Past In Northern Ireland Research Articles

Notes from the Field: Lessons Learned from Investigating the Past in Northern Ireland

Notes from the Field: Lessons Learned from Investigating the Past in Northern Ireland

Presbyterians, Forgiveness, and Dealing with the Past in Northern Ireland: Towards Gracious Remembering

The transformative potential of forgiveness has been lauded in theory but its outworking on the ground has proved more challenging. Drawing on a study with 122 Presbyterians in post-violence Northern Ireland, this article returns to debates on forgiveness. We propose a modest role for religious discourses on forgiveness, situated within a wider process of political forgiveness. We advance ‘gracious remembering’ as a contextual, faith-based, transitional concept for helping create conditions in which political forgiveness may become more likely. Drawing on our empirical study, as well as the work of Northern Irish public theologian Johnston McMaster, gracious remembering is orientated around a vernacular understanding of grace and utilizes a four-fold framework to guide grassroots and civil society dialogues about the past: (1) the rehumanizing of the other by acknowledging the human cost of violence, (2) giving victims a public voice, (3) engaging in self-critical reflection, and (4) listening to alternative interpretations of events. Overall, we seek to demonstrate that religious discourses and social scientific framings of political forgiveness need not be opposed; and forgiveness and remembering need not be opposed. Ultimately, we argue for the value of faith-based contributions in post-violence settings, but with ample recognition of their limitations.

Jim Smyth (ed.), Remembering the Troubles: Contesting the Recent Past in Northern Ireland

Jim Smyth (ed.), <i>Remembering the Troubles: Contesting the Recent Past in Northern Ireland</i>

Prosecutions, Imprisonment and the Stormont House Agreement: A Critical Analysis of Proposals on Dealing with the Past in Northern Ireland

This report analyses proposals that have been made to address legacy offences in Northern Ireland benchmarks each for compliance with international human rights law, the Good Friday Agreement and the Stormont House Agreement.

Remembering the Troubles: Contesting the Recent Past in Northern Ireland, ed. Jim Smyth

The use of memory in reconstructing the historical past has, in recent years, come to preoccupy historians as they seek to explain what the relationship is of memory and commemoration to history. Such a task is of particular importance in places such as Northern Ireland where the use of memory, commemoration and history in the context of a divided society can serve to keep alive bigotry, intolerance and intercommunal violence. This is given greater edge when both sides to the Northern Ireland conflict parade their duty to the dead as a means not just of underscoring the identity of each community, but as providing motivation for action in the present. Ruan O’ Donnell, in his richly textured chapter, quotes the leading Republican Daithi O’Conaill to the effect that ‘as long as people revere the memory of those who suffered and died in the cause of Ireland, freedom will never be defeated’ (p. 65). Another instance of what A.T.Q. Stewart noted many years ago, that in Ireland all history is applied history.

Remembering the Troubles: contesting the recent past in Northern Ireland. Edited by Jim Smyth. Pp 218. Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press. 2017. $40.

Remembering the Troubles: contesting the recent past in Northern Ireland. Edited by Jim Smyth. Pp 218. Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press. 2017. $40.

Jim Smyth (ed.), Remembering the Troubles: Contesting the Recent Past in Northern Ireland, University of Notre-Dame Press, 2017

This collection of essays edited by Jim Smyth, from the University of Notre Dame, is published, very timely, in the middle of the “decade of commemorations”. The issue of remembering, always very pressing in Ireland, is even more so when the country commemorates the centenary of the period that saw it through the Ulster Covenant, the Battle of the Somme, the Easter Rising, the Anglo-Irish war and the Civil War. The present collection is informed right from ...

Developing Gender Principles for Dealing with the Legacy of the Past

This Note documents the motivations, process and challenges in developing the 10 Gender Principles for Dealing with the Legacy of the Past in Northern Ireland. The Principles are the outcome of a targeted intervention by a group of women from civil society and academia in Ireland and the UK to challenge the exclusions of ongoing negotiations to agree on a process to deal with the past. The Principles were shaped by a small-scale consultation with women bereaved by the conflict. The Note discusses some of the implications of the initiative for efforts elsewhere to craft practical feminist interventions into transitional justice processes, including the challenges inherent to such work.

The Republican Movement, ‘Disappearing’ and Framing the Past in Northern Ireland

Despite a rich body of research on the conflict and peace process in Northern Ireland, the ‘disappearances’ carried out by Republican armed groups have so far escaped scrutiny. In this article I examine how the Republican movement has framed the rationale behind ‘disappearing’ as a rational response to informing and as an example of historical continuity. In doing so, Republicans appear to attempt to confer legitimacy on their choice of target and normalize the use of the practice within a Republican framework. However, these rationales incorporate techniques of neutralization and attempts to contextualize the ‘disappearances’ in such a way as to distance the Irish Republican Army from agency. Such distancing speaks to a third, overarching rationale for ‘disappearing’: the avoidance of an embarrassment that has continued into the postconflict period. I consider why Republicans persist in claiming the ‘disappeared’ were legitimate targets, killed by a method for which there is historical precedent, when such framing left them open to criticism at a time when they were seeking to demonstrate that they had left violence behind. I conclude that Republican attempts to satisfy two audiences resulted in a gulf between their engagement in the process of recovering remains and their rhetoric surrounding this issue. In so doing, light is shed on some of the challenges the Republican movement faced in their transition away from violence. More broadly, the value of unpicking the framing of key actors in transitional processes is illuminated.

Practice, Power and Inertia: Personal Narrative, Archives and Dealing with the Past in Northern Ireland

Through the prism of Northern Ireland, this article explores the function of existing and proposed archives within societies emerging from conflict, and highlights their potential in adding complexity to understanding conflict and challenging dominant narratives. The article outlines how, despite progress since the Northern Ireland peace accord in 1998, efforts to deal with the past and human rights violations have been piecemeal and politically contested. In the absence of a comprehensive approach to the past, testimony gathering, initiated ‘unofficially’ at a community level, has provided opportunities for individuals’ experiences of the conflict to be documented and acknowledged. The recent Stormont House Agreement (2014) seeks to establish an Oral History Archive as a central repository for individuals to ‘share experiences and narratives related to the Troubles’. The article discusses the challenges in developing this ‘official’ archive, and the problem of reconciling competing historical narratives of the past. This is contrasted against the growth in bottom-up ‘storytelling’ or testimony work. The article argues for supplementing the official process with wider testimony gathering processes directed by and located within community contexts. It is argued that the deliberate juxtaposition of contrasting horizontal or inter-community narratives held by different local parties may allow for the emergence of a more complex and inclusive narrative of the past, rather than attempts to impose a shared vertical narrative, which is subject to either further contestation or uncomfortable compromise.

Dealing with the Past in Northern Ireland: The Current State of Play

Introduction: Peace Dividend? The IRA and loyalist military groups declared ceasefires in 1994. Three and a half years later, the Good Friday or Belfast Agreement was signed by all political parties, leading eventually, and after a number of major setbacks, to the establishment of a devolved, power-sharing Assembly and Executive. To begin with, it is

Dealing with the Past in Northern Ireland: The Current State of Play

Dealing with the Past in Northern Ireland: The Current State of Play

Official Responses to Dealing with the Past in Northern Ireland: Between Remembering and Forgetting

Since the early 2000s, Northern Ireland society has been considering whether it should confront its violent past. The voluntary sector and both the British and devolved governments have consulted the population on the issue. These surveys have concluded that part of the population was in favour of some mechanism to deal with the past. However no real consensus existed on a global process that would involve society as a whole. At the same time, the British government set up new Inquiries into controversial past events such as Bloody Sunday and established units within the police service to re-examine unsolved cases. In the absence of a global process to deal with the past such as the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, conclusions of these Inquiries and investigations have been made public since 2010. The analysis of some of these reports will reveal to what extent the truth about those past events has been established and responsibilities attributed and whether they offer an approach to remembrance that transcends the conflicts of the past..

Dealing with the Past in Northern Ireland: An Inventory

The paper was presented at an event entitled ‘What Next? Dealing with the Past in Northern Ireland,’ in Belfast on 25 May 2012. The event was organised by the Transitional Justice Institute at the University of Ulster. The paper considers the various mechanisms established by the state to deal with the legacy of the thirty year conflict. These include the Police Ombudsman's Office, the Historical Enquiries Team of the Police Service of Northern Ireland and the Coroner's Office as well as initiative such as the Consultative Group on Dealing with the Past. It critically examines these mechanisms and concludes that together they do not constitute a comprehensive truth recovery process.

Unionist voices and the politics of remembering the past in Northern Ireland

Unionist voices and the politics of remembering the past in Northern Ireland

Forging a Feminist Vision for Dealing with the Past in Northern Ireland: What Role for the UNSCR 1325

These Remarks were presented to a local women's conference in Northern Ireland. They consider how UNSC Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security might be utilized by women attempting to influence official processes to deal with the past in Northern Ireland. In the Remarks, two aspects of the Resolution are considered, namely the protection of women as victims of violence, and the participation of women in peacemaking. The commentator suggests that, to date, interventions from Northern Irish women into official processes to deal with the past have concentrated on the participation aspect of the Resolution. Drawing on international experience of feminist engagement with transitional justice, the Remarks contend that women in Northern Ireland would do well to focus greater energy and attention on the protection aspect of the Resolution, articulating more fully and comprehensively the diverse forms of violence to which women were subjected during the conflict, and demanding accountability for that violence. In this way, UNSC Resolution 1325 might facilitate a conversation that has long proven difficult and divisive amongst women in Northern Ireland on the nature and extent of the gender-specific impact of the conflict violence, and ultimately, provide a platform to influence official conversations about dealing with the past in Northern Ireland.

Truth, Justice and Dealing with the Legacy of the Past in Northern Ireland, 1998–2008

ABSTRACT This article examines the debate on ways of dealing with the past in Northern Ireland from the signing of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998 to the present. The British government's recent creation of a consultative group, due to report in June 2008, has re-focused attention on whether or not, and in what form, Northern Ireland might adopt past-focused mechanisms as part of its post-conflict transition process. Against the backdrop of wider international and theoretical perspectives, the article examines the context and character of some of the issues this process is likely to face, particularly around the issue of collusion, and explore public attitudes towards the possible creation of a Truth Commission for Northern Ireland.

Confronting a Troubled History: which past in Northern Ireland’s museums?

Confronting a Troubled History: which past in Northern Ireland’s museums?

The Word of God and the Ethics of the Religious Past in Northern Ireland

(1998). The Word of God and the Ethics of the Religious Past in Northern Ireland. Rethinking History: Vol. 2, No. 3, pp. 387-396.

Political Division, Practical Alliance: Problems for Women in Conflict

PoiincAL Division, Practical Alliance: Problems for Women in Conflict Eilish Rooney It is still necessary to map the recent past in Northern Ireland. We are so used to the "sound byte," "whaf s happening now" coverage of current events and history that it is easy to lose sight of even the living memory context of the current conflict. This conflict has been going on for over twenty-six years. Long enough for the present generation to remember nothing other than conflict. The pohtical conflict, dramatically visualized in the early media images, continues to shape the hves of people here. In the intervening twenty-six years the western media has developed other transitory obsessions and preoccupations. Northern Ireland, Ulster, the North of Ireland, the Province, the six counties—and the contested pohtical meanings of those titles, is of little interest in a world stage that is crowded with bloodier, newer, more exotic conflicts. The western world's gaze is currently focused on what is seen as the emerging "new world order." Northern Ireland has neither oil, nor arms, nor a large population whose destruction may be counted in the thousands. It is not strategically important. Within the British Isles and Ireland the conflict in the North has not featured as a major, or even a minor, electoral issue in either the British or Irish elections. The conflict is "contained." For people who Uve here the human costs of that containment are enormous. Northern Ireland is a small, contested state of 1.5 milhon people. The pohtical cleavage between unionism and nationalism has defined pohtical , economic, and social life since the setting up of the state in 1922. Broadly, the unionists (50 percent plus population) support the union of Northern Ireland with Great Britain and define the problem as the refusal of the Cathohc, nationalist minority to accept the legitimacy of a state which is supported by a majority of its citizens. The nationalists (40 percent plus population) aspire to some form of united Ireland and view Northern Ireland as an artificial pohtical entity which was gerrymandered in the 1920s to ensure a permanent Protestant, unionist majority. The British Government supports the Unionist veto on constitutional change and says it will do so for as long as the majority of people within Northern Ireland wish to remain a part of the United Kingdom. For many unionists this is unacceptable. In their view the constitution of Northern Ireland should not be subject to the vicissitudes of the ballot box (albeit that they are theoretical for the moment). As one unionist politician put it recently, "fifty per cent plus one could bring about a united Ireland." Constitutional © 1995 Journal of Women's History, Vol 6 No. 4/Vol. 7 No. 1 CWinter/Spring) 1995 REFLECTIONS: ElIiSH ROONEY 41 nationalists tolerate the veto as long as some form of participation in government is guaranteed for them. Republicans use the historical argument to reject the veto and cite the sectarian nature of the state in support of their position. At various points in the history of Northern Ireland this pohtical cleavage has erupted into violent confrontation and repression. Between 1968 and 1994 over 3,000 people have been killed; 36,000 injured; 22,000 charged with terrorist offenses or detained under the Prevention of Terrorism Act; there have been 33,000 shootings, 16,000 explosions, incendiaries and defusings. It is a measure of how we are used to large-scale devastation that the impact of these figures has to be translated into the context of a country with a greater population in order to be appreciated. Were these ratios transposed into a country the size of Great Britain (population approximately 54 million), the numbers killed and injured in this period would be approximately 108,000 and 1,188,000 respectively. More than 792,000 people would have been charged or detained. In this context, the scale of the conflict seems staggering and yet, it has continued for over a generation. Indeed it has come to be seen as an "acceptable level of violence." Northern Ireland is a profoundly unstable society whatever the perspective from which it is viewed. Beginning with Women This phase of conflict started...