Theorising Civil Society Peacebuilding

The Practical Wisdom of Local Peace Practitioners in Northern Ireland, 1965–2015

Emily E. Stanton

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN:
  9780367496838
• eBook ISBN:
  9781000396546
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Irish History
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Using empirical qualitative research, this book conceptualises and demonstrates the value of local practical knowledge for peacebuilding in the context of Northern Ireland.

There are increasing calls to involve local people to ensure legitimacy, relevance, and sustainability when seeking to build peace and transform violent conflict. However, as peacebuilding becomes increasingly professionalised, this raises fundamental questions about whose knowledge matters for building peace and what kind of knowledge matters. Seeking to address these questions and to learn from applied practice, this book provides a qualitative empirical research study, investigating 40 practitioners active in conflict transformation at a grassroots level in Northern Ireland over 50 years. This research led not only to recapturing lost knowledge from practitioners, but also to a neglected 'virtue' – the Aristotelian concept of practical wisdom, phronesis. This book argues that phronesis has deepened our understanding of why 'local' practical knowledge is vitally important and calls for its global rediscovery as knowledge necessary for building sustainable peace.

This book will be of much interest to practioners and students in the fields of peacebuilding, conflict resolution, philosophy, and British and Irish politics.

1Introduction

In his seminal book, Building Peace: Sustainable Reconciliation in Divided Societies, John Paul Lederach (1997), a leading peacebuilding practitioner–academic, was one of the first in his field to begin to articulate a premise that in order for protracted social conflict to be transformed, peacebuilding initiatives need to involve multiple levels of society working across all lines of division. Since then, this understanding has gained significant traction within peacebuilding scholarly research, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) working in conflict areas, and those working to influence policy within post-conflict societies. A body of scholarly literature has begun to develop which focuses specifically on the necessity for, and impact of, ‘bottom up’ grassroots and civil society peacebuilding as an important contribution towards a more comprehensive, integrated, locally owned, and sustainable peace (Diamond and McDonald, 1996; Lederach, 1997; Fitzduff, 2002; Schirch, 2004; Zelizer and Rubenstein, 2009; Donais, 2009, 2012; Mitchell and Hancock, 2012; Odendaal, 2013; Zelizer, 2013). As a result, there is now a greater appreciation for the importance of embedding any negotiated peace agreement within a society that is likely to accept and support peace on the ground. In this respect, Northern Ireland has much to offer to illustrate or test this theory, since ‘bottom up’ initiatives to build peace have operated at the grassroots level and within civil society for more than 50 years despite and throughout years of protracted conflict and violence.

Attempting to provide background to the conflict in Northern Ireland is a daunting task. Unsurprisingly, both its cause and consequences are a source of dispute. They can be said to be traced back as early as 831 ce with the invasion of Vikings or as recently as 1968–1969 depending on where one chooses to start. Furthermore, it is not only the time frame that is a matter of dispute; the conflict’s very nature is similarly contested and considered to include multiple saliently divisive dimensions including those which are theological, economic, cultural, political, and ethnic (McGarry and O’Leary, 1995).

McMaster (1994), in exploring the roots of division between Catholic and Protestant communities in Northern Ireland, makes several key points, which offer a view into this complex and contradictory conflict narrative (pp. 3–20). McMaster writes that the arrival of Anglo-Normans in the 1100s came at the behest of the deposed Irish King Dermot MacMurrough and highlights that Henry II, then king of England, came to Ireland with Pope Adrian IV’s blessing, investing him with the right to rule Ireland. However, during the next several centuries, the desire to preserve the power base of the English Protestant church and state in a wider context of European power struggles played out in Ireland through the plantation of Ulster of 1609, the native uprising of 1641 and Cromwell’s reprisal, and the Williamite wars of the 1690s – often to the detriment of native Irish Catholic populations (ibid).

Penal Laws established after the Williamite wars and not fully repealed until 1829 institutionalised discrimination against Catholics, barring them from land ownership, freedom of worship, Catholic education, and the holding of public office. While some of these laws also adversely affected Presbyterians, McMaster argues that the discrimination of the Penal Laws for Catholics effectively served to create an association between Protestants, ascendency, and British rule (ibid., p. 11). Darby (1983) describes of the Penal Laws:

[t]‌heir main effects were to entrench the divide between Catholics and Protestants, to strengthen Irish Catholicism by adding a political component to it, and to drive underground some aspects of the Catholic Gaelic culture notably education and public worship.

(Darby, 1983, p. 16)

Political reforms that overturned the institutionalised discrimination were not to emerge until the late 1790s and after the Catholic Emancipation Act of 1829. Agitation against discrimination was not the sole domain of native Catholics. There was also disenchantment from Presbyterians who, although not as comprehensively, also suffered political discrimination as they were barred by the Penal Laws from holding public office. The cause for independence from Britain found common support in the 1790s – albeit a short-lived one – as a unifying issue for both radical Presbyterians and fellow Catholics. This alliance led to the forming of the Society of United Irishmen and the joining of forces in the rebellion of 1798. Its subsequent failure, however, ended such endeavours; judicial investigations of the rebellious Presbyterian clergy led to three hangings and seven imprisoned (Boyd cited in Darby, 1983, p. 16). The short-lived alliance was instead replaced by a re-aligned relationship between Presbyterians and the ruling Anglican Protestants (McMaster, 1994). However, tensions over land ownership and self-determination would continue. McMaster outlines that:

[T]‌he first half of the [19^th] century was dominated by Daniel O’Connell’s campaign for Catholic emancipation and for the repeal of the union…(t)he second was dominated by agrarian agitation and unrest and the demand for Home Rule.

(McMaster, 1994, p. 14)

All Ireland tensions were furthered by the economic prosperity of the north of the island as it benefited from an enhanced industrial relationship with Britain (Darby, 1983, p. 18). Darby suggests this served to further separate the southern from the northern parts of Ireland; for example, the potato famine of the 1840s had a much greater impact with far greater consequences in the former than the latter. Northern industrial prosperity was by and large controlled and of greatest benefit to Protestant communities (McKittrick and McVea, 2012, p. 2). As the 19th century drew to a close, increased pressure for ‘Home Rule’ for Ireland generated alarm among Protestant Unionists in Ulster who, according to authors McKittrick and McVea, viewed it as a threat to the union, with Britain fearing it would lead to Irish independence and an end to their ascendancy (p. 3). Two ‘Home Rule’ bills introduced in Britain during the early part of the 20th century were diverted by the onset of World War I but agitation both for and against the possibility of more political autonomy for Ireland, remained. For example, the Ulster Volunteer Force, a Protestant militia was formed in anticipation of having to defend the right to remain part of the union. Instead, their military training was redirected towards service in the British Army fighting in World War I – and is particularly associated with the Battle of the Somme of 1916.

In Ireland, with Home Rule put on hold, the Easter of 1916 saw a small group of Republicans in Dublin stage an armed rebellion against continued British rule. While quickly quelled, it was the public execution of its leaders – considered an overreaction by the British – that galvanised local support (McKittrick and McVea, 2012). The newly formed Irish Republican Army began an armed guerrilla campaign against the British state over the next several years that led to the eventual partition of the island of Ireland and the first Northern Ireland parliament elected in 1921. Northern Ireland was to include six of the nine traditional counties of the historical province of Ulster – divided so as to maintain a Protestant majority (Darby, 1983).

The newly formed Northern Ireland state was “born amid bloodshed and communal disorder” (Darby, 1983, p. 21) and, for the first few years, remained fractious. Protestant Unionists, two-thirds of the population at the time, became the majority against a Catholic minority. Politically, Unionism dominated Northern Ireland for the next 50 years and established a hegemonic grip in particular through gerrymandering and abolishing proportional representation in local councils. Economic deprivation was more acutely felt among Catholic communities who faced employment discrimination; for example, during the period of Unionist-dominated government, only 10% of the civil service was Catholic (McKittrick and McVea, 2012, p. 13). In addition to Nationalist views rejecting partition, discrimination in employment, housing and voting rights would form the bedrock of grievances Catholic communities held against the Unionist-controlled government of Northern Ireland. These fault lines would erupt in the early 1960s as discriminatory practices were highlighted and surfaced by civil rights activists advocating for social reform. Non-violent civil rights marches were opposed by Loyalist counter-protests and local police (predominately drawn from Protestant community) were accused of using excessive force to manage confrontations. Unionist politicians were divided among themselves on political reforms (ibid, pp. 48–49). As a result, a view was reinforced among many local Catholics that the state was unwilling to reform.

Turbulent communal unrest in 1969 saw British soldiers arrive to re-establish order. However, they would soon become protagonists in the conflict against a re-engaged Official Irish Republican Army (OIRA) and latterly the Provisional Republican Army’s (PIRA) armed campaign in the early 1970s. Loyalist paramilitaries became galvanised by the eruption of what they viewed as a ‘terrorist campaign’ and justified Loyalist violence as defensive protection of their communities. The protracted conflict would stretch on in low-intensity communal and ethnic violence over the next 25 years. Leaving a legacy of over 3,700 deaths (McKittrick and McVea, 2012) and over 47,000 injured from 1969 to 2003 (CAIN, 2018), the armed conflict was brought to an end following the ceasefires of armed combatants in 1994–1995 and political negotiations leading to the signing of the Good Frida...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Information
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of illustrations
• Acknowledgements
• List of abbreviations
• Prologue: episteme, techne but no phronesis
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Whose knowledge counts for peace?
• 3 What kind of knowledge matters for peace?
• 4 A history of applied phronesis?Peacebuilding in Northern Ireland from 1965 to 2015
• 5 Phronesis as an epistemology of practice
• 6 Using phronesis to progress peace
• 7 The phronetic lens: Value added for peace?
• 8 Taking local practice seriously?
• Appendices
• Index