Smashing H Block

Download or read book Smashing H-block written by F. Stuart Ross and published by Liverpool University Press. This book was released on 2011-01-01 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The period from 1976 to 1982 is widely regarded as a crucial turning point in the Irish Troubles. As time has passed the historic prison hunger strikes of 1980 and 1981 have taken on near mythic resonance, somewhat distorting the broader picture of the Irish republican struggle against criminalization. Focusing on the popular movement outside the prisons, Smashing H-Block gives us a gripping, thorough account of this fateful time and reveals how these years of protest reshaped and revitalized modern Irish republicanism. Drawing on extensive archival research and the widest range of sources available, F. Stuart Ross paints a compelling portrait of the last great wave of activism and mobilization with the nationalist population. He argues that the protests outside of the infamous H-Blocks of Maze Prison challenged republican orthodoxy, while, more broadly, he examines the importance of popular grassroots movements in effecting political and social change.

Download or read book H Blocks written by Louise Purbrick and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2023-01-26 with total page 219 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Shortlisted for the Alice Davis Hitchcock Medallion 2023 A place of incarceration and liberation, political debate and historical denial, the H Block cell units of Long Kesh/Maze prison in Northern Ireland housed members of both Republican and Loyalist military groups during 'The Troubles' and are now considered 'icons' of that conflict. The H Block's dual status as an articulation of and resistance against power mean that the area is still one of the most contested sites of conflict in Europe. Based on a long-standing site-specific investigation, and drawing on a range of sources from architectural plans to photographs of street protests, H Blocks explores the material relationship between the prison as a built articulation of power and its inhabitants, highlighting the ethical and political roles that architecture can play in situations of conflict. It also addresses the afterlife of such sites after the end of conflict and how they can adapt to the changing cultural meanings of their space. The book demonstrates how the conflicted histories of the prison are configured in its design and destruction, and the inhabitation and attempted preservation of the site itself, revealing how its architecture is bound up with questions of power and resistance, embodiment and attachment, witnessing and remembering, the materiality of history and its commodification.

Download or read book A Failed Political Entity written by Stephen Kelly and published by Merrion Press. This book was released on 2016-10-10 with total page 405 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Charles Haughey maintained one of the most controversial and brilliant careers in the history of Irish politics, but for every stage in his mounting success there was one issue that complicated, and almost devastated, his ambitions to lead Irish politics: Northern Ireland. In ‘A Failed Political Entity’ Stephen Kelly uncovers the complex motives that underlie Haughey’s fervent attitude towards the political and sectarian violence that was raging across the border. Early in Haughey’s governmental career he took a hard line against the IRA, leading many to think he was antipathetic towards the situation in Northern Ireland. Then, in one of the most defining scandals in the history of modern Ireland – The Arms Crisis of 1970 – he was accused of attempting to supply northern nationalists with guns and ammunitions. Whilst his role in this murky affair almost ended his political career, the question of Northern Ireland was ever-binding and would deftly serve to bring Haughey back to power as taoiseach in 1979. Through recent access to an astonishing array of classified documents and extensive interviews, Stephen Kelly confronts every controversy, examining the genesis of Haughey’s attitude to Northern Ireland; allegations that Haughey played a key part in the formation of the Provisional IRA; the Haughey–Thatcher relationship; and Haughey’s leading hand in the early stages of the fledgling Northern Ireland peace process.

Download or read book One Man's Terrorist written by Daniel Finn and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2021-06-29 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A history of “the Troubles”: the radical politics of Republicanism The conflict in Northern Ireland was one of the most devastating in postwar Europe. Based on extensive archival research, One Man’s Terrorist explores the relationship between the IRA, a highly capable and ruthless clandestine army, and the political movement that developed alongside it to challenge British rule. Finn shows how the radical history of the IRA shaped modern Ireland. In the light of Sinn Féin’s unprecedented electoral success in the Republic of Ireland, and the ongoing Brexit saga with its impact on Northern Irish politics, this book supplies the essential background for an understanding of today’s events.

Download or read book Irish Republican Counterpublic written by Dieter Reinisch and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2022-12-30 with total page 165 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume examines the critical factors and processes by which the Provisional Irish Republican movement campaign from 1969 to 1998 transformed a once acquiescent nationalist population in Northern Ireland into a counterpublic of resistance demanding national self-determination and social justice. Considering the establishment of Irish Republican community institutions, prison protests, Republican Feminism, and Provisional IRA media and communications, this volume explores the emergence of Republicanism as a mass social movement in the nationalist Catholic ghettos and rural regions of Northern Ireland in the 1970s – a development that helped to sustain the armed struggle of the Provisional Irish Republican Army for three decades. An examination of the emergence and transformative power of the counterpublic discourse and action of the Irish Republican movement, this volume provides a framework for conceptualizing counterpublics in social movement studies. As such it will appeal to scholars of sociology, history, and politics with interests in social movements and mobilization.

Download or read book Out of the Ashes written by Robert White and published by Merrion Press. This book was released on 2017-04-25 with total page 555 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Out of the Ashes is the definitive history of the Provisional Irish Republican movement, from its formation at the outset of the modern Troubles up to and after its official disarmament in 2005. Robert White, a prolific observer of IRA and Sinn Féin activities, has amassed an incomparable body of interview material from leading members over a thirty-year period. In this defining study, the interviewees provide extraordinary insights into the complex motivations that provoked their support for armed struggle, their eventual reform, and the mind-set of today’s ‘dissidents’ who refuse to lay down their arms. Those interviewed stem from every stage of the Provisionals’ history, from founding figures such as Seán Mac Stiofáin, Ruairí Ó Brádaigh and Joe Cahill to the new generation that replaced them: Martin McGuinness, Danny Morrison, and Brendan Hughes among others. Out of the Ashes is a pioneering history that breaks new ground in defining how the Provisionals operated, caused worldwide condemnation, and were transformed by constitutional politics.

Download or read book Sport and Protest written by Cathal Kilcline and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-12-18 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sporting mega-events habitually spawn protests from local groups discommoded by the building of new infrastructure, environmental lobbies contesting the long-term legacies of such events, and expressions of outrage at the expenditure of public funds on events often restricted to an elite selection of participants and spectators. Are these protest movements ever successful in preventing sporting events from taking place or in modifying their nature, or even in drawing attention to social issues? Or are they inevitably destined to be ignored in the popular fervour and financial windfall that accompanies such events? Similarly, sporting events have occasionally been the site of iconic moments of political protest. Tommie Smith’s and John Carlos’ ‘Black Power’ salute at the Mexico Olympics in 1968, for example, remains one of the abiding symbols of resistance to oppression expressed in a sporting context. What is it about sport that lends itself to these kinds of protests? Are these protests effective in accelerating change in society or does the sporting context ultimately serve to trivialize important social issues? Here we endeavour to respond to some of these questions and thereby illuminate the evolving political, economic, environmental and cultural implications of sport in society. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue in The International Journal of The History of Sport.