Neil Jarman

Parades and power

Whenever political change in the north threatens their centuries-old hegemony, the protestant marching season takes on a special significance. This years Orange parades marched to confrontation to the fading tune of a dying order

Green Parades in an Orange State: Nationalist and Republican Commemorations and Demonstrations from Partition to the Troubles, 1920–70

Parading is seen as a practice that is central to the Northern Irish Protestant culture and one that defines that community in distinction to the nationalist community. While it is acknowledged that nationalist organisations do hold commemorative and other parades, these are regarded as either little more than a pale reflection of their Orange counterparts or as part of a political strategy which could be easily abandoned. Parades are not seen as part of nationalist culture in the way that they are a part of unionist culture.1 They are not imbued with the weight of tradition. Yet parades have been a part of Irish social, cultural and political life since at least the fifteenth century, and during the late nineteenth century were as much a vehicle for mobilising and defining an Irish nationalist identity as they were for defining a Protestant British identity.2 For instance, from the 1890s to the First World War, the Fifteenth (Lady’s Day, 15 August) was treated by the Irish News as comparable to the Twelfth, the Ancient Order of Hibernians (AOH) rivalled the Orange Order, and Derry nationalists paraded the city walls each St Patrick’s Day.3

Ten Years after Patten: Young People and Policing in Northern Ireland

Through a comprehensive review of existing literature, this article documents young people’s experiences of policing during the period of political transition and extensive reform of the structures of policing in Northern Ireland since the publication of the Independent Commission on Policing for Northern Ireland (The Patten Report) in 1999. The article explores the nature and context of these relationships and provides a commentary of how young people’s experiences and perceptions of policing have been shaped by their social, economic, and community backgrounds. Furthermore, a number of ideas and activities that have been developed with the aim of improving the attitudes of young people toward the police, the attitudes of police officers toward young people, and the interactions between the two are also discussed.

A Bitter Peace: Flag Protests, the Politics of No and Culture Wars

This chapter explores the role of protest within the Protestant Unionist culture in response to political initiatives that are considered to be a threat to its status, position and identity. Beginning with a discussion of the 2012–13 flag protests, the chapter seeks to contextualise them within the wider contemporary international cycle of protests, including those of the Arab Spring and Occupy movements. It then traces the specific style and form of protests within Northern Ireland from the opposition to the civil rights movement in the 1960s, the Ulster Workers Council strike in the 1970s and the mobilisation against the Anglo-Irish Agreement in the 1980s. It concludes that while the insistence on no change has remained consistent, the efficacy of oppositional protests has become less effective as a means of popular resistance.

Negotiating the Ground: ‘Mobilizing’ a Divided Field Site in the ‘Post-Conflict’ City

ABSTRACT While an exploration of mobility patterns in ‘post-conflict’ societies has much to tell us about how division is produced through ordinary activities, less work has considered the practical application of a mobilities ‘lens’ during fieldwork in such contexts. Negotiating the ground in highly polarized contexts presents a unique array of challenges, but also offers opportunities to make use of mobile methodologies. This paper discusses the advantages of GPS-based technologies and walking interviews to a recent activity-space segregation study in Belfast, Northern Ireland, and reflects on methodological issues posed by the ‘post-conflict’ field site.

Acknowledgement, Recognition and Response: The Criminal Justice System and Hate Crime in Northern Ireland

Hate crime in Northern Ireland has been a feature of the current peace process, with increasing numbers of low-level incidents over the past twenty years serving as the backdrop to higher-profile cases, such as the murders of Simon Tang in Carrickfergus in 1996, Ian Flanagan in Belfast in 2002 and Thomas Devlin in Belfast in 2005. Sustained attacks on the small Roma community in Belfast, followed by attacks on the Polish community after an international football match and the sectarian murder of Kevin McDaid in Coleraine led in 2009 to the region being dubbed the ‘race hate capital of Europe’ in the media (as it had previously in 2004 and 2006).