Evaluating historic splits in Irish republicanism

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sophie A. Whiting
Keyword(s):  
Irish Republicanism

Sinn Féin and the IRA

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mathew Whiting
Keyword(s):  
Northern Ireland ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Sinn Fein ◽  
Peace Processes ◽  
British Rule ◽  
Irish Republicanism ◽  
The Republic ◽  
British State ◽  
State Responses

When Sinn Féin and the IRA emerged in Northern Ireland in 1969 they used a combination of revolutionary politics and violence to an effort to overthrow British rule. Today, the IRA is in a state of ‘retirement’, violence is a tactic of the past, and Sinn Féin is a co-ruler of Northern Ireland and an ever growing political player in the Republic of Ireland. This is one of the most startling transformations of a radical violent movement into a peaceful political one in recent times. So what exactly changed within Irish republicanism, what remains the same, and, crucially, what caused these changes? Where existing studies explain the decision to end violence as the product of stalemate or strategic interplay with the British state, this book draws on a wealth of archival material and interviews to argue that moderation was a long-term process of increasing inclusion and contact with political institutions, which gradually extracted moderate concessions from republicanism. Crucially, these concessions did not necessitate republicans forsaking their long-term ethno-national goals. The book also considers the wider implications of Irish republicanism for other cases of separatist conflict, and has significance for the future study of state responses to violent separatism and of comparative peace processes.

Douglas Goldring: ‘An Englishman’ and 1916

2017 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 195-212
Author(s):  
Guy Woodward
Keyword(s):  
British Army ◽  
Conscientious Objector ◽  
Easter Rising ◽  
Irish Republicanism

In October 1914, the English writer and publisher Douglas Goldring was invalided out of the British Army. By 1916, he had become a conscientious objector and moved to Ireland, where he lived for the next two years, witnessing the aftermath of the Easter Rising. Illuminating connections between the pacifist movement in Britain and Irish Republicanism, his writings of this period – including two Irish travelogues and a propagandist semi-autobiographical bildungsroman, The Fortune (1917) – disclose transnational and transcultural networks of resistance and dissidence, and show how the Rising and its aftermath helped to radicalise pacifist writers in London.

scholarly journals An bhfuil ár lá tagtha? Sinn Féin, special status and the politics of Brexit

2021 ◽  
pp. 136914812110261
Author(s):  
Jonathan Evershed ◽  
Mary C Murphy
Keyword(s):  
Northern Ireland ◽  
Sinn Fein ◽  
Political Costs ◽  
Irish Republicanism ◽  
Economic Risks

In this article we critically examine how Sinn Féin responded to Brexit, why, and with what consequences. By destabilising the UK’s territorial constitution and intensifying debate about Ireland’s constitutional future, Brexit has represented a moment of unprecedented opportunity for Irish republicanism. However, this has been offset by the very real political and economic risks it has posed for the island of Ireland. We argue that Sinn Féin’s pursuit of ‘Special Status’ for Northern Ireland represented an attempt to mitigate Brexit’s risks, rather than to leverage its opportunities. This approach came with political costs for the party, whose recent electoral surge has arguably been in spite of rather than because of it. We demonstrate how Brexit has served to reshape Sinn Féin’s politics, and how it has functioned to further moderate its ‘Eurocriticism’.

Who Wants a United Ireland?

1985 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-47 ◽  
Author(s):  
W. Harvey Cox
Keyword(s):  
Prime Minister ◽  
Great Majority ◽  
Easter Rising ◽  
Course Of Action ◽  
The People ◽  
British Prime Minister ◽  
Irish People ◽  
Irish Republicanism ◽  
The Right ◽  
Elected Representatives

THE PROVISIONAL IRA'S ATTEMPT TO ASSASSINATE THE BRITISH Prime Minister and Cabinet at Brighton on 12 October 1984, represents the most dramatic move to date in a reputedly 20-year strategy of inducing the British to withdraw from Northern Ireland and leave Ireland to the Irish. Where nonviolent Irish nationalists have aimed, most notably through the New Ireland Forum Report published in May 1984, to persuade the British that the 1920 constitutional settlement dividing Ireland is inherently unstable and must be dismantled, the Provisional IRA has no faith in this course of action. The British, they calculate, will be persuaded not by the force of argument but by the argument of force. In this they can claim, with some justification, to be the true heirs of the Easter Rising of 1916. At that time the Proclamation of the Irish Republic, which was to become the basic document of Irish republicanism, declared ‘… the right of the people of Ireland to the ownership of Ireland and to the unfettered control of Irish destinies, to be sovereign and indefeasible’. Since the 1916 Proclamation was ratified by the first subsequent meeting of elected representatives of the Irish people, the first Dáil Eireann, in 1919, representing virtually all but the Ulster unionist minority, and since the right and the aspiration to Irish unity have been reaffirmed by all non-unionist Irish parties ever since, it must be a truth universally acknowledged that the division of Ireland is unjust and undemocratic and that the reunification of the country is the rightful aspiration of the great majority of its people.

Transition, ‘Never Again’ and ‘Moving On’

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin Hearty
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Northern Ireland ◽  
Transitional Justice ◽  
Human Rights Violations ◽  
Master Narrative ◽  
The Past ◽  
The North ◽  
Irish Republicanism ◽  
Difficult Issue ◽  
Subsequent Replacement

Viewing Irish republican policing memory primarily through a transitional justice lens, this chapter critically examines how Irish republicans, as a principal party to the conflict, approach the difficult issue of ‘dealing with the past’ as both collective victims and perpetrators of human rights violations during the conflict. It will interrogate the range of divergent views within modern Irish republicanism on issues such as victimhood, truth recovery, ‘moving on’ and ‘dealing with the past’. In particular, it looks at how the memory of human rights violations framed the wider policing debate and led to a master narrative of ‘never again’ whereby the value of ‘remembering’ past abuses lay in helping to prevent future repetition. This is placed against a more general backdrop of the stop-start ‘dealing with the past’ process in the North of Ireland that has included the establishment, operation and subsequent replacement of the Historical Enquiries Team (HET), the passage of the Civil Service (Special Advisers) Act (Northern Ireland), and proposals like the Haass/O’Sullivan document and the Stormont House Agreement.

The Patriot Dead

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin Hearty
Keyword(s):  
Political Transition ◽  
Armed Struggle ◽  
Critical Engagement ◽  
Counter Narrative ◽  
Political Resource ◽  
Grassroots Support ◽  
Irish Republicanism ◽  
The Dead ◽  
War Dead ◽  
Political Groups

This chapter assesses the centrality of martyrology to Irish republicanism as an ideology. It examines how the dead become a useful political resource for competing memory entrepreneurs who are keen to sanctify their current strategies and in the process keep their grassroots support base on board during periods of political transition. It interrogates contending narratives on whether ‘critical engagement’ is in furtherance of or contradiction to the ideological goals that the Irish republican war dead sacrificed themselves for. The chapter grapples with the policing narrative proffered by each side; the narrative of ‘critical engagement’ being the extension of the courage shown by the dead during armed struggle and the counter-narrative that endorsement of policing represents a defeat of the goals for which the Irish republican war dead sacrificed themselves. It examines how commemoration and memorialisation were used by competing political groups prior to, during and following the Sinn Fein Extraordinary Ard Fheis on policing in order to bolster their respective positions through building a link of continuity with the martyred dead.

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