CONTESTINGCONTESTING HISTORYHISTORYOPPOSINGOPPOSING VOICESVOICES

16: A Botched State or Triumph of 16: A Botched State or Triumph of Terrorism? The Northern Ireland TroublesTerrorism? The Northern Ireland Troubles

Botched State or Triumph of Terrorism?Botched State or Triumph of Terrorism? Lord Roseberry (1891):Pitt’s greatest ‘domestic difficulty’ was

Ireland … ‘the gaunt spectre of the Irish question in its most menacing and formidable shape; an aspect it retains to this hour. It has never passed into history, for it has never passed out of politics. To take a simile from a catastrophe of nature ...

… the volcano that caused the eruption is still alive; beneath the black crust the lava torrent burns; so that the incautious explorer who ventures near the crater finds the treacherous surface yield, and himself plunged into the fiery marl of contemporary party strife.’

The new rhetoric of 1965: The O’Neill-Lemass meetings – the

first since the 1920s

Seamus Heaney, 1966, New Statesman ‘Life goes on, yet people are reluctant to

dismiss the possibility of an explosion. A kind of double-think operates: something is rotten, but maybe if we wait it will fester to death.’

Botched State or Triumph of Terrorism?Botched State or Triumph of Terrorism?

The Irish Times, 4 March 2006: Sinn Fein and SDLP opposed to Blair and

Ahern’s plan ‘to re-establish the Northern Ireland Assembly in “shadow” form’ in the absence of agreement on restoring the power-sharing executive, and continuing opposition thereto from the DUP in particular

Botched State or Triumph of Terrorism?Botched State or Triumph of Terrorism?

‘If the march was an act of remembrance for all those killed indiscriminately by violence, I would support it … The whole of the intended route … is full of the ghosts of ordinary working people [killed in 1973] …’

Botched State or Triumph of Botched State or Triumph of Terrorism?Terrorism?

Further Reading: Boyce, D. G. and O’Day, A. (eds), Boyce, D. G. and O’Day, A. (eds), Defenders of the Defenders of the

Union: A Survey of British and Irish Unionism Union: A Survey of British and Irish Unionism since 1801since 1801 (2001). (2001).

English, Richard, English, Richard, Armed Struggle: A history of the Armed Struggle: A history of the IRAIRA (2003). (2003).

O’Day, Alan (ed.), O’Day, Alan (ed.), Political Violence in Northern Political Violence in Northern Ireland: Conflict and Conflict ResolutionIreland: Conflict and Conflict Resolution (1997). (1997).