Abstract
Here’s the question. For 77 years the Irish Republic rode roughshod over the political wishes of northern unionists by persisting with a constitutional claim on Northern Ireland.1 Yet in 1998, by a massive majority of 94 per cent, those who voted for the Good Friday Agreement in the Irish Republic suddenly gave up that claim. How did such a convulsive change come about?
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.
(Matthew Arnold, ‘Dover Beach’)
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
Maureen Wall, ‘Partition: the Ulster Question (1916–26) in T. D. Williams (ed.), The Irish Struggle 1916–1926 (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul 1966), 87.
For a comprehensive critique of anti-partitionism see Clare O’ Halloran, Partition and the Limits of Irish Nationalism (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1987).
Peter Hart, The IRA and its Enemies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998).
Patrick Bishop and Eamonn Mallie, The Provisional IRA (London: Corgi, 1988).
Garret Fitzgerald, Towards a New Ireland (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan 1973), 14.
Eoghan Harris, The Irish Industrial Revolution (Dublin: Repsol, 1977).
Joseph Lee, Ireland 1912–85: Politics and Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 79.
Arthur Aughey, Under Siege (London: Blackstaff, 1989).
Eoghan Harris, ‘The Necessity of Social Democracy’, in R. English and J. M. Skelly (eds), Essays in Honour of Conor Cruise O’Brien (Dublin: Poolbeg, 1998), pp. 333–45.
Gearóid Ó Crualaoich, ‘Responding to the Rising’, in M. Ní Dhonnchadha and T. Dorgan (eds), Revising the Rising (Derry: Field Day, 1991), 50–71.
Mary Robinson, Everybody Matters (London: Walker and Company, 2012).
See Eoghan Harris, ‘Selling Unionism’, in T. Dunne and L. Geary (eds), History and the Public Sphere: Essays in Honour of John A. Murphy (Cork, 2005).
See Brian McIlroy, Shooting to Kill: Filmmaking and the Troubles in Northern Ireland (London: Steveson Press, 2001); also Padraic Coffey, ‘Cinema, Northern Ireland and the Representations of Protestants’ (UCD unpublished thesis, 2010).
Tim Pat Coogan, Memoir (London: Hachette UK, 2008).
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2015 Eoghan Harris
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Harris, E. (2015). Beginning to Talk to ‘Billy’: Revising Southern Stereotypes of Unionism. In: Burgess, T.P., Mulvenna, G. (eds) The Contested Identities of Ulster Protestants. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137453945_2
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137453945_2
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-49779-9
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-45394-5
eBook Packages: Palgrave Political Science CollectionPolitical Science and International Studies (R0)