Relations In Northern Ireland Research Articles

Adolescents’ and teachers’ experience of shared education: a small-scale qualitative study in Northern Ireland

ABSTRACT This article explores adolescents’ and teachers’ interpretations of shared education through interviews with participating teachers and pupils in one school partnership in Northern Ireland. As an initiative explicitly designed to bring pupils from Catholic and majority Protestant schools together, shared education offers potential for building intergroup relations in Northern Ireland where, despite a peace agreement in 1998, life continues to be characterised by deep political and cultural division. Drawing on the qualitative data from the two participating schools, the research reveals the complexities of contact amongst adolescents in divided contexts so that, although some students frame shared education experiences in positive terms, others are discomfited by the process and report negative experiences. It argues that as adolescents’ tendency towards self-consciousness and social unease may be intensified in shared education programmes, more attention might be placed on their unique characteristics when designing and planning shared classes.

Shared education as a contact-based intervention to improve intergroup relations among adolescents in postconflict Northern Ireland.

Past research has shown that intergroup contact can be a promising intervention to improve intergroup relations and that contact-based interventions might be most effective during adolescence. In postconflict Northern Ireland, widespread residential segregation and a largely separate school system limit opportunities for intergroup contact between adolescents from the Catholic and Protestant communities. We evaluated whether a large-scale intervention to facilitate intergroup contact between students attending separate schools (the 'Shared Education' program) improves a range of outcomes relevant for intergroup relations in Northern Ireland. We conducted a 5-wave longitudinal, quasi-experimental study that followed a large sample of school students (N = 5,159, Mage = 12.4, age range: 10-14 years; 2,988 girls, 2,044 boys) from 56 predominantly Catholic or Protestant schools from sixth to tenth grade. We compared the developmental trajectories of students who, in 9th (14-15 years) and 10th (15-16 years) grade, shared some classes with students from the other community, as part of the program, to students who did not. We found that participating in shared classes had a medium-size, positive effect on the amount of intergroup contact students had outside of class, and small, positive effects on students' outgroup attitudes, outgroup trust, and intergroup empathy (but not on their intergroup anxiety, future contact intentions, deprovincialization, or multicultural beliefs). Our findings show that a school-based program of shared education can provide a viable and effective intervention to facilitate intergroup contact, improve intergroup relations, and foster social integration among adolescents at a large scale in a postconflict society. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

"They just don't understand us": The role of felt understanding in intergroup relations.

We report 5 studies examining the unique role of felt understanding in intergroup relations. In intergroup terms, felt understanding is the belief that members of an outgroup understand and accept the perspectives of ingroup members, including ingroup members' beliefs, values, experiences, and self-definition/identity. In Studies 1 (Scotland-U.K. relations; N = 5,033) and 2 (U.K.-EU relations; N = 861) felt understanding consistently and strongly predicted outcomes such as trust, action intentions, and political separatism, including participants' actual "Brexit" referendum vote in Study 2. These effects were apparent even when controlling for outgroup stereotypes and metastereotypes. Felt understanding was a unique predictor of outgroup trust and forgiveness in Study 3 (Catholic-Protestant relations in Northern Ireland; N = 1,162), and was a powerful predictor of political separatism even when controlling for specific, relational appraisals including negative interdependence and identity threat in Study 4 (Basque-Spanish relations; N = 205). Study 5 (N = 190) included a direct manipulation of felt understanding, which had predicted effects on evaluation of the outgroup and of ingroup-outgroup relations. Overall, the findings provide converging evidence for the critical role of felt understanding in intergroup relations. We discuss future research possibilities, including the emotional correlates of felt understanding, and its role in intergroup interactions. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Gallantry on the Shankill road: the British ‘soldier-hero’ and state-media relations in Northern Ireland, 1969-1979

ABSTRACT The study of the British ‘soldier-hero’ as a political and cultural icon after 1945 has been largely confined to literature concerned with the memory of historical figures. Rarely have scholars considered how post-war military deployments not only created contemporary soldier-heroes, but also transformed their place within politics and society as the moral interrogation of these wars threatened to encroach upon the prestige of these icons. This article examines how the soldier-hero interacted with one of Britain’s most contentious deployments, Northern Ireland, and how politicians sought to control narratives surrounding this figure to avoid public relations controversy in unusual political conditions.

Inventorying Armagh: Max Lock, civil society, and the diffusion of planning ideas into Northern Ireland in the 1960s

ABSTRACTThe cathedral city of Armagh is one of the most historically and architecturally significant on the island of Ireland. This article explores the preparation of an inventory of Armagh’s architectural heritage by the London architect-planner Max Lock in 1964, commissioned by the Northern Ireland Committee of the National Trust. The inventory represents one aspect of the initial response of civil society to impending change in the built environment in the mid-1960s and formed part of efforts to ensure parity with Great Britain in land-use planning legislation. The inventory facilitates a wider discussion on state-civil society relations in Northern Ireland, the values and ideas guiding change within historic settlements, and the place promotional advantage that the local council sought to derive from Armagh’s history and heritage. Utilizing Ward’s typology of diffusion, it is argued that Northern Ireland represents an unusual ‘within-UK’ example of the transference of planning ideas and practices, with its historical experience of devolution offering valuable contemporary insights into the increasingly diffuse and fragmented governance space within the UK.

Integrated schools and intergroup relations in Northern Ireland: the importance of parents

Background: Integrated schools were established in Northern Ireland in the early 1980s. With an explicit intention to build better relations between Catholics and Protestants, it has an intuitive appeal in a society which has long experienced sectarian division. Whilst the sector has attracted considerable research, less is understood about how parents’ perceive the approach adopted by schools to build intergroup relations.Purpose: The present article seeks to address the gap in the literature by exploring parents’ views of integrated education. Drawing on theories of intergroup contact, the paper seeks specifically to explore how parents and head teachers perceive and negotiate the approach that the schools adopt to build intergroup relations.Method: In an attempt to probe the deeper meanings that participants attach to integrated education, a qualitative research approach was adopted; semi-structured interviews were carried out with 17 parents and 2 head teachers in two integrated primary schools.Findings: Through the data analyses, three main aspects were evident. Firstly, the study reveals something of the relational dynamic between head teachers and parents and the significance of this relationship for determining how intergroup relations are pursued in integrated schools. Secondly, it highlights the nebulous nature of identity salience and the practical challenges of making identity salient within mixed identity contexts. Finally, the study suggests the value of qualitative approaches for exploring intergroup contact initiatives.Conclusions: Overall, the paper demonstrates the inherent challenges of establishing an integrated school where good relations will be developed when multiple interpretations of what constitutes an appropriate response to difference and diversity prevails.

Children and Terrorism and commentaries

Children and Terrorism and commentaries

Counter-Insurgency against ‘Kith and Kin’? The British Army in Northern Ireland, 1970–76

This article argues that state violence in Northern Ireland during the period 1970–1976—when violence during the Troubles was at its height and before the re-introduction of the policy of police primacy in 1976—was on a greatly reduced scale from that seen in British counterinsurgency campaigns in the colonies after the Second World War. When the army attempted to introduce measures used in the colonies—curfews, internment without trial—these proved to be extremely damaging to London's political aims in Northern Ireland, namely the conciliation of the Catholic minority within the United Kingdom and the defeat of the IRA. However, the insistence by William Whitelaw, secretary of state for Northern Ireland (1972–73), on ‘throttling back'—the release of internees and the imposition of unprecedented restrictions on the use of violence by the army—put a serious strain on civil-military relations in Northern Ireland. The relatively stagnant nature of the conflict—with units taking casualties in the same small ‘patch’ of territory without opportunities for the types of ‘positive actions’ seen in the colonies—led to some deviancy on the part of small infantry units who sought informal, unsanctioned ways of taking revenge upon the local population. Meanwhile, a disbelieving and defensive attitude at senior levels of command in Northern Ireland meant that informal punitive actions against the local population were often not properly investigated during 1970–72, until more thorough civilian and military investigative procedures were put in place. Finally, a separation of ethnic and cultural identity between the soldiers and the local population—despite their being citizens of the same state—became professionally desirable in order for soldiers to carry out difficult, occasionally distasteful work.

‘A Whipping Boy If Ever There was One’? The British Army and the Politics of Civil–Military Relations in Northern Ireland, 1969–79

In almost every ‘small war’ in which they have fought against irregular opponents since 1945, senior British soldiers have complained about the political constraints imposed on military operations. Nowhere has this been more apposite than in Northern Ireland between 1969 and 1979, when the British Army was deployed onto the streets to provide Military Aid to the Civil Power. Yet, there has been little analysis of these claims, with most accounts overlooking the bargaining between the Northern Ireland Office and the British Army. This article focuses on the years 1969–79 when, arguably, civil–military relations were at their most strained. It details the process by which security policy was gradually ceded to the military between 1971 and 1976 and how it was finally wrested back by civilians with the return to power of the Conservative government in 1979.

Editorial

Every new academic journal aspires to promote the development of knowledge in their subject. The Journal of Mediation & Applied Conflict Analysis (JMACA) intends to achieve this by stimulating thematic conversations between researchers and practitioners who are reporting and reflecting on all aspects and forms of conflict intervention. The Edward M Kennedy Institute for Conflict Intervention produces and hosts this journal. JMACA aims to further the Institute’s mission to build capacity in society for constructive approaches to conflict. The journal welcomes article submissions from professionals and academics in the fields of family mediation, workplace, commercial, multiparty, community, conflict resolution in education, collaborative practice, restorative practices and peacemaking. This invitation is made in the belief that the examination of the ideology and approaches to conflict and conflict intervention in many fields enables cross-fertilisation and increases depth in the knowledge base of each practice. This first issue contains a number of such varied and thought provoking articles. Mediated Dialogue and Systemic Change in Northern Ireland, by Duncan Morrow, Brendan McAllister, Joe Campbell & Derrick Wilson, who review and discuss the methodology and vision of a programme of mediated dialogues on policing and community relations in Northern Ireland. This article details a critical dialogue approach that addresses distrust between police and civilians, working to create a more restorative culture and will be of interest to all those concerned about healing splits between public and political organisations and citizens.

Mediated Dialogues and Systemic Change in Northern Ireland 'Policing Our Divided Society' (PODS) 1996-2003)

This paper is a synopsis of “Changing Police Culture, A Critical Dialogue Project”, Morrow, D., Mc Allister, B., Campbell., J. & Wilson, D A., an Unpublished Report of a Five Year Programme of mediated dialogues around policing and community relations in Northern Ireland carried out by Mediation Northern Ireland and a charitably funded University of Ulster Action Research Programme, Future Ways. Because of the sensitivity of people from diverse traditions and organisations taking part in inclusive meetings around policing, we undertook not to publish the material until there was a sufficient time distance. The programme was funded by a variety of funders including the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust, the Ireland Funds and the United States Information Agency (USIA) with support from the Northern Ireland Office and the Irish Government.

Frontiers in Social Movement Methodology

I am honored to serve as editor for this special issue of Mobilization on innovative methods in social movements research. I was delighted when Rory McVeigh originally conceived of the idea of compiling manuscripts that employed cutting edge methods of collecting and analyzing data in order to advance contemporary social movement theory. I enjoyed the opportunity to review the wide variety of scholarly works I received for this issue. The six pieces included here represent the best submissions and emerging trends in the field. This special issue encapsulates the breadth of contemporary social movements research. Combined, the pieces highlight both the promise and difficulties associated with using new sources of data and methods. Although there are several similarities across the works, each one offers a unique contribution to the study of social movements. Jennifer Earl’s piece presents a solution to the tricky problem of collecting a representative sample from the Internet when preexisting lists from which to sample do not exist. Critically, Earl shows that findings are heavily driven by sampling strategies. Her study of “reachable websites” reports much higher levels of online-focused protest than prior studies that relied on organizational sampling frames. Alex Hanna’s piece on Egypt’s April 6 youth movement utilizes computeraided content analysis methods. Hanna applies these innovative methods to answer central questions concerning the content of movement discourse and how that content changes over the course of a movement. [0]His piece also serves as an excellent primer on the quantitative analysis of text data, in this case using data gathered from Facebook in multiple languages. While Hanna and Earl’s work are in line with a major trend in the field, the following pieces show that the future will not rely solely on automating analysis or Internet data. Hank Johnston and Eitan Alimi’s careful analysis of the subject-verb-object structure of key documents created by the Palestinian national movement provides an alternate way to examine the process of movement framing. The technique they introduce is grounded in framing theory, methodologically rigorous, and able to provide new insights into framing dynamics. Methods focused on the semantic elements of language move beyond the content of movement texts to offer an additional and underexplored level of meaning construction. Using a similar subject-verb-object method, but with a focus on acts rather than frames, Gianluca De Fazio traces the evolution of contentious relations in Northern Ireland from 1968-1972. Using story grammars and semantic triplets, he maps how the networks of violence changed through mechanisms of radicalization, such as object shift and boundary activation. By moving beyond event counts, this manuscript demonstrates a useful technique appropriate for relational social movement theories. In addition to the data and methods discussed thus far, there remain opportunities for innovative work in case-specific instances. Michael Biggs’ study highlights the advantages of focusing on one rare and newsworthy tactic. He also convincingly shows how one event, the self-immolation of the Vietnamese monk Quang Duc, permanently altered the tactic’s trajectory. This manuscript highlights the value of constructing the genealogies of protest _______________________________

Protestant Identity and Peace in Northern Ireland

Graham Spencer has written a straightforward book about Protestants and Protestantism in Northern Ireland, looking for what is common to all Protestants and taking what Protestant clergy say about their church as evidence. The book is based on roughly fifty interviews with Protestant pastors and nine interviews with Catholic priests. There is no methodological discussion about the sampling process or form of the interviews, how the extracts quoted were selected, or what a clergy's self-presentations may or may not show about wider attitudes. Indeed the long quotations are not just self-presentations, they are also in part ideals and self-justifications. The common themes and phrases from different interviews suggest that these are issues about which the clergy talk among themselves, and about which at least some of them “sing from the same hymn-sheet.” Spencer does not discuss whether the statements give us an accurate picture of the practical norms that guide clerical actions, let alone whether they reflect the understandings of the Protestant population as a whole, whose relationship to their clergy is immensely varied and often conflictual. Nor, for the most part, do the clergy themselves distinguish clearly what it is to be Protestant and what it is to be Protestant in Northern Ireland. Their discussion of the Catholic/Protestant contrast is highly colored by the specific relations in Northern Ireland. Some ecumenical respondents draw on their discussions with republicans about Northern Ireland politics, constitutionality, and armed struggle. But political differences are not generalizable to everyday life, much less to a Protestant/Catholic contrast per se.

Power-sharing and political public relations: Government-press relationships in Northern Ireland's developing democratic institutions

Northern Ireland's democratic governance is consociational (i.e. power-sharing is mandatory) and therefore substantially different from the majoritarian electoral system which characterizes most Western democratic societies. Consociationalism has been advocated as a form of democracy which can reconcile post-conflict societies fragmented along ethnic, religious or linguistic lines. Political public relations within mandatory coalitions have received little attention from scholars to date. Drawing on data from elite interviews with Government Information Officers (GIOs), Ministerial Special Advisers (SpAds) and journalists in Northern Ireland, this paper analyses their perspectives on political public relations in Northern Ireland's evolving democratic institutions. Our findings suggest Northern Ireland's public sphere is characterized not just by the usual contest between government communicators and journalists over political stories, but also by competition across government departments and within departments between GIOs and SpAds. Our research investigates the role of public relations in Northern Ireland's developing democratic institutions and more generally identifies important issues surrounding government communication in post-conflict power-sharing democracies.

Sharing Classes between Separate Schools: A Mechanism for Improving Inter-Group Relations in Northern Ireland?

One manifestation of division and the history of conflict in Northern Ireland is the parallel education system that exists for Protestants and Catholics. Although recent decades have seen some advances in the promotion of integrated education, around 95% of children continue to attend schools separated on ethno-religious lines. In 2007 a programme for sharing education was established. Underpinned by intergroup contact theory, and reflecting educational priorities shared by all school sectors, the programme seeks to offer children from different denominational schools an opportunity to engage with each other on a sustained basis. In this article the authors adopt a quantitative approach to examining the impact of participation in the Sharing Education Programme on a range of outcomes (out-group attitudes, positive action tendencies and out-group trust) via, first, intergroup contact (cross-group friendships) and, second, intergroup anxiety. Their findings confirm the value of contact as a mechanism for promoting more harmonious relationships, and affirm the Sharing Education Programme as an initiative that can help promote social cohesion in a society that remains deeply divided.

A history of Republican public relations in Northern Ireland from “Bloody Sunday” to the “Good Friday Agreement”

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine the public relations strategies of the IRA (Irish Republican Army) and their political wing Sinn Féin, throughout the historical period known as the Northern Ireland “Troubles”.Design/methodology/approachThis study uses semi‐structured élite interviews as its primary data. The study structures a historical account of the development of republican public relations around three main phases: the “propaganda of the deed” phase; the development of political public relations phase; and the peace process phase.FindingsMuch previous research traces a common trajectory for terrorist organisations, where they begin with large‐scale “propaganda of the deed” activities, and then move toward more typical PR activities when their “message” begins to be heard. The findings suggest that this is only partially true for the republican movement. Previous research also claims that peace settlements virtually never acknowledge the demands of terrorist groups. However, the findings indicate that the republican movement, via the use of skilful public relations techniques and disciplined internal organisational communication, pushed itself to the forefront and remained central in the efforts to develop a peace process.Research limitations/implicationsThe study draws on interview data with a small group (six) of republican strategists, all of whom where involved in some capacity in public relations activities. While it is not claimed that they represent the views of the whole republican movement on the issues discussed, they do arguably represent the views of a “dominant coalition”. Future research could usefully investigate the public relations of power sharing since the Good Friday Agreement.Originality/valuePrevious approaches to analysing the subject of public relations and terrorism have tended to regard it as an activity engaged in by psychopaths or criminals. This paper's starting‐point is to problematise this definition of “terrorism” and at the same time widen the application of the term to include State actors. In this regard, it is in opposition to much current Western media, governmental and academic usage of the term. This research also differs from most other studies of terrorism in the public relations literature, in that it uses élite interviews as its primary source of data.

Police Community Relations in Northern Ireland in the Post-Patten Era: Towards an Ecological Analysis

This chapter provides an overview of police community relations in Northern Ireland following the recommendations of the Independent Commission on Policing. The chapter suggests that while general levels of support between the Catholic/Nationalist community in Northern Ireland the situation is rather more problematic for those communities and groups traditionally alienated from police actions in the past. The chapter contends that a failure by the PSNI to deal with low level crime and disorder has had a negative impact on public perceptions of the police.

‘Of Boundaries Traversed’: Deconstructing Ethnonationalist Identity and Ethnic Spaces in Northern Ireland

To cogently advance my arguments about ethnonationalism and ethnic spaces in Northern Ireland, my paper will be divided into four sections. The first will be a contextualizing one, providing a historical framework within which the dynamics of Northern Ireland can be better understood. Second, I will address my theoretical assumptions, examining the effects (and effectiveness) of partition, as well as the role of ideology in the entrenchment of ethnonationalism. Third, I will turn to more thorough analysis, relying on my historical and theoretical foundation to expound the long tradition of violence that plagued the Ulster counties during the Troubles. And, lastly, I offer a series of suggestions that might improve conditions and relations in Northern Ireland. In short, the paper intends to analyze the influences of ethnonationalism and ideology on identities and ethnic spaces in Northern Ireland, with the crucial purpose of advancing a reconsideration and deconstruction of the country’s binaristic terms. By the end, I hope to have offered a sufficiently comprehensive examination of the conflict – one that integrates various disciplines and relates the Troubles of Northern Ireland in properly complex fashion.

Residential segregation and health in Northern Ireland

Patterns of residential segregation in Northern Ireland reflect historic sectarian conflict as well as current animosities. A number of indices of segregation are examined in this paper and their relative merits in capturing localised societal divisions are discussed. The implications of such divisions on health as mediated through conflict-related stress are then considered. Costed datasets of hospital, community and anxiety/depression prescribing data have been assembled and attributed to local geographies. The association between geographical variations in these costs and levels of segregation was modelled using regression analysis. It was found that the level of segregation does not help to explain variations in costed utilisation of acute and elderly services but does explain variations in the costs of prescribing for anxiety and depression with controls for socio-economic deprivation included. Results in this paper would indicate that strategies to promote good relations in Northern Ireland have positive implications for mental health.

New peace, new teachers: Student teachers' perspectives of diversity and community relations in Northern Ireland

This paper reflects upon student teachers' conceptions of inter-community relations and the preparation they receive to address issues of diversity and mutual understanding. The study in Northern Ireland is set against a backdrop of political, social and educational change, where a shared, peaceful future appears possible. Student teachers at a Catholic institution and a predominantly Protestant institution indicated a willingness to engage with issues concerning diversity and inter-community relations, despite having a limited knowledge of the concepts. However they also demonstrated clear views about the relevance and value of the preparation they received. The findings are evaluated using multicultural theory.