Niall Ó Dochartaigh

Together in the middle: Back-channel negotiation in the Irish peace process

This article examines the development of cooperative relationships in back-channel communication and their impact on intraparty negotiation. It draws on extensive newly available evidence on back-channel communication in the Irish peace process to expand the range of detailed case studies on a topic which is shrouded in secrecy and resistant to academic inquiry. The article analyses the operation of a secret back channel that linked the Irish Republican Army to the British government over a period of 20 years, drawing on unique material from the private papers of the intermediary, Brendan Duddy, and a range of other primary sources. The article finds that interaction through this back channel increased predictability and laid a foundation of extremely limited trust by providing information and increasing mutual understanding. Strong cooperative relationships developed at the intersection between the two sides, based to a great extent on strong interpersonal relationships and continuity in personnel. This in turn produced direct pressure for changes in the position of parties as negotiators acted as advocates of movement in intraparty negotiations. The article finds that this back channel was characterized by a short chain, the direct involvement of principals and the establishment of a single primary channel of communication and that these features combined with secrecy to generate the distinctive cooperative dynamics identified in this article. It concludes that the potential for the development of cooperative relationships is particularly strong in back-channel negotiation for two reasons; first, the joint project of secrecy creates an ongoing shared task that builds trust and mutual understanding regardless of progress in the negotiations. Secondly, as a shared project based on the explicit aim of bypassing spoilers, the process creates structural pressures for cooperation to manage internal opponents on both sides, pressures intensified by the secrecy of the process.

Bloody Sunday: Error or Design?

When British Paratroopers shot dead 13 people at a civil rights march in Derry on January 30, 1972 it dealt a hammer blow to British government claims of neutrality and moral authority in dealing with the escalating violence in Northern Ireland. Existing historical accounts of Bloody Sunday treat the killings as the outcome of a more-or-less unified military anxiety at increasing disorder in Derry, combined with unexpected events on the day, presenting the killings as the outcome of essentially responsive actions by the British military. In so doing they lend support to the ‘cock-up’ theory that represents the killings as the outcome of a series of errors of interpretation and communication. This article provides an alternative interpretation of the political and military decision-making process, challenging key elements in the analysis in the existing literature. By contrast with existing accounts, it argues that the Bloody Sunday operation was a calculated plan devised at a very high level to stage a massive and unprecedented confrontation that would disrupt and shatter an established policy of security force restraint in the city of Derry. It argues further that the operation that day emerged from an intense internal struggle to shape security policy that reflected deep divisions within the security forces, analysing the statements and evidence of key participants much more critically than existing accounts do. It argues that high-level decision-making is central to the explanation of the outcome that day and that the operation raises serious questions about the relationship between political decision-making and the operational decision-making of the army in Northern Ireland.When British Paratroopers shot dead 13 people at a civil rights march in Derry on January 30, 1972 it dealt a hammer blow to British government claims of neutrality and moral authority in dealing with the escalating violence in Northern Ireland. Existing historical accounts of Bloody Sunday treat the killings as the outcome of a more-or-less unified military anxiety at increasing disorder in Derry, combined with unexpected events on the day, presenting the killings as the outcome of essentially responsive actions by the British military. In so doing they lend support to the ‘cock-up’ theory that represents the killings as the outcome of a series of errors of interpretation and communication. This article provides an alternative interpretation of the political and military decision-making process, challenging key elements in the analysis in the existing literature. By contrast with existing accounts, it argues that the Bloody Sunday operation was a calculated plan devised at a very high level to stage a ma...

The Longest Negotiation: British Policy, IRA Strategy and the Making of the Northern Ireland Peace Settlement

This article offers a new analysis of the Northern Ireland peace settlement through an examination of the pivotal relationship between two key actors: the British state and the Provisional Republican movement that included Sinn Féin and the IRA. It traces the negotiating relationship between these key parties and argues that the ending of violent conflict in the 1990s can best be understood as the outcome of a long bargaining process between these two actors that was conducted both tacitly and explicitly over a span of more than two decades. It concludes that the development of a cooperative relationship between the British state and the Provisional leadership and the active coordination of British policy and republican strategy were the crucial elements in securing an end to violence in the 1990s.

Territoriality and Order in the North of Ireland

This article draws on the recent academic literature on territoriality and power to analyse territorial strategies for the maintenance of public order in the north of Ireland. It argues that these strategies were shaped decisively by the distinctive relationship between the informal internal ethnonational boundaries that were a central focus of Frank Wrights work and the external boundary of the Northern Ireland state. As a consequence, the ‘internal’ issue of policing was immediately and inextricably bound up with the outer boundary of the state, even at the level of everyday policing practices. It traces the way in which the state in Northern Ireland adopted particular territorial strategies to secure the external border and adapt to internal territorial unevenness from the outset. It argues that order was necessarily maintained through a limited recognition of the distinctive ethnonational character of particular areas within the state, and by distinctive territorial strategies for the maintenance of order in such areas. Internal unevenness in sovereign control strictly limited the possibilities for internal territorial homogenisation and hindered the related naturalisation of the external boundary and the state itself.This article draws on the recent academic literature on territoriality and power to analyse territorial strategies for the maintenance of public order in the north of Ireland. It argues that these strategies were shaped decisively by the distinctive relationship between the informal internal ethnonational boundaries that were a central focus of Frank Wrights work and the external boundary of the Northern Ireland state. As a consequence, the ‘internal’ issue of policing was immediately and inextricably bound up with the outer boundary of the state, even at the level of everyday policing practices. It traces the way in which the state in Northern Ireland adopted particular territorial strategies to secure the external border and adapt to internal territorial unevenness from the outset. It argues that order was necessarily maintained through a limited recognition of the distinctive ethnonational character of particular areas within the state, and by distinctive territorial strategies for the maintenance of ...

Nation and Neighbourhood: Nationalist Mobilisation and Local Solidarities in the North of Ireland

A central ambition and achievement of modern nationalism is to extend collective identifications beyond the local spaces of everyday life. Nationalists assert the primacy of the national as a scale of solidarity and identification which subsumes and transcends solidarity and identity at regional and local level. Nationalism achieves this despite the fact that the national scale usually extends far beyond the more intimate and densely connected spaces of everyday life. As Agnew puts it, ‘the spatial practices of everyday life have always maintained a local place specificity that defies sweeping up into national territorial containers.’1 Crucial to this achievement is the embedding of the national scale in the spaces of everyday life.

REFRAMING ONLINE: ULSTER LOYALISTS IMAGINE AN AMERICAN AUDIENCE

This article examines one initiative aimed at taking advantage of new technologies to build new transnational connections between a political movement in the “homeland” and a diaspora population in the United States. It analyzes an initiative by Ulster loyalists in Northern Ireland to mobilize Americans of Ulster Protestant descent in support of their cause, while simultaneously attempting to undermine the American support base of their Irish nationalist opponents. By contrast with Irish nationalists, Ulster loyalists have never had significant support networks in the United States. This attempt to mobilize a distant diaspora has met with little success. This article argues that loyalist understandings of their imagined audience in the United States are built on a misleading caricature of Irish-American support networks for Irish republicans. These misunderstandings direct loyalists towards a strategy that places undue weight on the role of homeland propaganda in converting shared ancestry into political ...This article examines one initiative aimed at taking advantage of new technologies to build new transnational connections between a political movement in the “homeland” and a diaspora population in the United States. It analyzes an initiative by Ulster loyalists in Northern Ireland to mobilize Americans of Ulster Protestant descent in support of their cause, while simultaneously attempting to undermine the American support base of their Irish nationalist opponents. By contrast with Irish nationalists, Ulster loyalists have never had significant support networks in the United States. This attempt to mobilize a distant diaspora has met with little success. This article argues that loyalist understandings of their imagined audience in the United States are built on a misleading caricature of Irish-American support networks for Irish republicans. These misunderstandings direct loyalists towards a strategy that places undue weight on the role of homeland propaganda in converting shared ancestry into political support for ethnic compatriots in the “homeland” to the neglect of more fundamental factors in the mobilization of transnational support networks. The article argues that new technologies are of minimal significance for the mobilization of transnational support networks on the basis of shared ancestry in the absence of other fundamental conditions for mobilization. However, the new technologies allow movements to learn more about distant and little-understood support pools. The reflexive character of online interaction is illustrated by the way in which at least some loyalists have begun to explore other bases for transnational co-operation.

Bounded by Violence: Institutionalizing Local Territories in the North of Ireland

This article analyzes the relationship between territoriality and organized violence through an examination of two relatively understudied aspects of the production and reproduction of informal territorial boundaries in situations of violent conflict. It looks first at the role of the state in the establishment, maintenance, and institutionalization of substate territories associated with challengers, outlining how these bounding processes are generated through interaction between the state and challengers, rather than primarily through the actions of challengers. Secondly, it explores the shaping force of geopolitical contexts on the everyday maintenance of informal boundaries in conflict situations. The argument is illustrated with examples from the most recent period of violent conflict in the north of Ireland, drawing on a range of primary sources, including official and private papers. The article argues that an analysis that gives due recognition to the central role of the state and the importance of the geopolitical context in the delineation and institutionalization of substate territories associated with armed challengers can help us to better understand the dynamics of organized violence.This article analyzes the relationship between territoriality and organized violence through an examination of two relatively understudied aspects of the production and reproduction of informal territorial boundaries in situations of violent conflict. It looks first at the role of the state in the establishment, maintenance, and institutionalization of substate territories associated with challengers, outlining how these bounding processes are generated through interaction between the state and challengers, rather than primarily through the actions of challengers. Secondly, it explores the shaping force of geopolitical contexts on the everyday maintenance of informal boundaries in conflict situations. The argument is illustrated with examples from the most recent period of violent conflict in the north of Ireland, drawing on a range of primary sources, including official and private papers. The article argues that an analysis that gives due recognition to the central role of the state and the importance o...

The role of an intermediary in back-channel negotiation: evidence from the Brendan Duddy papers

This article draws on the newly available private papers of Brendan Duddy, the key intermediary in contacts between the British government and the IRA between the early 1970s and the early 1990s when the IRA moved towards a permanent ceasefire and a negotiated settlement of the conflict. It draws too on extensive interviews with Duddy and other key participants in these contacts, and on newly available documents from the UK National Archives to identify some of the key dimensions to the role of intermediary in back-channel communication. It argues that these sources help us to better understand the complexity and ambiguity of the role of intermediary in sensitive covert negotiations, as well as shedding light on the extent to which an intermediary shapes communication between two parties rather than simply acting as a channel between them.

Armed activism as the enactment of a collective identity: the case of the Provisional IRA between 1969 and 1972

Abstract This paper argues that micro-mobilization into armed activism is strongly motivated by the enactment of an identity that people already have prior to their mobilization as a way to strongly assert and emphasize individual agency in the face of major changes in the political context. Empirically, it advocates that those who joined the Provisional IRA between 1969 and 1972 did so in order to respond to a need for action by a northern nationalist community that stemmed from a perceived, alleged or actual, sense of second-class citizenship. We suggest that the importance of identity rather than ideology can also help us to explain why IRA members and former members overwhelmingly accepted the compromise peace settlement of the 1990s despite the fact that core ideological goals had not been realized. We conclude by suggesting avenues for future research outside the Irish context.

Nationalism, Territory, and Organized Violence: Introduction to the Special Issue

Recent decades have seen significant advances in research on the relationship between nationalist ideology and organized violence. New scholarship has paid much closer attention to the microdynamics of violence, the strikingly uneven distribution of violence, the relationship between master cleavages and intimate local and personal struggles, and to process, history, and contingency. Nationalist ideology is understood to be bound up intimately with institutions and with everyday relationships at the local level. We introduce the contributions to this special issue, outlining the way in which they highlight the power of ideas, narratives, and microlevel solidarity in mobilization for violence and how they address the crucial importance of territoriality in linking ideas and action.