Northern Ireland after the Good Friday Agreement

Whilst not dissenting, John Brewer’s more sociological analysis questions whether the degree of commitment towards rapprochement among politicians and people is sufficient to make things work. As with all deals, there are winners and losers. In considering the difficulties of the 1998 Agreement’s key architects, the SDLP (Social Democratic and Labour Party), Philippe Cauvet illuminates the difficulties besetting the politics of moderation. The deal instead rewarded, via their release from prison, those ‘combatants’ who had fought the ‘war’. Whilst their recidivism is low, the same can be said for their revisionism, according to Stephen Hopkins’ analysis. The shift from conflict has not led to a fundamental reappraisal among former prisoners of why they participated.

Occasionally, the eclecticism of edited volumes is a weakness. Here, it is a major strength, allowing the contributors to associate the strength of historical memory with contemporary disputes, whilst acknowledging the positive contributions made to community identities by remembrance and learning. Thus, the contributions of Jim McAuley and Aaron Edwards highlight the extent to which loyalist communities and organisations bond via shared interpretations of the past, but also limit how collective loyalist memory can accommodate the different versions of history offered by republicans. Three potential vehicles by which a community or organisation might be understood better by rivals and opponents are books, museums and the arts, which make the considerations of the value of each, by David Clark, Katie Markham and Laurence McKeown respectively, particularly valuable.

The sum of these parts is a wonderful, genuinely interdisciplinary and thoughtful volume, reliant upon evidence not mere assertion. The pleasure in reading lies in its breadth and the capacity of well-informed and astute contributors to challenge lazy orthodoxies, whilst not being controversial merely for the sake of controversy. This is a book which ought to be read by anyone with an interest in Northern Ireland’s past, present and future.

Jon Tonge

Professor of Politics

University of Liverpool

The opposition and perhaps lack of understanding between both communities in Northern Ireland has been at the forefront of the problems and has hindered appeasement in Northern Ireland. Through an analysis of the memoir-writing of loyalist and nationalist paramilitary prisoners, Stephen Hopkins considers the experiences of these prisoners during the Troubles in order to gain an understanding of the willingness of reconciliation with the other side and the idea of a shared future. Hopkins has discovered a real lack of understanding between these prisoners of the nature of the conflict in Northern Ireland which he posits complicates any attempt for reconciliation or indeed a shared future. Hopkins concludes through his study of republican and loyalist paramilitary prisoners that they still cling to certain myths and shibboleths of the conflict era and to the notion of republican and loyalist legitimacy. Until a true reappraisal of these myths is carried out, the author questions whether a reconciled or shared future is possible.

Similarly, Jim McAuley discusses Ulster loyalism and the interpretation of the past. This past is claimed to be the possession of the history of one group over another. According to McAuley, through collective memory, Ulster loyalists reproduce a ‘distinct sense of Self and community’ based on an unchanging sense of a ‘common identity and a shared sense of history’. Certain acts of commemoration and remembrance (wall murals, formal commemorations, parades and memorials around the centenary of the Ulster Covenant in 1912, the creation of the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) and increasingly the battle of the Somme in 1916) allow loyalists to interpret their version of history, history as memory, and maintain the boundaries with the ‘other’ community. This social memory can be transmitted from generation to generation thus reinforcing barriers and division and promoting a shared past among loyalists rather than a shared future within Northern Irish society at large.

The Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) has sought to contribute to the continued attempts at dealing with the past in Northern Ireland but Aaron Edwards’ concludes how little progress has been made by this loyalist group thus far. The author suggests that writing about the past can enlighten present and future generations as to why and how people made the choices they did and the consequences of those choices, but that questions need to be continually asked in order to gain a real understanding of past events. Only when the actual human cost of armed conflict in Northern Ireland is understood can it hope to move towards reconciliation and ultimately a shared future.

The Social Democratic and Labour Party’s (SDLP) declining influence in Northern Ireland since 1998 and its incapacity to provide political leadership in Northern Ireland is discussed by Philippe Cauvet. According to the author, this is largely due to the limits and contradictions of the postnationalist analysis which was defended by the late John Hume. Cauvet evokes the weakness of the moderate SDLP faced with the resilience of sectarianism in Northern Ireland and puts forward suggestions as to how this party needs to transform itself in order to find a way out of this impasse and have a role to play in the future of Northern Ireland.

The final chapters of this volume deal with literature and the arts. Eva Urban’s article looks at Green Shoot’s community theatre production 1932: The People of Gallagher Street (2016) and Rosemary Jenkinson’s play Planet Belfast (2013) where the impact of conflict trauma on a divided community in Northern Ireland is staged. 1932: The People of Gallagher Street has as its central theme the reification of community divisions for material and political interests and Planet Belfast deals with the reification of community trauma for personal and political gain. Urban suggests that it is important to remember and learn from past instances of community cohesion and solidarity such as the 1932 outdoor relief strike and the political attempts at sowing divisions amongst people, in order to build solidarity across community lines in Northern Ireland’s post-conflict society.