A history of the political struggle in Northern Ireland from the loyalists' perspective, "based on a series of frank and chilling interviews, both with the paramilitary leaders who mapped out loyalist strategy over the years and the gunmen who carried out the bombings and killings."--Jacket.

Signs of War and Peace focuses on the role public display plays in the conflict in Northern Ireland. In doing so, it ranges freely over other times, places, and events that shed light on the social and political processes and dynamics involved in public display traditions, such as the Saint Patrick's Day parades in Boston, Massachusetts, and the popular spontaneous shrines to Lady Diana in London. The book is about the nature of public display, its relationships to class-based aesthetics, tradition, and popular style. It is also about contest, conflict, and civil war, and the ways the former are intimately intertwined with the latter, both in Northern Ireland and elsewhere throughout the world. The work is interdisciplinary, combining ethnographic, anthropological, folkloristic, and performance studies approaches. The manuscript benefits from large amount of field work in Ireland, and as a result contains both ethnographic data and revealing interviews with many people in Northern Ireland who have participated in the display events Santino seeks to analyze. The perspective that Santino offers helps to explain the intensity of the conflict as well as the origination, motivations, and justifications of bonfires, murals, commemorative displays, parades, etc. that symbolically articulate what he terms the 'dual master narratives' that underlie and in many ways help to articulate the parameters of that conflict.

The 1998 Belfast Agreement promised to release citizens of Northern Ireland from the grip of paramilitarism. However, almost a decade later, Loyalist paramilitaries were still on the battlefield. After the Peace examines the delayed business of Loyalist demilitarization and explains why it included more fits than starts in the decade since formal peace and how Loyalist paramilitary recalcitrance has affected everyday Loyalists. Drawing on interviews with current and former Loyalist paramilitary men, community workers, and government officials, Carolyn Gallaher charts the trenchant divisions that emerged during the run-up to peace and thwart demilitarization today. After the Peace demonstrates that some Loyalist paramilitary men want to rebuild their communities and join the political process. They pledge a break with violence and the criminality that sustained their struggle. Others vow not to surrender and refuse to set aside their guns. These units operate under a Loyalist banner but increasingly resemble criminal fiefdoms. In the wake of this internecine power struggle, demilitarization has all but stalled. Gallaher documents the battle for the heart of Loyalism in varied settings, from the attempt to define Ulster Scots as a language to deadly feuds between UVF, UDA, and LVF contingents. After the Peace brings the story of Loyalist paramilitaries up to date and sheds light on the residual violence that persists in the post-accord era.

Clearly and accessibly written, Dixon provides a lively introduction to the nature and politics of the Northern Ireland conflict and of successive attempts to resolve it. The comprehensively revised 2nd edition has been updated to take account of new information and an entirely new chapter has been added on implementing the Good Friday Agreement.

Alvin Jackson's Ireland 1798-1998 reappraises apparently rigid political divides and apparently decisive turning-points.

Selection of columns written for Hot press, 1987-1998.

Recalls young Doctor Fingal Flahertie O'Reilly's World War II service aboard the HMS Warspite, and the challenges he faces two decades later tending to the needs of the residents of Ballybucklebo.

Fifteen minutes before five o'clock on Good Friday, 1998, Senator George Mitchell was informed that his long and difficult quest for an Irish peace accord had succeeded--the Protestants and Catholics of Northern Ireland, and the governments of the Republic of Ireland and the United Kingdom, would sign the agreement. Now Mitchell, who served as independent chairman of the peace talks for the length of the process, tells us the inside story of the grueling road to this momentous accord. For more than two years, Mitchell, who was Senate majority leader under Presidents Bush and Clinton, labored to bring together parties whose mutual hostility--after decades of violence and mistrust--seemed insurmountable: Sinn Fein, represented by Gerry Adams; the Catholic moderates, led by John Hume; the majority Protestant party, headed by David Trimble; Ian Paisley's hard-line unionists; and, not least, the governments of the Republic of Ireland and the United Kingdom, headed by Bertie Ahern and Tony Blair. The world watched as the tense and dramatic process unfolded, sometimes teetering on the brink of failure. Here, for the first time, we are given a behind-the-scenes view of the principal players--the personalities who shaped the process--and of the contentious, at times vitriolic, proceedings. We learn how, as the deadline approached, extremist violence and factional intransigence almost drove the talks to collapse. And we witness the intensity of the final negotiating session, the interventions of Ahern and Blair, the late-night phone calls from President Clinton, a last-ditch attempt at disruption by Paisley, and ultimately an agreement that, despite subsequent inflammatory acts aimed at destroying it, has set Northern Ireland's future on track toward a more lasting peace.

Through an exploration of the dynamics of war and peace in Northern Ireland, this book sets out to uncover the true significance of the principles of democracy and imperialism, in order to chart the dangers which accompany their misapplication in political conflicts which threaten the world.

The ratification of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998 was the culmination of a lengthy and contentious peace process that involved the efforts of a committed team of political actors. In 2001, Marianne Elliott brought together a collection of essays by many of these pivotal figures in The Long Road to Peace in Northern Ireland, an invaluable resource for students, scholars, and politicians. Now Elliott, one of the most prominent chroniclers of Irish history, presents a fully updated edition with new essays commissioned to explore the events of the past five years. A period that saw successes such as the decommissioning of the Provisional IRA but also a rise in drug trafficking and organized crime, as a generation of men who have done nothing other than serve as paramilitaries are now finding their skills most valued as criminals. With contributions from U.S. Senator George J. Mitchell, Sir David Goodall, Jan Egeland, Lord Owen, and Peter Mandelsohn, the second edition of The Long Road to Peace in Northern Ireland is an illuminating record of the ongoing peace process—and its consequences—told by the people directly involved in its evolution.