Suchergebnisse

Almost nowhere are politics and history so intimately bound up as in Ireland. Over the course of several hundred years rival political and religious camps have shaped their identities according to particular interpretations of their shared history. As such, any re-examination and revision of Irish history has the potential to have a very real impact upon wider society. Defining revisionism in historiography as a reaction to contemporary conflict in Ireland, this book looks at how intellectuals, scholars and those who were politically involved, have reacted to a crisis of violence. It explores.

This article looks at the devolution of policing in Northern Ireland. It begins with an outline of the historical context of policing in Northern Ireland and looks at the concept of legitimacy. I examine the motives and rhetoric of those involved in the devolution of policing in Northern Ireland. I also outline the reforms to policing as well as the difficulties faced on the ground. Where appropriate I compare developments in Northern Ireland with other post-conflict situations. This article is written from the perspective of commending those politicians, police officers and others who have taken risks for peace and whose leadership has led to the devolution of policing in Northern Ireland, which represents a completion of the devolution of powers to Northern Ireland as promised in the Good Friday Agreement of 1998. I argue that honesty about the past is key to the process of 'conflict resolution' — for the police, politicians and paramilitaries.

Power-sharing government resumed in Northern Ireland on 8 May 2007 after a historic agreement was reached between the Democratic Unionist Party and Sinn Fein. Unionist Ian Paisley became First Minister and Sinn Fein's Martin McGuinness, former Chief of Staff of the Irish Republican Army (IRA), became Deputy First Minister. The Provisional Republican movement has signed up to the decommissioning of weapons and policing in Northern Ireland; and hard-line Unionism has signed up to power-sharing and cross-border bodies. For the vast majority in Northern Ireland the conflict is over after almost a century of political turmoil and more than a generation of violent conflict. It is fitting, therefore, to examine the 'war of ideas' in the revisionist controversy that dominated Irish historiography throughout the period of this conflict. The purpose of this article is to offer an overview of this controversy. The writing on the Easter Rising of 1916 serves to illuminate the discussion and will aid in answering the issue of what the revisionist controversy is all about. In this article revisionism is defined as a re-examination of the ideological roots of current orthodoxy in response to the contemporary conflict in Northern Ireland. The article looks at how a variety of historians have reacted to this violent crisis, and how they concluded that revisionism was necessary: that is, how the deconstruction and re-evaluation of ideology and a new interpretation of history are crucial in understanding such crises of violence (and perhaps thereby defusing the tension). The article examines the nature and extent of this revisionist intellectual response. It recognizes that even though intellectuals are influenced by political conflicts, they do not necessarily follow political agendas.