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This book focuses on the strand of the Irish republican left which followed the ‘alien ideology’ of Soviet-inspired Marxism. Moscow-led communism had few adherents in Ireland, but Irish and British officials were concerned about the possibility that communists could infiltrate the republican movement, the Irish Republican Army (IRA). Another concern arose for British and American observers from 1969: would the Soviets resist the temptation to meddle during the Northern Ireland Troubles and cause trouble for Britain as a geo-political crisis unfolded? The book considers questions arising from the involvement of left-wing republicans, and what became the Official republican movement, in events before and during the early years of the Troubles. Could Ireland’s communists and left-wing republicans be viewed as strategic allies of Moscow who might create an ‘Irish Cuba’? The book examines another question: could a Marxist party with a parliamentary presence in the militarily-neutral Irish state – the Workers’ Party (WP) – be useful to the Soviets during the 1980s? This book, based on original sources rather than interviews, is significant in that it analyses the perspectives of the various governments concerned with subversion in Ireland. This is a study of perceptions. The book concludes that the Soviet Union had been happy to exploit the Troubles in its Cold War propaganda, but, excepting supplying arms to the Official IRA, it did not seek to maximise difficulties whenever it could in Ireland, north or south.

This is a comprehensive and nuanced historical survey of the death penalty in Ireland from the immediate post-Civil War period through to its complete abolition. Using original archival material, this book sheds light on the various social, legal and political contexts in which the death penalty operated and was discussed. In Ireland the death penalty served a dual function: as an instrument of punishment in the civilian criminal justice system, and as a weapon to combat periodic threats to the security of the state posed by the IRA. In closely examining cases dealt with in the ordinary criminal courts, this book elucidates ideas of class, gender, community and sanity and how these factors had an impact the administration of justice. The application of the death penalty also had a strong political dimension, most evident in the enactment of emergency legislation and the setting up of military courts specifically targeted at the IRA. As this book demonstrates, the civilian and the political strands converged in the story of the abolition of the death penalty in Ireland. Long after decision-makers accepted that the death penalty was no longer an acceptable punishment for ‘ordinary’ cases of murder, lingering anxieties about the threat of subversives dictated the pace of abolition and the scope of the relevant legislation.

This work makes an original and important contribution, both to the field of British fascist/extreme Right studies and to the Ulster question. British fascist studies have to date largely ignored Northern Ireland, yet it engaged the attention of all the significant fascist movements, both pro-loyalist and pro-nationalist, from the British Fascists and Sir Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists in the inter-war period to Mosley’s Union Movement, the National Front and British National Party thereafter. As a recurring site of political unrest Northern Ireland should have provided a promising arena for development, however this work demonstrates the great differences between Northern Ireland and Britain that made this problematic, especially the singularity of regional concerns and outlooks and the prominence of the constitutional issue, leaving little space for external parties to develop. Nor did framing the Ulster problem in a European context, such as Mosley’s post-war concept of Europe-a-Nation prove effective. for pro-loyalist extreme Right organisations during the Troubles a common allegiance to symbols of Britishness was offset not only the distinctiveness of regional interests but by the presence of Catholics among their leaders, while their failure to develop successfully as national movements in Britain meant they had little to offer Ulster loyalists. In focussing on Northern Ireland, this study provides insights, both into the strengths and weaknesses of British fascist organisations in the UK as a whole together with how difficult the region was for British organisations to cultivate; indeed, not just the extreme Right but mainstream parties as well.

Jimmy Reid was probably the greatest political orator of late twentieth-century Britain. He was at the forefront of the major turning points in the history of industrial relations and politics in Britain. His story is an epic one; from a poverty-stricken background in Govan, Glasgow, he became a communist at a young age, leading a national strike of engineering apprentices while only twenty, before being pitch into the national limelight as the leading spokesperson for the Upper Clyde Shipbuilders Work-In in 1971-2. Disillusioned with communism he left the Party for Labour and the centre-left before leaving them disenchanted with New Labour to join the Scottish National Party. His political journey from Communism, to Labourism, and ultimately to Nationalism (a political life in three acts) not only speaks of the complexities of left politics after 1945, but also illuminates and facilitates our understanding of institutions and social change in post-war Britain by showing how they were understood and negotiated by a particular individual.

This book provides the first detailed analysis of the influence of former Irish Parliamentary Party members and methods in independent Ireland and the place of the party’s leaders in public memory. Previous studies of the party have concluded with its dramatic fall in 1918 and shown little interest in the fate of its members thereafter. This study uses biographical data to provide the first statistical analysis of the Irish Party heritage of each political party in the independent Irish state established in 1922. Utilising a wealth of archival material, contemporary and critical writings, it asks how former Irish Party followers reacted to the changed circumstances of independent Ireland. One chapter undertakes a case study of the Irish National League, arguing that this organisation founded and led by former MPs effectively constituted a ‘legacy party’. Analysis of party politics is complemented by scrutiny of the practice of commemoration to ask how the Irish Party was remembered in a state founded on the sacrifice of the Easter Rising. This study therefore highlights significant features in the evolution of the party’s public memory and sheds new light on how figures such as Charles Stewart Parnell, John Redmond and Michael Davitt were remembered.

This book examines the role of the United States of America in the Northern Ireland conflict and peace process. It assesses Northern Ireland as both an international and a domestic issue in the United States during the years of conflict there. It looks at how US figures engaged with Northern Ireland, as well as the wider issue of Irish partition, in the years before the outbreak of what became known as the “troubles”. From there, it considers early interventions on the part of Congressional figures such as Senator Edward Kennedy and the Congressional hearings on Northern Ireland that took place in the aftermath of Bloody Sunday, 1972. It analyses the causes and consequences of the State Department decision to ban the sale of weapons to the Royal Ulster Constabulary, before considering the development of the US role in Northern Ireland through the Reagan administration and the onset of US financial support for conflict resolution in the form of the International Fund for Ireland. It then assesses the dynamics behind the role that President Clinton assumed following his election in 1992, before examining how Presidents Bush and Obama attempted to seize on the momentum of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement