In Bolton's pubs at the end of the 1930s, the research organization Mass Observation pursued ... more In Bolton's pubs at the end of the 1930s, the research organization Mass Observation pursued answers to big abstract questions about time by studying small concrete actions. Drawing on field notes, draft manuscripts, and published works, this article sets out the different understandings and experiences of time documented by the team of investigators. Outside the ‘time-clock factory-whistle dimension of living’ and inside ‘pub-time’, individuals bought drinks for their companions, drank at the same pace, and engaged with everyone around them on an equal footing. Mass Observation presented such behaviours as proof that the pub fostered a socially harmonious, egalitarian community from a pre-industrial age. However, this article shows that the pub study's archive contains material that goes against the published findings. Observers turned in reports about authoritarian conduct, hierarchical power structures, and the intrusion of contemporary politics. Blurring the research sub...
The year 1968 witnessed a global revolt against imperialism, capitalism, and bureaucracy. It was ... more The year 1968 witnessed a global revolt against imperialism, capitalism, and bureaucracy. It was not – as has long been claimed – the start of a cultural revolution that produced greater personal freedom, but the end of the post-war attempt to define a new left. This reinterpretation of '68 as a global revolt rather than the the baby-boom generation's coming-of-age party is based upon recent research at the local level. An examination of Ireland's radical left during the ‘long '68’ is an important contribution to this work, as it was significant as well as small. Contact at congresses and through the media with other leftists enabled Northern Ireland's ‘sixty-eighters’ to conceive of themselves as part of an imagined community of global revolt. They shared similar goals and tactics. Like their comrades on the continent and across the Atlantic, the region's sixty-eighters tried to attract attention and support by provoking the authorities into an overreaction....
War and Peace sets out to 'tell the story of wasted years, and of lives that were lost or were sh... more War and Peace sets out to 'tell the story of wasted years, and of lives that were lost or were shattered, as men and women of vision and courage were outmanoeuvred by those who put prejudice and personal gain above peace and social justice' (p. 13). Christine Kinealy has gone about doing this through a chronological narrative of both the Troubles and the peace process that makes explicit moral judgements. What marks this book out from popular accounts that do much the same thing and indeed from academic general histories of this period, too, is Kinealy's interest in how 'Language has become a tool of politics' (p. 17). She repeatedly returns to the ways in which language has been essential to the production and reproduction of the conflict, resting her analysis on fictional and non-fictional texts and on high, middlebrow and popular culture. Throughout the book, Kinealy not only manages to maintain conceptual clarity, but also to surprise with her examples: a discussion on BBC censorship, for instance, is illuminated by references to Marxman, Ireland's answer to pioneering hiphoppers Public Enemy (pp. 254-5). It is regrettable, however, that Kinealy does not take as much care constructing her own explanation for the conflict as she does deconstructing those offered by others. Her thesis seems to be that there were a series of overlapping struggles taking place in Ireland: an anti-colonial struggle (pp. 136-7), an ethnic struggle (p. 40) and a struggle for 'social justice' (p. 13). The last is both somewhat novel and somewhat vague. 'Social justice' clearly matters to Kinealy-she dedicates her book to 'all those who campaign for social justice in Ireland' and concludes that 'the quest for social justice remains at the forefront of the Irish struggle' (p. 335)-yet she does not define what it means to her. At one point Kinealy lines 'social justice' up with Catholic social teaching, while at others she lines it up against the Church (pp. 202-3, 325-7). The protean quality of the concept, though, has the advantage of allowing Kinealy to try to tie together the loose threads of narrative. Long before their British and American counterparts began to worry about the whole possibility of writing a unitary general history, Irish historians, such as J.C. Beckett, were fretting about the lack of an obvious overriding framework. Kinealy's primary solution to this problem-making the Troubles and the peace process the
The study of the Northern Irish Troubles is dominated by ethnic readings of conflict and violence... more The study of the Northern Irish Troubles is dominated by ethnic readings of conflict and violence. Drawing on new scholarship from a range of different disciplines and on fresh archival sources, this article questions these explanations. General theories that tie together ethnicity with conflict and violence are shown to be based on definitions that fail to distinguish ethnic identities from other ones. Their claims cannot be taken as being uniquely or even disproportionately associated with ethnicity. Explanatory models specifically developed for the case of modern Ireland do address that weakness. Yet, this article contends, they rest upon the fallacy that the Catholic and Protestant peoples are transhistorical entities. Political ideas, organizations, and actions cannot be reduced to fixed group identities. This article argues instead that the Troubles centered on a political conflict—one over rival visions of modern democracy. The pursuit of equality, the core value of democracy...
Writing the Sixties into Northern Ireland and Northern Ireland into the Sixties. DSpace/Manakin R... more Writing the Sixties into Northern Ireland and Northern Ireland into the Sixties. DSpace/Manakin Repository. Search Cadmus. Search Cadmus This Collection. Advanced Search. Browse. ...
W hen the Irish Republican Army (IRA) again embarked upon armed struggle in 1956, it was again fo... more W hen the Irish Republican Army (IRA) again embarked upon armed struggle in 1956, it was again for "an independent, united democratic Irish republic." "This is the age-old struggle of the Irish people versus British aggression," read the Proclamation of December 1956. 1 The plan was for "flying columns"-which had played an important role in the Anglo-Irish war of 1919-21-to cross into North Ireland's border counties and link up with local units. 2 The four columns were named after republican heroes (Patrick Pearse, Tom Clarke, Bartholomew Teeling, and Liam Lynch) and Tom Barry, who had written the West Cork flying column of the Anglo-Irish War into legend, was called upon to train his successors. 3 By fleeing into the past, however, the IRA was forced once again to retreat: the present problems of the North's security apparatus, the South's hostility, and the Catholic community's indifference could not be overcome by anachronistic tactics. 4 In February 1962, when the IRA finally faced up to the failure of the campaign, the Army Council blamed "the attitude of the general public whose minds have been deliberately distracted from the supreme issue facing the Irish people-the unity and freedom of Ireland." 5 Before continuing with this narrative about the Irish revolutionary tradition, it Simon Prince is a modern British and Irish historian at the Department of History, King's College London. He would like to thank Roy Foster for his advice and guidance. He is also grateful to Robert Tombs,
Abstract The availability under the Thirty Years Rule of the Northern Irish and UK state papers f... more Abstract The availability under the Thirty Years Rule of the Northern Irish and UK state papers for the start of the Troubles has made it possible to reassess what happened on 5 October 1968 in Derry. This article uses these files, other primary sources such as ...
Northern Ireland after October 1968 rapidly descended into civil war. Local conflicts were of cen... more Northern Ireland after October 1968 rapidly descended into civil war. Local conflicts were of central importance in this turn to violence. By looking at the civil rights movement and then at Belfast Republicanism, this article argues that fragmentation and competition created incentives for groups and individuals to adopt violent strategies. Both the overarching conflict and the myriad local conflicts which were linked to it shaped how the early Troubles developed.
Contents: Transnationalism and the 'Troubles', International Women's Organisations - ... more Contents: Transnationalism and the 'Troubles', International Women's Organisations - Irish, British, German and US-American women and women's groups - Feminism and Republicanism - Feminism and Peace Activism - Transnational Brokers - State-Society Links - Rooted Cosmopolitans.
In Bolton's pubs at the end of the 1930s, the research organization Mass Observation pursued ... more In Bolton's pubs at the end of the 1930s, the research organization Mass Observation pursued answers to big abstract questions about time by studying small concrete actions. Drawing on field notes, draft manuscripts, and published works, this article sets out the different understandings and experiences of time documented by the team of investigators. Outside the ‘time-clock factory-whistle dimension of living’ and inside ‘pub-time’, individuals bought drinks for their companions, drank at the same pace, and engaged with everyone around them on an equal footing. Mass Observation presented such behaviours as proof that the pub fostered a socially harmonious, egalitarian community from a pre-industrial age. However, this article shows that the pub study's archive contains material that goes against the published findings. Observers turned in reports about authoritarian conduct, hierarchical power structures, and the intrusion of contemporary politics. Blurring the research sub...
The year 1968 witnessed a global revolt against imperialism, capitalism, and bureaucracy. It was ... more The year 1968 witnessed a global revolt against imperialism, capitalism, and bureaucracy. It was not – as has long been claimed – the start of a cultural revolution that produced greater personal freedom, but the end of the post-war attempt to define a new left. This reinterpretation of '68 as a global revolt rather than the the baby-boom generation's coming-of-age party is based upon recent research at the local level. An examination of Ireland's radical left during the ‘long '68’ is an important contribution to this work, as it was significant as well as small. Contact at congresses and through the media with other leftists enabled Northern Ireland's ‘sixty-eighters’ to conceive of themselves as part of an imagined community of global revolt. They shared similar goals and tactics. Like their comrades on the continent and across the Atlantic, the region's sixty-eighters tried to attract attention and support by provoking the authorities into an overreaction....
War and Peace sets out to 'tell the story of wasted years, and of lives that were lost or were sh... more War and Peace sets out to 'tell the story of wasted years, and of lives that were lost or were shattered, as men and women of vision and courage were outmanoeuvred by those who put prejudice and personal gain above peace and social justice' (p. 13). Christine Kinealy has gone about doing this through a chronological narrative of both the Troubles and the peace process that makes explicit moral judgements. What marks this book out from popular accounts that do much the same thing and indeed from academic general histories of this period, too, is Kinealy's interest in how 'Language has become a tool of politics' (p. 17). She repeatedly returns to the ways in which language has been essential to the production and reproduction of the conflict, resting her analysis on fictional and non-fictional texts and on high, middlebrow and popular culture. Throughout the book, Kinealy not only manages to maintain conceptual clarity, but also to surprise with her examples: a discussion on BBC censorship, for instance, is illuminated by references to Marxman, Ireland's answer to pioneering hiphoppers Public Enemy (pp. 254-5). It is regrettable, however, that Kinealy does not take as much care constructing her own explanation for the conflict as she does deconstructing those offered by others. Her thesis seems to be that there were a series of overlapping struggles taking place in Ireland: an anti-colonial struggle (pp. 136-7), an ethnic struggle (p. 40) and a struggle for 'social justice' (p. 13). The last is both somewhat novel and somewhat vague. 'Social justice' clearly matters to Kinealy-she dedicates her book to 'all those who campaign for social justice in Ireland' and concludes that 'the quest for social justice remains at the forefront of the Irish struggle' (p. 335)-yet she does not define what it means to her. At one point Kinealy lines 'social justice' up with Catholic social teaching, while at others she lines it up against the Church (pp. 202-3, 325-7). The protean quality of the concept, though, has the advantage of allowing Kinealy to try to tie together the loose threads of narrative. Long before their British and American counterparts began to worry about the whole possibility of writing a unitary general history, Irish historians, such as J.C. Beckett, were fretting about the lack of an obvious overriding framework. Kinealy's primary solution to this problem-making the Troubles and the peace process the
The study of the Northern Irish Troubles is dominated by ethnic readings of conflict and violence... more The study of the Northern Irish Troubles is dominated by ethnic readings of conflict and violence. Drawing on new scholarship from a range of different disciplines and on fresh archival sources, this article questions these explanations. General theories that tie together ethnicity with conflict and violence are shown to be based on definitions that fail to distinguish ethnic identities from other ones. Their claims cannot be taken as being uniquely or even disproportionately associated with ethnicity. Explanatory models specifically developed for the case of modern Ireland do address that weakness. Yet, this article contends, they rest upon the fallacy that the Catholic and Protestant peoples are transhistorical entities. Political ideas, organizations, and actions cannot be reduced to fixed group identities. This article argues instead that the Troubles centered on a political conflict—one over rival visions of modern democracy. The pursuit of equality, the core value of democracy...
Writing the Sixties into Northern Ireland and Northern Ireland into the Sixties. DSpace/Manakin R... more Writing the Sixties into Northern Ireland and Northern Ireland into the Sixties. DSpace/Manakin Repository. Search Cadmus. Search Cadmus This Collection. Advanced Search. Browse. ...
W hen the Irish Republican Army (IRA) again embarked upon armed struggle in 1956, it was again fo... more W hen the Irish Republican Army (IRA) again embarked upon armed struggle in 1956, it was again for "an independent, united democratic Irish republic." "This is the age-old struggle of the Irish people versus British aggression," read the Proclamation of December 1956. 1 The plan was for "flying columns"-which had played an important role in the Anglo-Irish war of 1919-21-to cross into North Ireland's border counties and link up with local units. 2 The four columns were named after republican heroes (Patrick Pearse, Tom Clarke, Bartholomew Teeling, and Liam Lynch) and Tom Barry, who had written the West Cork flying column of the Anglo-Irish War into legend, was called upon to train his successors. 3 By fleeing into the past, however, the IRA was forced once again to retreat: the present problems of the North's security apparatus, the South's hostility, and the Catholic community's indifference could not be overcome by anachronistic tactics. 4 In February 1962, when the IRA finally faced up to the failure of the campaign, the Army Council blamed "the attitude of the general public whose minds have been deliberately distracted from the supreme issue facing the Irish people-the unity and freedom of Ireland." 5 Before continuing with this narrative about the Irish revolutionary tradition, it Simon Prince is a modern British and Irish historian at the Department of History, King's College London. He would like to thank Roy Foster for his advice and guidance. He is also grateful to Robert Tombs,
Abstract The availability under the Thirty Years Rule of the Northern Irish and UK state papers f... more Abstract The availability under the Thirty Years Rule of the Northern Irish and UK state papers for the start of the Troubles has made it possible to reassess what happened on 5 October 1968 in Derry. This article uses these files, other primary sources such as ...
Northern Ireland after October 1968 rapidly descended into civil war. Local conflicts were of cen... more Northern Ireland after October 1968 rapidly descended into civil war. Local conflicts were of central importance in this turn to violence. By looking at the civil rights movement and then at Belfast Republicanism, this article argues that fragmentation and competition created incentives for groups and individuals to adopt violent strategies. Both the overarching conflict and the myriad local conflicts which were linked to it shaped how the early Troubles developed.
Contents: Transnationalism and the 'Troubles', International Women's Organisations - ... more Contents: Transnationalism and the 'Troubles', International Women's Organisations - Irish, British, German and US-American women and women's groups - Feminism and Republicanism - Feminism and Peace Activism - Transnational Brokers - State-Society Links - Rooted Cosmopolitans.
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