Suchergebnisse

This volume explores the dynamics and divisions within the Ulster Loyalist paramilitary groups in Northern Ireland since the mid-1970s, including the Ulster Volunteer Force, the Ulster Defence Association and the Red Hand Commando

The invasion of Iraq and the subsequent laws of regime change were directed at the 'purification' of public sector employment. Such policies based upon removing transgressors from within the previous regime are commonly known as lustration. In Iraq, these were normatively presented as a required process for democracy building and victim recognition. However, in reality, lustration emerged problematically and essentially as a form of counter-insurgency aimed at removing those guilty of war crimes but also those opposed to neo-liberalism, federalism and the erosion of secularism. The misuse of laws of lustration was allied to external design and the relish of the new elite to use public resources to attempt state hegemony. Lustration, thus emerging as one of the few sites in which the new state could control and assert influence even if that led to new grievances and ethno-sectarian resentment.

This article argues that within Northern Ireland the processes of disarmament, demobilisation and re-integration (DDR) remain incomplete. Despite general disarmament and demobilisation and a very significant fall in paramilitary violence, those imprisoned as a consequence of the conflict remain marginalised by vetting laws and other instruments of civic exclusion. This has significant consequences in terms of acknowledging that the conflict has ceased as a violent/military episode. This is due to rhetorical devices and positions that uphold variant readings of the past, especially those that impose a humiliated status upon conflict-related prisoners.

A central failing of analysis of the peace process has been to account for, explain and determine the extent of loyalist‐led conflict transformation. My argument is that, despite evident wrong‐doing, there has been a failure to appreciate the prosperity of loyalist thinking and action in the period after the paramilitary ceasefires of 1994. Loyalism has appeared less relevant than it is to peacemaking due to its criminalisation, its refusal to accept positive morphology and a failure to self‐promote. An appreciation of the positive nature of loyalist transition offers much to those who seek to comprehend the future of Northern Ireland.