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Divisions between north and south Ireland were prevalent since the 1920s. Yet, until the 1970s, nobody in public life in the Republic of Ireland argued that partition was justified. This book examines in detail the impact of the Northern Irish Troubles on southern Irish society during the period 1968-79. It begins with the aftermath of the civil rights march in Derry in October 1968 and traces the reaction to the events until the autumn of 1972. The impact of August 1969, the aftermath of internment and the response to Bloody Sunday are examined. The book looks at violence south of the border, particularly bombings and shootings and their human cost, and examines state security, censorship and the popular protests associated with these issues. A general outlook at the changing attitudes to refugees and northern nationalists is provided before describing the impact of the conflict on southern Protestants. The controversies concerning the Irish Republican Army and their activities are highlighted. The book looks at the question of revisionism and how debates about history were played out in academia as well as at a popular level. A variety of social and cultural responses to the conflict are examined, including attitudes to Britain and northern Unionists. For many southerners, Ulster was practically a foreign country and Northern Ireland did not seem very Irish. By 1979, the prospect of an end to the conflict seemed dim.
, Judge Cory, Bloody Sunday end of things and my interface was with Stephen Leach and Chris Maccabe on the British side. I think here we need to look a bit more thematically at the decommissioning issue. What was the nature of power-sharing and what was the relationship between power-sharing and the North–South arrangements? Basically the deal in all of this for unionists was to participate in the North
Bloody Sunday and the image of the British Army 13 ‘Every man an emperor’: the British press, Bloody Sunday and the image of the British Army1 Greg McLaughlin and Stephen Baker Graham Dawson and Michael Paris have highlighted what they call a ‘pleasure culture of war’ in Britain that posits the British soldier as a paragon of honest, honourable and courageous manhood, enshrined in the image of the British ‘Tommy’ and ‘our boys’.2 This figure has long been popularised and celebrated in forms of mass entertainment and has been critical in forging gendered notions
with Social Democratic and Labour party (SDLP) MP John Hume, that the Parachute Regiment had carried out ‘cold-blooded mass murder; another Sharpeville; another Bloody Sunday’. Some news outlets reported Derry’s James Connolly Republican Club’s call for an ‘immediate general strike (to) bring the country to a standstill’.3 Monday 31 January On Monday morning, walkouts began from factories in the Shannon Industrial Estate. An estimated 2,000 workers marched to the airport terminal and demanded the tricolour be lowered to half-mast. By 9am Cork dockers had struck
thinks of The Pumpkin Eater or Sunday Bloody Sunday (John Schlesinger 1971), especially during one of the musical numbers or the scenes opposite John Gielgud wearing a very silly hat. 1 Finch once reflected of his career that, ‘All of the others have either been films I liked that didn’t make money or films I didn’t like that did make money’ (Ebert 1968 : n.p.). Anyone who wishes to chronical the cinematic career of Peter Finch faces three challenges, the first of which is the bulk of material devoted to his affair with Vivien Leigh and the second is that of
‘infected the Southern body politic’ but the ‘wonder is that it infected it so little for so long’.3 John A. Murphy asserted as early as 1975 that ‘the Northern troubles had amazingly little impact on the South’ and that ‘by and large, there was no popular involvement, if we except the emotional outburst and the burning of the British Embassy in Dublin after Bloody Sunday in Derry’.4 Almost a decade later, Ronan Fanning wrote that it was remarkable ‘not how much but how little the high drama of events in Northern Ireland since 1968 have impinged upon politics and society
James I: ‘I have written history before. Sunday was about Bloody Sunday in Derry in 1972. Hillsborough was about the 1989 football disaster and Dockers was about the Liverpool Docks’ Dispute of the mid-Nineties.’ For McGovern, then, Gunpowder, Treason and Plot was very much about finding the right storytelling approach to both engage an audience and get at what he came to see as the essential truths of an episode in British history that continued to have powerful contemporary resonances. McGovern was, though, clearly aware of the essential differences as well as the
in calling for a campaign of civil disobedience.42 Despite the rapid deterioration of the situation, it was not until the tragedy of ‘Bloody Sunday’ in January 1972 – when British paratroopers fired on an anti-internment rally in the Bogside area of Derry, resulting in fourteen deaths – that London finally accepted the need to assume direct responsibility for the governance of Northern Ireland. But as well as providing the final nail in the coffin for Stormont, Bloody Sunday also dealt a devastating blow to constitutional nationalism. As with internment, the IRA
, during which soldiers from the Parachute Regiment shot dead thirteen unarmed protestors (another man died later), the then Chief of the General Staff, Sir David Richards, issued a public statement on behalf of the Army. ‘We must never forget the tragic events of Bloody Sunday,’ he said. ‘In the thirty-eight years since that tragic day’s events, lessons have been learned. The way the Army is trained, the way it works and the way it operates have all changed significantly.’3 It was a powerful gesture, interpreted by the son of one of the men killed as a way to ‘begin to
supportive of the Provisional IRA. Consequently, the party became more reactive than proactive, following sentiment in the minority community instead of leading it. The period is characterised by an increase in anti-British attitudes among the minority population, particularly after Bloody Sunday in January 1972: a shift that is reflected in SDLP language and actions. Reunification, an issue that had been carefully side-lined by both the civil rights movement and the SDLP statement of policy, once again emerged into the foreground. The SDLP was faced with a delicate