Trouble Research Articles

“No Pope Here”: Britain, the Vatican, the IRA, and the Papal Visit to Ireland, September 1979

AbstractIt is often assumed, particularly by outsiders, that the conflict in Northern Ireland—known euphemistically as “the Troubles”—in which some 3,600 people lost their lives, was an atavistic throwback to Europe's religious wars of earlier centuries. In 1979, by which time some 2,000 people had already been killed in the Troubles, Pope John Paul II proposed to pay a visit to Ireland and perhaps to cross the border into Ulster's sectarian cockpit. The idea provoked outrage from some Ulster Protestants and high anxiety for the British, concerned that the Pope might inadvertently inflame the situation or embarrass the British by raising difficult issues. But there were hopes, too, that an unequivocal condemnation of violence by the head of the Catholic Church might help to bring the conflict to an end. This article, based on extensive research in diplomatic archives, reveals deep divisions within the Catholic Church on the Irish question and points to the power and limitations of the British diplomatic reach into the Vatican. It reveals also, however, the powerlessness of prayer and pleadings in the face of terrorist violence.

The Catholic Church and the Northern Ireland Troubles, 1968–1998, by Margaret M. Scull

The Catholic Church and the Northern Ireland Troubles, 1968–1998, by Margaret M. Scull

Ethos of conflict as the prism to evaluate the Northern Irish and the Israeli-Palestinian conflicts by the involved societies: A comparative analysis.

The present study compared participants’ evaluations of their own conflict with their evaluation of another conflict. These evaluations were examined through the prism of the ideological ethos of conflict (EOC), which was seen as the major contributing factor in the development of the biased perceptions, divergent understandings, and emotional responses previously observed among groups in conflict. The participants in the study were students: Protestants and Catholics from Northern Ireland, Jews and Palestinians from Israel, and an additional group of Swiss students. They were presented with four scenarios: Two scenarios presented separately the views of Catholics and Protestants about the conflict in Northern Ireland and two presented the views of Jews and Palestinians about the conflict in the Middle East. They were followed by a questionnaire that assessed emotional responses, attributions, and conflict assessment. Participants demonstrated greater bias when evaluating their own conflicts than the other one, as a function of their level of adherence to the ethos of their conflict. The results showed consistently, and without exception, that individual’s ratings of their own conflict were significantly associated with their level of EOC’s acceptance as an ideology, but responses to another conflict were not. They imply that the EOC serves as a lens that is used to judge one’s own conflict in a biased way.

Republican women and Catholic Church responses to the strip searching of female prisoners in Northern Ireland, 1982–92

ABSTRACT Although the practice of strip searching of female prisoners in Northern Ireland was used in the1970s, it reached its height in Armagh Jail between 1980 and 1986. Based on in-depth interviews and extensive archival research, the article brings together two different perspectives on strip-searching. It first examines the personal narratives of strip searching by republican women, who interpreted the practice as a violation of the female body, a form of systematic oppression, and a ‘gendered weapon’ deliberately used to demoralise and humiliate republican women, and by extension, the wider republican and nationalist community. The article explores how republican women gained an unlikely advocate in denouncing strip searching and the State in the form of some members of the Irish Catholic Church. While the Irish Catholic Church had regularly condemned republican violence, some within the Church viewed strip searching as a moral issue and a clear violation of basic human rights. The article demonstrates how more radical, nationalist members of the Catholic clergy and hierarchy walked a fine line between taking a pastoral concern for their parishioners and making political statements against the British government, leading to questions about the Catholic Church and its role in the Northern Irish conflict.

“Is Austria a Catholic Country?”: Trust and Intersubjectivity in Postconflict Northern Ireland

ABSTRACT Media pundits, politicians, and academic observers have frequently described the Northern Irish Troubles as a religious conflict, a description the Irish republican actors of the conflict reject. In 2009 and 2011, I interviewed twenty-five former Irish republican women activists. Other scholars have argued that the emotions, feelings, and subjective experiences of the researcher can have several roles and functions and, thus, shape our research interests and decisions. Similarly, the interviewer’s presence, as much as the narrator’s perceptions, will shape the story the narrators tell. Based on these considerations, I discuss how the Irish republican women I interviewed projected their own Catholic convictions on me, despite stressing that they were not overly religious or even practicing Catholics. These women acknowledged that as I was Austrian, I was a “neutral outsider to the conflict” (as one woman put it), but nevertheless, they projected a supposed shared affinity on me. These projections shaped their answers during the interviews. Furthermore, while these women emphasized that their political motivation for Irish republican activities was not religiously driven, they were raised in a Catholic environment. Thus, these subjective experiences shaped their answers and attitudes towards the interviewer. In essence, this article examines, first, how Catholic convictions were projected on the interviewer by narrators in oral history projects on the Northern Ireland conflict and, second, what roles and functions these religious projections served during the interview process.

Overcoming Identity Crisis: Limits of Consociationalism and Stagnation in Northern Ireland Conflict Regulation

For many decades, Northern Ireland has been characterized by a tense conflict of identities with frequent outbreaks of political and religious violence. At the end of the 20th century, a consensus was reached between the opposing sides on the need for a peaceful settlement of the contradictions, which was reflected in the 1998 Belfast Agreement. The most important part of the agreement was a transition to the consociational model of governance. Consociationalism was assumed to “cure” the Northern Irish region, save it from violence and antagonism, and help to establish a dialogue between the representatives of the region’s key collective identities — unionists and nationalists. However, although 22 years have passed since the introduction of the consociational system, the settlement of the conflict has not seen any obvious progress. The article attempts to trace the reasons for this state of affairs and, in particular, to find out whether consociational model could, in principle, live up to the expectations. Based on the analysis of the fundamental characteristics of this model, as well as the institutional patterns in the Northern Irish politics, P.Maksimova comes to the conclusion that consociational practices not only failed to contribute to the elimination of the antagonistic moods in the society, but also helped to preserve them. According to the author, consociational system is merely an instrument of crisis management, which, if misinterpreted, can only intensify confrontation and block the final settlement of the conflict. This is exactly what happened in Northern Ireland, where the specific features of the consociational system made it almost impossible to abandon group identities.

Religious Women and the Northern Ireland Troubles

The article uses research from an ongoing oral history project examining the peacebuilding work of religious women during the conflict in and about Northern Ireland, euphemistically known as the “Troubles.” The focus is on religious women whose peacebuilding activism was motivated by faith. Since 2015 the project has recorded religious women in conversation about their lives serving the working‐class communities that bore the brunt of the violence during the Troubles. It has brought to the fore their involvement in political as well as personal and societal reconciliation. Yet their activism has been omitted from the historical record. The article explores why this happened and argues the necessity of considering their contributions to the peace process in order that its dynamics be fully understood. The article brings forward new research that complicates secularisation narratives and the male‐centric version of the Troubles that still prevails.

Struggling lives and symbolic boundaries: Violence, young people and trauma in post-conflict Belfast

In Belfast, despite everyone knowing the conventional date that put an end to the Northern Irish conflict, commonly known as The Troubles, many people still suffer from its legacies to this day. In this article, I consider both post-conflict dynamics and contemporary issues in Belfast, focusing in particular on young people. Through a qualitative methodology, and drawing on anthropological concepts such as structural violence, I provide some reflections on the relationship between violence and trauma in this context through the analysis of the ethnographic data collected in a youth centre. This intervention is intended as a potential contribution to the broader literature on the anthropology of trauma and the ethnographies of violence, and on the debate on the transmission of mental distress from one generation to another.

Living in the Wake of Rural Irish Troubles: building an institution for sustainable peace through emotive out-of-place tourism

During the thirty-year period (1968–1998) known as the Troubles in Northern Ireland, 3500 people died and thousands more suffered physical disabilities and psychological trauma. Belfast, among other conflict cities, helped inspire the term ‘dark tourism’ in 1989. The country continues to be in conflict but is officially in a period of peace. Northern Ireland has been the theme for much peace and reconciliation research, but literature to date concentrates on polarised discourses rather than rural representation. Toward meeting and expanding the UN SDG16 peace goals, this research explores how what we term emotive peace tourism can be used as a methodology to affect emotional reconciliation registers in a unique rural Northern Ireland visitor experience. Bringing domestic tourists from Catholic and Protestant communities into face-to-face contact through a liminal participative ‘out-of-place’ visitor experience, we choreographed and performed a series of “Troubles” events: a guided night walk through a checkpoint, an IRA Wake, a UDA Funeral, and a Mixed-Marriage. Contributing to the debate as to whether tourism is more of a ‘peacekeeper’ than a ‘peacemaker’, our research demonstrates that an in situ liminal, emotive peace tourism experience, can generate sustainable tolerance, respect, trust, sympathy, and empathy towards others in post-conflict Northern Ireland and likely elsewhere.

Work disability and the Northern Irish Troubles*

AbstractIn this paper, we examine the labour market implications of permanent illness or injury from conflict among civilians. From 1969 to 1998, Northern Ireland experienced a violent ethnopolitical conflict characterized by terrorist bombing campaigns, sectarian killings and armed forces patrolling the streets. The consequences of this period for current high work disability rates are disputed by the main political parties. We address this question using a new high‐quality dataset. Potential endogeneity and reverse causation issues are addressed using the intensity of conflict‐related deaths as instruments. We find clear evidence that conflict has increased work disability by 28% points. The main doctor‐diagnosed medical condition mediating this effect is mental ill health.

Trophy Hunters: War Writing in the Twentieth Century

Trophy Hunters: War Writing in the Twentieth Century

The Fight for Political Status in Portlaoise Prison, 1973–7: Prologue to the H-Blocks Struggle

Between 1973 and 1977, about 100 Provisional republican prisoners staged a series of violent prison protests and hunger strikes in the Republic of Ireland’s high-security prison, Portlaoise. Research on political imprisonment during the Northern Ireland conflict overwhelmingly focuses on the H-Blocks struggle. The Portlaoise Prison protests, thus, remain an under-researched area, largely ignored by academics, commentators, and the public. This article tells the story of these protests in Portlaoise by focussing on three periods: winter 1974/5, winter 1975/6, and spring 1977. The Portlaoise protests ended almost simultaneously with the start of the blanket- and no-wash-protests in the H-Blocks. This article is based on the testimonials of former Irish republican prisoners, statements of the republican movement, and interviews with former Portlaoise inmates.

Margaret M. Scull, The Catholic Church and the Northern Ireland Troubles, 1968–1998

Margaret M. Scull, <i>The Catholic Church and the Northern Ireland Troubles, 1968–1998</i>

‘Just Get on with It’: A Qualitative of Study of Social Workers’ Experiences during the Political Conflict in Northern Ireland

Abstract This article reports on a retrospective study of social workers experiences and perception of practice during the height of the political conflict in Northern Ireland (1969–1988). The article describes the qualitative research methodology used to access the sample, design of interview schedule and data collection. Data were analysed using an iterative process to highlight emergent themes. Interviews were carried out with twenty-eight social workers who were employed in a range of agencies. The findings explore how social workers routinely had to negotiate access to communities in the midst of this violence, sometimes through paramilitary organisations. Respondents identified a range of coping mechanisms that they had used to make the ‘abnormal normal’. This included adopting apolitical, neutral stances, yet taking risks in the everyday tasks of meeting the needs of individuals and families. There was, however, limited evidence of employers providing support for practitioners, with peer support most prevalent and purposive forms of education and training during this period. The authors argue for greater attention to the skills and knowledge required for interventions with victims and survivors of the conflict and a more holistic approach to the analysis of social work and political conflict across international contexts.

From Belfast to the Somme (and back again): loyalist paramilitaries, political song, and reverberations of violence

ABSTRACT During the Northern Ireland conflict (1968–1998), paramilitary groups were supported and sustained by a sociocultural apparatus that helped legitimise their position within the community and disseminate their political message. From the use of flags and murals, to loyalist and republican parades, working-class vernacular culture revealed who was in control of various districts within the Province. For many working-class Protestants, loyalist songs were a key component of this culture, connecting the past and the present. Unlike the better-known marching band scene, which is a huge public spectacle, the loyalist song scene is much more private. Performed in a closed setting, within local bars and clubs, loyalist songs are reproduced for internal consumption rather than outward expression. Yet, in addition to celebrating a particular loyalist culture, such songs also serve an important function in authenticating and legitimising paramilitary groups, connecting them to older organisations, whose legacy they draw upon. This paper focuses on one such song, exploring how ‘The Ballad of Billy McFadzean’ is used to connect the Ulster Volunteer Force of the 1960s onwards, with the 1913 organisation of the same name. In so doing, the paper attempts to illustrate the political utility of song and how songs can be used to launder and legitimise conflict, as well as those engaged in political violence.

Ambivalent Déjà-vu: World War II in the poetry of the Northern Irish Troubles

This article addresses how the poetry of the Northern Irish Troubles enters into a dialogue with the memory of World War II. Poems by Michael Longley, Seamus Heaney, Derek Mahon, and Sinéad Morrissey are analysed, showing how World War II is a controversial source of comparison for these poets. While World War II provides important ways of framing the suffering and claustrophobia of the Northern Irish conflict, evident differences also mean that such comparisons are handled warily and with some irony. The poems are highly self-conscious utterances that seek to unsettle and develop generic strategies in the light of traumatic suffering. This essay draws on Michael Rothberg’s concept of multidirectional memory, and it also makes use of Alison Landsberg’s notion of prosthetic memory in order to highlight how Seamus Heaney in particular makes use of the World War II memories mediated by popular culture to respond to the Troubles.

‘Attempting to deal with the past’: historical inquiries, legacy prosecutions, and Operation Banner

ABSTRACT Over the summer of 2019 a number of maroon banners appeared across towns and cities in Northern Ireland, declaring that the local population ‘stands with Soldier F’. Soldier F was a member of the Parachute Regiment who, in March of 2019, was charged with the murders of James Wray and William McKinney and five additional attempted murders as a result of his actions on Bloody Sunday, 30 January 1972. These charges were announced at a time when it was reported that up to 200 former members of the British Army could face official investigation for their conduct in Northern Ireland. These cases sit at the centre of the sensitive and divisive issue of the legacy dimension of the Northern Ireland conflict, posing a challenge to the continuing success of the Northern Ireland peace process. Engaging a developing literature on post conflict reconciliation processes, this article will analyse the issue of legacy prosecutions from Operation Banner.

Sectarianism and the Provisional Irish Republican Army

ABSTRACT This article addresses the scholarly debate over sectarianism and the Provisional Irish Republican Army’s (PIRA) campaign during the Northern Ireland Troubles. It argues that although there is much merit in the contributions made in this discourse, unfortunately, for, the most part, there is a lack of engagement with the deeper meaning of sectarianism. Consequently, it seeks to enhance the understanding of sectarianism within this arena before considering the nature of the PIRA campaign. By conducting a thorough analysis of the killings conducted by this organisation in the early years of the conflict it is ultimately concluded that, at the very least, PIRA tolerated, and likely sanctioned, sectarian violence from within its ranks.

Bridge-builder feminism: the feminist movement and conflict in Northern Ireland

ABSTRACT While gender has been widely used as an analytical category to understand the dynamics of conflict transformation in Northern Ireland, surprisingly little has been written on the ways in which the conflict has shaped or constrained feminist organising. Singular focus on groups or initiatives like the Northern Ireland Women's Coalition, Peace People or the Women's Support Network has overshadowed the contested history and intricacies of the wider feminist movement. Adopting a more holistic view, this article takes the concept of ‘bridge-builders' as conceptualised by Ruane and Todd in The Dynamics of Conflict in Northern Ireland (1996) to examine the fractured development of the feminist movement in the North. It charts how ‘bridge-builder feminism' became a distinguishable feature of the feminist movement during the Troubles and was used as a mechanism to transgress what Todd calls the ‘grammars of nationality’ (Todd, 2015). I argue that although this organising approach pioneered some changes in Northern Irish society, it overlooked key feminist struggles and thrived at the expense of an inclusive, intersectional feminism. Though the movement has undergone significant changes in the last two decades, the legacy of bridge-builder feminism continues to impact the capacities of the movement to address key feminist issues.

Nostalgia for ‘HMP Divis’ and ‘HMP Rossville’: Memories of the Everyday in Northern Ireland’s High-Rise Flats

The Divis and Rossville Flats in Derry and Belfast were high-rise housing projects built as part of Terence O’Neill’s modernizing 1960s vision for Northern Ireland. They became notorious during the Troubles in Northern Ireland as sites of state and non-state violence, and emblematic of the deprivation and suffering of Catholic communities. Following prolonged campaigns by residents, the flats were demolished in the 1980s and 1990s. Drawing on oral testimonies collected after the near-total demolition of both spaces, this article argues that there are similarities in the cultural memory of both spaces. This is firstly apparent in their evocation of the materiality of the flats, and secondly apparent in their negotiation with the iconic status of Divis and Rossville in relation to the Troubles. Finally, we argue that while both sets of sources mobilize forms of nostalgia to narrate the history of the flats, this nostalgia is differently-inflected across both sites.