The Northern Ireland Problem

Although recent events are testing its durability, the Good Friday Agreement of 1998 has been hailed as a triumph of Anglo-Irish diplomacy. But why did it take 30 years of intense conflict to reach an understanding of the problem before a solution could be implemented?

Barton and Roche have drawn on the expertise of leading Irish historians to examine the history and political/ideological character of Irish nationalism and unionism and the origins and implementation of Partition. The book also draws on the expertise of historians, political analysts and economists to explore 'North-South relations' in post-Partition Ireland and the extent of socio-economic and political discrimination in Northern Ireland after 1920. The Northern Ireland Question: Nationalism, Unionism and Partition offers a 'revisionist' challenge to Irish nationalist claims (in, for example, the Report of the New Ireland Forum published in 1984) about the nature and extent of 'discrimination' in Northern Ireland and to Irish nationalist claims about the economic viability of the political uniication of Ireland. The book concludes with an overview of unionist and nationalist thinking in the 1990s during the crucial period of the beginning of the 'peace process' and the negotiations that led to the Belfast Agreement in 1998.

This book looks at the roots of the current struggle in Ulster and of British military intervention, setting both in the longer perspective of the Anglo-Irish troubles, and addressing the issue of the response of democratic states to ethnic conflict.

In a new book about Northern Ireland historian Peter Rose argues that if Harold Wilson's government in the late sixties had pursued a different policy the province might have been spared The Troubles. Wilson had promised the Catholics that they would be granted their civil rights. However, new evidence suggests that Westminster was deliberately gagged to prevent MPs demanding that the Stormont administration ended discrimination in the province. Had the government acted on intelligence of growing Catholic unrest, it could have prevented the rise of the Provisional IRA without provoking an unmanageable Protestant backlash. The book draws upon recently released official documents and interviews with many key politicians and civil servants of the period to examine the failure of British policy to prevent the troubles.

In this book, one of the leading authorities on contemporary Northern Ireland politics provides an original, sophisticated and innovative examination of the post-Belfast agreement political landscape. Written in a fluid, witty and accessible style, this book explores: how the Belfast Agreement has changed the politics of Northern Ireland whether the peace process is still valid the problems caused by the language of politics in Northern Ireland the conditions necessary to secure political stability the inability of unionists and republicans to share the same political discourse the insights that political theory can offer to Northern Irish politics the future of key political parties and institutions.

Whilst there are any number of books on the subject of Northern Ireland, few provide much guidance on how it has been handled by Westminster and Whitehall, or indeed the extent to which British governments and Parliament has tried to avoid having to handle the issue. This book provides a much needed historical context in which to assess contemporary approaches to the Northern Ireland problem and, in essays covering the period from the establishment of the Northern Ireland state to the present day, points to many often overlooked continuities in British policy.