Negotiations of Irish identity in the wake of terrorism: the case of the Irish in Birmingham 1973–74

This article explores the Irish migrant experience in Birmingham during and in the wake of terrorist campaigns carried out in Britain between 1969 and 1975 and attributed to the Irish Republican Army (IRA). Beginning with a discussion of the competencies with which Irishness was associated at the close of the 1960s in England, many of which were hinged on a notion of the Irish predisposition towards violence, the article continues on to take the political, cultural and religious “temperature” of the Irish community in Birmingham between 1969 and 1975, and follows on with a discussion of the specific strategies sought out by Irish immigrants to come to terms with the effect of events such as the “Birmingham Bombings” on their daily lives. Principle findings that emerge from the study indicate that IRA terrorism forced the Irish in Birmingham to engage with and adopt a number of distinct linguistic and cultural strategies in the post-1974 period, the cultivation of which indefinitely altered their relationship with Ireland as “home”, their visibility in the public British sphere and their associational patterns and practices within the migrant enclave.     

Making difference: conflict over Irish identity in the New York City St. Patrick’s Day parade

The controversy surrounding the New York City St. Patrick’s Day parade suggests that Irish ethnicity in the United States is still an important site of identity formation and fragmentation. In this paper I examine the New York City parades between 1990 and 2001 where a conflict has developed between the organizers of the parade, the Ancient Order of Hibernians, and the Irish Lesbian and Gay Organization, who want a place in the parade but have been denied entrance. The identity politics that surround the St. Patrick’s Day parade controversy suggest that for diasporic communities, ethnic and national identities are highly contested and that boundaries—some hard and fast, others more permeable—are constructed along any number of axes. For the construction of Irish identity in New York City within-group identity is disputed across a number of these axes with the most important difference being sexual identity, particularly when it is being performed in a public space.     

Perfecting the nation: Enlightenment perspectives on the coincidence of linguistic and ‘national’ refinement

This article describes the correlation between language and nation in Enlightenment thought and its perceived value as a means to pursue investigations aimed at deciphering the ‘rules of social evolution’. In doing so, it further clarifies the manner in which ‘the nation’ was represented in contemporary texts, lending much-needed empirical support to recent overtures in this direction by scholars who have challenged the validity of temporally and spatially fixed ideal types. Dictionaries and other lexicographical works are used to illuminate the semantic traditions underlying the correlations cited above and the fitness more generally of ‘the nation’ for the anthropological pursuits of the period. The study is then extended to a survey of contemporary works of history, natural philosophy and other episteme, the texts under review supplying further testimony of a theoretical perspective in which nation, ‘manners’ and language were not only connected, but deemed to be in a relationship of coterminous perfectibility. This theoretical outlook explains, in conclusion, why endeavours aimed at linguistic refinement were explicitly identified as ‘national’ undertakings by Enlightenment-era reformers, providing, in turn, important historical context for one prominent stream of nineteenth-century nationalist discourse.     

Greek nationhood and ‘Greek love’: sexualizing the nation and multiple readings of the glorious Greek past

The paper addresses the ways in which the idea of homosexuality has been expelled from local dominant narrations about the Modern Greek nation and seeks to culturally frame this historical erasure. The ancient past and Ottoman rule are viewed as the two key moments of negotiating (and repeatedly placing in oblivion) any link between ‘Greekness’ and homoeroticism. Placing this institutional silence in juxtaposition to multiple Western readings of ‘Greek love’, the study provides ethnographic instances that reveal the appropriations of the Western gaze and moments of breaking the silence about Greek homosexuality. Selected individuals and cultural locales serve as terrains of negotiating the present-day Greek state's façade as cosmopolitan, Western and post-modern. On the one hand, Greece is perpetually re-constituted as a topos, appropriate(d) for projections of varying versions of history-telling from Western and local agents alike; on the other hand, homoeroticism is being negotiated through consecutive articulations of Greekness in past and present tense.     

BIFFOs,jackeens and Dagenham Yanks: county identity, “authenticity” and the Irish diaspora

Despite being an everyday point of reference in Irish discourse, the extent to which the county serves as a locus of identification has been oddly overlooked in the Irish studies literature. In particular, the persistence of identification with the county of origin post-migration offers new insights on the construction and maintenance of identity within the Irish diaspora. Drawing on my PhD research on discourses of authenticity and identity among the Irish in England, this article investigates the ways in which county identity is invoked both by Irish migrants and those of Irish descent. It illustrates how the county is used as a rhetorical tool to situate the speaker within discourses of belonging and authenticity, but how this may also act as a constraint on the articulation of a collective, diasporic identity. It argues for a greater research focus on translocalism within the context of changing Ireland–diaspora relations.     

Family stories,public silence: Irish identity construction amongst the second‐generation Irish in England

Formal narratives of history, especially that of colonial oppression, have been central to the construction of national identities in Ireland. But the Irish diasporic community in Britain has been cut off from the reproduction of these narratives, most notably by their absence from the curriculum of Catholic schools, as result of the unofficial ‘denationalisation’ pact agreed by the Church in the 19th century (Hickman, 1995). The reproduction of Irish identities is largely a private matter, carried out within the home through family accounts of local connections, often reinforced by extended visits to parent/s ‘home’ areas. Recapturing a public dimension has often become a personal quest in adulthood, ‘filling in the gaps’. This paper explores constructions of narratives of nation by a key diasporic population, those with one or two Irish‐born parents. It places particular emphasis on varying regional/national contexts within which such constructions take place, drawing on focus group discussions and interviews for the ESRC‐funded Irish 2 Project in five locations — London, Glasgow, Manchester, Coventry and Banbury.     

On the Perils of Lifting the Weight of Structures: An Engagement with Hobson’s Critique of the Discipline of IR

Sajed's and Inayatullah's joint intervention focuses on Hobson's effort to bring forward a notion of non-Western agency as an antidote to the prevailing Eurocentrism of contemporary IR scholarship. They reflect on the stakes involved by constructing a story of an agentic non-Western world co-participant in the past and current world system. They worry that ‘in his attempt to recover Eastern agency, [Hobson] inadvertently plays down the impact (and the rigidity) of global structures.’     

Irish Republican Politics and Violence before the Peace Process, 1968–1994

Analyses of the Provisional IRA in Northern Ireland tend to underplay the influence of political strategy in the 1970s, preferring to emphasise militarism. Similarly, the persistence of militarism in the 1980s is often obscured by the attention paid to a ‘new’ republican political orientation. This article seeks to draw attention to the IRA's evolving attitude to the ‘problem’ of Ulster unionism, and republicanism's various estimations of the likely efficacy of violence throughout the period. Republicanism is best understood as a deeply rooted working-class ethno-nationalist movement interacting closely with the other agents of the Northern Ireland conflict: constitutional nationalism, unionism and the British government. ‘Armed struggle’ became a declining asset for republicanism as it came to be seen less as a form of ‘popular guerrilla warfare’ and more as ‘terrorism’. 1 [1] For valuable advice, thanks to Prof. Roy Foster. Opinions expressed are my own. View all notes     

Joyce Family Values: Treason,Nationality and the Case of ‘Lord Haw-Haw’s’ Irish Cousin

The conviction and execution of William Joyce (‘Lord Haw-Haw’) for treason to the British crown remains controversial to the present day. He was not, however, the only wartime traitor in the Joyce family. His first cousin, the Irish-born Sergeant Michael Joyce, RAF, also volunteered his services to the Nazis while a prisoner of war in Germany, and arguably compromised himself even more seriously than his more notorious relative. In contrast to the avidity with which William Joyce was pursued, however, Michael Joyce’s crimes — which came to light as the trial of ‘Lord Haw-Haw’ opened at the Old Bailey — were efficiently concealed by prosecutors. The difference in the treatment of the cases of the two Joyce cousins not only sheds new light on the determination of the British authorities to secure a conviction against ‘Lord Haw-Haw’ at all costs, but also reveals the ambiguity and instability of ‘Britishness’ at a moment when, paradoxically, patriotism and national self-confidence were at their twentieth-century zenith.     

‘R.I.P. Nature Island’: the threat of a proposed oil refinery on Dominica's identity

Dominica is a small island nation in the eastern Caribbean Sea that has long struggled with issues of poverty and development. To improve these conditions, the government formed a preliminary agreement with Venezuela to build a multimillion dollar oil refinery on the island. Some discussion about this proposal took place in local forums, such as radio talk shows, but additional discussion took place online. Internet-based media, including online reproductions of traditional media and new types of media such as interactive discussion forums and weblogs, were used not only to continue the discussion but also to raise awareness among a wider audience. The framework for appealing to such a disparate set of interests both locally and abroad was already in place: the island's ‘nature island’ identity. The project was perceived as a threat to quality and aesthetic appearance of the nature island as well as a threat to the concept of Dominica as the ‘nature island’. This paper examines the role of Dominica's identity at the heart of this perceived threat in the construction of environmental discourses through internet-based media, such as online newspapers with associated discussion forums and blogs.     

The famished soul: resonance and relevance of the Irish famine to Irish men’s accounts of hunger following immigration to England during the 1950s and 1960s

This paper uses a hermeneutically informed analysis to reveal how Irish men’s accounts of acute hunger on arrival in England during the 1950s and 1960s resonate with archival oral accounts of the Great Hunger in Ireland during the 1840s. The paper makes the case for a new continuum of memory which foregrounds the corporeal and spiritual dimensions of acute food deprivation and its significance over space, place and time. I argue that a corporeal-spiritual medium of memory represents a two-sided reality, a pivotal yet nebulous point of contact which exemplifies our understanding of how discourses of hunger recounted over the course of a century help shape reconstructions of Irish sociocultural identity. The symbolic potency of hunger and particular foods to expose a distinct moral and social order during both time periods is examined. I also show how this more burnished and fluid medium of corporeal and spiritual memory highlights the importance of intracultural diglossia in respect of Irish sociocultural identity and with it, the interface between individual, collective and folk memory.     

‘If I was Irish I'd be crying by now’: Irishness and exteriority,Doyle's Deportees and the Irish plays of Martin McDonagh

While variations on the relationship between Irishness and exteriority resound throughout Irish literature and Irish studies, the implications and applications of the version offered by Roddy Doyle's short story ‘Home to Harlem’ remain underdeveloped. This article explores the particular paradigm of Irishness derivable from Doyle's work, and is motivated by it to revisit and re-examine the Irish plays of Martin McDonagh and the question of audience relation to them. I argue that the constituents of the overly rehearsed ‘McDonagh enigma’ – his reliance on stereotypical representation and his highlighting of artifice – ensure a dynamic of recognition and exteriority in the Irish-identifying audience, which, in turn, enacts an extreme version of the process of Irishness extrapolable from Doyle.