Northern Ireland's '68. Civil Rights, Global Revolt and the Origins of The Troubles. By Simon Prince.

Abstract

Northern Ireland is generally not a location to be included in accounts of global 1968. The communitarian dissensions that caught international attention – usually referred to as ‘The Troubles’ – from the late sixties onward are more likely to evoke nightmares of the past than images of a non-alienated future. Simon Prince, however, rightfully draws our attention to the concrete circumstances of Northern Ireland in 1968, which, upon closer inspection, indeed suggest plentiful parallels to what happened elsewhere in Europe and the wider world. Not only were the specific political actors responsible for giving Northern Ireland headline news exposure in 1968 roughly equivalent to similar actors in Berkeley, Paris or in Rome, but even the language and the images evoked during the heat of the struggle clearly point to the manifold parallels between Irish battles and the heated contestations beyond the Irish Sea and Atlantic. When, in early 1969, a giant message – ‘You Are Now Entering Free Derry’ – was painted onto the outside wall of a house on the edge of that part of Derry which had become a no-go area for the Royal Ulster Constabulary, the slogan had been consciously adapted from Berkeley's famous Free Speech Movement in the autumn of 1964. Thus, this reviewer eagerly grabbed the chance to scrutinize this volume, which promised to be an important new study. Yet, despite providing some useful insights on the conjuncture of Northern Ireland's 1968, in the end this book remains disappointing. For, above all, it suffers from two conceptual flaws.