Search results
In the twenty years after Ireland joined the UN in 1955, one subject dominated its fortunes: Africa. The first detailed study of Ireland's relationship with that continent, this book documents its special place in Irish history. It describes the missionaries, aid workers, diplomats, peacekeepers, and anti-apartheid protesters at the heart of Irish popular understanding of the developing world. It chronicles Africa's influence on Irish foreign policy, from decolonisation and the end of empire, to apartheid and the rise of foreign aid. Adopting a fresh, and strongly comparative approach, this book shows how small and middling powers like Ireland, Canada, the Netherlands and the Nordic states used Africa to shape their position in the international system, and how their influence waned with the rise of the Afro-Asian bloc. O’Sullivan details the link between African decolonisation and Ireland's self-defined post-colonial identity: at the UN, in the Congo, South Africa, Rhodesia, and Biafra – even in remote mission stations in rural Africa. When growing African radicalism made that role difficult to sustain, this book describes how missionaries, NGOs, and anti-apartheid campaigners helped to re-invent the Irish government's position, to become the ‘moral conscience’ of the EC. Offering a fascinating account of small state diplomacy and identity in a vital period for the Cold War, and a unique perspective on African decolonisation, this book provides essential insight for scholars of Irish history, African history, international relations, and the history of NGOs, as well as anyone interested in why Africa holds such an important place in the Irish public imagination.
Socialist Republic is a detailed account of left-wing politics in 1980s Britain. The 1980s is considered a time of crisis for left-wing politics but this book demonstrates the persistence of social democracy in localities like Sheffield. Drawing on archival research and oral history interviews it examines how Sheffield City Council developed a left-wing agenda to counter Thatcherism and renew the British left. Stepping back from the Council, it then explores how the city’s wider activism of the labour movement, women’s groups, peace, environmentalism, anti-apartheid, anti-racism, Black community organising, and lesbian and gay politics interacted with the ‘Socialist Republic’, and how these movements were embraced, supported, restricted, or ignored by the local authority. By bringing a wide range of movements together and examining them in the context of a vibrant local government, this book uses the local to offer a methodological challenge to the study of new social movements while providing a road map for how left-wing politics can be studied in other cities. Offering a timely focus on regional politics, it demonstrates how histories of local political cultures can enrich our understanding of political developments on a national and international level.
3 On the side of the angels The birth of the Irish Anti-Apartheid Movement Congo’s descent into chaos was watched closely by its neighbours in southern Africa. Unwilling to countenance any reduction in their power, the controlling minorities in South Africa (and by extension South West Africa) and Southern Rhodesia, and the authorities in the Portuguese territories (Angola, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, and Mozambique) viewed African political independence as an unhealthy and threatening development. To them the Congo unrest exemplified the potential menace to
4 Anti-apartheid solidarity in the perspectives and practices of the British far left in the 1970s and 1980s Gavin Brown Communists and members of the New Left were involved in the Anti-Apartheid Movement (AAM) from its origins in the late 1950s. In its early days, the AAM welcomed support from individual communists, but was reluctant to be seen to be too close to the Communist Party (CP). Nevertheless, members of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) played a significant role at all levels of the movement throughout its history.1 Fundamental to this was
bus fares and the National Health Service (NHS); to campaign against unemployment and racism; and to protest against Margaret Thatcher's 1983 speech at the Cutlers’ Feast celebration of Sheffield's industry. It played in support of the anti-apartheid movement, revolution in Nicaragua and Mass Trespass. It supported CND demonstrations locally and across Britain, performing in Heeley in Sheffield, in London, at Faslane Nuclear Base in Scotland and at Royal Air Force bases at Menwith Hill in North Yorkshire, Cottesmore in the East Midlands and Molesworth in
In 1972 the anti-apartheid movement in the United Kingdom produced a poster opposing emigration to South Africa. Showing the South African Prime Minister John Vorster, arms open wide in an apparent gesture of welcome, superimposed on a photograph of police beating Black South African women, it read, ‘Prominent South African figure seeks white workers to help maintain racist regime’. Highlighting the exploitation of Black workers, and naming British companies, including Dunlop and British Leyland, involved in this
southern Africa for ‘closely following that of Britain and the United States’.32 A year later, the continued growth in trade between Ireland and South Africa – imports rose from IR£1,424,161 in 1965 to IR£2,378,930 in 1969, with a concurrent rise in exports from IR£153,620 (1965) to IR£996,962 (1969) – was highlighted by the DEA as a potential cause for embarrassment, both at the UN and at home. Criticism ‘might be directed at the Minister . . . both by the Anti-Apartheid Movement as well as by certain opposition deputies in the Dáil’.33 Aiken, however, remained
in the Nordic states, while in the United States the anti-apartheid movement maintained its role as a leader of popular opinion. In Britain and Ireland the protests against the Springbok tour 162 Ireland, Africa and the end of empire in 1969–70 tapped into a growing public discontent and made the antiapartheid movements look inwards at their structures and approaches. The organisers of the British AAM decided that it had ‘gone too far along the path of being a parliamentary pressure group and that it must go back to its origins and attempt again to build a
This book explores the gendered dynamics of apartheid-era South Africa's militarisation. It analyses the defiance of compulsory military service by individual white men, and the anti-apartheid activism of white men and women in the End Conscription Campaign (ECC), the most significant white anti-apartheid movement of South Africa. Militarized, white masculinity was a dominant model of masculinity that white men were encouraged to perform and white women were encouraged to admire. One of the most consistent features of pre-1994 South African society was progressive militarisation, in terms of both military preparedness and activity and the social conditions necessary for war making. The book then analyses the 1984 Citizenship Act as evidence that conscription was a transformative political act for the men who undertook it. The wider peace movement is also analysed as a transgressive sub-cultural space where radical political subjectivities could be formulated. The ECC's use of art, music and satire is assessed as a means to critique the militarisation of South African society. The role of women in the ECC, the feminist activism and the ways in which constructs of white femininity were addressed are also analysed. The book also explores the interconnections between militarisation, sexuality, race, homophobia and political authoritarianism. Finally, it conceptualises the state as premising its response to objectors on a need to assert and reinforce the gendered binaries of militarisation.
This chapter draws the book's central themes together into an overview of how Ireland and the ‘fire brigade’ states adapted to the shifting sands of international relations in the Cold War. The principles of interdependence and interconnectedness are key. In place of a pragmatic battle of East versus West, this chapter emphasises the socialising effect of international relations and the link between national (individual) and international (collective) interests. Africa played a key role in that process. Ireland's history and its deep-rooted (if largely self-defined) post-colonial identity played shaped its attitudes to decolonisation and the creation of successful, independent African states. Its approach in the Congo, Biafra and elsewhere echoed a long-held conviction that the key to international stability – and by inference its own security – lay in the rejection of outside interference and the promotion of co-operation through the medium of international law. Its progressive stance on apartheid and foreign aid helped shape its identity as a member of the EC. And the rise of non-state actors (the anti-apartheid movement and humanitarian NGOs) linked Irish opinion to global debate on an unprecedented scale, precipitating a shift towards transnational action and away from the centrality of the state.