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The Chroniclers of Violence in Northern Ireland Revisited: The Analysis of Tragedy*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

J. Bowyer Bell
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Extract

As the years pass, the Northern Ireland Troubles appear to have become institutionalized at an intolerable but apparently irreducible level of violence. There appears no light at the end of the tunnel, and no firm evidence that the center can hold. The bridges between a divided society have long been reduced to rubble. The Provisional IRA appears capable, even eager, to continue a campaign of guerrilla attrition damned as self-defeating, immoral, and bloody-minded by all concerned including the Official IRA. In return Protestant gunmen have opened the season on Catholics, all guilty of treason in some form, all enemies of British Ulster. And the British Army remains a tempting target even at times to the Protestant militants.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 36 , Issue 4 , October 1974 , pp. 521 - 543
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1974

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References

1 Besides the Ulster conference, the Institute for the Study of Conflict has produced three issues of Conflict Studies on Ireland: No. 6 by Iain Hamilton, No. 17 by Hamilton, and Moss, Robert (whose more extensive report on Ulster may be found in The War for the Cities, New York: Coward, McCann & Geoghegan, 1972) and No. 36, June, 1973, Ulster: Politics and TerrorismGoogle Scholar. The analysis is essentially the view from conservative London based in large part on authorized sources, suspicious of “revolution” and without a grasp of the Irish perspective. Despite the flaws, the publications of the Institute are handy, concise—but not in the Irish case purely disinterested analysis.

2 There is a vast collection of party papers (The United Irishman of the Official IRA or Combat of the UVF), neighborhood newssheets, broadsides, theoretical journals published erratically, pamphlets, weeklies produced in Belfast or London or New York (The Irish People)—all largely only the concern of the professional scholar, various security forces, and the faithful.

3 Another far more elegant effort at propaganda—sympathetic reporting—is O'Sullivan's, P. MichaelPatriot Game (Chicago: Follett, 1972)Google Scholar, largely a book of photographs buttressed with an unfortunate text (as told to Don Johnson, whatever that may mean).

4 Another massive category of works on Irish matters is here ignored in that there has been a rush in foreign parts to publish on Ulster. The Troubles can be fitted into various existing niches—Left politics or Catholic loyalty. Repeatedly journalists have returned to Italy or Germany to write of their Ireland. A typical example would be Tortura in Irlanda (Rome: Napoleone Editore, 1972)Google Scholar edited by Angelo Puggioni—mostly a collection of translated declarations and documents. There is probably no harm done although all those old familar names do look odd in the midst of paragraphs in grandiose Italian journalese or dense German analysis.

5 So far the greatest contribution of the thesis-dissertation group has been to previously ignored areas of Irish history rather than examination of events since 1968. In 1972–1973 in the United States there was only one Irish dissertation (Kenny, Kathleen, “The Political System of the Irish Republic: Two-anda-half Parties in a Developing Nation,” Syracuse)Google Scholar in political science and only a single proposal dealing with the Troubles (Mulvihill, Robert F., “Attitudes Toward Political Violence: A Survey of Catholics and Protestants in Londonderry, Northern Ireland,” Pennsylvania)Google Scholar. Given the course record, this restraint is unlikely to continue and rumor of various projects, particularly in British universities, is rife.

6 The old faithfuls, mostly potted sociology on “The Irish” are still about, ranging from the serious and good (Kennedy, Robert E. Jr, The Irish: Emigration, Marriage and Fertility, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973)Google Scholar to the usual trot through the Irish character and countryside. A saving grace to date has been a general reluctance to trot through the Troubles.

7 There is an obvious need for a thorough bibliography of the Troubles but as yet there has been no hint of such a project. At least efforts are being made in Belfast to collect the most fugitive material but an authoritative listing of academic analysis is yet to be made.

8 Lebow, Richard Ned, “Civil War in Ireland: A Tragedy in Endless Acts?” Journal of International Affairs, vol. 27, no. 2 (1973), 247–260Google Scholar, and Thomas E. Hachey, “One People or Two? The Origins of Partition and the Prospects for Unification in Ireland,” ibid., 232–246.

9 Doob, L. W. and Foltz, W. J., “The Belfast Workshop: An Application of Group Techniques to a Destructive Conflict,” Journal of Conflict Resolution, vol. 17, no. 3, pp. 489–512CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and “The Impact of a Workshop upon Grass-Roots Leaders in Belfast,” ibid., (forthcoming June, 1974).

10 Lynch's, single contribution has been “The Anglo-Irish Problem,” Foreign Affairs, vol. 50, no. 4, 07, 1972.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

11 British strategy is to invest in a center that will reward moderation and stability while threatening the Protestants with the evacuation of the province and the Provos with perpetual occupation. So far the rewards have been insufficient, the Protestants truculent and the Provos determined. Dublin's strategy is to support London and deplore violence.