Northern Ireland: The Reluctant Peace

Description

In this thoughtful and engaging book, Feargal Cochrane looks at Northern Ireland’s “Troubles” from the late 1960s to the present day. He explains why, a decade and a half after the peace process ended in political agreement in 1998, sectarian attitudes and violence continue to plague Northern Ireland today. Former members of the IRA now sit alongside their unionist adversaries in the Northern Ireland Assembly, but the region’s attitudes have been slow to change and recent years have even seen an upsurge in violence on both sides. In this book, Cochrane, who grew up a Catholic in Belfast in the ’70s and ’80s, explores how divisions between Catholics and Protestants became so entrenched, and reviews the thirty years of political violence in Northern Ireland—which killed over 3,500 people—leading up to the peace agreement. The book asks whether the peace process has actually delivered for the citizens of Northern Ireland, and what more needs to be done to enhance the current reluctant peace. CONTENTS LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ABBREVIATIONS AND ACRONYMS INTRODUCTION CHAPTER ONE. THE COLLISION OF RELIGION AND POLITICS, 1690–1920 CHAPTER TWO. WHY POLITICS FAILED AND VIOLENCE BEGAN, 1921–72 CHAPTER THREE. THE RATIONALITY OF WAR, 1972–74 CHAPTER FOUR. DIRECT RULE AND THE GROWTH OF INFORMAL POLITICS, 1974–90 CHAPTER FIVE. TALKING TO THE ENEMY, 1993–95 CHAPTER SIX. BRINGING THE OUTSIDE IN: THE INTERNATIONAL DIMENSION, 1995–98 CHAPTER SEVEN. THE INCOMPLETE AGREEMENT, 1998–2002 CHAPTER EIGHT. DELIVERY, DELIVERY, DELIVERY, 1999–2010 CHAPTER NINE. DISSENTING VOICES, 2010–12 CHAPTER NINE. DISSENTING VOICES, 2010–12 POSTSCRIPT NOTES BIBLIOGRAPHY INDEX