is surprising that the near-universal availability of Ireland's national station, RTÉ, in the north-eastern corner of Ireland has only recently been achieved. This was facilitated by the new political arrangements in Northern Ireland and by the final switch-off of analogue television signals across the UK and Republic of Ireland. Why was progress on this issue so slow? Did television have a role to play in promoting tolerance and mutual understanding between the people of Ireland? The issue has played out against the backdrop of the turbulent politics of Northern Ireland and wider Anglo-Irish relations, international broadcasting regulation as well as commercial and rights considerations. This article charts the changing political, legal and technical circumstances that now allow widespread free access to RTÉ television in Northern Ireland after a seemingly interminable period of gestation. This marks the achievement of a long-held public policy aspiration of successive Irish governments.

Despite the seismic shift of Sinn Fein from being the ‘‘mouthpiece’’ of the Provisional Irish Republican Army to the largest nationalist force in Northern Ireland, the party continues to project its objectives within the revolutionary politics and tradition of 1916. Whilst various groups across the island of Ireland stress their loyalty to Irish independence and allegiance to their republican forefathers, 2016 also plays host to devolved assembly elections in Northern Ireland. The centenary of the Easter Rising is therefore a poignant moment to reassess republican politics, more specifically, the relationship between the armed revolutionary tradition and constitutionalism. Within the post-peace process era Sinn Fein have been accused of maintaining an autocratic culture and an intra-party framework that is more representative of a clandestine revolutionary organisation than a political party. Yet, simultaneously, Sinn Fein have not been immune to the pressures experienced by other modern political parties, bound by the laws of electoral competition and driven by office-seeking priorities. In order to explore Sinn Fe´in within the modern political arena, this article firstly examines the broader debate surrounding how armed groups make the transition into constitutional politics. Secondly, public opinion survey data is used to judge the basis of Sinn Fein’s electoral appeal. Finally, internal party documents are used to examine party structure, intra-party democracy, and professionalisation in order to judge the extent to which Sinn Fein have completed the transition from being a ‘‘mouthpiece’’ to their armed counterpart, towards being a ‘‘normal’’ political party.

This paper is focused on the dangers and opportunities for Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland presented by Brexit. It argues that the difficulties cannot analytically be understood nor the opportunities seized until we disaggregate ‘identity politics’, seeing it not as a function of a homogenous identity but of identity change. Once set in place, however, identity politics takes on its own dynamic. Exogenous shocks can open the opportunity of alternative aims, alliances and identity-coalitions, and then the task is to find the institutional and political incentives to guide identity change in more open, deliberative and dialogic directions. That is what a constitutional moment provides.  I argue that the exogenous shock of Brexit opens the way for such a period of North-South deliberation and reconstruction. The paper begins with the general argument, and goes on to show how Brexit stimulates Irish government action and can lead to a constitutional moment, one focused not on the state in control in Northern Ireland but on creating deliberative political communities on the island and in its two parts .

"The oldest records indicate that the performance of poetry in Gaelic Ireland was normally accompanied by music, providing a point of continuity with past tradition while bolstering a sense of community in the present. Music would also offer, particularly for poets writing in English from the eighteenth century onwards, a perceived authenticity, a connection with an older tradition perceived as being untarnished by linguistic and cultural division.

While providing an innovative analysis of theoretical work in music and literary studies, this book examines how traditional Irish music, including the related song tradition (primarily in Irish), has influenced, and is apparent in, the work of Irish poets. While looking generally at where this influence is evident historically and in contemporary Irish poetry, this work focuses primarily on the work of six poets, three who write in English and three who write primarily in the Irish language: Thomas Kinsella, Seamus Heaney, Ciaran Carson, Gearóid Mac Lochlainn, Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill and Cathal Ó Searcaigh."

The city of Belfast, Northern Ireland, has experienced a major political transformation and urban revitalization since the signing of the Good Friday Agreement in April 1998. Though the incidence of sectarian violence has declined dramatically since the end of the “Troubles” (i.e., Northern Ireland’s decades-long political conflict), most residential neighborhoods in Belfast remain heavily segregated between Protestants and Roman Catholics. Moreover, sporadic episodes of rioting and property destruction by sectarian youths continue to plague the city, particularly during the annual summer “marching season.” As a relatively new phenomenon in Belfast, skateboarding is especially prevalent in the mostly non-sectarian spaces of the city center. Protestant and Catholic young people often skate together in the same vicinity, thus interacting with the urban “other.” The influence of skateboarding on the collective identities and ethno-religious perceptions of Belfast youth are investigated in this paper, with an emphasis on the role of subcultural spaces in bridging the sectarian divide. Everyday acts of resistance to traditional sectarian norms and values, occurring within the spaces of skateboarding, are described and analyzed. The paper is based primarily on ethnographic observations and semi-structured interviews with skateboarding teens and young adults, conducted by the author in Belfast during July/August 2010.

Expressions and conceptions of loyalty are especially potent and contentious in the constitution of collective identities in Northern Ireland. On the one hand we have the Orange marches - Protestant religious-political expressions of loyalty to the British monarch and Protestant faith which date back to the late eighteenth century.  Some of these insist on marching through Catholic-nationalist areas where they are not welcome and are seen as expressions of Protestant-unionist domination and oppression.  Thus, the relationship between loyalty, identity, and history is particularly interesting in Northern Ireland, not least because there are long-standing political discourses, practices and institutions associated with ‘loyalism’, within unionist politics and history.  Loyalism in Northern Ireland is an ideology, a movement and an identity, associated with more extreme unionism, in the same way that ‘republicanism’ is associated with more extreme or militant ‘nationalism’.

This short booklet is a product of several years spent analysing Ulster Loyalism from a personal and academic perspective. It is something of a truism that those who write regularly on this topic are often socially and geographically detached from their subject matter. In our case the reverse is more accurate. While we both hail from similar working class Protestant
backgrounds we nevertheless hope that our academic and professional training has enabled us to run a fairly objective diagnostic check on the current condition of Progressive Loyalism, a decade on from the paramilitary ceasefires, in order to provide helpful recommendations for its future development. To that end our work here is intended principally as a problemsolving exercise rather than as a purely academic treatise: we find little merit in pontificating about something that ultimately invites dispassionate and critically rigorous analysis.

"Meehan, Níall., and Horgan, Jean. (1987).

Survey on attitudes of Dublin Population to Section 31 of the Broadcasting Act

Includes brief history of implementation of Section 31 of the Broadcasting Act and foreword by Professor Farrell Corcoran, (7 January 1987). State broadcasting censorship arising out coverage of the conflict in Northern Ireland, the 'Troubles', was imposed on the Irish state broadcaster, RTE, in 1971 and removed in 1994. It was perfected during the ministerial reign, as Minister for Posts and Telegraphs, of Dr Conor Cruise O'Brien between 1973-77.

PDF, [5314KB] available at:
http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/othelem/media/meehan/meehanhorgan070187.pdf
on
http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/othelem/media/source.htm

Dublin: National Institute for higher Education (now Dublin City University)."

abstract: From the early 1970s Conor Cruise O'Brien acquired a reputation in Ireland and internationally as one of the most vociferous critics of nationalism. While many see the origins of his critique in his reaction to the emergence of militant nationalism in Northern Ireland at this time, in this article I argue that the foundations of O'Brien's anti-nationalism had already been laid in the postwar European context. The article illustrates how O'Brien's historical and intellectual experience in the aftermath of the Second World War had an essentially conservative influence on his thought, providing him with a pool of ideas which he would later employ in his attack on nationalism, and Irish nationalism in particular. I therefore maintain that there is a lot more continuity in O'Brien's thought than is sometimes assumed.

Describing the impacts of political intervention in arts and cultural policy in Northern Ireland, using Belfast Exposed as a case study. The article traces Belfast Exposed's early years  as a local community photography project founded by local trade unionist Danny Burke in West Belfast in 1983 as a community response to the conflict in Northern Ireland.

The article raises broader questions of autonomy, freedom and responsibility for arts and cultural organizations operating within highly politicized environments.

This article examines aspects of Ireland’s foreign relations in 2019. It begins with a synopsis of elections to the European Parliament, which took place in May, assessing the broad European trends and how the elections played out in Ireland. We then examine the Brexit negotiations process, particularly the impact of Boris Johnson’s rise to the British premiership. The article also assesses the significance of the Westminster election vote in Northern Ireland, which many considered a proxy for a referendum on Irish unity and which produced for the first time a greater number of nationalist than unionist MPs. The review then appraises relations
between Scotland and Ireland as a bilateral review was launched to examine how the two countries might cooperate over the succeeding five years. Relations between Ireland and Russia are then surveyed, particularly Tánaiste Simon Coveney’s visit to Russia, the first bilateral meeting between foreign ministers since Ireland chaired the OSCE in 2012 and coming one year after both countries expelled each other’s diplomats as a result of the poisoning of military intelligence officer Sergei Skripal and his daughter. Subsequent sections are devoted to relations with Armenia and Turkey while the visits of Donald Trump and Mike Pence provide opportunities to reflect on the rapidly changing interactions between Ireland and the United States. Before concluding, the article contains a
brief section devoted to those significant figures in Irish and international affairs who died during the year.

This review examines elements of Ireland’s foreign relations during 2017. It
presents a summary of domestic politics in Ireland, including the Fine Gael
leadership race that followed Enda Kenny’s retirement as party leader after sixteen years. It also explores the negotiations on Britain’s departure from the European Union and the implications of Brexit for Ireland. In addition, it considers significant political events and processes within Northern Ireland during 2017; the response of the Irish political elite to Donald Trump’s first year as US president; and government plans to double Ireland’s ‘global footprint’, in diplomatic terms, by 2025. Significant figures in Irish and international politics who died during the year are noted.

Through an analysis of Belfast, Northern Ireland and Nicosia, Cyprus, this article considers how separation barriers catalyze social mixing and cooperation in ethnonationally divided cities. Due to their highly visible and symbolic nature as well as their physical location at the interface between communities, I argue that the barrier is a critical infrastructural element whose management and symbolic interpretation can motivate intercommunal cooperation – just as it can incite conflict. This article analyzes four socio-material interventions designed to ameliorate spatial and social divide: 1) the regeneration or aestheticization of barriers; 2) the negotiation of border openings; 3) the use of the border as a catalyst for intergroup activities; and 4) the creation of shared spaces at the boundary line. I discuss the possibilities and limitations of these practices both as confidence-building measures and as activities that foster social mixing. The article concludes by querying if barrier projects may inadvertently funnel funding away from more localized, single-community peacebuilding activities.

Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist party, currently the fourth largest in the House of Commons, should not be understood in simple left/right terms, argues Sophie Whiting. In post-election negotiations the DUP will seek to protect funding but also to block Westminster ‘meddling’ in the region’s social and moral affairs.

Within the subsidized arts, important conversations around arts practice, the social value of art and the relationship between art and the public rarely occur except at moments of crisis and then merely as subtext. The ongoing reorganisation of Northern Ireland's public administration has provided the latest field of battle, where, inevitably in an environment where resources are scarce and competition fierce, unresolved ideological and aesthetic concerns have tended once again to become externally -which is to say politically directed -focused on the prize of official recognition in the form of funding.

The use of deterrence, coercion and brute force in effecting peace in asymmetric conflict is often overlooked and a premium instead is placed on diplomacy and bargaining between states and non-state terrorist groups. Indeed, the relative success of the Northern Ireland “peace process” since the 1990s has amplified the sound of dialogue as a means of ending violent conflict in deeply divided societies. This article adopts a different perspective. Borrowing from strategic theory, it examines the British state's application of force in bringing the Provisional IRA to the negotiating table. It argues that in the “battle of wills” between the British state's security forces and the IRA, a more coercive strategy was adopted by Britain than is openly admitted in the scholarly literature on the Northern Ireland “troubles.” The article concludes with several observations on the importance of the use of force in counter-terrorism operations.

This article investigates how urban spatial changes have influenced the construction, negotiation, and transformation of collective identities in contemporary Belfast, Northern Ireland, and features an ethnographic study of local teenagers and young adults (ages 15 to 28). Spatially splintered for years by an ideologically driven conflict known as the Troubles, Belfast was bifurcated primarily along ethno-religious lines. However, the city’s socio-spatial structure was modified to some extent beginning in the late 1990s as a result of major political developments such as the enactment of Northern Ireland’s Good Friday peace accord. The continued existence of in-group/out-group perceptions among young people in post-Troubles Belfast is a major focus of this article. In addition, the construction of shared (non-oppositional) spaces populated mostly by youth is explored, based on the theory that the presence of alternative subcultures and related neo-tribes in such spaces effectively reconfigures social boundaries and diminishes the salience of traditional identification categories. Though sectarian perceptions were discovered to exist among many respondents, traditional social barriers were found to have eroded in certain settings. In particular, recently constructed shared social spaces have been utilized by youth to effectively blur schismatic distinctions and at least partially transform their collective identities.

New Labour‟s superintendence of the Northern Ireland peace process has re-opened debate about the party‟s stance on the “Irish question”. While some commentators hold the view that it remains ideologically wedded to the nationalist goal of Irish unity, it could be argued that Labour‟s Northern Ireland policy has been characterised by an ambivalent non-interventionist approach. The “peace strategy” pursued by Tony Blair‟s three administrations between 1997 and 2007 is examined in light of the political discourse articulated by key actors within New Labour itself. Moreover, the interpretive approach in British political science is utilised to illuminate key variables, such as ideology and values, driving the party‟s view on sovereignty in the United Kingdom more broadly. In applying this analytical framework the article explains how New Labour‟s policy towards Northern Ireland underwent significant adaptation under Blair‟s leadership and why it finally achieved its overarching objective of consigning the violent conflict to atrophy.

The injunction to stay silent – not to speak about any aspect of republican activity or even about one’s own identity as a republican – remains a particularly intriguing issue in Northern Ireland because it appears that, with the cessation of the Northern Ireland conflict, many paramilitaries have actually been anxious to speak about their involvement in the IRA. The Belfast Project, launched by the Boston College in 2001, offered them an opportunity to speak from beyond the grave, by means of recordings to be kept hidden in a special Treasure Room of the John J. Burns Library until they die. The project went awry thus contributing to the removal of the republican code of silence. This paper focuses on the Project’s ramifications for contemporary attitudes to silence and to the legacy of the Troubles in Northern Ireland. It takes a closer look at how the culture of silence has affected individual writings from Northern Ireland (including Heaney’s poetry, Keenan’s latest novel, Seamus Deane’s writing and David Park’s fiction) and, on a more general scale, it addresses the tight link between silence and death in Irish history and culture.

The work of Belfast poet Padraic Fiacc is an important but critically neglected contribution to the canon of Northern Irish poetry. This article explores Fiacc's work, giving particular attention to the collections published during the bloodiest years of the Northern Ireland conflict and to the anthology of poems on the subject of the conflict which he edited and published in 1974 with the Blackstaff Press. Beyond the intrinsic value of Fiacc's poems themselves, his work has the benefit of causing us to reconsider issues of canonicity in the Irish poetic tradition and to revisit some of the assumptions about the relationships between poetry, history, and politics which have become dominant in our understanding of this tradition. Fiacc's poetry, while located in a distinctly Irish cultural context, bears important resemblances to the work of continental figures such as Rimbaud and Celan. In addition, Fiacc's work raises crucial questions about the relationship between violence, poetry, and language at a more general level. The article addresses some of these questions through the insights of philosophers such as Slavoj Žižek, Theodor Adorno, and Walter Benjamin.

This article examines the General Elections 2020 outcome in Ireland and analyses political potential effects on issues such as reunification and the Unity Referendum, among others.

To cite this article:
Calzada, I. (2020), Irlanda, gure bihotzean (Ireland, in our heart). Berria. DOI:10.13140/RG.2.2.22426.39369/1

Open Access: https://www.berria.eus/paperekoa/1876/016/001/2020-02-27/irlanda-gure-bihotzean.htm

This article examines aspects of Ireland's foreign relations in 2018. It begins with a brief synopsis of domestic politics in Ireland. Deteriorating relations between Russia and the West are then surveyed, particularly the Irish response to the poisoning of Sergei Skripal, for which the Kremlin was blamed, and which triggered the mass expulsion of diplomats. The visit of Pope Francis to Ireland is examined and provides an opportunity to reflect on the rapidly changing interactions between Ireland and the Holy See. Subsequent sections are devoted to significant political events during the Brexit negotiations process including the ‘chequers plan’, the Salzburg summit and the withdrawal agreement negotiated by the European Union and the British Government. The review then appraises the presidency of Michael D. Higgins and its role in Ireland's foreign relations. Before concluding, a brief section is devoted to those significant figures in Irish and international politics who died during the year.

Janet McNeill’s fiction has experienced a recent revival, led by London-based publisher Turnpike Books, which reissued three of her novels between 2014 and 2015, with a fourth due in autumn 2019. The Maiden Dinosaur (1964/2015) is her best-known book, and it depicts Northern Ireland at a transitional moment in its history, during the post-war period and preceding the recommencement of the Troubles. McNeill explores vestigial systems of power that endure in Northern Ireland amidst the shifting gender, class, religious, and political contexts of the early 1960s. This essay analyses her rendering of the middle-class Northern Protestant house, and argues that it is a metonym for patriarchal structures that pervade mid-century Belfast society. McNeill examines how the women of her generation manoeuvre within this circumscribed space, and her novel represents an aesthetic gesture of self-liberation.