Ideology, reconciliation and nationalism in Northern Ireland

Abstract

This article explores the conceptualization of ‘reconciliation’ within modern Northern Irish nationalist discourse. I argue that the case of Northern Irish nationalism adds a new dimension to those understandings that remain currently underappreciated within the literature. The article charts how reconciliation becomes operationalized as a restrictive politics both despite and because of it being framed in a language of pluralism, restoration and openness. While this process points towards the constitution of a political and ideological community, the concept of reconciliation also precipitates contestation and competition – not simply over memory but over a moral vision of the (violent) past. As such, I argue that reconciliation is not so much about the past but about ideological reframing(s). The case of Northern Irish nationalism, then, suggests that those reframings – a closing down and an opening up of debate – take place simultaneously within the rhetoric of reconciliation.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. A. Schaap, ‘Reconciliation as ideology and politics’, Constellations, 15(2) (2008), pp. 249–264.

2. D. Conversi, ‘Modernism and nationalism’, Journal of Political Ideologies, 17(1) (2012), p. 14.

3. The masthead of the website of the Social Democratic and Labour Party, for example, states that the party’s ‘vision is a reconciled people living in a united, just and prosperous new Ireland’; see www.sdlp.ie (accessed 29 January 2015).

4. J. Tonge, Comparative Peace Processes (London: Polity, 2014), p. 133.

5. D. Tutu, No Future without Forgiveness (London: Rider, 1999).

6. See, for example, A. Rigby, Justice and Reconciliation: After Violence (London: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2001); A. Schaap, Political Reconciliation (London: Routledge, 2005); E. Verdeja, Unchopping a Tree: Reconciliation in the Aftermath of Political Violence (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 2009).

7. Though see Tonge, Comparative Peace Processes, op. cit.; J. Coakley, Nationalism, Ethnicity and the State: Making and Breaking Nations (London: Sage, 2012).

8. Rigby, Justice and Reconciliation, op. cit., p. 12.

9. For a recent appraisal of the policy implications of transitional justice see T.D. Olsen, L.A. Payne, and A.G. Reiter, Transitional Justice in Balance: Comparing Processes, Weighing Efficacy (Washington, DC: United States Institute for Peace, 2010).

10. UN Human Rights Council, Resolution 9/11. Right to the Truth, available at http://ap.ohchr.org/documents/E/HRC/resolutions/A_HRC_RES_9_11.pdf (accessed 9 March 2014).

11. S.J. Stern, Remembering Pinochet’s Chile: On the Eve of London 1998, Book One of the Trilogy: The Memory Box of Pinochet’s Chile (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004), p. xxvii.

12. M. Humphrey, ‘Marginalizing “victims” and “terrorists”: modes of exclusion in the reconciliation process’, in J. Renner and A. Spencer (Eds) Reconciliation after Terrorism: Strategy, Possibility, or Absurdity? (Abingdon: Routledge, 2012), p. 54.

13. L.A. Payne, Unsettling Accounts: Neither Truth nor Reconciliation in Confessions of State Violence (London: Duke University Press, 2008), p. 10.

14. Verdeja, Unchopping, op. cit., p. 148. See also Verdeja’s argument that ‘Truth is fundamental for reconciliation. Societies need a basic understanding of past events to assign responsibility and resist impunity’ (op. cit., p. 40).

15. Ibid., p. 71.

16. A. Gutmann and D. Thompson, ‘The moral foundations of truth commissions’, in R.I. Rotberg and D. Thompson (Eds) Truth V. Justice: The Morality of Truth Commissions (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000), p. 28.

17. Ibid., p. 35.

18. D. Philpott, Just and Unjust Peace: An Ethic of Political Reconciliation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), p. 85.

19. Schaap, ‘Reconciliation as ideology and politics’, op. cit., Ref. 1, p. 249; original emphasis.

20. Schaap, Political Reconciliation, op. cit., Ref. 6, p. 4.

21. Ibid., p. 35.

22. For an introduction to Rancière’s thought see J. Rancière, The Politics of Aesthetics: The Distribution of the Sensible, edited and translated by G. Rockhill (London: Bloomsbury, 2004).

23. S.A. Chambers, The Lessons of Rancière (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013).

24. Schaap, ‘Reconciliation as ideology and politics’, op. cit., Ref. 1, p. 260.

25. Ibid., p. 249.

26. Ibid., p. 260.

27. See Chambers, Lessons, op. cit., pp. 142–149.

28. See, for example, P. Gready, The Era of Transitional Justice: The Aftermath of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa and Beyond (Abingdon: Routledge, 2010) or D. Mendeloff, ‘Truth-seeking, truth-telling, and postconflict peacebuilding: curb the enthusiasm?’ International Studies Review, 6 (2004), pp. 355–380.

29. Freeden links decontestation to the competition of meaning within ideologies: ‘An ideology attempts to end the inevitable contestation over concepts by decontesting them, by removing their meanings from contest’; M. Freeden, Ideology: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), p. 54. The attempt is, however, open-ended: ‘human thought-behaviour aspires to determine the meaning of political language, though any specific form this decontestation may adopt will, from the viewpoint of the analyst, necessarily fail to achieve finality’; M. Freeden, Ideologies and Political Theory: A Conceptual Approach (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), p. 76.

30. J. Leader Maynard, ‘A map of the field of ideological analysis’, Journal of Political Ideologies, 18(3) (2013), p. 302.

31. That nationalists could, hypothetically, withdraw from participating in a power-sharing Assembly that can be seen as copper-fastening partition might require a rethinking of the role that the concept of reconciliation plays within the ideology; it would not, I would contend, necessarily mean a radical refashioning of the rhetoric in which it is couched – for example, reconciliation could still be linked to ‘truth’ and ‘progress’ but presented to the effect that those are only truly achievable in a unified Ireland.

32. S. Hopkins, ‘Sinn Féin, the past and political strategy: the provisional Irish republican movement and the politics of “Reconciliation”’, Irish Political Studies, 30(1) (2015), I-First.

33. Schaap, ‘Reconciliation as ideology and politics’, op. cit., Ref. 1, p. 251.

34. K. Bean, The New Politics of Sinn Féin (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2007), p. 232.

35. See, for example, C. McGrattan and E. Meehan, Everyday Life after the Irish Conflict: The Impact of Devolution and Cross-Border Cooperation (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2012).

36. J.P. Lederach, Building Peace: Sustainable Reconciliation in Divided Societies (Washington, DC: US Institute of Peace, 1997).

37. See, for example, S. Buchanan, Transforming Conflict through Social and Economic Development: Practical Lessons from Northern Ireland and the Border Counties (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2014); C. Knox, and P. Quirk, Peace Building in Northern Ireland, Israel and South Africa: Transition, Transformation and Reconciliation (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2000).

38. ‘Proposed agreement, 31 December 2013: an agreement among the parties of the Northern Ireland Executive on parades, select commemorations, and related protests; flags and emblems; and contending with the past’, available at http://www.northernireland.gov.uk/haass.pdf (accessed 11 March 2014).

39. At the time of writing, a follow-up policy document to Haass/O’Sullivan, ‘The Stormont House Agreement’, has yet to be ratified; the document does not differ radically from the 2013 proposals, indeed, one talks’ representative termed it ‘Haass-lite’; see R. Black, ‘UUP’s Jeffrey Dudgeon: “Police once raided my home and quizzed me for being gay”’, Belfast Telegraph, 12 January 2015, available at http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/politics/uups-jeffrey-dudgeon-police-once-raided-my-home-and-quizzed-me-for-being-gay-30895565.html (accessed 15 January 2015). The text of the Stormont House Agreement is available at https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/390672/Stormont_House_Agreement.pdf (accessed 15 January 2015).

40. The Agreement, available at http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/events/peace/docs/agreement.htm (accessed 11 March 2014).

41. S. Lehner, Subaltern Ethics in Contemporary Scottish and Irish Literature: Tracing Counter-Histories (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), pp. 98–99.

42. B. Hamber and G. Kelly, Reconciliation: A Working Definition (Belfast: Democratic Dialogue, 2004), available at http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/dd/papers/dd04recondef.pdf (accessed 5 May 2013).

43. The programme was part of a series of conflict transformation initiatives in Northern Ireland and the border counties of the Irish Republic that have spent approximately €2.95 billion since 1986. The initiatives drew on funds from Ireland, the UK, the EU, Canada, the United States, Australia and New Zealand. See Buchanan, ‘Examining the peacebuilding policy framework of the Irish and British governments’, in M. Power (Ed.) Building Peace in Northern Ireland (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2011), pp. 172–190. See also ‘PEACE III: EU Programme for Peace and Reconciliation, 2007–2013: Northern Ireland and the Border Region of Ireland. Operational Programme’, p. 29, available at www.dfpni.gov.uk/peace_iii_programme_2007–2013 (accessed 12 March 2014).

44. Cited in Buchanan, ‘Examining’, op. cit., Ref. 43, p. 181.

45. T. Shanahan, The Provisional Irish Republican Army and the Morality of Terrorism (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2008).

46. Schaap, Political Reconciliation, op. cit., Ref. 6, p. 8.

47. Ibid.

48. See, for example, C. Farrington, Ulster Unionism and the Peace Process in Northern Ireland (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006).

49. See J. Todd, ‘Northern Irish nationalist political culture’, Irish Political Studies, 5 (1990), pp. 31–44; or P.J. McLoughlin, John Hume and the Revision of Irish Nationalism (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2012).

50. Schaap, Political Reconciliation, op. cit, Ref. 6.

51. J. Todd, ‘Nationalism, republicanism and the Good Friday Agreement’, in J. Ruane and J. Todd (Eds) After the Good Friday Agreement: Analysing Political Change in Northern Ireland (Dublin: University College Dublin Press, 1999), p. 51; emphases in original.

52. G. Murray and J. Tonge, Sinn Féin and the SDLP: From Alienation to Participation (Dublin: O’Brien Press, 2005).

53. J. Ruane and J. Todd, ‘A changed Irish nationalism? The significance of the Good Friday Agreement of 1998’, in Europe’s Old States in the New World Order: The Politics of Transition in Britain, France and Spain (Dublin: University College Dublin Press, 2003), p.142.

54. Sinn Féin, ‘Republicans committed to genuine process of national reconciliation – McGuinness’, 20 April 2014, available at http://www.sinnfein.i.e./contents/29678 (accessed 30 January 2015).

55. M. Devenport, ‘Alasdair McDonnell addresses SDLP conference in Armagh’, 9 November 2014, available at http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-politics-24879977 (accessed 30 January 2015).

56. C. McGrattan, Memory, Politics, Identity: Haunted by History (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012); Hopkins, ‘Sinn Féin’, op. cit., Ref. 32.

57. See, for example, A. McIntyre, Good Friday: The Death of Irish Republicanism (Dublin: Ausubo, 2008).

58. The quotations are taken from Declan Kearney’s address to Sinn Féin’s 2013 annual convention (ard fheis), ‘Reconciliation and Legacy’. Author copy.

59. Schaap links the ‘conservative’ epithet to the Marxist suspicion that reconciliation demands a quietist resignation to the interests of ruling elites; ‘Reconciliation as ideology and politics’, op. cit., Ref. 1.

60. D. Kearney, ‘National reconciliation in Ireland – the need for uncomfortable conversations’, 24 October 2012, available at http://www.sinnfein.ie (accessed 29 January 2015).

61. H. Patterson, ‘Beyond the “micro group”: the dissident republican challenge’, in P.M. Currie and M. Taylor (Eds) Dissident Irish Republicanism (London: Continuum, 2001), pp. 65–95.

62. See, for example, M. Purdy, ‘Castlederg parade a defining moment in difficult summer’, BBC Online, 19 September 2013, available at http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-24169334 (accessed 5 November 2013).

63. One example is McGuinness’s attempt to deflect criticism of the party leader’s (Gerry Adams’) alleged involvement in the disappearance of a mother-of-ten, Jean McConville, in 1971, by the assertion that such tactics were ‘wrong’ and ‘unjustified’. See, M. McHugh, ‘IRA’s burial of “informers” unjustified: McGuinness’, Irish Independent, 5 November 2013, available at http://www.irishexaminer.com/ireland/iras-burial-of-informers-unjustified-mcguinness-248499.html (accessed 5 November 2013).

64. SDLP ‘Addressing the past: a comprehensive truth process and the ethical way forward’ (N.P., 2012). Author copy.

65. D. Kelly, ‘Collusion’, available at http://blogs.qub.ac.uk/compromiseafterconflict/ (accessed 5 November 2013).

66. J. McGarry and B. O’Leary, Explaining Northern Ireland: Broken Images (London: Blackwell, 1996); C. McGrattan. ‘Explaining Northern Ireland? The limitations of the ethnic conflict model’, National Identities, 12(2) (2010), pp. 181–197.

67. J. Ruane and J. Todd, The Dynamics of Conflict in Northern Ireland: Power, Conflict and Emancipation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). Todd has developed critiques of Northern Irish nationalism based on the mapping of critical concepts and the tracing of their changing emphases; the work does not explicitly address the notion of reconciliation as a delimiting and creative impulse; see Todd, ‘Northern Irish Nationalist Political Culture’, op. cit.

68. See McLoughlin, John Hume, op. cit., Ref. 49; see also D.L. Horowitz, Ethnic Groups in Conflict (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1985).

69. P. Dixon, Northern Ireland: The Politics of War and Peace (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006).

70. R. English, Irish Freedom: The History of Nationalism in Ireland (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2006).

71. Though see A. Aughey, The Politics of Northern Ireland: Beyond the Belfast Agreement (Abingdon: Routledge, 2005); C. Farrington, Ulster Unionism and the Peace Process (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006).

72. S. Buckley and D.P. Dolowitz, ‘Ideology, party identity and renewal’, Journal of Political Ideologies, 14(1) (2009), p. 13.

73. M. Freeden, ‘What should the “Political” in political theory explore?’ The Journal of Political Philosophy, 13(2) (2005), p. 121.