Republican Movement in Iran and the reasons of its failure (January – March 1924)

By the beginning of the twentieth century for almost 2500 years of its history,Iranwas an originally monarchical country, where the republican ideas and traditions were completely untypical. Nevertheless, from the end of December 1923, the society traced the idea of overthrowing Ahmed Shah Qajar and replacing constitutional monarchy with a republic. The main source of the republican movement was the Tajjaddod (Renaissance) Party, led by Seyyed Mohamed Tadayon. In fact, the whole process was initiated by an almighty dictator Reza Khan (whose honorary title was Sardar Sepah). He held the posts of a Prime Minister and a Minister of War and in order to achieve his goals he forced Ahmed Shah to leaveIranin November 1923. Reza-Khan wanted to repeat Kemal Ataturk’s way, and planned to become the so-called lifetime president of the republic.However, the movement for becoming a republic provoked strong resistance in various segments of Iranian society, which was led by Shiite clergy. The leader of Anti-Republican Movement was Seyed Hassan Modarres, a major theologian and politician and a member of the Majlis (Parliament).As a result of a sharp struggle between the opposing camps, the Republican Movement suffered a crushing defeat. The reasons for it were, firstly, the unwillingness of the majority of Iranian classes and social groups to give up the monarchy and, secondly, straightforward and rough actions of the Republicans, which caused the opposite effect among the population.

Conclusion

The closing chapter concludes the book by summarising the findings of the analysis into forty years of peacemaking and war experience in Northern Ireland and Turkey, and how these might be applied to other ethno-nationalist conflicts in which similar peace processes have been instituted. This chapter discusses the implications of the policies applied in the two specified conflicts for conflict resolution theory more broadly and lays out a framework for further research in the field. It argues that there is a complementarity between three major aspects of conflict resolution processes: backchannel communications, as the unofficial aspect; peace organisations, as the informal and semi-official aspect; and official negotiations, as the official aspect. The conflict resolution processes in these two cases encouraged the conflicting sides to consider talks and to enter into a negotiation process at the pre-negotiation stage. The processes then intended to reach a peace agreement during the negotiation stage. This book has suggested that a peace agreement requires mediation by an independent third party: between the British government and their adversaries, the IRA and the republican movement, in one case, and the Turkish government and their adversaries, the PKK and pro-Kurdish movement in the other.

The Politics of Apology and the Prospects for ‘Post-conflict’ Reconciliation: The Case of the Provisional Irish Republican Movement

This article analyses the Irish Provisional Republican movement and the evolution of its approach to the politics of apology. The first section analyses recent scholarship regarding ‘political apologies’, and provides a challenge to the existing literature, which concentrates upon ‘official’ or state apologies, rather than examples involving non-state armed groups (paramilitary or ‘terrorist’ organisations). This section argues that it remains difficult to discern an adequate general model for establishing criteria for a ‘successful’ or ‘sincere’ political apology involving such groups. The second section considers a number of case studies, including the statements of the IRA in 2002, and after the Enniskillen bombing in 1987. It is argued that the Provisional movement’s apologies have not generally proven helpful to its declared aim of post-conflict reconciliation. This article argues that attempted apologies or quasi-apologies by non-state groups may not ameliorate the sense of grievance experienced by victims/survivors, and may also serve to revivify social and political ‘framing battles’ over the past.

‘Sinn Féin permits … in the heels of their shoes’: Cumann na mBan emigrants and transatlantic revolutionary exchange

The emigration of female revolutionary activists has largely eluded historical studies; their global movements transcend dominant national and regional conceptions of the Irish Revolution and challenge established narratives of political exile which are often cast in masculine terms. Drawing on Cumann na mBan nominal rolls and U.S. immigration records, this article investigates the scale of post-Civil War Cumann na mBan emigration and evaluates the geographical origins, timing and push-pull factors that defined their migration. Focusing on the United States in particular, it also measures the impact of the emigration and return migration of female revolutionaries – during the revolutionary period and in its immediate aftermath – on both the republican movement in Ireland and the fractured political landscapes of Irish America. Ultimately, this article argues that the cooperative transatlantic exchange networks of Cumann na mBan, and the consciously gendered revolutionary discourse they assisted in propagating in the diaspora, were integral to supporting the Irish Revolution at home and abroad.

Political Mobilization and Social Unrest in Rural Portugal in the Early Twentieth Century: The Example of Montemor-o-Novo between 1908 and 1918

This article studies the different expressions of political mobilization and social unrest that occurred in rural Portugal during the early twentieth century. To do so, it offers an investigation at local level, using as an example the municipality of Montemor-o-Novo, part of the Alentejo region, in the southern half of the country, and covers the years of unrest marked by the fall of the monarchy and the early years of the Republic (1908–1918). This research focuses on the analysis of three aspects: the acts of political mobilization associated with the republican movement; the expansion of associations and conflict associated with the workers’ movement; and the protests associated with the absence of basic foodstuffs resulting from the Great War. In doing so, the article aims to show how the rural Portuguese population in the early twentieth century played an active and dynamic role in the political and social life of the country by means of very different forms of collective mobilization (such as meetings, demonstrations, strikes and riots), resulting from a wide variety of political, economic, or labour-related circumstances.

The KGB and Ireland

A potential espionage threat to Britain from Dublin-based Soviet agents arose as the establishment of Irish-Soviet relations became a probability. This chapter examines perceptions of the communist-influenced Official republican movement as the Troubles escalated in 1971-2, with officials expressing fears for the stability of the Dublin government – the ‘Irish Cuba’. British and American officials used a Cold War prism here. The Russians could be expected to exploit the northern crisis, the American ambassador warned, using the Official movement as their ‘natural vehicle’. Following Bloody Sunday, when British paratroopers killed thirteen unarmed civilians, the British prime minister, Ted Heath, warned Dublin that the Soviets would cause as much trouble as they could, using the Official IRA as a proxy. The Irish revolutionary left too used a Cold War lens when opposing Ireland’s membership of the European Economic Community (EEC): it would lock Ireland into a NATO-dominated bloc.

'An Alien Ideology'

This book focuses on the strand of the Irish republican left which followed the ‘alien ideology’ of Soviet-inspired Marxism. Moscow-led communism had few adherents in Ireland, but Irish and British officials were concerned about the possibility that communists could infiltrate the republican movement, the Irish Republican Army (IRA). Another concern arose for British and American observers from 1969: would the Soviets resist the temptation to meddle during the Northern Ireland Troubles and cause trouble for Britain as a geo-political crisis unfolded? The book considers questions arising from the involvement of left-wing republicans, and what became the Official republican movement, in events before and during the early years of the Troubles. Could Ireland’s communists and left-wing republicans be viewed as strategic allies of Moscow who might create an ‘Irish Cuba’? The book examines another question: could a Marxist party with a parliamentary presence in the militarily-neutral Irish state – the Workers’ Party (WP) – be useful to the Soviets during the 1980s? This book, based on original sources rather than interviews, is significant in that it analyses the perspectives of the various governments concerned with subversion in Ireland. This is a study of perceptions. The book concludes that the Soviet Union had been happy to exploit the Troubles in its Cold War propaganda, but, excepting supplying arms to the Official IRA, it did not seek to maximise difficulties whenever it could in Ireland, north or south.

Conclusion

‘Military neutrality’ and ‘political neutrality’ are not the same. The Irish authorities did not allow the state’s non-aligned status to prevent them joining the crusade in the West against communism. They had a Cold War agenda. In the 1950s, leading officials such as Colonel Dan Bryan in G2, the Irish army intelligence directorate, believed that Ireland should assist the NATO powers in their global struggle. So, too, did Peter Berry, the Department of Justice secretary in Dublin. They supplied detailed information on the tiny communist organisation to the ‘hypersensitive’ Americans, for example, and provided intelligence on ‘peace’ activists to the British. Details on suspect activists ended up in the files of the Church’s ‘vigilance’ committee – a clear breach of the separation of Church and State. As functionaries in what Berry termed the ‘communist international’, Michael O’Riordan in Dublin and Desmond Greaves in London were seen to be taking directions from the British communist party, the CPGB. The communists had their own Cold War agenda to follow, with ‘world peace’ Moscow’s priority. But this issue did not capture the imagination of the working class, as a frustrated Roy Johnston discovered. Nevertheless, orders were orders for Ireland’s ‘fifth column’. Some communist-led organisations, however, were believed to have recruitment potential. Could the CPGB-directed Connolly Association, and its equivalent in New York – both ‘dangerous’ in Bryan’s view – convert Irish exiles by highlighting issues related to Northern Ireland? Was there any possibility that communists could succeed in infiltrating the Irish republican movement?...