State In Northern Ireland Research Articles

BORDERLANDS: STOCK PHOTOGRAPHY AND PRESS DEPICTIONS OF THE BORDER BETWEEN THE REPUBLIC OF IRELAND AND THE STATE OF NORTHERN IRELAND

This article explores photographic representations of the border between the Republic of Ireland and the state of Northern Ireland. This contentious division of the island occurred in 1921 following a War of Independence. It left six of the island’s thirty-two counties under British rule and its creation precipitated a Civil War (1922-1923). Photography has been employed to either undermine or solidify the border’s existence. At various times its visibility was heightened or negated reflecting the political climate. The article will consider the border imagery reproduced in popular magazines such as LIFE and also those created by stock photo-agencies. Mainly consumed by non-Irish audiences, these representations were initially quaint, however, as political and civil unrest grew, and British troops occupied and patrolled the border area, the depictions became more sinister. Border checkpoints and a ‘wild’ countryside teeming with paramilitaries became visual shorthand for this ‘problematic’ space. Recent Fine Art representations of the border in the post-Brexit era will also be considered.

THE MODERN BREXIT AGENDA: SOME CONSEQUENCES OF “TAKE BACK CONTROL”

Brexit, the historically unique process of the UK’s withdrawal from the European Union, has continued to dominate the global conversation for several years and its significance has not waned. The withdrawal of a state from the EU happened for the first time in more than half a century of its history. Despite the formal completion of Brexit, many related issues regarding the implementation of the EU-UK Withdrawal Agreement, the status of Northern Ireland, the implementation of the Trade and Cooperation Agreement between the two parties, the place of EU law in the British national legal order, are still not finally resolved. The adopted legal decisions influence the current development of both the EU and especially the UK’s legal order. All this allows us to talk about the actual continuation of Brexit and the formation of its modern agenda.

Glocal Borders in Kenneth Branagh's Belfast (2021)

Kenneth Branagh’s semi-autobiographical film Belfast (2021) tells the story of a young boy, Buddy, growing up in Belfast in the sectarian border zones that internally fissured the state of Northern Ireland. This article suggests that the movie’s critical success partly rests on the movie’s glocal approach to Belfast’s history, including its border zones. The film employs a number of aesthetic devices to turn the local experiences of Buddy into a global narrative about childhood, family and border zones. Among these tools are the use of self-referential framing devices, the child’s perspective and elements of nostalgia that link local history to transnational bonds of affection. By using a child's perspective, Belfast transcends the ruptures inherent in Belfast’s zones of division to create connections across cultural, ideological and physical spaces. Situated in a glocal framework, Buddy’s childhood symbolically embodies the experiences of a collective Irish diaspora, one that thinks back to its own or its family’s migrant experiences and turns it into a source of emotional belonging.

Out of Time: BBC Northern Ireland and the Paradoxes of Partition

This article considers the contradictions of British broadcasting in northern Ireland. Established in 1924, following war and partition, the BBC in the sectarian state of Northern Ireland was permitted to develop at an arm’s length and out of sync with the national model of British broadcasting. Structured on the colonial presumption of neutrality on the part of British interests in Ireland, British television, during the Troubles, took for granted the legitimacy of partition and, as a result, misconstrued the causes of conflict. Throughout the period up to negotiation of the 1998 settlement – the Good Friday Agreement – and down to the present era, British perspectives on the crisis neglected the precedence of parallels in the Irish experience of partition, notably, since 2010, when confronted with the resurgent forces of ethnic nationalism (aka Brexit). In its post-public-service dotage, the BBC has responded poorly to a constitutional crisis from which the Union of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (that is, the UK) may not recover. So much so that, by now, amid a series of politically awkward centenaries, it is argued, the BBC and the partitionist project of NI, are each in their own way manifesting signs of morbidity, and both are running out of time.

1403 Leadership and Teamwork in The Major Trauma Service – Implementation of A New Approach to Secondary Surveys

Abstract Aim Trauma Audit and Research Network (TARN) guidelines at a Major Trauma Centre in Northern Ireland state that all patients admitted with Major Trauma should have a secondary survey completed and documented within 24 hours of admission. Method All patients admitted with major trauma had their medical notes reviewed on discharge to look for evidence of a documented secondary survey. Two audit cycles were completed. The first from January 2018 to April 2018 (n = 38). Following a quality improvement project with specific interventions to improve compliance, including improved communication behaviours and the implementation of a revised trauma booklet, a second cycle was performed from October 2019 to January 2019 (n = 44) Results 58% of group 1 and 75% of group 2 had a documented secondary survey within 24 hours of admission. The interventions therefore resulted in an overall 17% increase in the number of secondary surveys completed within 24 hours. Patients admitted under Orthopaedic care had a significant improvement of 26% between cycles to 89% compliance. Cardiothoracics (33% to 40%), Neurosurgery (14% to 43%) and General Surgery (75% to 66%). Conclusions A quality improvement drive led by the Orthopaedic team involving the education of doctors, improving communication channels and the introduction of revised trauma documentation, resulted in a significant increase in the number of secondary surveys completed within 24 hours. Patients under the care of Orthopaedics were more likely to have a survey completed compared with other specialties. This highlights the need for more education and engagement of other specialities to increase compliance in secondary surveys.

The arbitration of nature: state, water, and civil engineering in Northern Ireland directly after partition

Begun in the summer of 1923, the Silent Valley Reservoir was the first large scale civil engineering project after the division between the North and the South of Ireland. It was the continuation of a previous project. In the late Nineteenth Century a portion of the Kilkeel and Annalong Rivers in the Mourne Mountains had been diverted 35 miles to provide water for the growing industrial city of Belfast in the North of Ireland. A reservoir in the mountains was also planned at a later date but this was delayed by the Great War and then by Irish political instability and the high cost of construction in immediate post war period. Before being completed the project had to overcome several obstacles. Firstly, the Mourne Mountains were claimed by the South of Ireland and thus subject to the Boundary Commission of the Anglo-Irish peace treaty. The Water Commissioners had brought important British political leaders to tour the Silent Valley construction site in an attempt to demonstrate how implausible a situation (in their opinion) that the South should control the major water supply to the capital city of the North. Secondly, shortly after the Boundary Commission was shelved, the combination of fluid subsoil and the failure to locate bedrock at expected depth brought construction to a halt while an engineering, political, and legal solution was sought for the expensive and now publicly controversial project. This article traces the contingent relationship between state (sovereignty) and technology (water reservoir) using a socio legal and socio material description of the crucial arbitration process enabling further time and resources for resolution of the difficulty. Ultimately an air-shaft device for excavating under increased atmospheric pressure had to be designed taking in mind both technical and political difficulties. Today the 3000-million-gallon reservoir, first imagined in the late Nineteenth Century, continues to be a major water source for the city of Belfast.

The Brexit Effect? Ethno-National Divisions on the Island of Ireland among Political Elites and the Youth

The status of Northern Ireland has been at the heart of the Brexit impasse. Using semi-structured interviews of political elites and an original survey experiment administered to young people on both sides of the Irish border (N = 771), this study analyzes Brexit’s impact on identities and territorial attachments on the island of Ireland. The results demonstrate that political elites perceived that Brexit had greatly exacerbated intergroup tensions; whereas the survey experiment only identified a significant influence of Brexit on territorial attachment in the Republic of Ireland, and no significant effect of Brexit on attitudes was measured in Northern Ireland.

Political adjudication or statutory interpretation: Robinson v Secretary of State for Northern Ireland

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Models of Irish Unification Processes

The purpose of this paper is to identify and evaluate pathways to Irish unification that would be (a) constitutionally permissible in Ireland—i.e. the State currently governed by the Constitution of Ireland 1937—(b) consistent with the terms of the Belfast / Good Friday Agreement 1998 (GFA), and (c) consistent with the Northern Ireland Act 1998. Starting with the southern Irish perspective, we argue that bare unification does not require constitutional amendment, and could be achieved by a plebiscite or (probably) legislation. There are, however, many related changes frequently suggested in the context of unification that would require either a constitutional amendment or constitutional replacement in the South. Without evaluating the merits of any of these changes, we make an assumption—which we believe to be reasonable although contestable—that unification would involve at least some changes of this type. It follows that unification would involve a referendum, either to amend or replace the Constitution of Ireland 1937. We argue that the GFA requires that this referendum be concurrent with a referendum in Northern Ireland, although there is some ambiguity as to the meaning of ‘concurrence’. If both referendums favour unification, there is then an obligation on the Irish and British Governments to introduce and support in their respective parliaments legislation to give effect to that wish. Irish unification must therefore involve, if it is to meet the three criteria identified above, concurrent referendums North and South followed by legislation approved by Westminster and the Oireachtas (Irish Parliament). We go further, however, and specify three desiderata against which unification processes can be assessed. First, that those voting in referendums should be able to have a reasonably clear idea of what the implications of their vote. Second, that the processes should reduce the risk of the UK and Ireland diverging over the final constitutional status of Northern Ireland. Third, that the processes should allow for a wide range of consultation and negotiation over the constitutional and political structure of a unified Ireland, including extensive attempts to engage with the views of northern unionists. We identify several models that fit the legal parameters. We suggest, however, that the model that best meets the desiderata is one in which the form of a united Ireland is settled through negotiations prior to the referendums. The required legislation in Westminster and the Oireachtas should then follow as a matter of course.

Political bargaining chips: republican internees in Northern Ireland 1972-1975

ABSTRACTFrom March 1972 until internment itself was eventually abandoned in December 1975 successive Secretaries of State for Northern Ireland used their powers to arrest and release republican internees. This article demonstrates that several factors contributed to the policy of controlling the arrests and releases of internees, and that the most important was not negotiations with the Provisional IRA (PIRA) but the need to encourage the engagement of moderate nationalists in an emerging political process. The story of internment is often exclusively seen in the narrower narratives of paramilitary historiography and the later ‘prison war’. This article adopts a broader contextual approach in which both moderate nationalist, and to a lesser extent, unionist concerns over arrests and releases are considered. In doing so, this work resituates the gradual ending of internment at the heart of the mainstream political discussions in Northern Ireland in the 1970s. The article also contends that this controlled use of internment as a political strategy ultimately proved to be successful for the British government in achieving their desired objectives.

What’s in an Irish Border? Brexit, the Backstop(s) and the Constitutional Integrity of the UK

The decision of the UK Government to withdraw from the single market and the EU customs union after the end of the transition period has presented a significant challenge for the frictionless nature of the Irish territorial border. To effectively deal with this, several differentiated arrangements have been suggested for Northern Ireland. A number of political actors, however, have expressed their concerns over such arrangements claiming that they pose a threat to the status of Northern Ireland as an integral part of the United Kingdom. The current paper shows that territorial differentiation is a tool that the EU has used frequently in order to accommodate regions that already enjoy a degree of legal or constitutional differentiation in their relationship with the respective metropolitan State. In the case of Northern Ireland, the differentiation introduced by the Protocol on Ireland/Northern respects the right of self-determination of the people in the region as expressed through the principle of consent on which the GFA was built. As such, it protects the unique constitutional status of Northern Ireland rather than threatens UK’s constitutional integrity.

The Status of Northern Ireland after Brexit: Probable Models

The article highlights one of the main issues related to the UK's withdrawal from the European Union, Northern Ireland’s new status, in particular, the status of the border between NI and the Republic of Ireland. It has been an ‘apple of discord’ from the first stage and during the last stage of the Brexit negotiations. The future ‘hard’ or ‘soft’ Irish-British border is not a problem in the negotiations between the United Kingdom and the European Union only, but is also a serious domestic political challenge for Theresa May’s government. The article explains possible models of the future status of Northern Ireland. The most probable solutions are: a ‘reverse Greenland’, a ‘reverse Cyprus’ and a ‘German version’.
 Following the Good Friday Agreement of 1998, the EU invested heavily in supporting border communities for the development of small business and industry, which improved the economic situation in the area of the former conflict and facilitated border dialogue. However, it led to the fact that many enterprises were oriented towards the EU market or border trade. The article concludes that the ‘reverse Greenland’ model would enable Northern Ireland to remain in the single market and customs union apart from the rest of Great Britain, which would prevent the establishment of a tight boundary between both Irelands. The author outlined the possible implications of the ‘reverse Cyprus’ model, which suggests that the United Kingdom would technically remain a part of the EU, and that the EU’s legislation would be suspended only on its separate parts (that is, Wales and England). The researcher emphasizes that the ‘German version’ could be applied in the case of future reunification of both Irelands, then Northern Ireland would remain a part of the EU until its new status on the referendum have been resolved.
 The article summarized that no examples above provide a precise analogy, since Brexit is unprecedented event. The most likely models of the Northern Ireland’s future are the ‘reverse Greenland’ and the ‘reverse Cyprus’

‘No textbook solutions to the problems in Northern Ireland’: Airey Neave and the Conservative Party's Northern Ireland Policy, 1975–1979

This article examines Airey Neave's contribution to the Conservative Party's Northern Ireland policy from 1975 to 1979, a hitherto neglected subject related to the Conservative Party, the Northern Ireland Troubles and more generally contemporary British history. It challenges the widely held misconception that Neave was simply a militarist when it came to Northern Ireland; that as shadow secretary of state for Northern Ireland his sole objective was to defeat Republican terrorists. On the contrary, while he sought ‘complete victory’ over Republican paramilitaries, Neave remained committed to finding a workable solution amongst the political parties in Northern Ireland in the hope of ending direct rule. The article re-evaluates Neave's attitude to devolution in Northern Ireland. Specifically, whether he championed the restoration of devolved government, based on a power-sharing executive, or if he favoured a return to majority-rule in Northern Ireland. It refutes the argument that Neave was a committed integrationist, that he supported integrating Northern Ireland fully within the United Kingdom. Rather, it is argued that he can be most adequately described as a champion of so-called ‘compromise integration’, which advocated reform of local government in Northern Ireland, with the establishment of one or more Regional Councils.

North by North

[Extract] Seven centuries of cartographic convention has placed north at the top of maps, and by logical extension at the top of the world. This convention has been closely aligned with another, known as the Mercator projection. Devised by the Flemish cartographer Gerardus Mercator in 1659, this system of map-making has been uncritically handed down through the centuries to the present time and continues to be the cartographic standard in many parts of the world. Mercator’s projection not only points northward but exaggerates northern landmasses at the expense of the south. For example, it magnifies Greenland to be approximately the same size as Africa, which is actually fourteen times larger. The Greenland example is one of many northern amplifications and conceits that belittle the south. The specific contrast with Africa was presented with deadpan humour and devastating effect in a 2012 episode of Aaron Sorkin’s The West Wing. Cartographers for Social Equity lobby President Bartlet’s White House to withdraw all Mercator maps from US schools and replace them with Gall-Peters maps. The Gall-Peters projection represents with greater fidelity and accuracy the relative proportions of the world’s landmasses. The Cartographers for Social Equity fail in their representation but, coincidental or not, five years after the screening of The West Wing episode Gall-Peters maps began to be phased in at schools in two American states. North and south are cardinal directions and polar opposites that refer to exact locations at either end of the globe. Within ice-bound regions, the North Pole defines the Arctic, an old term derived from Latin and Greek to mean north. By contrast, its antithesis—the Antarctic—is a negative term that means opposite to north. It is defined by the South Pole. This linguistic preference suggests that north is the one while south is the other.

Peled, Yoav. 2014. The Challenge of Ethnic Democracy: The State and Minority Groups in Israel, Poland and Northern Ireland

Peled, Yoav. 2014. The Challenge of Ethnic Democracy: The State and Minority Groups in Israel, Poland and Northern Ireland

The Moral Economy of Loyalty: Labour, Law, and the State in Northern Ireland, 1921–1939

The state of Northern Ireland was founded in 1921 and consolidated in the inter-war period. Analysts have claimed that this was accomplished through religious discrimination and populist patronage, despite the existence of Article V of the Government of Ireland Act, 1920. Utilizing a case study approach, this article examines how two pieces of legislation impacted on the labour movement in the region in the period 1921 to 1939. The Special Powers Act (first passed in 1922, and a permanent act from 1933), and the Trade Disputes Act, 1927, were both legislated by the inter-war Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) government of Northern Ireland. Labour activists suffered political discrimination, while they were intimidated through the legislation and organization was curtailed. These restrictions were carried out on the basis that the labour movement was considered a ‘disloyal’ section of the Northern Ireland populace. The article concludes that during the period 1921 to 1939 the state of Northern Ireland state was administered by the UUP through a moral economy of loyalty, due to the politicized nature of regional policy. The evidence suggests that as a result of the Government of Ireland Act, 1920, all those considered disloyal in Northern Ireland were liable to political discrimination, while those loyal were to be rewarded through patronage.

Schooling, the Protestant churches and the state in Northern Ireland: a tension resolved

In 1998, Byrne and McKeown examined the churches’ roles in Northern Ireland’s (NI) schooling system. NI was then governed by direct-rule from the UK’s Westminster Parliament. The authors concluded that the desire of the Protestant churches to re-establish their influence in schools was ‘unlikely to succeed’. This was contrasted with the ‘success-story’ of Catholic influence in schooling. This article tracks the fortunes of the Protestant churches in NI’s educational policy developments in the last 18 years. Of particular interest are the government’s proposals to establish an Education and Skills Authority (ESA) under a new Education Bill. A careful reading of the Protestant churches’ annual education reports indicates the alarm with which these proposals were met. In the early years of the new millennium it seemed that the conclusions of the 1998 paper were prescient. However, extensive lobbying by the Protestant churches in a changed (devolved) political context secured almost all their demands. This article concludes that the ‘tension’ (claimed in the 1998 paper) between the Protestant churches and the state has largely been resolved. The article evaluates the significance of recent developments for the Protestant churches and their involvement in schooling. More critically, the propriety of these developments is questioned asking if they mark an advance for the Protestant churches and/or schooling in NI.

How the ‘suspect community’ became ‘critical engagers’: the (re)framing of the Irish republican narrative on policing in Northern Ireland

ABSTRACTThis article is an empirical case study of how the Irish republican narrative on policing in Northern Ireland evolved from an absolutist position of rejection to one of post-conflict ‘critical engagement’. Drawing on previous research by McEvoy and by Mulcahy it evaluates the strategic dimensions to the (re)framing process that aided mobilisation throughout the course of the conflict and into the transition in Northern Ireland. Positing that the Irish republican policing narrative can be conceptualised into four distinct phases (passive rejection, ‘Ulsterisation’, disbandment and ‘critical engagement’), it critiques how the process of (re)framing enabled Irish republicans to adapt their policing narrative to mobilise in response to unfolding political developments in Northern Ireland. Although cognisant of certain dominant themes prevailing across multiple narrative phases, this article examines how the issue of policing was subject to changing narrative frames as the ‘end point’ the narrative sought to make changed from phase to phase. The changing ‘end points’, this article will argue, developed in tandem with changes in the relationship between Irish republicans and the Northern Ireland state.

“For whose benefit these burdens must be taken”: Children, Employment, and Training in Northern Ireland, 1921–1939

This essay explores how state and welfare authorities attempted to deal with the issue of juvenile unemployment in the new Northern Ireland state. It addresses measures introduced between 1921 and 1939 by the newly devolved government to deal with the growing problem. Industrial production in Belfast was severely hit in the postwar economic climate, resulting in an employment problem that plagued the government until the outbreak of hostilities in 1939. This created difficulties for welfare authorities and the cabinet because the emphasis by Northern Irish politicians rested on ensuring that welfare provision and standards of living would remain equal to those in the rest of the UK. This prompted authorities in Northern Ireland to look towards England for exemplary intervention in juvenile unemployment. This resulted in a solution that was not designed for local conditions, and its efficacy was questionable.

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.