What We Talk About When We Talk About Peace: A Rejoinder to McEvoy and Shirlow

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Acknowledgments

The authors wish to thank Professor Henry Patterson, Dr. Thomas Hennessey, and Dr. Paul Dixon for comments on an early draft of this article.

Notes

A. Edwards and C. McGrattan, “Terroristic Narratives: On the (Re)Invention of Peace in Northern Ireland,” Terrorism and Political Violence 23, no. 3 (2011): 357–376; K. McEvoy and P. Shirlow, “The Northern Ireland Peace Process and ‘Terroristic’ Narratives: A Reply to Edwards and McGrattan,” Terrorism and Political Violence 25, no. 2 (2013): 162–166.

See the review of Shirlow's latest monograph in the current Dublin Review of Books: C. Parr, “Getting Beyond No,” Dublin Review of Books 30 (2013), http://www.drb.ie/reviews/getting-beyond-no?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=The+Dublin+Review+of+Books+Issue+30+March+11th+2013&utm&_content=The+Dublin+Review+of+Books+Issue+30+March+11th+2013+CID_414621bf2145eb0a2256b810d4ab9788&utm_source=Email%20marketing%20software&utm_term=Getting%20Beyond%20No%20Connal%20Parr

J. W. McAuley, J. Tonge, and P. Shirlow, “Conflict, Transformation, and Former Loyalist Paramilitary Prisoners in Northern Ireland,” Terrorism and Political Violence 22, no. 1 (2010): 24.

A. Edwards and C. McGrattan, The Northern Ireland Conflict: A Beginner's Guide (Oxford: Oneworld, 2010).

A. Kelly, “Geopolitical Eclipse: Culture and the Peace Process in Northern Ireland,” Third Text 19, no. 5 (2005): 547–548.

K. McEvoy and P. Shirlow, “Encumbered by Data: Understanding Politically Motivated Former Prisoners and the Transition to Peace in Northern Ireland,” in M. Power, ed., Building Peace in Northern Ireland (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2011), 126.

The most authoritative source on conflict-related deaths puts the total at 3,720; see David McKittrick, Seamus Kelters, Brian Feeney, Chris Thornton, and David McVea, Lost Lives: The Stories of the Men, Women and Children Who Died as a Result of the Northern Ireland Troubles (Edinburgh: Mainstream, 2012).

Numerous political histories make this case (including our own book The Northern Ireland Conflict (note 4 above); perhaps the most detailed in terms of archival material is Thomas Hennessey, Northern Ireland: The Origins of the Troubles (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan, 2005).

This seems to originate from Shirlow's contributions: McEvoy and Shirlow, “Encumbered by Data,” 111 (see note 6 above) attribute a quote from McGrattan's article on community-based restorative justice (C. McGrattan, “Community-Based Restorative Justice in Northern Ireland: A Neo-Traditionalist Paradigm?,” British Journal of Politics and International Relations 12, no. 3 (2010): 408–424) to one on transitional justice in a completely different journal (C. McGrattan, “‘Order out of Chaos:’ The Politics of Transitional Justice,” Politics 29, no. 3 (2009): 164–172). This is repeated in P. Shirlow, “A Prosperity of Thought in an Age of Austerity: The Case of Ulster Loyalism,” Political Quarterly 83, no. 2 (2012): 6; and in P. Shirlow, The End of Ulster Loyalism (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2012), 146.

A. Edwards, Defending the Realm? The Politics of Britain's Small Wars Since 1945 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2012).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Aaron Edwards

Aaron Edwards is senior lecturer in defence and international affairs at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, and was a visiting research fellow in the School of Politics, International Studies and Philosophy at the Queen's University of Belfast from 2010–2011.

Cillian MCGrattan

Cillian McGrattan was previously a lecturer in politics at the University of Ulster and is now a lecturer in the Department of Political and Cultural Studies at Swansea University.