Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- List of Abbreviations
- Introduction
- Part I Defining the Community
- Introduction to Part I
- 1 Shaping the Terrain: Economy, State and Civil Society
- 2 From Resistance Community to Community Politics
- 3 ‘They Haven't Gone Away, You Know’: The Withering Away of the ‘Provisional State’?
- Part II The Historic Compromise?
- Conclusion: The End of a Song?
- Bibliography
- Index
2 - From Resistance Community to Community Politics
from Part I - Defining the Community
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- List of Abbreviations
- Introduction
- Part I Defining the Community
- Introduction to Part I
- 1 Shaping the Terrain: Economy, State and Civil Society
- 2 From Resistance Community to Community Politics
- 3 ‘They Haven't Gone Away, You Know’: The Withering Away of the ‘Provisional State’?
- Part II The Historic Compromise?
- Conclusion: The End of a Song?
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Ardoyne is a small community in Belfast, which has borne more than its fair share of suffering in the past 20 years of conflict. This week its people came together to remember their dead and to rededicate them to the struggle for lasting peace in their community and their country … The staunchness of the ordinary working-class community of Ardoyne and of many another communities like it across the Six Counties is a shining example to all the oppressed sections of the Irish people. Neither [sic] occupation, criminalization, extradition, imprisonment nor even assassination can defeat them. They are the real stalwarts of freedom.
Characterizing the Provisionals has been a central issue in Northern Irish politics since the 1970s. Throughout the Troubles, it has proven difficult to fit Provisionalism into the theoretical categories of conventional politics. Stressing the ‘traditional’ nature of Republicanism or situating it solely within a terrorist paradigm ignores the complexities of the contemporary movement. ‘Terrorology’ is as useful as theology in explaining the emergence of New Sinn Féin over the last sixteen years.
Events since the signing of the Belfast Agreement have confirmed the scale of this transformation. The Provisionals' participation in the institutions of the Good Friday Agreement ‘was a departure no previous Republican has endorsed. Not even de Valera when he departed Sinn Féin in 1926 argued that Republicans should end abstentionism in the context of parliamentary representation in Northern Ireland.’
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The New Politics of Sinn Fein , pp. 51 - 90Publisher: Liverpool University PressPrint publication year: 2007