Category: Irish terrorism
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A forgotten ‘suspect community’? Remembering the experiences of the Irish in Britain in the 1970s-80s
Two events this week have brought back the conflict in Northern Ireland to the attention of many, nearly twenty years after the Good Friday Agreement – the death of Sinn Fein’s Martin McGuinness and the terrorist attack at Westminster. Firstly McGuinness’ death demonstrated that while many had accepted the outcomes of the peace process and…
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New policy paper at History & Policy: Brexit and the history of policing the Irish border
This is just a quick note to let you all know that History and Policy have just published a policy paper by me on the history of policing the Irish border and the possible impact of Brexit upon how this border operates. It is based on this earlier blog post.
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Policing the Northern Irish border in the 1970s
With the debate about ‘Brexit’ heating up in the final week before the Referendum, there has been more and more debate about what would happen to the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. During the conflict in Northern Ireland, the British, Northern Irish and Irish authorities were also concerned about this border,…
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Appeal for primary source material on British/Irish left & female hunger strikers at Armagh 1980
Recently the Irish Times has started running a series of articles on the history of the 1980-81 hunger strikes in the lead up to a symposium being held on the subject in London in June 2016. One of the articles by Maria Power discussed the hunger strike undertaken by three republican women in Armagh Prison…
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Removing the barriers to deportation from the UK: Lord Carrington and counter-terrorist efforts in the early 1980s
A story has appeared in The Guardian today that the UK Appeals Court has ruled that it is legal for foreign convicted criminals to be deported without their chance to appeal from the United Kingdom. The right to appeal before deportation was originally enshrined in the Immigrants Appeals Act 1969 and was long considered a…
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Crime, Masculinity and the Post-War Era in Peaky Blinders and Boardwalk Empire
WARNING: CONTAINS POTENTIAL SPOILERS I have recently finished watching the entire five series of the HBO drama Boardwalk Empire, set in the 1920s in Atlantic City, New Jersey during the era of prohibition, spanning the decade until 1932. Earlier this year, I also watched both series of the UK drama Peaky Blinders, which was…
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The Prevention of Terrorism Acts and exclusion orders: 40 years since their introduction
This week it will be forty years since the introduction of the Prevention of Terrorism Act (Temporary Provisions) 1974, passed quickly in the aftermath of the Birmingham pub bombings in November 1974. The POTA was a broad piece of counter-terrorism legislation and many of the controversial elements of contemporary legislation concerning counter-terrorism and national security…
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Thatcher and the ANC as ‘terrorists’
In the many reflections on the life of Nelson Mandela, several commentators have pointed out that both Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan opposed sanctions being placed upon South Africa and that these neo-liberal warriors both regarded Mandela and the African National Congress (ANC) as ‘terrorists’. Some of Thatcher’s defenders have questioned this and using this…
New Historical Express 