Abstract
The past is individual, it is collective, it is about looking back, it is about looking forward and sideways, it can create unity and it can create division, it concerns truth and it concerns construction. All these facets are key elements in the continuous discussion about the role of the past in Northern Ireland. This chapter presents a close reading of three reports on how to deal with division and the past after the Good Friday Agreement: ‘A shared future’ from 2005, ‘The Report of the Consultative Group on the Past’ from 2009, and the ‘Programme for Cohesion, Sharing and Integration’ from 2010. How are the past, present, and future conceptualised and linked in the documents and what is at stake in the different conceptualisations? The chapter discusses and compares the reports’ notions of identity and their proposals on how to prevent the turbulent past from engendering future division.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
- 1.
Paul Dixon has challenged this, arguing that the Good Friday Agreement is best characterised as an integrationist variant of power sharing (Dixon 2005, 365).
- 2.
- 3.
He particularly points to the challenges regarding the sacralising of place, the battle for the commemorative landscape and the hierarchy of victimhood that goes with commemoration, and a parallel process of forgetting ‘the less valuable’ dead (Graham 2011, 95–96).
- 4.
- 5.
Cf. Tony Blair’s speech at the final negotiations before the Good Friday Agreement on 7 April 1998: ‘A day like today is not a day for soundbites, we can leave those at home, but I feel the hand of history upon our shoulder with respect to this, I really do.’
Bibliography
Baumann, M. M. (2013). Critical Memory Studies and the Politics of Victimhood: Reassessing the Role of Victimhood Nationalism in Northern Ireland and South Africa. In T. Bonacker & C. Safferling (Eds.), Victims of International Crimes. An Interdisciplinary Discourse. The Hague: Asser Press.
Consultative Group on the Past. (2009). Report of the Consultative Group on the Past. Belfast: OFMDFM.
Deane, S. (1994). Wherever Green Is Read. In C. Brady (Ed.), Interpreting Irish History. Dublin: Irish Academic Press.
Dickens, C. (1994). A Tale of Two Cities. London: Penguin Books.
Dixon, P. (2005). Why the Good Friday Agreement in Northern Ireland Is Not Consociational. Political Quarterly, 76(3), 357–367.
Ganiel, G. (2010). Cohesion, Sharing, Integration: Northern Ireland Can Do Better. http://www.gladysganiel.com/victims/cohesion-sharing-and-integration-northern-ireland-can-do-better/. Accessed 5 Aug 2017.
Graham, B. (2011). Sharing Space? Geography and Politics in Post-conflict Northern Ireland. In P. Meusburger et al. (Eds.), Cultural Memories. Knowledge and Space (Vol. 4). Dordrecht: Springer.
Graham, B., & Nash, C. (2006). A Shared Future: Territoriality, Pluralism and Public Policy in Northern Ireland. Political Geography, 25, 253–278.
Hancock, L. (2012). Transitional Justice and the Consultative Group: Facing the Past or Forcing the Future? Ethnopolitics, 11(2), 204–228.
Hayward, K. (2014). Deliberative Democracy in Northern Ireland: Opportunities and Challenges for Consensus in a Consociational System. In J. Ugarizza & D. Caluwaerts (Eds.), Democratic Deliberation in Deeply Divided Societies: From Conflict to Common Ground. London/New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
House of Commons Northern Ireland Affairs Committee. (2009). The Report on the Consultative Group on the Past. Second Report of Session 2009–2010. London: The Stationary Office.
Hughes, J. (2007). Peace, Reconciliation and a Shared Future: A Policy Shift or More of the Same? Community Development Journal, 44, 23–37.
Hughes, J. (2011). Is Northern Ireland a Model for Reconciliation? LSE Workshop on State Reconstruction after Civil War. http://personal.lse.ac.uk/hughesj/images/NIModel.pdf. Accessed 4 Aug 2017.
Knox, I. (2011). Cohesion, Sharing and Integration in Northern Ireland. Environment and Planning C: Government and Policy, 29, 548–566.
Komarova, M. (2012). Imagining ‘A Shared Future’: Post-conflict Discourse on Peace-Building. In K. Hayward & C. O’Donnell (Eds.), Political Discourse and Conflict Resolution. Debating Peace in Northern Ireland. Oxon/New York: Routledge.
Lawther, C. (2011). Unionism, Truth Recovery and the Fearful Past. Irish Political Studies, 26(3), 361–382.
Lijphart, A. (1977). Democracy in Plural Societies: A Comparative Exploration. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Lundy, P. (2010). Commissioning the Past in Northern Ireland. Review of International Affairs, LX, 1138–1139.
McGarry, J., & O’Leary, B. (2009a). Power Shared After the Deaths of Thousands. In R. Taylor (Ed.), Consociational Theory. McGarry and O’Leary and the Northern Ireland Conflict. Oxon/New York: Routledge.
McGarry, J., & O’Leary, B. (2009b). Under Friendly and Less Friendly Fire. In R. Taylor (Ed.), Consociational Theory. McGarry and O’Leary and the Northern Ireland Conflict. Oxon/New York: Routledge.
McGrattan, C. (2009). ‘Order Out of Chaos’; The Politics of Transitional Justice. Politics, 29(3), 164–172.
McGrattan, C. (2012). Working Through the Past in Bosnia and Northern Ireland: Truth, Reconciliation and the Constraints of Consociationalism. Journal of Ethnopolitics and Memory Issues in Europe, 11(4), 103.
Northern Ireland Office. (2010). The Report of the Consultative Group on the Past. Belfast: HMSO.
OFMDFM. (2005). A Shared Future. Policy and Strategic Framework for Good Relations in Northern Ireland. Belfast: ODMDFM.
OFMDFM. (2010). Programme for Cohesion, Sharing and Integration, Consultation Document. Belfast: OFMDFM.
OFMDFM. (2013). Together: Building a United Community. Belfast: OFMDFM.
Rolston, B. (2010). Trying to Reach the Future Through the Past’: Murals and Memory in Northern Ireland. Crime, Media, Culture, 6(3), 285–307.
Ryan, S. (2010). Peacebuilding in Northern Ireland: The Past, Present and Future. Peace and Conflict Studies, 17(1), 71–100.
Simpson, K. (2013). Political Strategies of Engagement: Unionists and Dealing with the Past in Northern Ireland. British Politics, 8, 2–27.
Sontag, S. (1978). Illness as a Political Metaphor. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Taylor, R. (2006). The Belfast Agreement and the Politics of Consociationalism: A Critique. Political Quarterly, 71(2), 217–226.
Taylor, R. (Ed.). (2009). Consociational Theory. McGarry and O’Leary and the Northern Ireland Conflict. Oxon/New York: Routledge.
Taylor, R. (2013). Introduction. The Promise of Consociational Theory. In R. Taylor (Ed.), Consociational Theory. McGarry and O’Leary and the Northern Ireland Conflict. Oxon/New York: Routledge.
Todd, J., & Ruane, J. (2010). From ‘A Shared Future’ to ‘Cohesion, Sharing and Integration’: An analysis of Northern Ireland’s Policy Framework Documents. London: Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Rosland, S. (2019). Making Hope and History Rhyme? Dealing with Division and the Past in Northern Ireland After the Good Friday Agreement. In: Armstrong, C.I., Herbert, D., Mustad, J.E. (eds) The Legacy of the Good Friday Agreement. Palgrave Studies in Compromise after Conflict. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-91232-5_9
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-91232-5_9
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-91231-8
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-91232-5
eBook Packages: Political Science and International StudiesPolitical Science and International Studies (R0)