Right Wing Ireland

Building on the success of the first two editions, Politics in the Republic of Ireland continues to provide an authoritative introduction to all aspects of politics in the Irish Republic.

The declining role of the Church and its conservatism have left a vacuum in Irish politics. O'Connell assesses the likelihood that the vacuum will be filled by a new and shrill right-wing populism. Evidence from surveys and focus groups are presented

Essay from the year 2011 in the subject Politics - Region: Western Europe, grade: 70%, 1,5, Dublin City University, course: Introduction to Modern Ireland, language: English, abstract: Tom Garvin introduces his book “The Evolution of Irish Nationalist Politics” from 2005 with the following appraisal: “The political parties of the Irish Republic are somewhat exotic entities. The country’s party system, and its style of popular politics in general, are untypical of Western liberal democracies in many ways.” He is proved right when looking at the classical political model and Ireland’s party structure. The general political spectrum that “divides political ideologies on the basis of their beliefs” is not applicable to the Irish political landscape. One can neither find a clearly left-wing nor a genuine right-wing party. Instead, two big and nearly equal conservative parties prevail: Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil. For many years these parties dominate the Dáil winning together over 50% of the seats every election. Since their foundation in the early 20th century the parties share basically the same political platform and represent therefore just an alternative to each other. The Irish population constantly favoured centre-right politics and consequently other political camps were generally left by the roadside: in 2007, for instance, the Labour Party and the Green Party together won only 26 out of 166 seats. Another factor for Ireland’s flat political landscape is the lack of cleavages within the Irish society. Not only due to “exceptional ethnic and religious uniformity, [...] [based on] the role of the Catholic Church in social and political life” but also due to Ireland’s late industrialisation, traditional and homogeneous voting was and still is more influential than in other western democracies. The three factors, introduced above and explained in detail below, are not the exclusive reasons for Ireland’s unique political landscape. Instead, the whole party structure matured over the past 100 years. It is therefore important to regard the process as a whole, to better understand the evolution of the current situation.

Analyses the growing political influence of Sinn Féin and its place in the globally resurgent democratic left.

Delves into the internal politics and personalities that brought life to the Irish Socialist Republican Party. The political significance of the organisation led by James Connolly is viewed in both the international and national sphere. The legacy of theISRP has had an impact on the left wing and republican movements in Ireland for many decades.

The story of contemporary Ireland is inseparable from the story of the official republican movement, a story told here for the first time - from the clash between Catholic nationalist and socialist republicanism in the 1960s and '70s through the Workers' Party's eventual rejection of irredentism. A roll-call of influential personalities in the fields of politics, trade unionism and media - many still operating at the highest levels of Irish public life - passed though the ranks of this secretive movement, which never achieved its objectives but had a lasting influence on the landscape of Irish politics. 'A vibrant, balanced narrative' Diarmaid Ferriter, Irish Times Books of the Year 'An indispensable handbook' Maurice Hayes, Irish Times 'Hugely impressive' Irish Mail on Sunday 'Excellent' Sunday Business Post

The perfect gift for parents this Father’s Day: a beautiful, gut-wrenching memoir of Irish identity, fatherhood, and what we owe to the past. “A heartbreaking and redemptive book, written with courage and grace.” –J.D. Vance, author of Hillbilly Elegy “…a lovely little book.” –Ross Douthat, The New York Times The child of an Irish man and an Irish-American woman who split up before he was born, Michael Brendan Dougherty grew up with an acute sense of absence. He was raised in New Jersey by his hard-working single mother, who gave him a passion for Ireland, the land of her roots and the home of Michael's father. She put him to bed using little phrases in the Irish language, sang traditional songs, and filled their home with a romantic vision of a homeland over the horizon. Every few years, his father returned from Dublin for a visit, but those encounters were never long enough. Devastated by his father's departures, Michael eventually consoled himself by believing that fatherhood was best understood as a check in the mail. Wearied by the Irish kitsch of the 1990s, he began to reject his mother's Irish nationalism as a romantic myth. Years later, when Michael found out that he would soon be a father himself, he could no longer afford to be jaded; he would need to tell his daughter who she is and where she comes from. He immediately re-immersed himself in the biographies of firebrands like Patrick Pearse and studied the Irish language. And he decided to reconnect with the man who had left him behind, and the nation just over the horizon. He began writing letters to his father about what he remembered, missed, and longed for. Those letters would become this book. Along the way, Michael realized that his longings were shared by many Americans of every ethnicity and background. So many of us these days lack a clear sense of our cultural origins or even a vocabulary for expressing this lack--so we avoid talking about our roots altogether. As a result, the traditional sense of pride has started to feel foreign and dangerous; we've become great consumers of cultural kitsch, but useless conservators of our true history. In these deeply felt and fascinating letters, Dougherty goes beyond his family's story to share a fascinating meditation on the meaning of identity in America.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • SOON TO BE AN FX LIMITED SERIES STREAMING ON HULU • NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER • From the author of Empire of Pain—a stunning, intricate narrative about a notorious killing in Northern Ireland and its devastating repercussions. "Masked intruders dragged Jean McConville, a 38-year-old widow and mother of 10, from her Belfast home in 1972. In this meticulously reported book—as finely paced as a novel—Keefe uses McConville's murder as a prism to tell the history of the Troubles in Northern Ireland. Interviewing people on both sides of the conflict, he transforms the tragic damage and waste of the era into a searing, utterly gripping saga." —New York Times Book Review "Reads like a novel ... Keefe is ... a master of narrative nonfiction. . .An incredible story."—Rolling Stone A Best Book of the Year: The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, TIME, NPR, and more! Jean McConville's abduction was one of the most notorious episodes of the vicious conflict known as The Troubles. Everyone in the neighborhood knew the I.R.A. was responsible. But in a climate of fear and paranoia, no one would speak of it. In 2003, five years after an accord brought an uneasy peace to Northern Ireland, a set of human bones was discovered on a beach. McConville's children knew it was their mother when they were told a blue safety pin was attached to the dress--with so many kids, she had always kept it handy for diapers or ripped clothes. Patrick Radden Keefe's mesmerizing book on the bitter conflict in Northern Ireland and its aftermath uses the McConville case as a starting point for the tale of a society wracked by a violent guerrilla war, a war whose consequences have never been reckoned with. The brutal violence seared not only people like the McConville children, but also I.R.A. members embittered by a peace that fell far short of the goal of a united Ireland, and left them wondering whether the killings they committed were not justified acts of war, but simple murders. From radical and impetuous I.R.A. terrorists such as Dolours Price, who, when she was barely out of her teens, was already planting bombs in London and targeting informers for execution, to the ferocious I.R.A. mastermind known as The Dark, to the spy games and dirty schemes of the British Army, to Gerry Adams, who negotiated the peace but betrayed his hardcore comrades by denying his I.R.A. past--Say Nothing conjures a world of passion, betrayal, vengeance, and anguish.

From the Plantation of Ulster in the seventeenth century to the entry into peace talks in the late twentieth century the Northern Irish people have been engaged in conflict - Catholic against Protestant, Republican against Unionist. The traumas of violence in the Northern Ireland Troubles have cast a long shadow. For many years, this appeared to be an intractable conflict with no pathway out. Mass mobilisations of people and dramatic political crises punctuated a seemingly endless succession of bloodshed. When in the 1990s and early 21st century, peace was painfully built, it brought together unlikely rivals, making Northern Ireland a model for conflict resolution internationally. But disagreement about the future of the province remains, and for the first time in decades one can now seriously speak of a democratic end to the Union between Northern Ireland and Great Britain as a foreseeable possibility. The Northern Ireland problem remains a fundamental issue as the United Kingdom recasts its relationship with Europe and the world. In this completely revised edition of his Very Short Introduction Marc Mulholland explores the pivotal moments in Northern Irish history - the rise of republicanism in the 1800s, Home Rule and the civil rights movement, the growth of Sinn Fein and the provisional IRA, and the DUP, before bringing the story up to date, drawing on newly available memoirs by paramilitary militants to offer previously unexplored perspectives, as well as recent work on Nothern Irish gender relations. Mulholland also includes a new chapter on the state of affairs in 21st Century Northern Ireland, considering the question of Irish unity in the light of both Brexit and the approaching anniversary of the 1921 partition, and drawing new lessons for the future. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

The February 2020 general election in the Republic of Ireland sent shockwaves through the country’s political system. Sinn Féin, ahead of all other parties in terms of first preference votes, secured its place as a potential coalition partner, a role it has been playing in Northern Ireland since the start of the century. This result not only disrupted the two-party system, it also questioned a narrative that had cast Sinn Féin as an outlier in the political mainstream. However, the prospect of this all-Ireland, radical left and former Provisional IRA associate being in government raises many questions: what does the success of this all-Ireland party say about the prospect of reunification? Can a party over which the shadow of paramilitaries still lingers be fully trusted? And are the radical changes that the party advocates in areas such as housing, public health and taxation a compelling alternative? These are the questions that this book sets out to address.