“The Cassette Played Poptones”

The conflict in Northern Ireland, known colloquially as the ‘Troubles’, is often understood as a religious war but in fact is underpinned by competing religious, political, and national ideologies, often dichotomised into those who wish Northern Ireland to reunify with Ireland and those who wish it to remain part of the United Kingdom. These ideologies are bound up in a series of social identities that are represented by the Protestant and Catholic communities. In this chapter, we trace the relationship between identity, conflict, and peace in Northern Ireland from the emergence of the ‘Troubles’ up until and following the signing of the Good Friday/Belfast Peace Agreement. Specifically, we cover four key themes that underlie much of the work on social identity in Northern Ireland: (a) the prevalence of social categorisation, identification, and comparison strategies; (b) the role of identity in conflict; (c) the relationship between stress, coping, and identity; and (d) the role of intergroup contact in promoting identity for peace. In doing so, we argue that whilst identity lies at the root of the Northern Irish conflict, it also presents important exciting opportunities for peace.

The Punk Turn in Comedy: Masks of Anarchy

Listen to Punk Rock! Exploring a Musical Genre discusses the evolution of punk from its inception in 1975 to the present, delving into the lasting impact of the genre throughout society today. Listen to Punk Rock! provides readers with a fuller picture of punk rock as an inclusive genre with continuing relevance. Organized in a roughly chronological manner, it starts with an introduction that explains the musical and cultural forces that shaped the punk genre. Next, 50 entries cover important punk bands and subgenres, noting female punk bands as well as bands of color. The final part of the book discusses how punk has influenced other musical genres and popular culture. The book will give those new to the genre an overview of important bands and products related to the movement in music, including publications, fashion, and films about punk rock. Notably, it pays special attention to diversity within the genre, discussing bands often overlooked or mentioned only in passing in most histories of the movement, which focus mainly on The Sex Pistols, The Clash, and The Ramones as the pioneers of punk.

Community, conflict and rural planning in Northern Ireland

The conflict in Northern Ireland since 1969 has cost over 3,600 lives and about 100,000 people in Northern Ireland live in a household where someone has been injured in a troubles-related incident. This has been a key issue in British and Irish politics and the recent peace process in Northern Ireland and the current ‘War on Terrorism’ has stimulated international involvement and a desire to ‘learn the lessons’ of ‘the troubles’. Although Northern Ireland has a population of just 1.5 million people it is one of the most researched territories of the world. There is considerable controversy over the interpretation of the history of Northern Ireland, not least since 1969. This new addition to the Seminar Studies in History Series provides a comprehensive introduction to the difficult topic, reviewing different perspectives on the recent history of the conflict in Northern Ireland while at the same time providing an authoritative overview. Each book in the Seminar Studies in History series provides a concise and reliable introduction to complex events and debates. Written by acknowledged experts and supported by extracts from historical Documents, a Chronology, Glossary, Who’s Who of key figures and Guide to Further Reading, Seminar Studies in History are the essential guides to understanding a topic.

The article is devoted to the research for commonalities and differences between the conflict in Northern Ireland and Eastern Ukraine. The meaning of terms and emphases as «military conflict», «armed conflict», «local and regional war» are explained. The settlement of the conflict in Northern Ireland by the British government has been studied. Steps have been identified to resolve the conflict in Northern Ireland that would be useful for resolving the conflict in Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts by the Government of Ukraine. A brief generalized analysis of the success of some commitments of the government programs of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine (governments of V. Groysman, O. Honcharuk, D. Shmygal) on the settlement of the conflict in Donetsk and Luhansk regions has been made. The article assesses the actions of the Russian Federation in the framework of aggressive policy towards Ukraine. The settlement of the military conflict through diplomacy is considered. From the beginning to the end of the article, the importance of military capability and development of the Armed Forces of Ukraine is emphasized. The proposed steps to resolve the conflict have a history of practical implementation. The topic of deoccupation of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol is proposed to be given a separate study. The article considers, but needs more extensive research, the introduction of transitional justice, compensation for damages at the interstate level, referendums on certain issues. It is argued that an important area of conflict resolution is the solution of humanitarian problems: the implementation of social benefits, ensuring access to health care in health care facilities. It is also worth noting that, in general, the government's policy towards the inhabitants of the temporarily occupied territories should be stable, strategic, result-oriented in the long run, and frequent changes of ministers/governments may harm this and contribute to further delays.

Reviewed by: We’re Not Here To Entertain: Punk Rock, Ronald Reagan, And The Real Culture War Of 1980s America by Kevin Mattson Dewar MacLeod We’re Not Here to Entertain: Punk Rock, Ronald Reagan, and the Real Culture War of 1980s America. By Kevin Mattson. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020. xvi + 388 pp. Cloth $27.95. The title in its starkness—“We’re Not Here to Entertain”—shouts out the audacity, even silliness, but admirable nonetheless, of entertainers who announce they won’t entertain. Punk rock in the United States of the 1980s was about much more than pleasure or escape; indeed, the punk rock shows and records were attempts to challenge power and change the world. Kevin Mattson’s new book does an excellent job of demonstrating how youth culture should be studied as the actions of young people who attempt to shape their own destiny, not simply follow fads. After the first wave of punk rock in the late 1970s, new and varied punk scenes emerged throughout the United States, many of them focused on their opposition to the politics of the era. The hardcore scene in Southern California, the Straight Edge scene in Washington, DC, and the Northern California Bay Area scene centered around the zine Maximum Rocknroll (MRR) were the most directly political and influential. Other writers have studied hardcore and the politics of local scenes, but Mattson tries to create a national narrative that emphasizes the coherence of political punk while recognizing its variety, with different iterations in different locales. He brilliantly shows how wide, fluid, and varied the punk scene was, making connections that are left out of a narrow focus on hardcore. He insightfully highlights the important influences of earlier generations of rockers and punks from the 1960s and 1970s. And he explores the exciting cross-pollinations between different subgenres and scenes, giving attention to Portland (the Wipers, Sado-Nation), San Jose (Tim Tannooka’s Ripper zine), and the scenes that spread across the country. Some of the strongest material in the book comes from close readings of punks’ perspectives on the world. MRR’s Tim Yohannan interviewing Bill Graham on KPFA is fascinating and illustrative. Graham was the pioneering rock promoter of the Fillmore and Winterland clubs in San Francisco who, by the 1980s, controlled the local promotion for touring bands. Yohannan blasted Graham for losing touch with youth culture and pushed him to stay out of booking punk shows, arguing, “This is a folk culture which music is only part of” (57). Mattson’s analysis shows us how punk politics connected the local music shows with larger political ideology and DIY actions. [End Page 348] While the politics of 1980s punk was mostly cultural—attacking the record industry and the larger consumerist entertainment culture of the US—Mattson takes us on the “Rock Against Reagan” tour of bands traveling to Washington, DC, to directly challenge “Reagan, Radiation, Racism, the Right, Repression, Registration, and Recession” (151). Throughout the book, he deftly explicates the many political debates within and between punk scenes, especially as they played out in zines like MRR. Mattson makes the case that we should take 1980s punk seriously for its politics and its impact. This book is important both for how it ties together so many strands of punk and independent music and for how it links those punk scenes to the larger political developments of the decade. Mattson weaves together an unwieldy set of themes and topics—from squatters’ rights to libertarianism to cop shows to cyberpunk and so on—showing how punk sat at the center of the “real culture war” of the Reagan era. The most glaring omission is the voices of women and girls. While Mattson acknowledges that “young, suburban white males dominated” (81), he makes no effort to dig into why that was. He makes only one mention of sexuality, which is unfortunate because several of the most important bands were led by gay and bisexual members. MRR was addressing these issues early on, discussing the Dicks as a “Commie, faggot band” and publishing a women’s poll and article that called for punk to “Annihilate Sex Roles” in 1983. If Mattson...

James McKenna, Farhat Manzoor and Greta Jones, Candles in the Dark: Medical Ethical Issues in Northern Ireland during the Troubles (London: Nuffield Trust, 2009), pp. v + 149, no price given, paperback, ISBN: 978-1-905030-32-3. - Volume 55 Issue 4

To date, no large-scale cross-comparative study of psychiatric morbidity in the United Kingdom has been carried out until recently when the Northern Ireland Household Panel Survey (NIHPS) included the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-12) in 2001. The GHQ-12 has been included in the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) since 1991 for England and since 1999 for both Scotland and Wales. The purpose of this article is to compare rates of psychiatric morbidity across the United Kingdom, given that one region in particular, Northern Ireland, has experienced political conflict and civil strife for more than 35 years. To assess the impact of low-intensity warfare on rates of psychiatric morbidity in Northern Ireland and to compare these with psychiatric morbidity rates across England, Scotland and Wales. The sample consisted of 17,343 respondents completing the GHQ-12 across the United Kingdom. In England, 8286 respondents completed the GHQ-12 while 2729, 3165 and 3163 respondents from Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland completed the GHQ-12 respectively. Results were then weighted according to population size. Rates of psychiatric morbidity varied across each UK region. Wales had the highest mean GHQ-12 score (11.54), followed by Northern Ireland (11.41). English respondents had the lowest mean score (11.02). The difference in mean scores across the four regions in the UK was statistically significant (F= 5.04, df = 3, p < 0.001). Post-hoc analyses indicated that the mean scores for England differed significantly from those for Wales and Northern Ireland but not for Scotland. Region accounted for less than 1% of the variation in GHQ-12 scores. Psychiatric morbidity rates for adults in Northern Ireland are comparable to other parts of the United Kingdom and we propose that individuals in Northern Ireland use a range of coping strategies to moderate the impact of the conflict in everyday life. These include habituation to the violence, denial and social cohesion, evidenced in the tightly knit Unionist and Nationalist communities. Particular concern was noted over GHQ-12 scores for Wales and while social and economic factors are acknowledged in our commentary, we conclude that further research appears to be crucial in understanding and preventing poorer rates of mental health in this region.

Part 1 Context: Northern Ireland - a state in conflict understanding political violence in Northern Ireland economic and social aspects of the troubles pen pictures of the protagonists a chronology of events. Part 2 The human costs of the troubles: profiling those who died in Northern Ireland's troubles patterns of violence victims and perpetrators half the battle - the impact of the troubles on children conclusions and next steps.

While gender has been widely used as an analytical category to understand the dynamics of conflict transformation in Northern Ireland, surprisingly little has been written on the ways in which the conflict has shaped or constrained feminist organising. Singular focus on groups or initiatives like the Northern Ireland Women's Coalition, Peace People or the Women's Support Network has overshadowed the contested history and intricacies of the wider feminist movement. Adopting a more holistic view, this article takes the concept of ‘bridge-builders' as conceptualised by Ruane and Todd in The Dynamics of Conflict in Northern Ireland (1996) to examine the fractured development of the feminist movement in the North. It charts how ‘bridge-builder feminism' became a distinguishable feature of the feminist movement during the Troubles and was used as a mechanism to transgress what Todd calls the ‘grammars of nationality’ (Todd, 2015). I argue that although this organising approach pioneered some changes in Northern Irish society, it overlooked key feminist struggles and thrived at the expense of an inclusive, intersectional feminism. Though the movement has undergone significant changes in the last two decades, the legacy of bridge-builder feminism continues to impact the capacities of the movement to address key feminist issues.

This article examines the English and Welsh Catholic Church's reaction to the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) attacks on London during the Northern Ireland ‘Troubles’. English Catholic bishops vociferously condemned these attacks yet regularly faced criticism for their perceived inaction. Letters published in secular and religious newspapers, and also sent directly to English Catholic bishops, reveal a dismayed public who called for religious retribution in the form of excommunication. I argue IRA attacks on English soil fell into a ‘grey area’ of Church condemnation: a Catholic bishop would not comment on events outside his own nation. No Irish Catholic bishop had excommunicated an IRA member, so for an English bishop to do so would have been setting a precedent. However, the IRA’s shift to a bombing campaign in England had allowed English bishops to comment on the conflict in Northern Ireland. Subsequently, statements and actions by English bishops would directly impact on how Irish bishops could mediate the conflict in Northern Ireland. Provisional IRA attacks on London specifically garnered international press attention and greater focus on the reactions of the Catholic Archbishop of Westminster, amplifying the English Catholic Church’s response more broadly. This article highlights the evolving relationship between Irish and English bishops, from one of mutual anger to one of mutual understanding, through an examination of three attacks: the Old Bailey bombing (1973); the Harrods Bombing (1983); and the London Docklands Bombing (1996). Drawing on seldom discussed archival material, religious papers, and correspondence, this article elucidates the entangled relationship between English and Irish Churches, suggesting that such a complicated relationship, at times, hindered the Irish Catholic Church’s ability to mediate the conflict and aide the peace process.

This article questions the fashionable view that Northern Ireland is a counterinsurgency lesson to be learned for the global ‘war on terror’. It suggests that Britain’s involvement in the Northern Ireland conflict – one of the longest conflicts within Europe in which a government has been at war with a clandestine organization – can be regarded as a meaningful metaphoric utterance in efforts to analyse the practical failures and threat discourses of the global ‘war on terror’. Northern Ireland is more than a specific case study: it acts as an appealing metaphor in attempts to understand the logics and pitfalls of the ‘war against terrorism’, where the increasing primacy granted to terror control – present and future – means that Western governments are increasingly more willing to infringe otherwise inviolable rights in the pursuit of a supposed greater good – security. The article explores the political economy of unease, suspicion, exception and radicalization in the ‘war against terrorism’. It concludes that Northern Ireland is not a model that can be exported around the globe but an invitation to analyse contingency, daily operations of security, and their effects on social practices and routines. Northern Ireland also represents a remarkable inducement to assess how exception, suspicion and radicalization are correlated, as well as to recognize that efforts to contain the unpredictability of the future are self-defeating.

The third chapter examines perceptions of the Irish revolutionary left following the outbreak of what became known as the Troubles in Northern Ireland. Unrest in Northern Ireland raised the question of Irish revolutionaries again seeking Kremlin assistance, as KGB ‘special actions’ through proxy organisations had been a tool of Soviet foreign policy. London, at times, had a Cold War understanding in relation to developments in Ireland. And so did the US embassy in Dublin, because White House fears in relation to any threat posed by communism were fuelled by widespread opposition in the West to America’s war in Vietnam. This chapter looks at the geo-political dimension to the northern crisis as it was raised at the United Nations (UN) and the Soviets began to take a greater interest in developments in Ireland. Sectarian violence in Northern Ireland led to a split in the republican movement and the emergence of the leftist Official IRA.

This paper systematically describes the different types of political violence that occurred in Northern Ireland between 1968 and 1972, examining how they interacted and fueled each other. To measure the level of political violence in Northern Ireland, traditional quantitative approaches use variables such as the number of conflict-related deaths, paramilitary attacks, or riots; the goal of this paper, instead, is to disaggregate acts of violent contention by actor, type, and target. Relying on Quantitative Narrative Analysis (QNA), all the violent actions perpetrated by the actors participating in the conflict have been recorded, coded, and analyzed. Three main types of violence in Northern Ireland are identified: a) protest-related violence—violent interactions among protesters, counterprotesters, and police before, during, and after mass demonstrations; b) sectarian violence—includes riots and clashes between members of the two main ethno-national communities; and c) armed conflict—violent actions by paramilitary groups and security forces. While originating from different conflict situations, these three types of violence affected each other, as they altered, and were altered by, the broader political context. Conceptual and methodological disaggregation of political violence are encouraged to better understand violent conflicts.