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.
John Newsinger
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780719096310
- eISBN:
- 9781526120809
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719096310.003.0002
- Subject:
- History, British and Irish Modern History
There is a huge body of memoir literature relating to the ‘Troubles’. This chapter looks at two bodies of British memoirs: first the military memoir and second, the political memoir. It looks at ...
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There is a huge body of memoir literature relating to the ‘Troubles’. This chapter looks at two bodies of British memoirs: first the military memoir and second, the political memoir. It looks at three accounts written by members of the Parachute Regiment, A F N Clarke’s Contact, Harry McCallion’s Killing Zone and Michael Asher’s Shoot to Kill They are discussed in terms of what they have to say about the culture of the ‘Paras’ and the contribution this culture made to intensifying the conflict, providing the Provisional IRA with a base of support that made it possible for them to wage a protracted war.
The discussion of political memoirs looks at the memoirs of a number of Labour politicians, James Callaghan, Harold Wilson, Merlyn Rees, Roy Mason, Peter Hain and Tony Blair. It chronicles how the change from Old Labour to New Labour also involved a shift in attitude and tone, from support for eventual Irish unity, hostility towards the Unionists and Ian Paisley in particular to support for a reformed ‘Unionism’. Callaghan and Tony Blair’s memoirs are compared very much to the latter’s disadvantage.
The chapter argues for the importance of memoir literature.Less
There is a huge body of memoir literature relating to the ‘Troubles’. This chapter looks at two bodies of British memoirs: first the military memoir and second, the political memoir. It looks at three accounts written by members of the Parachute Regiment, A F N Clarke’s Contact, Harry McCallion’s Killing Zone and Michael Asher’s Shoot to Kill They are discussed in terms of what they have to say about the culture of the ‘Paras’ and the contribution this culture made to intensifying the conflict, providing the Provisional IRA with a base of support that made it possible for them to wage a protracted war.
The discussion of political memoirs looks at the memoirs of a number of Labour politicians, James Callaghan, Harold Wilson, Merlyn Rees, Roy Mason, Peter Hain and Tony Blair. It chronicles how the change from Old Labour to New Labour also involved a shift in attitude and tone, from support for eventual Irish unity, hostility towards the Unionists and Ian Paisley in particular to support for a reformed ‘Unionism’. Callaghan and Tony Blair’s memoirs are compared very much to the latter’s disadvantage.
The chapter argues for the importance of memoir literature.
Stephen Hopkins
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780719096310
- eISBN:
- 9781526120809
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719096310.003.0005
- Subject:
- History, British and Irish Modern History
The purpose of this chapter is to analyse the memoir-writing of senior Labour Party (LP) politicians who were closely engaged in developing and implementing government policy towards Northern Ireland ...
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The purpose of this chapter is to analyse the memoir-writing of senior Labour Party (LP) politicians who were closely engaged in developing and implementing government policy towards Northern Ireland during the administrations of Harold Wilson (1964-70 and 1974-6) and James Callaghan (1976-9). Studying the memoirs of these leading policy-makers can furnish researchers with an understanding of the lived experience of individuals attempting to deal on a day-to-day basis with the intricacies of policy in a context (after 1970) of regular, and sometimes intense, political violence.
The argument presented here is that the significant degree of continuity in the Labour governments’ constitutional policy towards Northern Ireland is not always reflected in the memoir-writing of the key protagonists. It is also probable that a fuller understanding of the way in which policy towards Northern Ireland was made, and thought about, by key protagonists, may cast a brighter light on the nature of the LP as a governing party more generally.Less
The purpose of this chapter is to analyse the memoir-writing of senior Labour Party (LP) politicians who were closely engaged in developing and implementing government policy towards Northern Ireland during the administrations of Harold Wilson (1964-70 and 1974-6) and James Callaghan (1976-9). Studying the memoirs of these leading policy-makers can furnish researchers with an understanding of the lived experience of individuals attempting to deal on a day-to-day basis with the intricacies of policy in a context (after 1970) of regular, and sometimes intense, political violence.
The argument presented here is that the significant degree of continuity in the Labour governments’ constitutional policy towards Northern Ireland is not always reflected in the memoir-writing of the key protagonists. It is also probable that a fuller understanding of the way in which policy towards Northern Ireland was made, and thought about, by key protagonists, may cast a brighter light on the nature of the LP as a governing party more generally.
Stuart Murray
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- June 2013
- ISBN:
- 9781846310911
- eISBN:
- 9781846314667
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/UPO9781846314667
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Social Groups
From concerns of an ‘autism epidemic’ to the MMR vaccine crisis, autism is a source of peculiar fascination in the contemporary media. Discussion of the condition has been largely framed within ...
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From concerns of an ‘autism epidemic’ to the MMR vaccine crisis, autism is a source of peculiar fascination in the contemporary media. Discussion of the condition has been largely framed within medicine, psychiatry and education but there has been no exploration of its power within representative narrative forms. This book tackles this approach, using contemporary fiction and memoir writing, film, photography, drama and documentary together with older texts to set the contemporary fascination with autism in context. It analyses and evaluates the place of autism within contemporary culture and at the same time examines the ideas of individual and community produced by people with autism themselves to establish the ideas of autistic presence that emerge from within a space of cognitive exceptionality. Central to the book is a sense of the legitimacy of autistic presence as a way by which we might more fully articulate what it means to be human.Less
From concerns of an ‘autism epidemic’ to the MMR vaccine crisis, autism is a source of peculiar fascination in the contemporary media. Discussion of the condition has been largely framed within medicine, psychiatry and education but there has been no exploration of its power within representative narrative forms. This book tackles this approach, using contemporary fiction and memoir writing, film, photography, drama and documentary together with older texts to set the contemporary fascination with autism in context. It analyses and evaluates the place of autism within contemporary culture and at the same time examines the ideas of individual and community produced by people with autism themselves to establish the ideas of autistic presence that emerge from within a space of cognitive exceptionality. Central to the book is a sense of the legitimacy of autistic presence as a way by which we might more fully articulate what it means to be human.
