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The case of Northern Ireland and ex-IRA informers demonstrates the difficulty of dealing with the informer legacy post-conflict. We explain why Sinn Féin and the UK state have dealt with some conflict legacy cases involving informers but not with others. Contemporary political and reputational reasons are an important explanation, but there are also legal considerations and communal pressures at play. Divisions amongst alleged and self-confessed informers further facilitate this unstructured approach to legacy. These difficulties with informers' legacy are not unique to Northern Ireland. Similar challenges in reconciling former state agents with paramilitaries are evident across other conflicts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) vigorously pursued Irish Republican Army (IRA) fugitives in the helping secure a number of high-profile deportations and extraditions, while the State Department enforced a strict policy of visa denial against prominent leaders of Sinn Féin. It mentions initiatives made it increasingly difficult for the IRA to utilize Irish America as a source for arms procurement, financial support, and publicity.

Authors have argued that counterterrorism must be consistent with 'the rule of law.' Often associated with this approach is the assumption that plural political structures limit the state's response to terrorism and that state agents will be held accountable if their response is excessive. Scholars who focus on social movements reject this assumption. We examine the state's response to anti-state violence in Northern Ireland between 1969 and 1994. In 1982, Sinn Féin did much better than expected in an election to the Northern Ireland Assembly. Following the election, it is alleged that state agents followed a 'shoot-to-kill' policy and shot dead Irish republican paramilitaries instead of arresting them. We find evidence suggesting such a policy and consider the implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on two confidential reports, this article demonstrates the significant political agency exercised in the 1980s by Irish and Irish American politicians supported by an unusually robust form of ethnicity. Embodied in hundreds of cultural and fraternal associations, this vigorous Irish American ethnicity was animated by political passion arising out of the conflict in Northern Ireland. The first report, by the Irish Embassy in Washington in 1980, provided first-hand accounts of the widespread activities of Irish American associations, with a view to enlisting their support in resolving the conflict in Northern Ireland. The embassy and Irish American political leaders formed a powerful "Irish lobby" in Washington seeking a solution based on nonviolence and equality between Catholic nationalists and Protestant unionists, strengthening the hand of the Irish government in its negotiations with the British government. The second report, compiled in 1988 by Sinn Féin, the political wing of the IRA, sought to bring the Irish American republican movement into line with Sinn Féin's recent decision to seek a political solution to the conflict. As Sinn Féin moved gradually away from violence, it exerted control over Noraid, the most important of the hardline Irish American organizations. Both the Irish government and Sinn Féin mobilized an Irish American ethnicity that, far from being merely "symbolic," was rooted in tangible social and political processes in which Irish immigrants and their descendants played the leading role. Whether that ethnicity can retain its vitality in the absence of continued immigration and an animating political cause is an open question. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT In April 1998, Catholic Nationalists and Protestant Unionists in Northern Ireland signed a historic peace agreement, The Good Friday Agreement. The article examines how the news of this peace [...]

This article examines the biographical writing devoted to the critical individual in the history of the Provisional Irish republican movement, Gerry Adams. As President of Sinn Féin from 1983 until he stepped down in February 2018, Adams has been viewed by many as the key figure in the leadership of the Provisional movement, despite his long-standing and continuing denial of membership in its armed ‘wing’, the Irish Republican Army. He has been interpreted as being instrumental in shaping, if not determining the evolution of Provisional republicanism, which began as a movement committed to violent insurrection in the cause of Irish unity and, after causing approximately 49 per cent of the deaths during the ‘Troubles’, subsequently espoused a largely non-violent political strategy in the post-Belfast Agreement era after 1998. This article takes a comparative approach to the three biographies of Adams published to date, by Colm Keena [(1990). A biography of Gerry Adams. Cork: Mercier], David Sharrock and Mark Devenport [(1997). Man of war, man of peace? The unauthorised biography of Gerry Adams. London: Macmillan] and Malachi O’Doherty [(2017). Gerry Adams: An unauthorised life. London: Faber and Faber]. The argument pursued here is that the biographical study of political life histories of emblematic individuals, such as Adams, may shed significant light upon the trajectory and character of the parties/movements which they lead. Moreover, the academic study of biographical writing should be an important resource for political scientists and contemporary historians, although there has been a tendency to marginalise this approach from the mainstream of the discipline of political science. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

More than a decade on, the Northern Ireland peace process can largely be considered a success. Despite the failure of the Provisional Republican Movement to achieve a united Ireland free of British control, the large-scale violence of “The Troubles” has been relegated to the past. Applying the logic of coercive diplomacy, this study examines the role of threats and the use of selective and limited violence by the Provisional Movement to manage real and potential opponents and challengers that have emerged within its own ideological ranks to maintain its position of dominance and prevent a spoiling of the peace process. This study shows that the Provisional Movement retained the capability to employ violence and demonstrated the credibility of coercive threat through a willingness to use force against its opponents on the Republican spectrum, and was able to do so with a high degree of impunity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is a case study of Irish republican memory entrepreneurship that critically examines the collective memory of the ‘Loughgall Martyrs’. Critiquing the ‘malleability of memory’, it interrogates attempts at remoulding the memory of the ‘Loughgall Martyrs’ in tandem with ‘memory politics’ in modern Irish republicanism and transitioning Northern Ireland. It examines the reinterpretation of the Loughgall memory by Sinn Fein to support their current strategy in the transition of Northern Ireland and conversely how traditionalists use the resilience of memory to contest reinterpretation. Particular examination is given to the emergence of the 1916 societies as a platform for localised resistance to political use of the memory of the men by Sinn Fein. It also examines how the memory of the ‘Loughgall Martyrs’ has been imbibed with assertions of victimhood that feed into wider contestation over the past in the North of Ireland. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Beginning in 1969, the Provisional Irish Republican Army conducted a paramilitary campaign designed to unite Northern Ireland with the Republic of Ireland, creating a 32 county democratic socialist republic. The Provisional IRA's campaign officially ended in 2005, but former Provisionals and others who followed them continue to pursue armed struggle to this day. The Provisional IRA and its successors are part of the centuries old and highly documented "resistance" of Irish people to British interference in Ireland. Over those centuries, state authorities . the British, Irish, and Northern Irish governments . have "resisted" the dissent of Irish Republicans. This paper draws on three different research methodologies available to social scientists . counts of events that inform quantitative analyses, intensive interviews/oral histories, and visual sociology . and argues that a multi-method approach will provide a better understanding of the dynamics of "resistance" in Ireland and, more generally, social protest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores the history of the structure of terrorist organizations into political, charitable, and military units or wings. Emphasis is given to topics such as the strategy of the Irish Republican Army through the political activity of the Sinn Féin party, the charity work of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, the establishment of social and cultural associations by cleric Muhammad Hussein Fadlallah linked to Hezbollah in Lebanon, and schools and clinics operated by Hamas.

With the advent of the new violent dissident merger, “The IRA/New IRA,” the group and its affiliates have had to legitimise their new existence. They have utilised the maintenance of paramilitary activity to achieve this. However, they have also produced a number of organisational statements, justifying their position, tactics, and strategies. This article analyses the evolution of these statements, both pre and post-merger from 2007 to 2015. 126 individual statements and four magazines are analysed using grounded theory. This analysis found that the statements have a dual strategy, aiming to foster trust in the movement and distrust in their perceived enemies. One of the dominant ways in which the group aims to foster trust is by proposing their possession of an historical mandate from the republican forefathers of 1916, as well as the internally lauded paramilitaries from The Troubles-era Provisional Irish Republican Army. The focus of the distrust narrative has been on the “constitutional nationalism” of Sinn Féin. However, it also pours scorn on the Police Service of Northern Ireland, and capitalism, across the island of Ireland. The analysis of these statements can provide us with an understanding of the future direction of the group, as well as giving us insight, which can inform the development of any counter-narrative. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article offers a new analysis of the Northern Ireland peace settlement through an examination of the pivotal relationship between two key actors: the British state and the Provisional Republican movement that included Sinn Féin and the IRA. It traces the negotiating relationship between these key parties and argues that the ending of violent conflict in the 1990s can best be understood as the outcome of a long bargaining process between these two actors that was conducted both tacitly and explicitly over a span of more than two decades. It concludes that the development of a cooperative relationship between the British state and the Provisional leadership and the active coordination of British policy and republican strategy were the crucial elements in securing an end to violence in the 1990s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Deception has played an important role in advancing the Northern Ireland peace process. This article discusses the morality of British Prime Minister Tony Blair's deception to secure a ‘Yes’ vote during the referendum campaign on the Good Friday Agreement 1998. The British Prime Minister misled Northern Irish public opinion by stating that the IRA would have to decommission before either republican prisoners were released or Sinn Féin entered government. This article explores the morality of Blair's deception from a variety of perspectives combining nationalist and unionist positions with realist and idealist approaches to deception. The idealist argues that morality does and should play an important role in politics. The realist approach, by contrast, argues that morality is not, and should not be, influential on politics. A ‘democratic realist’ argument is advanced in this article, which takes from idealism: the inevitability of morality in politics, a commitment to deepen democracy and concern about the corrosive impact of deception. From realism it takes: its ability to unmask power and hypocrisy, its critique of anti-political fundamentalist idealism and moralism, and an acceptance of the inevitability of deception. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article focuses on the remembrance and remediation of the 1981 Hunger Strikes on March 1, 1981 in Ireland. Topics discussed include democratization in electoral processes, Robert Sands, member of the Provisional Irish Republican Army, who selected March 1 as the date for the anniversary retraction of the Special Category Status in 1976, and Irish republican party Sinn Féin's political rhetoric.

The Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA), one of the best known and most researched terrorist organizations in history, has been comparatively assessed alongside various terrorist outfits from around the world. However, it has never been systematically compared with its most immediate rival, neighbour, and competitor, the lesser known Official Irish Republican Army (OIRA). This article addresses this scholarly gap and presents a thematic assessment of the similarities and differences between the two organisations in their respective post-ceasefire periods of 1972 and 1994. It proposes a new comparative approach to studying terrorist organisations in which knowledge about a better known entity (here, the PIRA) and its future trajectory is generated through a detailed assessment of the activities and developments of a not only more obscure case (here, the OIRA) but also, in many aspects, the most comparable case or cases. Such an approach could yield interesting results for the field of terrorism studies, which could still profit from in-depth, internal, case study analyses of specific terrorist organizations. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Intimately throughout the 1970s, and in a more detached way for the rest of his life, Bernard Crick thought seriously about the politics of Northern Ireland. Though he produced no systematic study of the Northern Ireland Question, and though at first glance Northern Ireland appeared to be unpropitious territory for the author of In Defence of Politics, his reflections illuminated a deep concern with the relationship between politics, freedom and peace. This article argues that Crick's writing on the subject constitutes a sustained appeal for a 'realism of pragmatic potential' in contrast to that despairing 'realism of impossible certainty' which, he felt, frustrated hopes for political progress. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the role of republican ideology among those who opposed the 1921 Articles of Agreement for a Treaty Between Great Britain and Ireland during the 1922-1923 Irish Civil War. It is said that the Irish nationalist movement Sinn Féin was divided regarding the issue, with some proposing that the Irish Free State should be accepted as a precursor to an eventual Irish Republic. Other topics include the conception of liberty by republicans, opposition to the treaty by the organization Irish Republican Army (IRA), and propaganda involved in the dispute.

The Twelfth of July is the unofficial ‘national day’ of Northern Irish Protestantism, and has often been characterised as highly sectarian and divisive. Research on the Twelfth has concentrated on the parades and on the Troubles period; assertions about the Twelfth and its rhetoric in the post-war, pre-Troubles era have often been based on little more than assumption. This article attempts to fill this gap by examining speeches made at Twelfth of July gatherings in Northern Ireland from 1954 to 1962. It will show that the dominant theme of the speeches was the threat to Ulster Protestants and their state from the Irish Republic, republicans such as the IRA and Sinn Féin, and from the Catholic Church. Orange and Unionist leaders used this sense of threat to discourage division and dissent within Ulster Protestantism. Although Irish nationalism and Catholicism were consistently presented as threatening, the amount of blatant sectarianism was much less than might be assumed. Northern Catholics were rarely attacked directly, and some Twelfth speakers argued specifically for better relations with Catholics. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The 21st century and the War on Terror have revitalized interest in terrorist groups, irregular warfare, transnational movements and insurgency. Many analysts and scholars have focused their attention on how terrorism can be defeated and how and when terrorist groups cease to exist. This chapter will examine a different phenomenon—how terrorist or insurgent groups can persist and become multi-generational revolutionary movements. The Irish Republican movement and its armed wing, the Irish Republican Army (IRA), continue to exist after at least four separate armed campaigns, two of which can only be termed abject failures. Surviving both defeat and sometimes partial success, the IRA continued to re-emerge each generation, like a phoenix from the ashes—adjusting its new campaigns each time to an internal analysis of the reasons for its success or failure. Assessing the IRA as both a strategic actor and as a multi-generational movement, therefore, may provide useful insights for how to combat Al Qaeda—another transnational movement based on a seductive but rigid and militaristic ideology—and perhaps how to avoid making a multi-generational movement out of our current adversaries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the Northern Ireland Peace Process as of 2012. It reviews and critiques interpretations of the process from what the author identifies as the enthusiasts, militarists, and skeptics among political and paramilitary groups like the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), the Irish Republican Army (IRA), and Sinn Féin. The article also examines the role of the British Labour Party in the peace process in advocating the Good Friday Agreement (GFA) and the St. Andrews Agreement of 2006. The article also discusses the views of British political leaders such as former Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) head David Trimble, Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams, and Northern Ireland deputy first minister Martin McGuinness.

The article discusses the history of dissident republican activity in Northern Ireland, focusing on the violent acts committed by some Irish Republican Army (IRA) political groups and their lack of an official mandate in April 2012. Topics include the Operation Harvest campaign of 1956, the politician Sinn Fein's contesting of elections, and the impact of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement on limiting support for IRA groups. Nationalism, public opinion, and a 2010 speech from the security officer Jonathan Evans are mentioned.

The author discusses the history of the violent actions of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) dissident radical group in Northern Ireland since 2007, focusing on the group's objectives and evaluating the severity of the threat it poses. According to the author, an increase in violent activity since 2007 indicates that the Belfast Agreement of 1998 did not mark the end of conflict in the region. Politicians such as Sinn Féin, political groups such as the Provisional IRA, and victims of violence such as the police constable Ronan Kerr are mentioned.

Following the outbreak of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, the British government established an office dedicated to gathering the views of political groups there, below the level of the state. By looking at the numerous contacts, conduits and intermediaries that existed (however temporarily) between the British government and the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) before the 1975 ceasefire, this article illustrates that an almost continuous conversation was taking place. It also demonstrates that these contacts were centred on Dáithí Ó Conaill, the then Sinn Féin Vice President, and that these ‘talks’, when taken as a whole, can better explain the events that culminated in the 1975 ceasefire. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

People do political violence for a reason. That is, the tactic of violence is resorted to in order to achieve a purpose. So what might lead the perpetrators of political violence to abandon its use and embrace peaceful democratic political activity? From the perspective of the perpetrator, the answer will lie in the nature of the ends/means relationship and the re-evaluation of the usefulness of particular means to achieve a given end. This paper explores the Irish Republican Movement's ‘transition to democracy’ and its apparent adoption of a different interpretation of democracy that no longer prioritises simple majoritarianism. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Northern Ireland peace process emerged from ‘behind the scenes’ when contacts between the British government and Sinn Féin were revealed in November 1993. On 31st August 1994, the Irish Republican Army (IRA) declared a ceasefire and in April 1998 the Good Friday Agreement achieved a power-sharing accommodation based on the moderate political parties. By 2003, the hardline Democratic Unionist Party was electorally dominant among unionists and Sinn Féin, the political wing of the IRA, among nationalists. Remarkably, in May 2007, the ‘hardline’ parties agreed to share power. The Northern Ireland peace process appears to represent an apparently successful case of two democratic governments—the British and Irish—negotiating with ‘the enemy’ to achieve a power-sharing accommodation. This success has led to various actors with competing political agendas claiming to have discovered ‘the lessons’ of Northern Ireland for other areas in conflict. The Labour government's ‘Orthodox’ interpretation suggests that it is always, or nearly always, a good idea to talk to the enemy. More recently, an ‘orthodox Neoconservative’ interpretation of the peace process has argued that Northern Ireland is the exception which proves the rule that it is almost never right to ‘talk to terrorists’ or ‘negotiate with evil’. These contrasting interpretations of the ‘Northern Ireland model’ are used by analysts and policy-makers to advocate talking or not talking to groups such as Hamas, Hezbollah, the ‘Sunni’ militias in Iraq, Al Qaeda and the Taliban. The ‘orthodox Neoconservative’ interpretation of the peace process argues that the IRA were defeated, partly due to the efficacy of the ‘dirty war’, and in negotiating the peace process British governments did not compromise core values and democratic norms. This article argues that this account of the peace process is inaccurate and that the ‘lessons’ derived by Neoconservatives from the peace process are flawed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article is an interview with former Provisional Irish Republican Army active service volunteer and current Sinn Féin activist and visual artist Danny Devenny. Culled from interviews conducted in Belfast between 1998 and 2000, during the Northern Ireland peace process, Danny Devenny reflects on the role of visual arts in the republican movement and discusses how public images framed the IRA prison struggle, connected republican communities to their history and traditions, and helped lay the groundwork for the successful politicization of Sinn Féin. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Like the conflict in Northern Ireland, the peace process has the distinction of being one of the longest-running processes both in the time required to reach an agreement and in the time required for implementation of that agreement. This article analyzes the peace process from the perspectives of elite negotiations to community relations and in between in order to determine how each of these peace processes within the overall peace process contributed its longevity and overall success. The distinction that peace is made from the top-down is contrasted with the notion that it cannot succeed without social preparation through bottom-up, or middle-out initiatives; concluding with analysis of frameworks that attempt to capture the entirety of the peace process and what its success means for the study of the Northern Irish peace process and peace processes in general. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the role of British intelligence in the negotiations of the Anglo-Irish treaty of 1921. The structure of British intelligence agencies including the intelligence branch of the British police, the "Special Branch" of the London Metropolitan Police, and the "London Bureau" is explored. The accuracy of intelligence collected by these agencies regarding Irish republican party Sinn Féin and the Irish Republican Army is examined.

This paper aims to find out how participation in the electoral process may have helped to alter the strategic outlook of the Irish Republican movement. The questions to be answered are whether electoral participation has contributed to the diminishing importance of terrorist violence in Irish Republican strategy, and – in particular – how electoral participation has influenced the process of strategic change. Based on the construction of a sound theoretical framework within which to evaluate the impact of electoral participation on a terrorist group's strategic outlook, the argument presented is that there were primarily two mechanisms through which electoral participation impacted upon the process of transformation within the Irish Republican movement: (1) its inclusion into a systematic process of dialogue with other political actors, and (2) the exposure to public opinion, whose negative responses towards the use of armed force undermined the reliance on this method. Furthermore, the paper highlights the significance of several enabling factors – the role of external actors, leadership, and state repression – which may be used to enhance our theoretical framework in further studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports on the political and government system in Northern Ireland. It states that Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) and the Irish Republican Army (IRA) along with one government shared most of the blame of impasses that implemented the Belfast agreement and stabilising Sinn Fein, the UUP and the British government. It notes that the government agreed to organise and implement their own package considering three choices like leaving further negotiation to the parties, suspend the agreement institutions and have fresh assembly elections.