British and Irish Conflict Regulation from Sunningdale to Belfast. Part II: Playing for a draw 1985–1999

Abstract. The fundamental improvement between the Sunningdale and Belfast (or Good Friday) Agreements as conflict regulation processes is the recognition of opposing nationalisms as the core cause of conflict and, by extension, the development of a more symmetrical intergovernmental relationship between British and Irish governments which maximised the basis of consent for addressing conflicting claims to national self‐determination. While the Agreement reflects a liberalisation of opposing nationalisms, it does not represent a ‘post‐nationalist’ solution; the evolution of conflict regulation from 1985 to 1998 reflects a bi‐national trend. The key to cultivating a ‘ripe moment’ for a constitutional settlement was based on the recognition that Northern Ireland's constitutional status needed to be redetermined and that the processes of self‐determination needed to address and modify ‘constitutive’ aspects of sovereignty which preceded partition, as well as ‘regulative’ aspects which have evolved since the Anglo‐Irish Agreement of 1985.     

“Continental crossings”: European influences on British public opinion and Irish politics, 1848–2002

Histories of Britain and Ireland are still often written as if cultural and political influences were limited by national or insular boundaries. This article offers a broader perspective by tracing the impact of events, parallels and ideas from continental Europe on British opinion and policy towards Ireland since 1848. It demonstrates that these European influences have often been more threaded and complex than is commonly assumed, and that to review transnational connections can be to illustrate neglected possibilities and to liberate repressed historical potential. Indeed, the role of European referents in political discourse towards the contemporary Northern Ireland conflict retains considerable ambiguity and room for political manoeuvre.     

Fatherhood and the British Fathercraft Movement, 1919–39

Fathercraft and Fathers' Councils ‐ male adjuncts to Maternity and Infant Welfare Centres ‐ reacted to the maternal dominance in infant welfare and parenting in interwar Britain by arguing that fathers should play a crucial role in the upbringing of children. This article outlines how rigid ideas about the 'public' and 'private' spheres meant that education schemes for fathers had to be explicitly and recognisably 'masculine' and were often focused on public functions that reinforced a man's traditional function as a breadwinner and provider. Yet, at the core of the fathercraft message was the idea that these traditional functions were insufficient. Fathers, it was argued, should have an active and involved role in their children's lives and men could no longer adequately fulfil their duties from the margins of the family. However, within a culture that placed great emphasis on motherhood and gender differences, the idea of instructing men in parenting was fraught with contradiction, confusion and resistance. Fathercraft was one version of fatherhood that attempted to reconcile these contradictions in a desire to involve fathers more fully with their children for the good of the Infant Welfare Movement, mothers and, indeed, for men themselves.     

Patrick O’Farrell and the Irish History Wars, 1971–1993

While Patrick O’Farrell's achievements as an historian of the Irish and of Catholicism in Australia are well recognised, little attention has been paid to his significance as an historian of Ireland. This article takes his two major Irish monographs, published in 1971 and 1975, and considers how they influenced leading Irish political historians of the 1970s and 1980s. In doing so, the article examines the crisis created for historians by the Northern Ireland Troubles. It demonstrates that the work of O’Farrell, which called into question the primacy of politics and of the nation state, helped open up new avenues for the analysis of Irish culture and identity. Yet, at the same time, such an approach challenged the republican reading of Irish history as a struggle against colonialism, and thus O’Farrell's work attracted severe criticism.     

Irish Domestic Servants, ‘Biddy’ and Rebellion in the American Home, 1850–1900

This essay looks at the role that Anglo‐American women played in governing their Irish immigrant domestic servants and at the racial and gendered meanings that were attached to servitude. In the second half of the nineteenth century, female Irish Catholic immigrants predominated in domestic service employment in the north‐eastern United States. Newspaper and magazine articles portrayed the home as a site of conflict where Protestant, middle‐class families clashed with Irish Catholic ‘peasant’ girls newly arrived in the US. Employers depicted ‘Bridget’ or ‘Biddy’, the collective nickname given to Irish domestic servants, as insubordinate, unrefined and prone to violent outbursts. While reliant on domestic service for wages, female Irish immigrants understood that service represented racialised labour in the United States and was viewed as an occupation befitting non‐white populations.     

Leaving Vietnam: Nixon,Kissinger and Ford, 1969–1975, Part two: January 1972–January 1973

Although anticipated, the North Vietnamese ‘Easter offensive’ against South Vietnam in 1972 created problems for the United States. Having reached a rapprochement with Communist China, President Nixon and his foreign policy adviser, Henry Kissinger, believed that the attack could have serious repercussions for their attempt to balance it with détente with the Soviet Union, not to mention the US's credibility as a Great Power. They also feared it would damage Nixon's prospects for re‐election in November 1972. Despite opposition from his Defense Secretary, Nixon renewed the bombing of North Vietnam which had been stopped by President Johnson in 1968. This helped to bring the North Vietnamese back to the conference table and after complex negotiations, a draft peace agreement was ready for initialling in October 1972. However, President Thieu of South Vietnam saw significant drawbacks in the agreement and refused to go along with it. The North Vietnamese chose to have one more attempt to win on the battlefield and President Nixon, who had scaled down the bombing when peace seemed closer and won a landslide victory in the presidential election, launched another eleven days of concentrated bombing raids on North Vietnam at the turn of the year. This led to the final agreement initialled on 23 January 1973, which President Thieu reluctantly acceded to. Thieu's reservations were justified, but Nixon realized that, despite his electoral victory, he could not count on the continued support of Congress and the American people for the war. Far from bringing ‘peace with honor in Vietnam and Southeast Asia’, the January agreement was a fig leaf to cover American withdrawal.     

Leaving Vietnam: Nixon,Kissinger and Ford, 1969–1975 Part three: January 1973–July 1975

The final volume of the Foreign relations series of documents on Indochina during the Nixon and Ford presidencies is not as detailed as those which preceded it. However, the documents do not support the view that, once the January 1973 Agreement between the Democratic Republic of (North) Vietnam and the United States had been concluded, the US was prepared to accept DRV's hegemony over the rest of Indochina, provided only that there was a ‘decent interval’ before it occurred. In fact, both the Nixon and Ford administrations did seek to prevent this from happening, but found their hands tied by congressional opposition. In the case of Cambodia, the United States also found itself the victim of its own illusions about the willingness of the People's Republic of China to support an alternative government led by the former ruler, Prince Norodom Sihanouk. Following the more or less total collapse of American policy in April 1975, some interesting ‘post‐mortems’ from various government departments on the history of US involvement in Indochina are also printed in the volume under review.