2- Political Instability

CHOOSING WAR, CHOOSING PEACE

POL3007-N)

Wyndham Lewis, War News (Portrait of Froanna), 1942 (MIMA Collection)

Module Descriptor

The political processes within societies that have moved between war and peace are of immense significance and importance to our understandings of the world we live in today. In this module, we will examine the political conflict in Northern Ireland in depth, and look to understand why it happened, why attempts to resolve this in the 1970s-80s failed, and the lessons this can teach us about war and peace in divided societies. This module addresses the specific problems that face political analysts seeking to understand divided societies. It discusses historiography, assesses the reliability of primary and secondary source material. It provides a social, economic and political exploration of Northern Ireland at a time of civil unrest and offers students a detailed examination of the outbreak and development of conflict. It employs a variety of sources including official reports and correspondences, newspapers, pamphlets, posters, memoirs and television programmes.

MODULE AIMS

• To provide students with an understanding of the economic, social and political history of Northern Ireland during this period.
• To assess the causes of conflict and the process towards peace.
• To engage with the defining social and cultural elements of unionist and nationalist identities during the Troubles.
• To develop students’ skills in analysis and interpretation of primary source material and in the historiography of the period.
• To consider the difficulties of ‘writing history’ in a contested society.

Learning Outcomes

As a result of taking this module students will be able to:

• Plan, undertake and negotiate a self-managed project.

• Demonstrate a comprehensive and detailed command of a substantial body of historical knowledge. Synthesise and critically appraise different aspects of disciplinary knowledge in a self initiated piece of work.

• Reflect critically on the nature of Politics as a discipline, its social rationale, its theoretical underpinnings and its intellectual standing.

• Gather and analyse primary and/or secondary sources to make independent judgements.

• Critically appraise interpretations using logical and supported argument in a independent manner.

• Act autonomously within limited supervision or direction within agreed guidelines.

• Communicate clearly, fluently and effectively in a range of styles appropriate to the context.

You will be able to achieve these targets by attending the seminar programme and by successful completion of the assessment scheme.

TEACHING PROGRAMME
Regular attendance at seminars is expected throughout the teaching programme, and a register will be kept for all sessions. However, regardless of these formal requirements, we would urge you to make full use of the seminar sessions in order to develop your own ideas and research methods which can be used in your course work.

Week
Date
Topic

Assessment

1
27 Sep
Background to the Troubles: Who is telling the truth?

2
4 Oct
Breaking points and civil rights, 1963-7

3
11 Oct
Escalation of violence, 1968-71

4
18 Oct
Protestantism and Unionism
.

5
25 Oct
Catholicism and Nationalism

6
1 Nov
Bloody Sunday

7
8 Nov
Northern Ireland on film: Bloody Sunday

8
15 Nov
Sunningdale and Strikes

9
22 Nov
Prison Life and Hunger-Strike

10
29 Nov
Everyday Life During the Troubles

General Histories

For an introduction to the history and politics of Northern Ireland you could start with:

R. Bourke, Peace in Ireland: The War of Ideas (London, 2003).
T. Hennessey, A History of Northern Ireland (Basingstoke, 1997).
M. Mulholland, The Longest War: Northern Ireland’s Troubled History (Oxford, 2002).
H. Patterson, Ireland Since 1939: persistence of conflict (London, 2007)

General Histories

J. Bardon, A History of Ulster (Belfast, 1992)
T. Bartlett, Ireland (Cambridge, 2011)
P. Bew, Ireland: The Politics of Enmity (Oxford, 2009) [ebook] P. Bew, P. Gibbon and H. Patterson, Northern Ireland 1921-2001: Political Forces and Social Classes (London, 2002).
P. Buckland, A History of Northern Ireland (Dublin, 1981)
M. Elliott, The Catholics of Ulster: a history (New York, 2001)
R. English, Armed Struggle, (London, 2002)
A Jackson, Home Rule: An Irish History (Oxford 2003)
A.Jackson, Ireland 1798-1998, (Oxford, 1999)
H. Patterson, Ireland’s Violent Frontier: The Border and Anglo-Irish Relations during the Troubles (Basingstoke, 2016) [ebook] S. Whichert, Northern Ireland Since 1945 (London, 1991)
J. Whyte, Interpreting Northern Ireland. (Oxford, 1991)

Essential and further reading will be available for each topic on Blackboard.

There are a great number of primary source materials available for this topic and you will be expected to reflect this in your work. A wealth of sources can be found online. The key websites are:

Conflict and Politics in Northern Ireland (CAIN) run by the University of Ulster has bibliographies; databases; primary source material and timelines and is an invaluable resource for this topic: www. http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/

Accounts of the Conflict is a digital archive of personal accounts of the conflict: http://accounts.ulster.ac.uk/repo24/index.php

Referencing Guidelines
These guidelines have been compiled to help you in the presentation of your History coursework and you should make every effort to adhere to them. Presentation is an integral part of the assessment and therefore poorly presented work will be penalised.

Basic Typographical Conventions
• Italicise book, film and opera titles, newspapers, and foreign words (e.g. Means-Test Man, Metropolis, Faust, status quo, de facto, Machtergreifung, Volksgemeinschaft).
• Put the titles of articles, essays, short stories, poems and paintings in single inverted commas (e.g. Benjamin West’s ‘The Death of Nelson’).
• Use colons (:) before long, indented quotations (see below).

Quotations
• Shorter quotations (less than 50 words) should be enclosed in single quotation marks (‘…’) and run on with the main text. Use double quotation marks (“…”) for quotations within quotations.
• Longer quotations (more than 50 words) should be separated from the main text by being indented without quotation marks.
• It is always better to quote from primary sources (i.e. those written by the person or at the time being written about) than secondary sources (i.e. those written about that time or person).
• Do not quote from secondary sources if the point could be made equally well in your own words or if the point could be made equally well through paraphrase (in which case remember to reference your source). Excessive use of quotations from secondary sources will be penalised.

Referencing
• You should use a reference wherever you cite or refer closely to another text. A reference should also be provided to indicate the source of any statistics, maps, etc provided in your work.
• For all coursework references may be placed either at the foot of a page (footnotes) or at the end of your work (endnotes). References should be numbered consecutively throughout your work.
• When referencing a single page, use p.. Hence, p. 5.
• When referencing more than one page, use pp.. Hence, pp. 5-6. pp. 155-70, pp. 403-17.
• If you cite or refer closely to another text without providing a reference, you run the risk of being suspected of plagiarism.

Referencing Style
• The referencing of primary sources will depend on the nature of the sources that you have used. You should therefore consult your module tutor for further guidance.
• Secondary sources should be referenced according to the following style:

Books (single author)
Abigail Green, Fatherlands: State-Building and Nationhood in Nineteenth-Century Germany (Cambridge, 2001).

Books (two authors)
Orlando Figes & Boris Kolonitskii, Interpreting the Russian Revolution: The Language and Symbols of 1917 (New Haven, 1999).

Books (subsequent editions)
Ian F.W. Beckett, The Great War second edition (Harlow, 2007).

J.M. Roberts, Europe 1880-1945 third edition (Harlow, 2001).

Edited Book
Tom Buchanan & Martin Conway (eds.), Political Catholicism in Europe 1918-1965 (Oxford, 1996).
Journal Articles
Gordon Martel, ‘Decolonisation after Suez: Retreat or Rationalisation?, Australian Journal of Politics and History 46 (2000).
Journal Articles (two authors)
Stefan Berger & Norman LaPorte, ‘In Search of Antifascism: The British Left’s Response to the German Democratic Republic’, German History 26 (2008).
Journal Articles (more than three authors)
Jan Palmowski et al., ‘The Long Nineteenth Century’, German History 26 (2008).

Edited Collections
Abigail Green, ‘How did German Federalism Shape Unification’, in Ronald Speirs & John Breuilly (eds.), Germany’s Two Unifications: Anticipations, Experiences, Responses (Basingstoke, 2005).
Brian Vick, ‘Language and Nation’, in Timothy Baycroft & Mark Hewitson (eds.), What is a Nation? Europe 1789-1914 (Oxford, 2006).

Conference Proceedings
Catherine Albrecht, ‘Economic Nationalism in the Sudetenland, 1918-1938’, Proceedings of the British Academy. Volume 104: Czechoslovakia in a Nationalist and Fascist Europe (Oxford, 2007).
Theses
Catherine Burke, ‘Working Class Politics in Sheffield, 1900-1920: A Regional Study in the Origins and Early Growth of the Labour Party’(PhD Thesis: Sheffield City Polytechnic, 1983).

Pauline E. Lynn, ‘The Shaping of Political Allegiance: Class, Gender, Nation and Locality in County Durham 1918-1945’ (PhD Thesis: University of Teesside, 1999).

Newspaper Articles
‘“Nazi” Gains Expected in Bavaria’, The Times, 11 September 1930.

Web Pages
‘An Act Declaring the Rights and Liberties of the Subject and Settling the Succession of the Crown’, The Avalon Project: Documents in Law, History and Diplomacy [http://Avalon.law.yale.edu/17th_century/England.asp], accessed 22 April 2009.

‘Constitutional Implications of the Campaign against Nuclear Power (November 3, 1976)’, German History in Documents and Images [http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/sub_document.cfm?document_id=1114], accessed 22 April 2009.

• If you cite the same source in consecutive footnotes/endnotes, then use ibid (from the Latin ibidem, meaning ‘in the same place’) for the second and subsequent footnotes/endnotes.
• After the first, extensive reference, subsequent, non-consecutive footnotes/endnotes should give the minimum necessary information (e.g. Green, p. 355; Martel, p. 119).
• If you cite two items by the same author, then, to avoid confusion, give a short title as well (e.g. Green, Fatherlands, p. 355; Green, ‘German Federalism’, pp. 129-33).

Bibliography
• Always put a list of all books, articles and other sources used at the end of your coursework.
• In most cases you will have used only books and articles, but in some cases your bibliography will be more extensive. In such circumstances, it should be subdivided into two categories: primary sources (e.g. private papers, official publications, newspapers) and secondary sources (books, articles and theses).
• The layout and referencing of primary sources will depend on the nature of the sources that you have used. Consult your module tutor for further guidance.
• Secondary sources should be arranged in alphabetical order according to the authors’ surnames (or titles where there is no cited author) and set out according to the conventions described in the ‘Referencing Style’ above.
• With edited collections, note that the article and author should be cited and not simply the book and editor.