Desmond Rea and Robin Masefield
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- January 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781781381502
- eISBN:
- 9781781382172
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9781781381502.003.0021
- Subject:
- Political Science, Public Policy
This chapter is drawn from the longer note (published as a book) by the authors which they submitted to the Haass talks in late 2013, entitled Dealing with the Past. As recorded here, the issue was a ...
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This chapter is drawn from the longer note (published as a book) by the authors which they submitted to the Haass talks in late 2013, entitled Dealing with the Past. As recorded here, the issue was a constant preoccupation of the chairman of the Policing Board and the one for which he secured their permission to address on his own behalf, which he did with the vice-chairman and Sir Hugh Orde. The chapter begins with examples of the scale of the challenge with reference to three atrocities – the Omagh, Claudy and Enniskillen bombings – before setting out the chairman’s paper Seeking to hold the Past in Healthy Balance with the Future, and going on to deal with the Consultative Group on the Past and the arrangements set up to reinvestigate unsolved murders from the Troubles including the role of the Historical Enquiries Team (HET). The chapter concludes with the remarks of Desmond Rea on a Talkback Panel at the West Belfast Festival in 2007, and the authors’ views as to how some of the legacy issues from the Troubles should best be dealt with.Less
This chapter is drawn from the longer note (published as a book) by the authors which they submitted to the Haass talks in late 2013, entitled Dealing with the Past. As recorded here, the issue was a constant preoccupation of the chairman of the Policing Board and the one for which he secured their permission to address on his own behalf, which he did with the vice-chairman and Sir Hugh Orde. The chapter begins with examples of the scale of the challenge with reference to three atrocities – the Omagh, Claudy and Enniskillen bombings – before setting out the chairman’s paper Seeking to hold the Past in Healthy Balance with the Future, and going on to deal with the Consultative Group on the Past and the arrangements set up to reinvestigate unsolved murders from the Troubles including the role of the Historical Enquiries Team (HET). The chapter concludes with the remarks of Desmond Rea on a Talkback Panel at the West Belfast Festival in 2007, and the authors’ views as to how some of the legacy issues from the Troubles should best be dealt with.
Roman David and Ian Holliday
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- December 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780198809609
- eISBN:
- 9780191846885
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198809609.003.0005
- Subject:
- Political Science, Comparative Politics
Myanmar’s half-century of authoritarianism from 1962 to 2011 left a bitter legacy of gross human rights abuse and other historical injustice. One issue widely held by researchers to be a contributing ...
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Myanmar’s half-century of authoritarianism from 1962 to 2011 left a bitter legacy of gross human rights abuse and other historical injustice. One issue widely held by researchers to be a contributing factor to establishing a human rights culture and promoting democratization is dealing with the past. In this context, the chapter explores the demand for transitional justice in Myanmar, drawing on interviews with former political prisoners, surveys, survey experiments, and secondary sources. It reviews factors commonly associated with demand for transitional justice, examines the historical and political determinants of transitional justice in Myanmar, probes the authors’ surveys to investigate popular demand for transitional justice, uses interviews with former political prisoners to assess victims’ needs and their conception of justice, and connects a victim-centred approach with popular demand by examining support for transitional justice in light of experimental evidence simulating real-life resolution of historical injustice.Less
Myanmar’s half-century of authoritarianism from 1962 to 2011 left a bitter legacy of gross human rights abuse and other historical injustice. One issue widely held by researchers to be a contributing factor to establishing a human rights culture and promoting democratization is dealing with the past. In this context, the chapter explores the demand for transitional justice in Myanmar, drawing on interviews with former political prisoners, surveys, survey experiments, and secondary sources. It reviews factors commonly associated with demand for transitional justice, examines the historical and political determinants of transitional justice in Myanmar, probes the authors’ surveys to investigate popular demand for transitional justice, uses interviews with former political prisoners to assess victims’ needs and their conception of justice, and connects a victim-centred approach with popular demand by examining support for transitional justice in light of experimental evidence simulating real-life resolution of historical injustice.
Jon Schubert
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781501713699
- eISBN:
- 9781501709692
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9781501713699.003.0002
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Asian Cultural Anthropology
Since the end of the Angolan conflict in 2002, the ruling MPLA party has been promoting a ‘master narrative’ of ‘peace and reconstruction’ through which the Angolan conflict is resignified as a ...
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Since the end of the Angolan conflict in 2002, the ruling MPLA party has been promoting a ‘master narrative’ of ‘peace and reconstruction’ through which the Angolan conflict is resignified as a merely technical issue, and the question of ‘national reconciliation’ is limited to the reconstruction of infrastructures. This chapter analyses the discursive strategies and performative acts employed in these processes, and looks at the symbolic and material effects of this ‘technical’ hegemonic discourse in the country’s capital, Luanda. As national reconciliation is limited to the reconstruction of infrastructures, the master narrative of the ‘New Angola’ is also physically imposed on the urban cityscape; similarly, any substantive political dialogue about the war is precluded as a threat to the ‘gains of peace’, which are measured again in purely material terms of the built environment. Less
Since the end of the Angolan conflict in 2002, the ruling MPLA party has been promoting a ‘master narrative’ of ‘peace and reconstruction’ through which the Angolan conflict is resignified as a merely technical issue, and the question of ‘national reconciliation’ is limited to the reconstruction of infrastructures. This chapter analyses the discursive strategies and performative acts employed in these processes, and looks at the symbolic and material effects of this ‘technical’ hegemonic discourse in the country’s capital, Luanda. As national reconciliation is limited to the reconstruction of infrastructures, the master narrative of the ‘New Angola’ is also physically imposed on the urban cityscape; similarly, any substantive political dialogue about the war is precluded as a threat to the ‘gains of peace’, which are measured again in purely material terms of the built environment.
Desmond Rea and Robin Masefield
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- January 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781781381502
- eISBN:
- 9781781382172
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9781781381502.001.0001
- Subject:
- Political Science, Public Policy
The Independent Commission on Policing for Northern Ireland, headed by Lord Patten, concluded in its 1999 report: ‘A new beginning for democratic accountability is key to a new beginning for ...
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The Independent Commission on Policing for Northern Ireland, headed by Lord Patten, concluded in its 1999 report: ‘A new beginning for democratic accountability is key to a new beginning for policing and to involving the community as a whole in the delivery of policing. We recommend that an entirely new Policing Board be created …’ This book is about the delivery of that new beginning for policing, achieved at a time when most commentators considered the Policing Board was itself likely to fragment along traditional community lines. The story of the Policing Board, from its establishment in 2001 through to the reconstitution of the membership in 2009 is in many ways an inspirational one, showing what can be done by politicians and community representatives working together to bring about a fundamentally different way of policing that better meets the needs of the whole community. The book offers valuable lessons and contemporary insights for law enforcement officers, accountability ‘bodies’ and academics world-wide, in key areas, including the need for a police service’s composition to reflect the community that it serves, promoting public confidence in policing and policing with the community; upholding human rights in the context of policing civil unrest and terrorism; how to hold a police service to account while providing the support it requires; and dealing with the legacy of inter-communal violence with over 3,500 deaths.Less
The Independent Commission on Policing for Northern Ireland, headed by Lord Patten, concluded in its 1999 report: ‘A new beginning for democratic accountability is key to a new beginning for policing and to involving the community as a whole in the delivery of policing. We recommend that an entirely new Policing Board be created …’ This book is about the delivery of that new beginning for policing, achieved at a time when most commentators considered the Policing Board was itself likely to fragment along traditional community lines. The story of the Policing Board, from its establishment in 2001 through to the reconstitution of the membership in 2009 is in many ways an inspirational one, showing what can be done by politicians and community representatives working together to bring about a fundamentally different way of policing that better meets the needs of the whole community. The book offers valuable lessons and contemporary insights for law enforcement officers, accountability ‘bodies’ and academics world-wide, in key areas, including the need for a police service’s composition to reflect the community that it serves, promoting public confidence in policing and policing with the community; upholding human rights in the context of policing civil unrest and terrorism; how to hold a police service to account while providing the support it requires; and dealing with the legacy of inter-communal violence with over 3,500 deaths.
Stephen Hopkins
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- May 2014
- ISBN:
- 9781846319426
- eISBN:
- 9781781381076
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9781846319426.003.0011
- Subject:
- History, British and Irish Modern History
This concluding chapter argues that a careful reading of the memoirs of the Northern Ireland conflict may enable us to gain genuine insights into the lived experience and retrospective judgments of ...
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This concluding chapter argues that a careful reading of the memoirs of the Northern Ireland conflict may enable us to gain genuine insights into the lived experience and retrospective judgments of some of the key protagonists of the conflict. It may also allow an analysis of the rhetorical strategies employed by these memoirists, as they seek to influence the ways in which the Troubles are remembered and interpreted by the wider society. Memoir-writing is but one dimension of the current ad hoc approach to ‘dealing with the past’ in Northern Ireland, but these memory entrepreneurs or ‘people’s remembrancers’ can sometimes appear locked into self-justifying and exclusive discourses. However, the potential for a creative and inclusive approach to the past should not be ruled out a priori.Less
This concluding chapter argues that a careful reading of the memoirs of the Northern Ireland conflict may enable us to gain genuine insights into the lived experience and retrospective judgments of some of the key protagonists of the conflict. It may also allow an analysis of the rhetorical strategies employed by these memoirists, as they seek to influence the ways in which the Troubles are remembered and interpreted by the wider society. Memoir-writing is but one dimension of the current ad hoc approach to ‘dealing with the past’ in Northern Ireland, but these memory entrepreneurs or ‘people’s remembrancers’ can sometimes appear locked into self-justifying and exclusive discourses. However, the potential for a creative and inclusive approach to the past should not be ruled out a priori.
Stephen Hopkins
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- May 2014
- ISBN:
- 9781846319426
- eISBN:
- 9781781381076
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9781846319426.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, British and Irish Modern History
This book examines memoir-writing by many of the key political actors in the Northern Irish ‘Troubles’ (1969–1998), and argues that memoir has been a neglected dimension of the study of the legacies ...
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This book examines memoir-writing by many of the key political actors in the Northern Irish ‘Troubles’ (1969–1998), and argues that memoir has been a neglected dimension of the study of the legacies of the violent conflict. It investigates these sources in the context of ongoing disputes over how to interpret Northern Ireland’s recent past. A careful reading of these memoirs can provide insights into the lived experience and retrospective judgments of some of the main protagonists of the conflict. The period of relative peace rests upon an uneasy calm in Northern Ireland. Many people continue to inhabit contested ideological territories, and in their strategies for shaping the narrative ‘telling’ of the conflict, key individuals within the Protestant Unionist and Catholic Irish Nationalist communities can appear locked into exclusive and self-justifying discourses. In such circumstances, while some memoirists have been genuinely self-critical, many others have utilised a post-conflict language of societal reconciliation in order to mask a strategy that actually seeks to score rhetorical victories and to discomfort traditional enemies. Memoir-writing is only one dimension of the current ad hoc approach to ‘dealing with the past’ in Northern Ireland, but in the absence of any consensus regarding an overarching ‘truth and reconciliation’ process, this is likely to be the pattern for the foreseeable future. This study provides a comprehensive analysis of the politics of memoir for understanding the conflict.Less
This book examines memoir-writing by many of the key political actors in the Northern Irish ‘Troubles’ (1969–1998), and argues that memoir has been a neglected dimension of the study of the legacies of the violent conflict. It investigates these sources in the context of ongoing disputes over how to interpret Northern Ireland’s recent past. A careful reading of these memoirs can provide insights into the lived experience and retrospective judgments of some of the main protagonists of the conflict. The period of relative peace rests upon an uneasy calm in Northern Ireland. Many people continue to inhabit contested ideological territories, and in their strategies for shaping the narrative ‘telling’ of the conflict, key individuals within the Protestant Unionist and Catholic Irish Nationalist communities can appear locked into exclusive and self-justifying discourses. In such circumstances, while some memoirists have been genuinely self-critical, many others have utilised a post-conflict language of societal reconciliation in order to mask a strategy that actually seeks to score rhetorical victories and to discomfort traditional enemies. Memoir-writing is only one dimension of the current ad hoc approach to ‘dealing with the past’ in Northern Ireland, but in the absence of any consensus regarding an overarching ‘truth and reconciliation’ process, this is likely to be the pattern for the foreseeable future. This study provides a comprehensive analysis of the politics of memoir for understanding the conflict.
