?Changed Utterly?? Transformation and continuity in late twentieth-century Ireland

Abstract

From about 1970, Irish history moved into a fast-forward phase culminating in an extraordinary economic boom for the Republic. This took place against the background of violence in Northern Ireland, up to the uneasy resolution of Good Friday 1998. It is now possible to try and analyse this era from a variety of sources, such as the reports of tribunals investigating corruption, contemporary memoirs, political records and investigative journalism. This article considers the forces and events behind dramatic and unforeseen change in politics, economics, cultural influence, religious profession and gender roles, and discusses how far the ‘key’ is to be found in American rather than European models and influence. Moreover, ‘liberalization’ in economic, religious, sexual and other spheres has been accompanied, on other levels, by a retreat into atavistic attitudes – particularly concerning the construction of Irish ‘identity’ and the packaging of Irish history. This masks a less-noticed revolution in attitudes over the last thirty years of the twentieth century – the strengthening of partitionist attitudes in the Republic, and the copper-fastening of the border between North and South.