Suchergebnisse

This article examines whether the promotion of British values is desirable, feasible or even permissible within Northern Ireland. Here, the advocacy of Britishness may be seen as threatening or offensive to a minority community whose political representatives desire the diminution of symbols of Britishness in order to encourage Irish nationalists to participate in political institutions. The promotion of British history, culture and belief systems may carry little remit among a nationalist community which more readily identifies with Irish versions of each of these features and may see the Irish, not British, government as the custodian of its interests. Moreover, the promotion of Britishness within Northern Ireland has historically been distinct from that found elsewhere in the UK. First, it has often been 'bottom-up', marked by ostentatious symbolism in response to the constitutional uncertainty which has beset the region. Secondly, Britishness has often taken on particular characteristics, such as Protestantism and Orangeism. In examining how the Westminster government and Northern Ireland executive have responded to these challenges, the article explores the constraints upon the promotion of Britishness in Northern Ireland. Any such project is necessarily confined to one side of the binary divide, a unionist community hardly in need of the assertion of its British identity, while it risks antagonising those holding an Irish identity. Given this, it is unclear how, if at all, the assertion of British values can be formulated on a UK-wide basis, when Northern Ireland remains an area of exceptionalism. Adapted from the source document.

The Protestant Orange Order is the largest organization in civil society in Northern Ireland. From 1905 until 2005, the Order was linked to the Ulster Unionist Party, until recently the dominant local political force. However, widespread Unionist disenchantment with the 1998 Good Friday Agreement led to a shift in the votes of Orange Order members, in common with other Protestants, to the anti-Agreement Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), which traditionally has had no links to the Order. This article examines the political, religious, and cultural attitudes of Orange Order members that prompted such a switch. It suggests that a combination of cultural and political insecurities over the fate of Protestant-British-Unionism has led to a realignment of Orangeism towards the stronger brand of Protestant and Unionist politics offered by the DUP. Tables, References. Adapted from the source document.

This is a case study of the social and physical construction of an 'Irish' community in an English town. It asks how or why members of this community migrated and how they construct contemporary images of 'home'. The article draws on semi-structured interviews and conversations with members of the contemporary Irish community in Huddersfield, including Irish-born and second-generation Irish respondents. We find that their sense of Irish identity is complex, encompassing the totality of social experience, much of which is influenced by often competing interpretations of social and political relationships and understandings of history. What constitutes Irish identity in Huddersfield is determined not just by these factors, but also by the ways in which individuals are socialised as members of different families, neighbourhoods, workplace or other social interest groups.

Following the 1998 Belfast Agreement in Northern Ireland, levels of paramilitary violence have declined substantially. Among loyalists, the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) and associated Red Hand Commando (RHC) have formally renounced violence, and dissolved their 'military structures', and perhaps the most reticent of all of the major paramilitary groupings, the Ulster Defence Association (UDA), has taken on board the central tenets of conflict transformation, and 'stood down' all of its 'active service units' in the Ulster Freedom Fighters (UFF). Thus, paramilitary violence now is mainly confined to the activities of 'dissident' republican groups, notably the Real and Continuity IRAs, although low-level sectarian violence remains a problem. Such dramatic societal and political change has resulted in a focus on the roles of formal party political leadership as agents of social change. This gaze, however, tends to obscure other important events such as the efforts, structures and approaches taken at the grassroots level to uphold and sustain conflict transformation and to maintain a reduction in violence. This article provides analysis of the role played by former loyalist paramilitary combatants in conflict transformation, and draws on material obtained through significant access to those former paramilitaries engaged in processes of societal shifts. In both personal and structural terms there is evidence of former combatants working to diminish the political tensions that remain as a result of the long-term inter-communal hostility developed across decades of violence and conflict. Adapted from the source document.

The 1998 Good Friday Agreement (GFA) led to a major realignment in unionist politics in Northern Ireland. The Ulster Unionist party (UUP), hitherto the dominant force within the Protestant British tradition, was usurped in electoral popularity by the Democratic Unionist party (DUP). In its post-GFA rise, the DUP garnered majority support from members of the Orange Order, the largest organisation in Protestant civil society. Drawing upon a recent membership survey of the Orange Order conducted by the authors, this article examines the demographic and attitudinal bases of support for unionist political parties among its members, and tests whether the locus of support for the DUP is evenly distributed, or instead biased towards particular age groups, social classes or Protestant denominations within the Order, as well as assessing whether attitudinal variations may be influential in determining party loyalties. Adapted from the source document.