Irish Republican Research Articles

Dangerous memories and entangled temporalities: Irish republicanism and the postcolonial politics of time

ABSTRACT In this article we develop a ‘hauntological’ reading of republicanism in postcolonial Ireland. This reading takes as its object the ways in which the politics of remembering – and remembering republican politics in particular – is equally a politics of time. Exploring the politics of republicanism through the lens of entangled temporalities, we develop an understanding of a particular mode of political desire. This republican political desire holds open the demand for a radical interrogation of the (post)colonial given. As such, it takes the form of a ‘dangerous memory’. Through the concept of a ‘dangerous memory’, we excavate a certain republican politics of refusal, that haunts the legitimacy and automatic reproduction of the postcolonial settlement and the attendant proprietary relations of inequality that it formalizes – culturally, politically, economically and legally. This theoretical interpretation of Irish republican hauntology is empirically explored through three historical layers and entangled temporalities that are organized around the ghosts of Roger Casement, a radical republican figure. The dangerous memories of Casement not only disrupt the canonical or official interpretation of Irish republicanism, but also open up the left-republican possibility to further interrogate the postcolonial present, both in Ireland and beyond.

‘Why, it’s like Belgium!’: the Women’s International League in the Irish War of Independence 1919–1921

ABSTRACT This article demonstrates how the Women’s International League (WIL) dealt with the changing ideas of nationhood, internationalism, imperialism, and freedom when supporting the cause of Irish independence. Their actions included seeking to protect Britain’s good name while simultaneously criticising that very same nation for its war in Ireland. The ‘small nations’ rhetoric that had emerged during the First World War was used by British feminists to divorce the atrocities of the British Crown force, the Black and Tans, from the wider colonial experience of oppression. Comparing the occupation of Ireland in 1919–1921 to that of Belgium during the First World War enabled British internationalist-feminists to support the sovereignty of Ireland’s nationhood, without necessarily having to engage with the colonial dimension or history of the conflict. This entirely changed the parameters within which British feminists could show solidarity with the Irish republicans while still maintaining positive views of British imperialism and the empire.

The hunger strike as a biopolitical technology: re-reading the 1981 Irish republican prison protest

ABSTRACT This article uses the case of the 1981 Irish republican prison protest to show that indefinite hunger strikes can force Euromodern states to the negotiating table by undercutting their commitment to good government. Drawing on a Foucauldian analysis of biopower and political reason, I argue that these acts of willed self-starvation exert pressure on state officials by exploiting a tension between the modern state’s juridical claim to sovereignty and its biopolitical investment in fostering life. In the case of the famed IRA hunger strike on the H-Blocks, the archive shows that the Thatcher government experienced more pressure to reach a negotiated settlement than the prime minister or her top advisers publicly acknowledged. Such pressure, however, stemmed not from a moral or humanitarian investment in saving the individual hunger strikers’ lives, but instead from officials’ biopolitical concern that the protest was undermining British attempts to restore ‘life as usual’ in the conflicted region. Ultimately, Thatcher was willing to let ten of the Irish republican strikers die rather than grant them any concessions that might indicate they were political prisoners. The article closes by showing how an indefinite hunger strike’s efficacy is often foreclosed in securitized and postcolonial contexts like that of Northern Ireland, where the protesters can be framed as a ‘biopolitical remainder’ that is allowed to die so that the broader society might thrive.

Spicebags, slippery masks and ‘Free Staters’: anti-republican anti-populism in contemporary Irish political discourse

ABSTRACT This article critically interrogates how in contemporary Irish political discourse anti-populism, specifically anti-left populism, is articulated as a form of anti-republicanism. This is large part due to the histories of anti-colonial republicanism in Ireland and the popular republican grammar they have bequeathed to contemporary political discourse. This thematic of (anti)populist politics is of renewed interest and urgency given the recent surge in popularity of Sinn Féin, a broadly left-wing republican populist party. This article adopts a discourse analytical method and identifies several key tropes of anti-republican anti-populism that centre largely around the framing of Sinn Féin as a non-normative or not-normal political party, given its historical connection to paramilitarism. Other key themes of anti-republican anti-populism include the politics of housing, policing and the nature of democratic representation. What emerges is a picture of Irish republicanism as a spectral remainder of past political struggles against colonial order and political exclusion. As such, republican politics bring into view the contingency of established order and reveals the fragile nature of political legitimacy in post-partition Ireland. This article concludes by commenting on what the Irish postcolony reveals about the nature of anti-populisms in Europe and its peripheries.

Engaging in Postconflict Violence: Militant Trajectories of Young Republican Paramilitaries in Northern Ireland

This article is based on an ethnographic study of young activists in Irish republican paramilitary organizations opposed to the Good Friday Agreement. It focuses on analyzing these youth’s trajectories as militants in order to understand the process of generational renewal within armed organizations as conflicts come to an end. The specificity of their trajectories is captured through a comparison with nonviolent young republican activists. This approach shows that, despite their different party affiliations, young postwar republican activists share the same sociological profiles, motivations for engagement and daily militant practices. In other words, the article highlights that although republican paramilitary networks claim to be violent actors, they have adopted nonviolent practices as a mode of ordinary and routine action. As a result, these networks are subject to a relative pacification that is explained more by their recruitment methods and the participation of new young militants than by any gradual support for the peace agreement.

“Once it was Ireland, Now it is Kenya”: anti-colonialism and internationalism in the pages of the Connolly Association’s Irish Democrat in the 1950s–60s

ABSTRACT Irish Democrat was the paper of the Connolly Association, a diaspora organisation established to build support for Irish republicanism within the British labour movement. The Connolly Association and the Irish Democrat had strong links to the Communist Party of Great Britain, which advocated for a peaceful mass movement to challenge the British presence in Northern Ireland and to remove discrimination faced by Catholics in the Six Counties. Encouraged by the wave of decolonisation across the British Empire in the 1950s-60s, both the CA and the CPGB saw the struggle against Unionist rule in Northern Ireland as analogous to events in Asia, Africa and the Middle East. This paper explores the narration of anti-colonial and national liberation movements elsewhere in the British Empire in the pages of the Irish Democrat and the overdetermination of Irish national questions by post-war discourses of radical decolonisation. It also traces the formation across difference of specific solidarities between the Connolly Association and other migrant communities within the multicultural political geography of post-war Britain, including out of campaigns against racial discrimination, the “colour bar” and post-war immigration controls.

Republican violence in Northern Ireland: a comparative case study of County Tyrone

ABSTRACT Ireland has a long history of political violence emanating from Irish republicans’ desire to be free from British rule. The focus of this article is on the use of such political violence in one particular area, namely County Tyrone using a comparative analysis to interrogate republican violence during the Anglo-Irish War (1919–1921) and the period known as the Troubles (1969–1997). Drawing upon archival sources, interviews with ex-security force members and republicans with direct experience of the conflict in County Tyrone and the extant literature, the article examines whether successive generations of republicans drew upon or deviated from established templates of political violence. In doing so, it considers the practical and lethal effect of the exchange of memories, grievance, justifications, tactics and patterns of past episodes of violence. By comparing and analysing differences in the political violence employed by successive generations of republicans, similar strategies and tactics are identified. These include the use of guerrilla warfare, attacks on security forces, the local economy and infrastructure, the creation of security force-free zones and the fostering of sectarian and representative violence. The research has contemporary relevance to improve our understanding, challenge misinterpretations and myths of past events and legacies in County Tyrone.

Ethnobotany and Irish nationalism: an early contribution by Dr Michael F. Moloney (Micheál P. Ó Máoldhomhnaigh) of Dungarvan

Michael Francis Moloney (Micheál Proinnsias Ó Máoldhomhnaigh) (1888–1934) qualified as a physician and established his practice in Dungarvan, County Waterford, where he also served as Coroner. In 1919, his book Luibh-sheanchus, maille le gearr-chunntas ar shaothar lucht leighis i n-Éirinn: Irish ethno-botany and the evolution of medicine in Ireland was published in Dublin. Luibh-sheanchus is notable being one of the earliest books to employ the term ‘ethnobotany’. It contained more than 950 Irish vernacular names for plants, representing about 525 different species of flowering plants, ferns and marine algae. For about one third of the species Moloney also provided brief notes about folk uses, mainly in treating illnesses but also for dyeing and in food. Moloney’s sources are discussed but few can be fully elucidated as he made no direct acknowledgements but the Irish names probably were mainly those in use in the Gaeltacht na nDéise, an Irish-speaking area in County Waterford. Published during a period of violence and turmoil in Ireland, the author, who was bilingual in Irish and English, supported the Irish Republican cause and was locally noteworthy for being arrested and imprisoned in November 1920 in the aftermath of ‘Bloody Sunday’ when British troops shot and killed twelve people in Dublin.

Was Gerry Adams a transformational leader?

ABSTRACT Gerry Adams was the foremost Irish Republican leader in The Troubles (1968–1998). This paper analyses the extent to which he was a transformational leader, shifting Republicanism from armed struggle to politics. The paper analyses three texts by Adams at milestone points in the conflict. The first (1976) at the height of the armed campaign; the second (1986) as political engagement was increasing; and the third (2003), after the conflict had formally concluded. The paper uses four criteria to signify transformational leadership. The paper argues that, while Adams does not meet all four transformational leadership criteria equally, he transformed his organisation.

‘Dead faces laugh’: Medievalist hungers and Irish republican time, 1917-1981

AbstractThe article analyses the temporal entanglements of personal and historical time through hunger-striking protests in Ireland and their commemoration in medieval imagery, reflecting on the role of medievalism and temporality in nation-building by insurgent agents. Between 1917 and 1981, twenty-two Irish republican paramilitary prisoners undertook hunger strikes to the death for recognition of political status and protest against their prison regimes. While some of these deaths went unremarked by the wider public because of state censorship and lack of support, others catalysed worldwide attention, and succeeded in pitching a compelling national and political narrative for their supporters. The article focuses on how the use of medievalism in examining and commemorating these deaths highlights the vivid temporal collapse between the present of the individual and the past of the nation, and the way this can appeal to the protest’s audience, while making a powerful political bid for the legitimacy of the insurgents’ national narrative. The article examines temporal entanglement both as practiced by the audience of the hunger strikes, from poets such as W.B. Yeats and Seamus Heaney to journalists and scholars, and by the republican community itself, whether by hunger strike survivors, their comrades, or their families, bringing together literary, material, and art historical evidence to show its relevance and pervasiveness. By doing so, the article achieves a study of the ways medievalist temporalities interact with political and personal history, in a bid for the ownership and definition of the nation.

A “Democrat” from the Start: Theobald Wolfe Tone, Emblematic Founder of Irish Republicanism, Anti-Monarchism, and the “Baneful Influence of England”

Theobald Wolfe Tone (1763-98), an Irish radical and revolutionary remembered in collective memory as the founding father of Irish republicanism, left behind more writings than all his radical associates combined. A founder of the Society of United Irishmen in 1791, he helped drive their democratic campaign to end religious discriminations in Ireland through a total reform of electoral representation in the Irish parliament. Tone’s adolescence and national identity had been shaped during the American War of Independence, when Irish patriotic culture began to truly question the connection to Britain. When reform campaigns failed, Tone became a separatist first, and a democrat inspired by the French Revolution and Painite republicanism. He conspired with France for a military invasion of Ireland that would support a revolution and achieve independence. The Irish republic he imagined would be free from the “baneful influence of England”, as would be its national symbols which he reconfigured to subvert British dominion. Yet his political language, only recently analysed by scholars, is not driven nor dominated by anti-monarchism. This essay explores that paradox, and how Tone’s vocabulary, in his private writings included, inspired future generations, particularly during the 1916 Rising.

Troubling rhetoric: discourse theory and Irish Republican Army narratives (1962–1972)

ABSTRACT This paper examines rhetorical theory and narrative creation in the history of militant Irish Republicanism. The splintering of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) was predicated on numerous ideological differences during the 1960s; these shifts were underpinned by modalities of discourse and performative speech. Drawing on Ronald Krebs’ work, the IRA’s internal narrative conflicts from the period of 1962–1972 are analysed. Further, it adapts the philosophy of communicative action to show how discourse – spoken and written – was deployed within the pre-split IRA organization and among the Republican community during the turbulent period of 1968–1970. The ideological changes conducted by IRA Chief of Staff Cathal Goulding and his allies offer opportunities to study the competing nationalist narratives and intra-organizational conflict. This work explores the rhetorical foundations of Goulding’s narrative contestations and argues their ‘moment’ was hampered by self-created political hurdles, due to their modes of linguistic deployment. The further application of discourse analysis – through an examination of ‘resistance communities’ – demonstrates how forms of ‘coercive speech’ allowed the fledgling Provisional Irish Republican movement to adapt during and after the split. These theoretical frameworks add to the historiography of this turbulent period and reassesses the how’s of narrative reformation.

Evaluating militant decision-making with information science: The Irish republican movement during the “Troubles”

Why do militant groups decide to escalate or deescalate their use of violence in conflict? Examining the case of the “Troubles” in Northern Ireland, we analyze groups that adopt violence as a political strategy and evaluate factors that influence its application. To do so, we adopt a novel empirical approach to the study of militant groups. Drawn from information science, this approach enables estimation of variable influence and uncertainty within structured case studies, and is thus ideal for topics such as militant decision-making where systematic data collection is difficult.

The IRA and the Partition of Ireland

The Irish Republican Army (IRA) has been the most aggressively hostile opponent of the border that was established in Ireland during the 1920s. This article focuses on the fact that the IRA’s own violence emerged from a substantial, evolving and complex politics. It suggests that close consideration of that politics, of associated IRA violence and of the long-term implications of both, represents a necessary part of understanding the Irish border and its associated and important histories. Three case studies are considered: Ernie O’Malley (1897–1957); Peadar O’Donnell (1893–1986); the Provisional IRA (1969–2005). The article argues that the paradoxical outcomes of these three significant IRA case studies point towards the need for greater honesty about the actual effects of non-state political violence; it also argues for an empathetic approach to understanding those with whom one instinctively disagrees, if the political history of the Irish border and its legacies is to be properly understood.

The Consequences of the Use of Internment Without Trial in Northern Ireland in the Early 1970s for the Provisional Irish Republican Army

This article examines the consequences of the use of internment without trial in Northern Ireland in the early1970s. The main focus of the article will be how the introduction of the measure effected the foremost republican paramilitary group, the Provisional Irish Republcan Army, during the conflict known as the Troubles. The effects of the measure on unionists and the British will also be considered. How internment helped to internationalise the conflict and the way it influenced other events will be highlighted. The primary argument of the article is that the internment period helped create a core republican community which provided enough support for PIRA for it to carry out its military campaign for almost thirty years.

Dealt with most severely: republican punishment attacks in Newry

ABSTRACT This paper explores how and why the Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA) and the Official Irish Republican Army (OIRA) in the Newry-area engaged in a type of violence commonly referred to as ‘punishment attacks’ during the first half-decade of the Troubles. A rich literature has developed to explain the use of punishment attacks, and their consequences, in Northern Ireland’s two largest cities of Belfast and Londonderry/Derry. This paper builds on this work by drawing on the emerging political science literature on rebel governance to develop a resource constraint model and an internal competition model to explain the use of punishment attacks in the rural and semi-rural areas along the border with the Republic of Ireland. The explanatory models are then evaluated against newly collected quantitative data on punishment attacks reported in the Belfast Telegraph from 1974–1975 and qualitative evidence from archival and newspaper sources. The analysis suggests that the resource constraint model provides a better, although imperfect, explanation for PIRA punishment attacks during this period, while the internal competition model provides a better, although imperfect, explanation for OIRA activity.

The Irish People and the American Presidency

ABSTRACT Irish People was a New York-based newspaper with the single mission of supporting Catholics in Northern Ireland as they faced discrimination from the British-controlled Ulster government. While Irish American magazines promoted a romantic view of Ireland that encouraged tourism to the Republic of Ireland, Irish People reported on political and social conflict. This article examines Irish People’s role as a propaganda newspaper that targeted the American presidencies of the 1980s and 1990s. While it was mostly a “white propaganda” operation—truthful and overt propaganda—that reported British offenses and applied pressure on the American government to intervene, some of the money the newspaper helped to raise for Northern Irish charities may have gone to the Irish Republican Army.

“We Shout at Each Other, But We’re Not Shooting Each Other”: An Interview with Reverend Harold Good on the Decommissioning of the Provisional Irish Republican Army

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Additional informationNotes on contributorsMatt FullerMatt Fuller (he/him) is a PhD candidate at the University of Otago in Aotearoa/New Zealand. He earned his IMAS Level Three Explosives Ordnance Disposal Certification from MAT Kosovo in 2022. Previously he was a Lecturer of Philosophy at St. Philip’s College in San Antonio, Texas. His focus is on ethics, post-conflict peacebuilding, and disarmament. E-mail: mattfullerauthor@gmail.com

Remembering otherwise: media memory, gender and Margaret Thatcher in Irish hunger strike films

ABSTRACT This article analyses two films about the Irish republican prison protests and the hunger strikes of 1981 – Terry George’s Some Mother’s Son (1996) and Steve McQueen’s Hunger (2008) – as countermemories of the dominant British media coverage of the protests and the hunger strikes. Focusing on the use of the voice/image of British prime minister Margaret Thatcher in these films, the article asks for what purpose and to what effect these clips and recordings are employed and suggests that Thatcher’s gender does matter in these films. In contrast to the worried mothers of the incarcerated republican sons, prime minister Thatcher appears as the unbending Iron Lady of the British government in Some Mother’s Son, representing the gendered chief villain of the film. In Hunger, Thatcher’s cold, disembodied female voice – Thatcher as acousmêtre – is set against the resisting and suffering male body of Bobby Sands. This article addresses these gendered depictions and their construction through the use of voice and silence. In both films, the female presence of Thatcher is used to invoke the old and create new media memories of the hunger strike.

Emmanuel Destenay. Shadows From the Trenches: Veterans of the Great War and the Irish Revolution (1918–1923).

Early in Shadows from the Trenches: Veterans of the Great War and the Irish Revolution (1918–1923), Emmanuel Destenay refers to recent shifts in Irish historiography, prompted by Great War centenaries, that have “permitted the Irish to come to terms with the historical oblivion” into which the Great War had sunk (xv). In truth, these shifts had begun much earlier than that, most relevantly here with Jane Leonard’s examination of Great War veterans published in the 1990s. But even if it is no longer the case, the Irish contribution to the British war effort was certainly underserved by historians for some time. Shadows from the Trenches thus builds on work by Leonard and, more recently, Paul Taylor, Michael Robinson, and others in examining the fate of Irish ex-servicemen on their return home. These men found an Ireland dramatically different to the one they had left, and in the midst of its own conflicts—most obviously, a war of independence (1919–1921) against British rule followed by a bitter civil war (1922–1923). Destenay follows their trajectories as they navigated their way through these new wars and into a new political order. Importantly, the book reminds us that this was not a homogenous cohort of men, and they held a range of loyalties and allegiances that drew them in an array of directions. They fought among the guerrillas of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) but also joined the forces of the British Crown tasked with suppressing IRA insurgency—as so-called “Black and Tans” in the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC), in the often brutal Auxiliary Division of the RIC, and in the Ulster Special Constabulary in what became Northern Ireland. Others avoided taking up arms again but were dragged into the conflict as victims of intimidation and violence. Inevitably, Irish ex-servicemen found themselves shooting at and killing their former comrades.