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The United Kingdom’s (UK) decision to leave the European Union (EU) has been felt most acutely in Ireland. One group specifically impacted by this decision is Ulster Loyalism. With a historic ‘warr...

This article argues that, at a tactical level, loyalist terrorism in the Irish border region between 1972 and 1974 worked. Cross-border attacks including bombings in Irish towns prompted the Irish government to reinforce security along the border—a long-standing loyalist demand. The loyalist campaign led to the IRA embarking on an effort to punish those who were believed to have passed information to loyalists, resulting in the killing of an Irish Protestant senator and widespread condemnation of the organization in the Republic of Ireland. However, short-term gains were outweighed by a growing perception among nationalists that the British state tolerated or even colluded in such attacks, undermining the British Army’s campaign to gain trust (and information) within the Catholic population of Northern Ireland. The article also contends that middle-class loyalists played an important role in mobilizing and equipping loyalist paramilitary organizations. It concludes that the British Army showed an excessive tolerance of loyalists with political capital or ties to the security forces, despite evidence that such individuals were directly supporting the activities of loyalist paramilitaries.

In his analysis of the loyalist flag protests of 2012, John Barry finds within them the potential for a civic, progressive politics beyond ethnic grievance; a post-conflict politics that need not be post-political; an agonistic politics of struggle and contestation that need not be violent. As a means to achieve this, John defends the need for single-identity/internal conversations within loyalism. In my reply, I am broadly supportive, but I suggest that such conversations cannot take for granted the continuation of the constitutional status quo.

This paper uses the political theories of recognition to assess the online political activism which constitutes the informal, political participation of working-class Loyalists in post-ceasefire Northern Ireland. The satirisation of the flag protesters and loyalists more broadly stimulated a competition of narratives regarding the capacity of loyalism and its contributions to a post-conflict social setting. The impact of satire on marginalised groups creates new spaces for those groups to offer alternative perspectives and to resist negative stereotyping from without. In response to the ritual derision which loyalists faced following the flag protests, some engaged in the production of grassroots media which attempted to transform the recognition relations of the group. In examining the relationships between groups in contested societies, particularly those emerging from conflict, theories of respect and esteem offer innovate insights into the role of status and social equality. The deliberative a...

34 p. -- Bibliogr.: p. 31-34 Europe has historically been a battleground for diverse communities, many of which fighting to achieve some form of power or sovereignty. Medieval battles between kingdoms lead to wars between empires and lastly to modern guerrilla based conflicts between armed organizations, which said to fight in the name of stateless nations, and their respective dominating states. These bloodsheds have drawn the geopolitical maps of modern Europe. The island of Ireland has not been exempt from this phenomenon. The lack of peace and political instability have caused numerous divisions in the Irish society, being even more profound in Northern Ireland. This paper argues the difficult Peace Process of Northern Ireland during the last two decades taking into account to do so the main clashing socio-political variables present in the area; The concept of modern state and national identities. First I will shed some light on the historical background of the Irish Peace Process emphasizing the importance of the Good Friday Agreement (1998). I will argue all the social work done in order to strengthen the foundations on which the Peace Process is built upon mainly focusing on social and the detrimental effects this has for the society. This paper points out the great influence of the last decades on the new historical chapter opened with the withdrawal process of the UK from the European Union. Lastly, I will try to note the great difficulties lying ahead in the near future for peace in Northern Ireland.

The Ulster-Scots ethnolinguistic ‘revival,’ often considered to be the ethnic, cultural or linguistic expression of unionism and loyalism, has recently made inroads into schools across Northern Ireland. With intercommunal educational segregation pervasive in the province, the teaching of such an ‘ethnic identity’ has potential sociological ramifications. Utilizing an in-depth textual analysis of the Ulster-Scots Agency’s educational materials and interviews with educationalists and political elites, I contend that although this ethnicization represents a break of sorts with traditional unionist-loyalist ideas rather than an unproblematic reinforcement of them, it holds considerable potential for the deepening of normative senses of communal difference.

Hostile countermobilization is a crucial, yet relatively understudied, factor in radicalizing movement tactics and generating political violence. This chapter focuses on the movement–countermovement interactions between the Civil Rights Movement and the Loyalist movement in Northern Ireland to clarify the emergence and intensification of political violence in the 1968–1969 years. The interactions between the civil rights mobilization and the loyalist countermobilization created the conditions to fuel both protest-based and sectarian violence, setting the terrain for the eruption of the Troubles. Relying on quantitative data on the actors participating to contentious collective events, as well as original archival research, this chapter shows how the loyalist countermobilization activated mechanisms of object shift and tactical codependency that facilitated the emergence of radicalization in Northern Ireland.

The emergence of British fascism in the early 1920s was a response to perceived, related external and internal threats to the United Kingdom and its Empire. From 1921, Ireland, in alliance with international communism, was seen to threaten to further constitutional upheaval. The literature on British fascism, however, has traditionally accorded relatively little attention to Ireland, though that is now changing. This paper, focusing on Rotha Lintorn-Orman's British Fascists (BF), the first such British movement, seeks to further this process. Drawing on primary and secondary sources, especially on newly released materials in the Public Records Office of Northern Ireland, it points up the influence of the Ulster issue on the BF sense of the crisis the United Kingdom faced and how it should be dealt with; the ideological, class and personal links between the BF and Ulster loyalism; and also how an examination of BF activities in Northern Ireland can provide insights on Ulster Unionism.

Almost 20 years after the original paramilitary ceasefires, the peace process in Northern Ireland continues to chart a tortuous and, at times, perilous course. There are few moments in recent years...

This article presents an examination of the capacity for existing Loyalist paramilitary structures and actors to engage with ‘far right’ wing action‐based and value‐based extremism. The author argues that Northern Ireland faces a similar threat posed by far right groups as the rest of the United Kingdom and that utilising a strategic theory approach reveals a number of possible responses to the threat posed by far right extremism.

This article offers a reflection upon four aspects of methodology in the context of the author's doctoral research in Northern Ireland: managing identity and research relationships, the ethics of dissemination and the reception of potentially polemic research in the academy. It argues that identity influences research in sensitive contexts in ways that are often hard to anticipate, that more inclusive approaches to dissemination can help counter issues related to research relationships, and that responses to work in controversial contexts highlight ambiguities within the academy regarding the nature and function of social science research, presenting particular challenges for early-career researchers.

In the late 1960s, the ‘Troubles’ in Northern Ireland began. Most of the British extreme right had just come together to form the National Front (NF) and the new organization's opposition to Irish Republicanism and defence of the retention of Northern Ireland within the Union quickly became entangled with support for loyalist paramilitary organizations. This article concentrates on the period from 1969 to the beginning of the 1990s, when the NF, having split into rival factions, ceased to be the dominant group for Britain's ‘racial nationalists’. Towards the end of the article, we turn our attention to the NF's most important splinter, the British National Party, from its emergence in the early 1980s until after its entry into the European Parliament in the early twenty-first century. British extreme rightists have not taken the same stance on Northern Ireland, and the article will contrast their frequent support for Ulster's retention within the Union with the attraction of one faction of the NF for Ulst...

A central failing of analysis of the peace process has been to account for, explain and determine the extent of loyalist-led conflict transformation. My argument is that, despite evident wrong-doing, there has been a failure to appreciate the prosperity of loyalist thinking and action in the period after the paramilitary ceasefires of 1994. Loyalism has appeared less relevant than it is to peacemaking due to its criminalisation, its refusal to accept positive morphology and a failure to self-promote. An appreciation of the positive nature of loyalist transition offers much to those who seek to comprehend the future of Northern Ireland.

During the modern conflict in Northern Ireland, the paramilitaries played an important role in shaping communal identities. The loyalist Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) and the Ulster Defence Association (UDA) enjoyed significant support in the Protestant community and should be understood as one expression of Protestant insecurity. This article considers the nature of this manifestation of Protestant fear during the formative years after the formation of the UDA in 1971 and up to the end of Andy Tyrie’s leadership of the organisation in 1988. It argues that the evidence uncovered by an examination of paramilitary literature, as well as that of the loyalist political parties which were affiliated with the UVF and UDA, reveals a complex persona that cannot be understood as entirely violent and exclusive. Instead, after outlining evidence for moderation, it explores what this evidence can reveal about the emergence of political thinking within parts of the UVF and UDA, and concludes that the literatur...

New loyalism is an effort to reinterpret the loyalist tradition through a more class‐based focus. The current study examines the work of community activists in Belfast to promote a new loyalist politics and to organize members of the Protestant working class into a self‐conscious political force. In the process these community workers challenge the traditional deferential role of the working class within unionism. They reject the politics of unionist elected officials while advocating an independent and activist involvement by residents in their communities. The study is based on interviews with 18 community activists about their understanding of loyalism and also their organizing efforts. Antonio Gramsci’s concept of the organic intellectual is employed as a theoretical framework for interpreting the ideas and actions of these community workers. The argument is made that while the subjects of this study do not correspond in every respect to Gramsci’s concept, they do embody the heart of his idea.

War is instrumental in shaping and negotiating gender identities. But what role does peace play in dispelling or affirming the gender order in post-conflict contexts? Building on a burgeoning international literature on representative landscapes and based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Northern Ireland between 2003 and 2006, this article explores the peacetime commemoration of the Northern Ireland ‘Troubles’ in order to explore the nuances of gender. Tellingly, the memorial landscapes cultivated since the inception of the paramilitary ceasefires in 1994 privilege male interpretations of the past (and, therefore, present). Gender parity, despite being enshrined within the 1998 Belfast Agreement which sought to draw a line under almost three decades of ethno-nationalist violence, remains an elusive utopia, as memorials continue to propagate specific roles for men and women in the ‘national project’. As the masculine ideologies of Irish Nationalism/Republicanism and British Unionism/Loyalism inscribe...

During the Northern Ireland Troubles some Protestant communities suffered more than others. The loyalist Shankill area of West Belfast is one such place. Geographically situated between the republican strongholds of the Ardoyne and Falls, it was regularly exposed to violent attack. The area witnessed a series of republican bombings that included children in the death toll as well as many deadly shootings. Violence of this kind has left an indelible mark on the Shankill community. However, more than other loyalist areas, it was prepared to respond to republican violence with violence. But the community has not emerged from the Troubles with confidence. Unanticipated post-conflict factors of a political, cultural, and territorial nature are undermining efforts to promote community confidence and encourage paramilitary groups to decommission their weapons.

The aim of this article is to examine how Gary Mitchell's As the Beast Sleeps and The Force of Change engage with what the Ulster poet Tom Paulin has described as "the unbudging, implacable destructiveness" of the triumphalist Loyalist ethos. In these two plays, Mitchell argues that the notion of cultural and physical resistance, not only against a hostile and encroaching world, but also towards the very concept of change itself, represents the dominant ethos of the contemporary Loyalist vision., L'article étudie la manière dont les pièces de Gary Mitchell, As the Beast Sleeps et The Force of Change, traitent de la mentalité loyaliste triomphaliste et de son « inébranlable et implacable penchant destructeur » selon le mot du poète d'Ulster, Tom Paulin. Dans ces deux pièces, Mitchell affirme que la notion d'une résistance culturelle et physique, tant contre un monde hostile et envahissant que contre l'idée même de changement, constitue la clé de voûte de la perspective loyaliste contemporaine., Gray Billy. "The fragments they shore up against their ruins" : Loyalism, Alienation and Fear of Change in Gary Mitchell's As the Beast Sleeps and the Force of Change. In: Études irlandaises, n°32 n°1, 2007. pp. 127-139.

The Northern Ireland peace process has provided the space for the emergence of an articulate loyalist politics which has had implications for the traditionally obstructive and negative representations of unionist discourse. During talk and negotiations which led to the Good Friday Agreement of 1998, leaders of the Progressive Unionist Party and the Ulster Democratic Party (both political wings of loyalist paramilitary groupings) voiced positions which assisted the possibilities for building constitutional change based along more moderate lines than those associated with dominant unionism. However, have the news media been receptive to such articulations and, if not, what problems have they created for the communication of loyalist positions? By considering such questions, this article explores the development of loyalism and loyalist communications in the early years of peace in Northern Ireland.

We knew full well that the media were short-changing us when it came to representing ‘our’ side of the story, but what was our side of the story? We couldn’t even explain it properly ourselves. And it’s still the same. There’s plenty of times people around here have refused to take part in cross-community meetings, not because we don’t want to sit down with Catholics, but because we don’t have the self-confidence to do so. Few of us can articulate our case the way they can theirs.1 Northern Ireland’s loyalists frequently lament what they perceive as their misrepresentation in the media, and in doing so they join the chorus of marginalised and oppressed sections in society that complain of being caricatured or ignored by the press, broadcasters and filmmakers. As Stuart Hall has pointed out with regards cultural representation generally, some people are always in a position to define, to set the agenda, to establish the terms of the conversation. Some others [are] … always on the margin, always responding to a question whose terms and conditions have been defined elsewhere: never ‘centred’. (1995: 5)

This article looks at the ways in which conceptions of Loyalist identity have been affected by the current political conjuncture in Northern Ireland. It argues that claims about cultural and political group identity are central to Loyalist political discourses and that the way in which this identity is figured is both variable and limited. Analysing the rhetoric of both the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) and the Progressive Unionist Party (PUP) the article shows how the reactions of these two parties to the ‘peace process' turn, in part, on (re)definitions of group identity shaped out a discourse concerned with authenticity and betrayal. From this basis the article explores the relationship of class identity to the formation of Loyalism and speculates as to the ways in which these parties might develop their imagining of identity as the peace process unfolds. It pays particular attention to the ways in working-class politics might become particularly central to the PUP.

This paper attempts to analyse and understand loyalist reactions to the ‘peace process’ in Northern Ireland since the summer of 1994. It highlights the strategically insecure position of the Unionist community and the variety of attempts which have been produced from within this community to respond to a changing political context - albeit on the basis of a political philosophy not free from internal contradictions. These attempts are based on re-statements of Unionist fundamentals; while there are indications of new forms of self-questioning within the Unionist community, particularly in its working class, these are vulnerable to etoliation by the dominant Unionist discourse.

Enter any mainstream bookshop in Northern Ireland and the image of loyalism that confronts the browser is ostensibly one of criminality and individualism. Publishers of books on loyalism seem to take particular interest in acts of violence and murder perpetrated by those who gain reputations not so much for their thinking, but for their actions. Accounts of this behaviour, through dramatic emphasis on menace and brutality, mean such books tend to sit better on the shelves of crime fiction, rather than politics or social history.