IN DEFENSE OF PROPAGANDA: THE REPUBLICAN RESPONSE TO STATE

CREATED NARRATIVES WHICH SILENCED POLITICAL SPEECH DURING THE

NORTHERN IRISH CONFLICT, 1968-1998

A thesis presented to

The Honors Tutorial College

Ohio University

In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for Graduation from the Honors Tutorial College with a Degree of

Bachelor of Science in Journalism

By

Selina Nadeau

April 2017

1 This thesis is approved by

The Honors Tutorial College and the Department of Journalism

Dr. Aimee Edmondson Professor, Journalism Thesis Adviser

Dr. Bernhard Debatin Director of Studies, Journalism

Dr. Jeremy Webster Dean, Honors Tutorial College

2

Table of Contents 1. History 2. Literature Review 2.1. Reframing the Conflict 2.2.Scholarship about Terrorism in Northern Ireland 2.3.Media Coverage of the Conflict 3. Theoretical Frameworks 3.1.Media Theory 3.2.Theories of Ethnic Identity and Conflict 3.3.Colonialism 3.4.Direct rule 3.5.British Counterterrorism 4. Research Methods 5. Researching the Troubles 5.1.A student walks down the Falls Road 6. Media Censorship during the Troubles 7. Finding Meaning in the Posters from the Troubles 7.1.Claims of Abuse of State Power 7.1.1. Social, political or economic grievances 7.1.2. Criticism of Government Officials 7.1.3. Criticism of the police, army or security forces 7.1.4. Criticism of media or censorship of media 7.2.Calls for Peace 7.2.1. Calls for inclusive all-party peace talks 7.2.2. British withdrawal as the solution 7.3.Appeals to Rights, Freedom, or Liberty 7.3.1. Demands of the Civil Rights Movement 7.3.2. The Right to Self-Determination 7.3.3. Against Imprisonment and Internment without Trial 7.4.Calls for Justice or Legal Redress 7.4.1. Calls for Inquiry into Wrongful Death 7.5.Calls for Resistance or Civil Disobedience 7.6.Explanation of Findings 8. Conclusion 9. Glossary of Terms 10. Bilbiography

3 The day is May 12, 1981, just after 6 p.m. and the streets of West Belfast are alive with the roar of protest. People are running in the streets, yelling. Others are trying to get to safety as security forces in riot gear march among civilians periodically handcuffing people and hauling them away. An all too common sight in the streets of Belfast, young men, some barely older than 14, sprint about solo or in small groups with bricks, large stones and petrol bombs in their hands, occasionally hurling them in the direction of anyone wearing a uniform. The rioting increasing across Belfast, Derry and other cities in

Northern Ireland, as well as in the independent nation south of its somewhat contested border, has been going on for seven days since the death of republican leader, hunger strike organizer, and recently elected member of British Parliament, Bobby Sands.

Today, however, the frenzied people on the streets near the entrance to Divis Tower, an apartment building that lost its top two floors to British Army snipers and lookouts, have a new reason to be angry. News has just reached the largest Catholic neighborhood in

Belfast that IRA member Francis Hughes, a fellow hunger striker, has died after 59 days without food. Hughes and Sands were two of the many republican prisoners on hunger strike. This is the second hunger strike in as many years protesting the withholding by the

British government of special political status for people arrested because of their political involvement in the current conflict. The hunger strikes became a very visible form of self-violence, especially when the casualty count from the second hunger strike continued to rise. One young man, who looks no different from the other young men throwing stones, runs down the street toward the base of Divis Tower, throwing his head angrily up in the direction of the soldiers at the top. His pockets empty of the stones and bricks that most people were using as weapons, the young man brandishes an automatic weapon, a

4 gun likely a loan from the Irish National Liberation Army, an organization similar to the

Irish Republican Army to which he claims membership. The young man begins to fire wildly up at the post almost 200 feet above him. There is no indication that his bullets are reaching their target, or that they are even being noticed, at least until fire is returned. A hail of bullets hit the sidewalk, several of them becoming buried in the young man’s chest, causing him to fall to the ground. His wounds are severe, but he is eventually put into an ambulance, with the help of some of his family members, including his youngest brothers who have been experiencing the rioting for months and likely have thrown a few stones themselves. Getting through the rioting is difficult enough, but, as happened frequently during the worst of the violence in Northern Ireland, the ambulance is stopped, searched and made to wait for security forces and others before it can reach the hospital.

The young man dies inside the ambulance, the image of his bloodied clothes and angry, black machine gun still clutched by his crimson-stained hands the last his family would ever have.1

As the title of this thesis indicates, the subject of this original research might be discounted immediately, despite the “defense” that will be laid out in the following pages. Still, the goal of this research is to illuminate, with the help of scholars who have made similar attempts to circumvent a dominant narrative of the conflict, a largely unnoticed, but organized effort by a marginalized group to make their voices heard.

Trying to grasp the effect that the conflict had for the people who lived there is nearly

1 Megan Deirdre Roy, “Divis Flats: The Social and Political Implications of a Modern Housing Project in Belfast, Northern Ireland, 1968-1998,” Iowa Historical Review, (University of Iowa, 2007), 11. Details were added to illustrate, based on the account of this day told to the researcher during a conversation in Belfast in January 2017 with the victim’s brother, which will be summarized later in this thesis. The summary of the events of May 12, 1981, including the information gained from discussion in Belfast is accurate.

5 impossible, this researcher would argue, without visiting the streets. In my research, I have noticed a similar trend among scholars of this conflict. I suspect this trend is simply the result of timing—in the last several decades, it has been very safe to travel to

Northern Ireland, and staying in Belfast doesn’t feel like living in a conflict zone the way it might have throughout the 1970s. Yet, the immediacy of the conflict is jarring, not only because so many people alive today, many barely forty years old, remember the conflict’s bloodiest days, but also because the scars of the conflict are still visible on brick walls and the sides of buildings. People have kept the memory of the conflict alive, and they share it. It is for those reasons that so many scholars who have written about the conflict in Northern Ireland begin by explaining how they found this subject and how they came to learn about it. For the next several decades, some of the best sources of information on the conflict will be the living memories of those who experienced it, so it will continue to entice scholars to slip into first person as they try to grapple with the plethora of subjective information that reveals so much about a complicated subject. Clifford

Christians and James Carey articulated the benefits of cultural understanding in research, arguing that “the interpretative process is not mysterious flashes of lightning as much as intimate submersion into actual traditions, beliefs, languages, and practices.”2 So, this researcher will do the same, in a later section. First, I will briefly explain the aims and methods of this thesis.

2 Bonnie S. Brennen, Qualitative Research Methods for Media Studies (New York: Routledge, 2013), 22. Cites Clifford Christians and James Carey, “The logic and aims of qualitative research,” in Research methods in mass communication, ed. by Guido H. Stempel et al. (New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1989), 363.

6 The primary question driving this research asks what political messages can be interpreted from what the mainstream narrative of the Troubles3 defined as republican propaganda. A secondary question ponders whether the censorship of reporting about the

Troubles achieved the goals that the British government espoused when it tightened its grip on the media. Subsequent questions driving this research ponder the legitimacy of both the mainstream narrative of the conflict and the political content of the original documents to be analyzed, taking the social and political realities of the Troubles into account.

This thesis argues that the failure of the mass media to accurately cover the conflict was met by a sufficient supplementary response from republican political organizers who utilized alternative forms of communication. Specifically, this is a study of more than 3,000 posters that have been collected at the Linen Hall Library’s Troubled

Images collection in Belfast, Ireland. These posters are artifacts of the alternative communications that were circulated during the years of the conflict.

1. History

One cannot adequately study the Troubles without looking back at the history between Britain and Ireland that has led to the contestation of one small section of the

Irish island. Irish history is full of rebellion and argument and bloody struggles, the most famous of which was the 1916 Easter Rising Rebellion in Dublin. A group of rebels who called themselves the Irish Volunteers took to the streets, shooting British soldiers and

3 The Troubles is a name used to refer to the violence in Northern Ireland beginning in the late 1960s and largely ending in the late 1990s when the peace treaty was signed. Because the conflict has nationalistic, political, economic, and religious implications, but also because it does not fit cleanly into many categories used to define conflict, this name was assigned.

7 creating shooting posts in many of the major buildings in Dublin. More British security forces were called into Dublin to quash the rebellion, and after five days of violence, the rebellion was stopped and more than 3,500 people were arrested. Nearly 500 people had been killed, more than half of them civilians. Most of those arrested were almost immediately released, but of the 90 people who were sentenced to death, fifteen men, including the main leaders of the rebellion, were executed by firing squad in the courtyard of Kilmainham Gaol. The organizers were shot, a few at a time, over several days, and although the executions were intentionally carried out away from the view of any prisoners inside the jail, word quickly spread. Eamon De Valera, who sent dozens of letters from jail, telling the public about the executions in the courtyard, was responsible for the public outrage over the actions of the British. Despite being one of the main orchestrators of the rebellion, De Valera was spared execution, mainly because he was born in the United States. The British were concerned that too harsh a response to the

Easter Rising would spur more rebellion, and it turned out that they were right. The news of the executions sparked the Irish War of Independence, which lasted from 1919 to

1921, and eventually yielded a peace treaty that split Ireland along the border between the

Republic and Northern Ireland that still exists today, a division that came to be called partition.4

A civil war waged between people who opposed the treaty and people who supported it, causing a rift in Irish revolutionary forces. Men who fought side by side in the Easter Rising killed each other during the civil war that began in June of 1922 after leaders from the War of Independence signed the Anglo-Irish treaty that would give the

4 Richard English, Armed Struggle: The History of the IRA (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 3-8.

8 Republic of Ireland independence but would retain the North as part of the United

Kingdom. The civil war lasted almost eleven months and ended with the defeat of anti- treaty forces and the solidification of the Irish border that still exists today. The lives lost during the Irish Civil war were the first of thousands of lives that would be lost fighting over the border between Ireland and the UK. 5

The Troubles cost the lives of more than 3,000 people and sunk the country into a near state of emergency from the late 1960s until 1998 when the Belfast Peace

Agreement was signed. Despite signing a peace treaty, many of the factors that contributed to the violence during the Troubles still exist in Northern Ireland, which remains part of the UK. The memories of the conflict are also still fresh in the minds of those who experienced it, especially those who lost loved ones and are seeking justice.

The conflict began with protests by Northern Irish nationalists, a group of people who were mostly Catholic and in large part took issue with the partition of Ireland in

1921 that left Northern Ireland under the control of the United Kingdom. Moreover, nationalists took issue with the treatment that they received under a largely loyalist and

Protestant government. Many of them joined the nonviolent civil rights campaigns that started to gain traction in the mid-1960s. Organizations like the Northern Irish Civil

Rights Association (NICRA) and People’s Democracy, a student group, formed and began to hold demonstrations. Fearing violence from the now dormant Irish Republican

Army (IRA), an organization left behind from the many years of Irish protest that earned the Republic of Ireland its independence, loyalist paramilitary groups began to form, the two largest ones being the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) and the Ulster Defense

5 English, Armed Struggle, 35-36.

9 Association (UDA). Those groups, as well as the UK security forces in Northern Ireland, the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) began to clash with nationalists at those marches.

Hundreds of civilians, many of them unarmed Catholics, were shot dead by paramilitary members in the two decades following the establishment of the first groups.6

In the late sixties the violence started to ramp up with bombing campaigns from many groups, turning the streets of Belfast and Derry, two of Northern Ireland’s largest cities, into something resembling a war zone. Violence spread to other parts of Northern

Ireland, the Republic, other parts of the United Kingdom, and, to a lesser extent, mainland Europe. In 1971, after blaming the majority of violence on the IRA, and in an attempt to capture its members, the Stormont government (the government of Northern

Ireland) introduced internment, the ability granted to British troops to search, arrest and detain indefinitely, anyone suspected of being in a terrorist organization. The practice was primarily carried out in Catholic and nationalist areas. As the violence continued into 1972, which was the most violent year of the conflict, the Protestant-controlled government was dissolved and “direct rule” was implemented from London.7 Internment of mostly republicans as well as increased violence from British security forces and apparent collusion between loyalist paramilitaries and British security forces led to increased membership in what became known as the Provisional IRA (PIRA) and the violence continued, with intermittent ceasefires, until the signing of the Belfast

Agreement in 1998. Some violence continued, however, including the deadliest bomb

6 According to The Conflict Archive on the Internet (CAIN) “Index of Deaths from the conflict in Ireland,” of the 363 people killed by British Security forces, 303 of them were Catholics. The CAIN Web Service is maintained by Ulster University and is the most complete database known of record and reports about the Troubles. http://www.cain.ulst.ac.uk/sutton/chron/index.html. 7 This governmental change was forced into effect by the UK government with the Northern Ireland Temporary Provisions Act of 1972.

10 blast in the history of the conflict, which killed 29 people in a shopping area in Omagh in

2001.

Organizations like Community Administration for Justice (CAJ), Relatives for

Justice, Healing Through Remembering, and even Amnesty International have spent time on the reconciliation and peace process in Northern Ireland. It is still unclear if the

Belfast Agreement was a success, though it does seem certain that Northern Ireland is not in danger of falling back into the chaotic violence that characterized its streets for decades. Now people there and in the international community face questions about reconciling, remembering and healing, and creating a history of what the conflict was and what it means for the future of the Northern Irish people.

2. Literature Review

There is a wealth of literature about the conflict in Northern Ireland, including a great deal that was written well before the signing of the treaty to end the violence. Many authors have addressed the subjects that are addressed in this thesis and articulated many of the same criticisms of government repression, media censorship, reporting inadequacies, and the characterization of the republican movement. The articles being analyzed in this section were found through various searches in Articles Plus using the terms “Northern Ireland,” “terror,” and “media.”8 The following pages will address other authors’ arguments and summaries of the conflict. This review will be divided by subject matter.

8 The terms “terror” was searched with asterisks at the beginning and the end and the term “republican” was searched with an asterisk at the end so the search would include the various words which included those words as their root, including “counterterrorism,” “terrorism,” and “republicanism.”

11 2.1. Reframing the Conflict

The argument of this thesis is based on an alternative understanding of the key players in the conflict that contradicts a hegemonic narrative. The author arrived at the conclusion that such a reframing was necessary through detailed and critical study of the conflict and the literary, scholarly and artistic works that were produced from it. Other authors, however, have more masterfully explained the purpose and benefits of such a reframing. David Miller, a researcher in the Stirling Media Research Institute, gives an especially articulate explanation of the problematic understanding of the conflict, which largely ignored the impact of the British government’s terror-inducing actions. He focuses mainly on the vestigial inequalities from Northern Ireland’s colonial roots, arguing that it is still a colony of Great Britain. He notes that “most historians do refer to relations between Britain and Ireland as colonial for the years between the late medieval period and the eighteenth century…but after that colonialism as an explanation seems to vanish.”9 He critiques authors for ignoring the role of the British government in the conflict, referring to the British government as sovereign without questioning the legitimacy of such an ascription. Miller explains that Northern Ireland is different from other colonial struggles such as those in India or Algeria, mainly because it was Britain’s first colony, and there were some attempts to integrate Irish and British societies. For that reason, he argues that a theory of settler colonialism more accurately explains the conflict, though he warns against generalizations of the unionist population that ignore the heterogeneity of that group and disregard “the progressive potential of the Protestant

9 David Miller, Rethinking Northern Ireland, (New York: Longman, 1998), 3.

12 working class.”10 He also notes that writings critical of British imperialism have been criticized for presenting “a crude and conspiratorial conception of the interests of British imperialism.”11

Unionism, Miller notes has also been fundamentally misrepresented in scholarship.

He summarized scholarship about unionism’s homogeneity. Class consciousness among unionists is a primary focus of a great deal of scholarship on the conflict, much of it written, Miller says, by academics with backgrounds in unionism. His discussion of unionism is also influenced by discussion of constructed ethnic identities. He notes that in

“1968 as many as 20 percent of Northern Protestants still thought of themselves as Irish.

With the impact of the conflict from 1969 this declined to 8 percent in 1978 and 3 percent in 1986.”12 This author will discuss ethnic identity in more detail in the section that includes theoretical frameworks. The notion of identity construction is important to the arguments in this thesis, however, as this author argues that national and religious identity became the defining qualities in Northern Irish society and those qualities were integral to the construction of a terrorist identity, which was ascribed to many people.

2.2. Scholarship about Terrorism in Northern Ireland

Bill Rolston, an associate researcher at the University of Ulster’s Transnational

Justice Institute, argues that the space for analyzing state terrorism is very limited and only recently became available because of the work of other scholars who have analyzed violent state action and found that it is no different than the violence of other less

10 Ibid. 11 Ibid., 6. 12 John Whyte, Interpreting Northern Ireland, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990).

13 legitimate groups.13 Several authors describe the repressive, often discriminatory, and ultimately silencing effects that much of the British counter-terrorist policies had on the disproportionately affected republican and Catholic populations in Northern Ireland.

Mass communication researchers Colm Campbell and Ita Connoly, for example, note that

“the state’s response (‘repression’) may function as a stimulus to the mobilization of its violent challengers, leading to fresh terrorist response.”14 Colm Campbell, in another article, describes Northern Ireland’s transition from “political violence and terrorism” away from violence, equating the two, but portraying a nonviolent future that comes from them.15

Historian Susan K. Morrissey articulates the British government’s strategies in

Northern Ireland and its use in perpetuity to create a global narrative about terrorism.

Morrissey says:

Over the 19th century…the language and practices of (counter)terrorism also became a means to define (and undermine) adversaries, to delegitimize popular movements and protests, and to defend existing systems of privilege and power with ever more elaborate structures of policing and social control.16 Social anthropologist Jeffrey Sluka argues that a culture of terror existed within

“Catholic ghettos,” a term which could be used to describe most of the predominantly

Catholic or republican areas of Belfast and Derry. Sluka hints at the disproportionately limited access that republicans and Catholics had to legitimate platforms for political speech as well as economic opportunity and decent housing. He argues:

13 Bill Rolston, “‘An Effective Mask for Terror’: Democracy, Death Squads and Northern Ireland,” Crime, Law and Social Change, 44 (2005): 190. 14 Colm Campbell and Ita Connolly, “Making War on Terror? Global Lessons from Northern Ireland,” The Modern Law Review¸ 69 (2006) 936 15 Colm Campbell, “’Wars on Terror; and Vicarious Hegemons: The UK, International law and the Northern Ireland Conflict,” International and Comparative Law Quarterly, 54 (2005): 326. 16 Susan K. Morrissey, “Terrorism, Modernity and the Question of Origins” Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History, 12 (2011): 224.

14 The major battlegrounds of the war are the Catholic ghettos, and the people living in these communities are the primary victims. Unfortunately, their voices, views and experiences are rarely sought or heeded. On those rare occasions when they are heard, they are frequently dismissed as "republican propaganda."17 Sluka articulates the problems that arise from criminalizing an entire section of the population and attributing an identity to them that doesn’t entitle them to have a political voice. By combining the constructed narrative with censorship of the mass media, an entire segment of the population was effectively silenced, a silence that, for a long time, included the posters which this author argues are legitimate speech.

Many authors redefine their scope of who can be considered a terrorist, using it to describe the state as well as using the label for groups who operated outside of the law— meaning any group that was not directly and officially affiliated with or supported by the state—but used violence to advance state goals. Bill Rolston, for example, described the rise of loyalist paramilitary organizations, mentioned the UVF and the UDA, and added that “both engaged in terror for pro-state ends.”18 More explicitly, he calls “paramilitary groups involved in state-sponsored or state-tolerated terror against political opponents…death squads,” a term that is typically not used in democratic societies.

Rolston further articulates the British strategy for narrative creation and how effective it was at creating a justification for state-sponsored terrorism toward republican resistance.

Rolston, as part of his argument that terrorism is not, in fact, anathema to democracy, states that “there are times when democracies, no less than other forms of political rule, seek ‘maximum plausible deniability’... death squads operate in a clandestine manner so

17 Sluka, Death Squad, (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999), 104. 18 Rolston, “An effective mask for terror,” 190.

15 that their backers (usually governments) may plausibly deny to both domestic and a foreign audience that they are connected to death squads.”19 Rolston argues that the

British government used loyalist death squads as a cover for silencing dissent against the state, while maintaining no traceable connection to paramilitary activity.20

2.3. Media Coverage of the Conflict

Sarah Edge, in “Why Did They Kill Barney? Media, Northern Ireland and the

Riddle of Loyalist Terror,” explains how meaning is made and understood in the world of newspapers.21 She argues that the way newspapers presented the news was already shaped by the hegemonic narrative at the time, depending on which audience they were trying to appease. She includes a quote from media theorist Stuart Hall in her discussion of the meaning-making accomplished by rival newspapers, each of which catered to a loyalist and republican audience in Northern Ireland, respectively. As this is a journalistic thesis, the logic applies here as well. Hall says:

“In setting out, each day, to signify the world in terms of its most problematic events, the newspapers must always infer what is already known as a present or absent structure. ‘What is already known’ is not a set of neutral facts. It is a set of common sense constructions and ideological interpretations about the world, which hold society together at the level of everyday belief.”22 (The emphasis is Edge’s).

19 Ibid., 199. 20 For more on terrorism and Northern Ireland see: Kenneth Pennington and Orla Lynch, “Counterterrorism, Community Policing and the Flags Protests: An Examination of Police Perceptions of Northern Ireland’s Operation Dulcet,” Studies in Conflict & Terrorism 38 (2015); Matt Qvortrup, “T-Test for Terrorism: Did the Introduction of Proportional Representation Reduce the Terrorist Threat? A Time Series Case Study of Algeria and Northern Ireland,” Studies in Conflict & Terrorism 38 (2015); and Kevin Bean “Endings and Beginnings? Republicanism Since 1994,” Studies in Conflict and Terrorism 37 (2014). 21 Sarah Edge, “Why Did They Kill Barney? Media, Northern Ireland and the Riddle of Loyalist Terror,” European Journal of Communication, 1999, 93-4 (Cites Stuart Hall, “Encoding, decoding,” The Cultural Studies Reader, (London: Routledge, 1973), 183.) 22 Edge, “Why Did They Kill Barney?” 93-4.

16 Edge also explains how the media’s tacit compliance with government censorship facilitated the British strategy of narrative creation. Edge references war photographer

John Taylor’s 1991 book, War Photography: Realism in the British Press, arguing that

“complex murders are initially ‘presented as a bald fact’ and then situated as a ‘personal tragedy’ from which ‘the inter-relations which may not justify it but may make it comprehensible’ are omitted.”23 Edge explains how the use of family photos of the victims of terrorism is another part of a strategy of narrative creation that seeks to create an implicit but “powerful and emotive punctum.” She continues to denounce “journalistic practices which allow this punctum to sometimes override all other meanings, obscuring a material contextualization which can act upon these emotions and give them real sociopolitical purpose.”24 She describes a phenomenon that is opposite in method to the strategy used by the British government to demonize political acts as the acts of terrorists.

The effect, minimizing events that have political significance to mere personal tragedies, is the same. Edge does not argue for eradicating the journalistic practice of using family photos of victims of violence, but merely for more care to be taken by journalists not to separate the tragedy of that violence from its political origins and consequences by portraying deaths during the conflict as instances of random tragedy. The title of Edge’s article points to the futility of asking a question—why did they kill Barney?—that has an obvious answer in a society where the dominant narrative doesn’t allow that answer to be printed in the papers. Contrary the British government’s argument that acknowledging the political agenda of “the terrorists” would only encourage them to continue their violence, this author argues that labelling all republican political speech as terrorist

23 Ibid., 96. (Cites John Taylor, War Photography: Realism in the British Press (London: Routledge, 1991), 131.) 24 Edge, “Why Did they Kill Barney?”111.

17 propaganda, not only tramples on the right to speech, but also prolongs violence.

Sociologist Simon Cottle describes the counterterrorist strategy of media censorship in the UK as originating from a statement by Margaret Thatcher urging “democracies …to starve the terrorists and hijackers of the oxygen of publicity on which they depend.” He continues, citing research that contradicts that view, and definitively states that, with few exceptions, media coverage, though it may increase awareness of terrorist acts, does not increase the legitimacy of terrorists’ claims. He says that criticism of mass media platforms as patsies for terrorist propaganda machines is also entirely unsupported by evidence. Cottle concludes his criticism of British counterterrorism policy, and the echoes of that policy around the world, by saying:

As one reviews the literature it becomes shockingly clear that not a single study based on accepted social science research methods has established a cause-effect relationship between media coverage and the spread of terrorism.25 As several scholars have argued, the counterterrorist fight in the UK is not as straight forward as the mainstream narrative of the Troubles suggests. It is important to remember going forward that those scholars are arguing against a powerful narrative that has driven the direction of scholarship for decades since the conflict. Alex P. Schmid, a research fellow at The Hague’s International Centre for Counter-Terrorism and director of the

Terrorism Research Initiative, argues that “rather than treating aspects of terrorism merely as sub-categories of political violence, armed conflict, guerrilla warfare or insurgency, [academics] began to conceptualize it as something sui generis.”26 Describing terrorist violence as a unique form of violence makes it difficult for scholars and the

25 Simon Cottle and Celeste Michelle Condit (eds.), “Reporting the Troubles in Northern Ireland: Paradigms and Media Propaganda,” Critical Studies in Mass Communication 14 (1997), 284. 26 Alex P. Schmid, “The Literature on Terrorism,” The Routledge Handbook of Terrorism (London: Routledge, 2013), 457.

18 public as a whole to grapple with ascribing causes to it that have also been ascribed to more generic types of political violence. That dangerous tendency also makes it easier for new and unique counterterrorism policies to infringe on democratic principles like that ensures a free press.27

3. Theoretical Frameworks

This thesis argues that the Northern Irish conflict needs to be reframed as a colonial struggle and a civil rights struggle, and ultimately, a battle for political legitimacy despite a powerful narrative that would contradict the former two arguments.

The original research in this paper, the analysis of posters, is built on the theories of scholars from a variety of fields, whose conclusions about the conflict make the basis for the claims made by this author. Every stage of analysis of a conflict like the Troubles yields a plethora of subjective interpretations of the causes, effects, and overall meanings behind the strategies of the conflict’s actors. In order to make sense of the many areas of contention that must be addressed in order to discuss the complicated issues of political speech and state-sponsored narratives, the following pages will address the theories scholars have formulated through detailed study of this and similar conflicts.

The theoretical frameworks used for this research come from three broad disciplines: media studies, political science, and anthropology. The political and

27 For more about media coverage and the Troubles see Aogan Mulcahy “Claims-making and the Construction of Legitimacy: Press coverage of the 1981 Northern Irish Hunger strike,” Social Problems 42 (1995); Phil Ramsey, “Broadcasting to reflect ‘life and culture as we know it’: media policy, devolution and the case of Northern Ireland,” Media, Culture & Society 37 (2015); Graham Murdock, “Patrolling the Border: British Broadcasting and the Irish Question in the 1980s,” Journal of Communications 41 (1991); Gary Edgerton, “Quelling the ‘Oxygen of Publicity’: British Broadcasting and “The Troubles” During the Thatcher Years” Journal of Popular Culture 30 (1996); Jerry White “Place, Dialect, and Broadcasting in Irish,” Eire-Ireland 50 (2015); Neil Ferguson et al., “The IRA Apology of 2002 and Forgiveness in Northern Ireland’s Troubles: A Cross-National Study of Printed Media,” Journal of Peace Psychology 13 (2007); and Bill Rolston, The Media and Northern Ireland: Covering the Troubles, (London: MacMillan, 1991).

19 anthropological theoretical frameworks are broken down by subject below, but first, the author will explain the dominant theoretical knowledge on media and propaganda, which informs the original research in this study.

3.1. Media Theory

The analysis of media censorship and alternative forms of political communication is informed by the spiral of silence theory, which explains how mass media functions as a form of social control. Developed by Elisabeth Noelle-Neuman in

1974, who argued that mass communication’s “cumulation, ubiquity, and consonance combine to produce powerful effects on public opinion.” Spiral of silence theory explains how dominant opinions are expressed and reproduced by the mass media and those reproductions encourage people to share those opinions. Coercion by interpersonal as well as institutional sources reduces the number of people who express opinions contrary to the dominant ones, interestingly called the “deviant opinion.”28

The original research in this thesis is also informed by semiotics theory, which explains the use of signs and signifiers in the primary textual documents to be analyzed.

Semiotic theory, as articulated by the founding father of the theory, Ferdinand de

Saussure, explains how a sign, anything that represents something else, is constructed through the signifier and the signified. A signifier defines the physical characteristics of the sign, such as the letters in a word, or the physical lines of a drawing or poster. The signified is the idea that the signifier represents. The relationship between the two creates the sign. Semiotic theory is especially useful for “analyzing texts within culturally

28 Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann, “The Spiral of Silence: A Theory of Public Opinion,” Journal of Communication, 24 (1974).

20 significant social practices,” which is why it influences research about The Troubles. 29

The cultural climate of the Troubles was unique and needs to be taken into account in any interpretations of the texts produced in that period. “Researchers who draw on semiotics not only study the definitional meaning or denotation of signs but also consider the representative or connotative meanings.”30

Communication theorist and political scientist Harold Lasswell’s theories about propaganda, which he formulated in 1938 after studying the techniques used by the

Nazis, form the backbone of public knowledge about propaganda. In analyzing the so- called propaganda of the republican side, the researcher considered Lasswell’s widely- accepted theories of propaganda. Lasswell defines propaganda as “the control of opinion by significant symbols, or, to speak more concretely and less accurately by stories, rumors, reports, pictures and other forms of social communication.”31 Psychologist Roger

Brown expanded on Lasswell’s theories in 1958 by adding a distinction between propaganda and persuasion. He defined persuasion as “symbol manipulation designed to produce action in others.”32 Those definitions will be instrumental in a discussion of propaganda and its uses during conflict.33

Lasswell’s theories of propaganda, which communicate the power necessary for and resulting from methods of social control, should be kept in mind when reading this thesis, as the researcher kept them in mind when conducting the original research.

29 Brennen, Qualitative Research Methods, 196. 30 Ibid. 31 Harold Lasswell, Propaganda Technique in the World War (New York: University of Chicago Press, 1927) 9. Lasswell’s book was reprinted in 1938. 32 Roger Brown, Words and Things (Glencoe: The Free Press, 1958). 33 Werner J. Severin and James W. Tankard Jr., Communication Theories: Origins, methods, and uses (New York: Hastings House, 1979), 104.

21 3.2. Theories of Ethnic Identity and Conflict

To explain conflict between groups in the same society, the author will outline conflicting theories of ethnic identity. In Northern Ireland, identity contributed strongly to the social, political and economic consequences in people’s lives. The primary

Northern Irish combatant groups, as described before, strongly identified themselves by their political leanings, either republican and nationalist or unionist and loyalist, their ascribed homeland, Ireland, Ulster34, or Great Britain, and their religious beliefs, mainly

Catholic or Protestant.35 Those identities shaped societal interactions, political movements, and fundamentally shape the way the conflict is understood.

Theories of ethnic identity are varied, contested, and many of them overlap with one another. For the purposes of this research, the author uses three categories, or schools of thought, defined by international relations scholars: primordialist, instrumentalist, and constructivist. Each of those describes certain aspects of the Northern Irish conflict, though none of them describes actors in the conflict completely. Primordialist thinking stresses the “uniqueness and overriding importance of ethnic identity.”36 Primordialism views strong ethnic identity as inherently conflictual. Critics decry the assumption of static identities within a multi-ethnic society as a primary drawback of the primordialist approach to ethnic identity. Specific criticism of primordialist thinking with regard to

34 “Wars and Conflict: The Plantation of Ulster,” last modified September 18, 2014, http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/plantation/. Ulster was the name of one of the four provinces of Ireland, which divided the island in the 1700s, when English and Scottish Protestant settlers began to populate the lands which had been taken from the Irish. All but three counties (Donegal, Cavan, and Monaghan) which were part of the original province remained part of the UK when the North was partitioned. Those three counties, as well as the other 26 counties in the three other provinces (Connaught, Leinster, and Munster) remained in the Republic of Ireland when they gained independence. 35 See Glossary of Terms for complete definitions of those terms. 36 Lake and Rothchild, “Ethnic Fears and Global Engagement: The International Spread and Management of Ethnic Conflict,” Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation (California: University of California, 1987).

22 Northern Ireland comes from anthropologist Jeffrey A. Sluka, who explained in his book,

“Death Squad: the Anthropology of State Terror,” which is also cited above, the two

“political myths” spread by British and Unionist authorities as well as the mainstream media during and since the conflict:

“(1) that Loyalist violence is a defensive or retributive ‘reaction’ to the republican armed struggle to achieve a united Ireland; and (2) that the war in Northern Ireland is a sectarian conflict between Catholics and Protestants, marked by ‘tit for tat’ killings in which the British are a third ‘neutral party trying to keep the peace between them.’”37

Sluka regards the tendency to compare loyalist and republican violence to tribal violence is an intentional strategy by the British officials and Unionist leaders to disguise discriminatory assaults waged predominantly against Catholics. Furthermore, he calls the

British government’s claim to a third-party arbiter role keeping two warring “tribes” apart a false narrative that was reinforced by misleading information and incomplete reporting about the religion of the perpetrators of violence and about the religion of the victims.

The dominant narrative characterizes the conflict as sectarian, though Sluka argues, citing republican journalist Laura Friel, that such a primordialist narrative disguises what is “the bloody expression of a supremacist elite determined to protect its privilege.”38 Friel’s quote hearkens back to the claims of discrimination made by republican protestors in the late 1960s, most of whom made claims for equality in employment, voting and housing, rather than espousing the desire for a united Ireland—an often-cited cause of violence.39

Circulating posters, like painting murals takes the power to control speech out of the hands of the elite and puts it into the hands of grass-roots political organizers. It also

37 Sluka, Death Squad, 144. 38 Laura Friel, An Phoblacht/ Republican News, January 15, 1998. 39 Sluka, Death Squad, 132-149.

23 expands the range of ideas that circulate the political marketplace, minimizing elite control over narratives.

The instrumentalist approach to ethnic identity maintains that ethnic identity is a tool used by groups to reach social, political and economic goals. This approach gives identity almost no importance outside of its political significance. Reducing identity to a tool leaves it in the hands of elites to control, which led scholars, including Lake and

Rothchild, to articulate the causes of ethnic conflict as arising from “collective fears of the future.”40 Information failures, including myths about past violence as well as widespread fear, cultivated by elites or “ethnic entrepreneurs” about which group will attack the other first are the main causes of ethnic violence cited by instrumentalist thinkers.

The fear that attempts to increase personal security will elicit attacks from others who perceive defensive measures as offensive ones is called the security dilemma.

Explained by political scientist Barry R. Posen, the security dilemma is described as arising from a condition of anarchy, or the lack of any one sovereign ruler, which causes all major groups to be concerned for their security.41 Stuart Kaufman disagrees with that explanation of the security dilemma, however, arguing instead that the “pursuit of dominance” on both sides leads to insecurities. Furthermore, Kaufman states that the security dilemma brings about anarchy, rather than the other way around.42 Both explanations of the security dilemma allow elites the ability to capitalize on insecurities in order to facilitate ethnic conflict, as the instrumentalist approach describes.

40 Lake and Rothchild, “Ethnic Fears and Global Engagement,” 6. 41 Barry R. Posen, “The Security Dilemma and Ethnic Conflict,” Survival, 35 (1993): 28. 42 Stuart J. Kaufman, “Modern Hatreds: The Symbolic Politics of Ethnic War, (New York: Cornell University Press, (2001), 20.

24 According to theory, conflict is facilitated by elites abusing their social and political influence in pursuit of personal interests, even when the result is mass violence.

An important aspect of the conflict in Northern Ireland which can be explained using the instrumentalist approach is the desire to join the ranks of paramilitary organizations, particularly the IRA. The bloody path to independence for Ireland meant that the IRA was already perceived by many in Northern Irish society and abroad, as a terrorist organization, rather than the freedom fighters they claimed to be. The association of ethnic identities with what Lake and Rothchild call “fear of the future lived through the past,” set the stage for contentious, long-lasting conflict. In Northern Ireland, the theory would suggest that perceptions of the IRA and their loyalist counterparts were reinforced by elites to facilitate conflict. Instrumentalist theory would also argue that “ethnic entrepreneurs,” had a committed interest in recruiting paramilitary members through exaggeration of ethnic difference. Similar to primordialist theory, ethnic difference can be exploited by elites looking for material gains from conflict. Instrumentalist theory does not see ethnic differences as historically rooted, and instead places more power in the hands of elites who can control a narrative that fosters ethnic divisions. Removing the historical implications of ethnic divisions leave only more recent events available to be concocted into a narrative by elites. Posters are an effective response to that type of narrative control by elites, because they allow political organizers to immediately and visibly counter false narratives.

Constructivism maintains that ethnicity only exists within a relational context and can change according to the social interactions that produced it. A constructivist approach argues that social structures which produce conflict through everyday interactions over

25 time are the root cause of ethnic conflict. According to Donald Green and Rachel Seher, ethnic conflict is caused not by individuals, but by a system that fosters historically reinforced division among socially constructed ethnic groups.43 A social construction surrounding ethnic identity, the notion of homeland, ties into a discussion of the origins of ethnic conflict. The assertion of a homeland, though it may not be a physical place, can serve as the basis for claims by ethnic groups that it is their right to defend what is theirs.

Rogers Brubaker articulates the usefulness of a constructed homeland for a minority group in a new nationalizing state. Cultivation of homeland politics provides ammunition for minority groups to fight any perceived nationalizing efforts of a majority ethnic group in that state which might harm the minority. Brubaker even notes that “in many cases their ‘groupness’ is more a political project than a social fact.”44 Brubaker questions the unity of any group that uses nationalist goals as a means of social integration. Proponents of a United Ireland used echoes of homeland politics to garner support from the many

Irish immigrants living around the world. Rhetoric purporting a united Ireland as the true homeland of the Irish people was useful in the fight against what many Irish people saw as discrimination masquerading as British nationalism.

Understanding conflict as being produced and reinforced by the social system means recognizing that the same divisions that start conflict also prolong it. John

Chipman, a professor at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, writes: “one of the great cruelties of ethnic conflict is that everyone is labeled a combatant—by the

43 Donald Green and Rachel Seher, “What Role Does Prejudice Play in Ethnic Conflict?” Annual Review of Political Science, 6 (2003): 521. 44 Rogers Brubaker, “National Minorities, Nationalizing States, and External National Homelands in the New Europe,” Daedalus (1995): 108.

26 identity they possess—even if they are not.”45 In the context of the Northern Irish conflict, the tendency to assign culpability for violence based on ethnic or religious identities contributed to the three-decade duration of the conflict. American journalist

John Conroy summed up his assessment of the plight of republicans, Catholics and Irish people living under British rule, who he said “suffered both from and for [the

IRA…British soldiers] sniped at and bombed by the IRA in civilian clothes, which, having done its worst, melted back into the landscape, they tended to believe that all civilians were enemies.”46 The media coverage during the Troubles is an important aspect of the social climate that would have formed the ethnic identities in society. Mass censorship had a powerful effect on the social environment that contributed to the conflict.

3.3. Colonialism

The Northern Irish conflict cannot be analyzed without first considering the colonial roots of Great Britain’s presence in Ireland. Theories of colonial and postcolonial societies accurately explain the inequality between the two main ethnic groups in Northern Ireland that became the primary basis for the republican civil rights claims of the late 1960s. Donald L. Horowitz explains the unequal distribution of resources and power between colonized groups in society as “differential modernization.”

The phenomenon described how the success and failure of different ethnic groups in post-colonial societies was largely based on the proximity of those groups to “colonial

45Lake and Rothchild, “Ethnic Fears,” 7. 46 John Conroy, Belfast Diary: War as a Way of Life, (Boston: Beacon Press, 1987), 22. Quoted from Historian George Dangerfield’s The Damnable Question, (Little, Brown & Company, 1976).

27 capital.”47 The inequalities of the colonial period are persistent, and many scholars have argued, were codified in the form of official government policy. Horowitz discusses specific colonial policies that encouraged “the employment of certain groups for colonial administrative purposes.”48 The vestiges of employment inequality during the colonial period in Ireland persisted in the form of disproportionate numbers of unionist leaders in the Stormont government.49 Kevin Toolis notes, after talking with the family of a deceased IRA member, that joining the paramilitaries was the only available job for some

Irishmen, adding that there was a “stereotype of Republicans as nihilistic unemployed bombers.”50

Discriminatory treatment toward republicans and Catholics was more explicitly articulated by General Sir Frank Kitson, who commanded British troops in Belfast from

1970 to 1972, when he said: “law should be used as just another weapon in the government’s arsenal, and in this case it becomes little more than a propaganda cover for the disposal of unwanted members of the public.”51 Kitson’s statement is a textbook example of mistreatment by an imperial power using the law as a tool to normalize discrimination rooted in colonial injustice, but it also calls for the use of propaganda, which the government would later condemn the republican movement for using to circulate their message. Kitson’s philosophy on protecting state interests at the expense of

47 Horowitz, “Group Comparison and Sources of Conflict,” Ethnic Groups in Conflict, 151. 48 Ibid, 157. 49 Tim Pat Coogan, The Troubles: Ireland’s Ordeal 1966-1996 and the Search for Peace (Boulder, CO: Roberts Rinehart Publishers, 1996), 32. Stormont was the name of the government building where the Northern Ireland government was housed after partition until the start of the Troubles. It became synonymous with majority Unionist rule before being dissolved by the British Government in favor of direct rule. 50 Kevin Toolis, Rebel Hearts: Journeys Within the IRA’s Soul, (New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 1995), 39. 51 Mark McGovern, “State violence and the colonial roots of collusion in Northern Ireland,” Race & Class, 5 (2015), 15.

28 due process of law is described by Mark McGovern as becoming the basis of the British counterinsurgency policy.52

Kitson’s statements also accurately represent the theory of lawfare, originally explained by John L. Comaroff as “the effort to conquer and control indigenous peoples by the coercive use of legal means.”53 Comaroff’s theory describes a systematic, often incremental, destruction of the legal rights of people in certain ethnic groups who are typically already in a marginalized position. The perpetuation of legally questionable policies that marginalize certain groups can be seen in the implementation of search, seizure and internment policies in predominantly Catholic areas of Belfast. Journalist Tim

Pat Coogan describes the implementation of internment:

The names included people who had been interned previously, or had been active in the IRA decades earlier, but who, despite Republican sympathies, were no longer active. They also included people who had never been in the IRA, including Ivan Barr, chairman of the [the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association] NICRA executive and Michael Farrell, [one of the founders of People’s Democracy]54. What they did not include was a single loyalist. Although the UVF had begun the killing and bombing, this organization was left untouched, as were other violent Loyalist satellite organizations such as Tara, the Shankill Defenders Association and the Ulster Protestant Volunteers. It is known that Faulkner was urged by the British to include a few Protestants in the trawl but he refused. The list was so out of date that 104 people had to be released within forty- eight hours.55 Coogan went on to describe the accuracy of such rounds of arrests, noting that officers would often arrest the wrong man, even from the name on their list, but by the time their mistake was realized, the men they arrested had experience horrific torture.

52 For more on General Frank Kitson’s connection to and influence on British counterterrorism policies, see Bill Kelleher, “Ambivalence, Modernity and the State of Terror in Northern Ireland,” Political and Legal Anthropology Review 17 (1991). 53 John L. Comaroff, “Colonialism, Culture and the Law: a Forward” Law and Social Enquiry, (2001): 306. 54 Coogan, The Troubles, 67. 55Ibid., 126.

29 Investigations into allegations of collusion between British forces and loyalist paramilitaries have been common since the end of the conflict, including the Stevens

Inquiry and the Cory Collusion report, both of which began in 2003, and Desmond de

Silva’s investigation into the killing of lawyer Pat Finucane in 2012. The Stevens Inquiry was intended to investigate the method of the RUC and the Police Service of Northern

Ireland (PSNI) as well as investigating specifically the deaths of Patrick Finucane and

Brian Adam Lambert, and the involvement of William Alfred Stobie, an Ulster Defense

Association (UDA) member who was arrested for both of their murders. Finucane worked as a solicitor for several republican clients, including several internees who were killed by the Ulster Freedom Fighters on February 12, 1989. He was shot 14 times in front of his wife and three children inside his home. Brian Adam Lambert was a young loyalist student, who authorities believed was mistakenly killed as part of retribution by loyalist paramilitaries for a bombing in Enniskillen, near the border. The Stevens Inquiry decided that the evidence was not substantial enough to prosecute in either case and

William Alfred Stobie was ultimately set free because of lack of evidence, only to be killed shortly after by another loyalist paramilitary organization. The Cory Collusion

Inquiry was the follow up to the Stevens Inquiry, and was spearheaded by retired

Canadian Supreme Court Justice Steven Cory.56 Although inquiries throughout the decades have shed some light on collusion between the government and paramilitaries, many, especially in republican areas say justice has not been served.57 Mark McGovern concludes his discussion of collusion and its colonial past, warning that it has a direct

56 Committee on the Administration of Justice, “The Apparatus of Impunity? Human rights violations and the Northern Ireland Conflict: a narrative of official limitations on post-Agreement investigative mechanisms,” (Belfast: Queen’s University Belfast, 2015.) 57 “Collusion between Security Forces and Paramilitaries,” last modified August 12, 2016, http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/issues/collusion/

30 connection to the imperial British policies practiced during the Troubles. The British government’s collusion policy, especially as it was emboldened by emergency measures during the Troubles, was informed by the same “doctrine of necessity” that allowed state agents to act with impunity for years.58 Colonial policies, as mentioned above became the backbone of future policies that contributed to the unequal society that spawned the republican civil rights movement. The continuation of those policies in the face of civil rights claims contributed to the rise of poster circulation.

3.4. Direct Rule

The institution of direct rule from London in March 1972 marked the start of a shift in the legal model of Northern Ireland.59 British officials quickly instituted authoritarian measures to control the republican population, which they perceived as getting out of control. Mark R. Beissinger notes the often misunderstood power of ethnic nationalism as a democratizing force.60 He posits that in the past, ethnic nationalism was beneficial to a democracy specifically in fights against foreign power. He even notes that democratizing governments that show favoritism to a majority ethnic group will continue to see democratizing forces prevail. He argues that even disadvantaged minority populations in democratizing societies may be able to take advantage of democratizing forces to have their concerns addressed by the government. Problems arise with ethnic nationalism when democratization is overcome by authoritarian pressures and private interests of elites in society, or when nationalistic forces in one country yield different

58 McGovern, “State violence and the colonial roots,” 1-17. 59 Richard English, Armed Struggle: The History of the IRA (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 155. 60 Mark R. Beissinger, “A New Look at Ethnicity and Democratization,” Journal of Democracy, 3 (2008): 85-96.

31 goals for different groups. In the case of Northern Ireland, direct rule created a new structure for the law that was extremely restrictive on the rights of the Catholic minority.

Direct rule ushered in the new era which gave soldiers increased discretion to search, seize and arrest, which they did, as described above, mostly in Catholic areas, with the protection of British law. Direct rule led to increased involvement in the conflict by

British officials, which contributed to claims from republican organizers of imperialist discriminatory policies. Official and unofficial censorship coming from the British government were increasingly powerful under the direct rule government, making the alternative response in the form of posters which primarily criticized the British government almost inevitable.

3.5. British Counterterrorism

The “war on terror,” as it has come to be called in recent decades, has a rhetorical and political history that is rarely mentioned in mainstream debates about terrorism. The word “terrorist” was originally used in English by Edmund Burke in Reflections of the

Revolution in France in 1790 where he referred to the impending reign of terror that would follow an increase in democracy.61 A strict conservative, Burke rejected outright popular sovereignty and democratic reform. In 2008, Isaac Land used Burke’s anti- revolutionary description of terrorism to discuss the dehumanization of terrorists using derogatory terms like “cockroach” and “thug.” Pirates were also called terrorists and maligned as “the enemies of society.”62 Land notes the transformation of the term, describing its connection to colonial policies, and its increased use to malign dissenters as

61 Edmund Burke, “Reflections on the Revolution in France” 1790, 27. Text is public record. 62 Isaac Land, Enemies of Humanity: The Nineteenth Century War on Terrorism (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2008), 6.

32 “barbarians, fanatical minorities, or threats to the value of civilization itself.”63 Historian

Susan K. Morrissey applauds Land’s analysis for showing how “the language and practices of counter-terrorism became a means to define (and undermine) adversaries, to delegitimize popular movements and protest, and to defend existing systems of privilege and power with ever more elaborate structures of policing and social control.”64

Didier Bigo and Emmanuel-Pierre Guittet address whether the “special, exceptional and derogatory measures,”65 mainly those introduced in the Prevention of

Terrorism Acts constituted an appropriate response to what they perceived as a credible terrorist threat. The short answer is no. After initially noting the difficulty of translating colonial policies of counterinsurgency into legitimate democratic policies, the authors argue that the failed policies, especially stop-and-search policies, introduced by the

British government further alienated the Catholic community and likely prolonged the conflict. The specific governmental actions the authors mention as causing problems were “undercover operations, deceptive propaganda, and collusion with loyalist death squads [which they claim] further increased the Catholic community’s feelings of alienation and served to radicalize both their demands and their strategies of action.”66

The authors also argue that the British mishandling of the conflict added to the perception held by UK citizens of Northern Ireland’s Irish Catholic population, which the authors claim “became a suspect community.”67 The myth that all republicans or all Catholics were violent members of the IRA was reinforced in the minds of Brits and non-Irish

63 Morrissey, “Terrorism, Modernity and the Question of Origins,” 224. 64 Ibid., 224. 65 Didier Bigo and Emmanuel-Pierre Guittet, “Northern Ireland as a metaphor: Exception, suspicion, and radicalization in the ‘war on terror,’” Security Dialogue 42, (2011): 483. 66 Ibid., 484. 67 Ibid., 486.

33 residents of Northern Ireland by the actions carried out in the spirit of the Prevention of

Terrorism Acts. When individuals living in Belfast were interviewed shortly after the implementation of the UK’s anti-terrorist policies, their responses indicated that the policy was affecting citizens’ acceptance of violent stereotypes. A Protestant man, when interviewed, referred to all Catholics as “terrorists,” because at least half of them were known to support Sinn Fein, which was still connected to the IRA and working as the political wing of the republican movement.68 Authorities, who, by that time, had an extremely high degree of discretion regarding arrests, detainment, and search and seizure stigmatized Irish Catholic republicans as an enemy who should have been under constant suspicion.69 That stigmatization explains the response in republican posters aiming to counter a narrative which portrayed ideological republicans as a terrorist threat.

4. Research Methods

The forthcoming research will be an analysis of political rhetoric and its role in conflict. The original research in this thesis will be a textual analysis of the posters in

Linen Hall Library’s Troubled Images collection.

The researcher will conduct a qualitative textual analysis of primary texts as the bulk of this original research. Scholars trace the birth of textual analysis to Siegfried

Kracauer’s The Challenge of Qualitative Content Analysis, wherein he critiqued content analysis for relying too much on the information gained by counting the number of times a word was repeated in a document, arguing that it often yielded “inaccurate analysis.”70

68 David Herbert, “Shifting Securities in Northern Ireland: ‘Terror’ and ‘the Troubles’ in global media and local memory,” European Journal of Cultural Studies: 352. 69 Bigo and Guittet, “Northern Ireland as a metaphor.” 70 Siegfried Kracauer, “The challenge of qualitative content analysis,” Public Opinion Quarterly 16 (1952-

34 He presented a more qualitative approach to analyzing a text which he called textual analysis. Textual analysis, in this case, is heavily influenced by semiotic theory, which involves the analysis of a message’s content combined with the context in which it was produced to fully explain the meaning of messages.

Text is used in the broadest sense of the word as it is defined for qualitative textual analysis. One such broad definition was given by cultural theorist Stuart Hall who defined a text as “literary and visual constructs, employing symbolic means shaped by rules, conventions, and traditions intrinsic to the use of language in its widest sense.”71

Qualitative textual analysis was selected as the method of research because of the nuanced nature of the conflict. Cultural context is important to understanding the motives and meanings communicated by the actors in the Troubles. Bonnie Brennen used textual analysis to study the denotative meaning of reporting about Thanksgiving over 100 years in order to determine how coverage changed over that period. Through in-depth qualitative textual analysis, she was able to draw conclusions about certain shifts in public opinion. For example, she concluded that attitudes toward homeless, sick, incarcerated and disabled people had gotten more negative as the years went by, despite the number of people in those categories increasing. She arrived at that conclusion by analyzing not only the text, but also by considering social trends and attitudes at the time of publication.

The main method was a close reading of every text in the collection to find meaning, including the latent meanings, as the author interpreted them based on the context of their creation. The author reviewed all of the poster images digitized on a CD-

53), 631-642. 71 Brennen, Qualitative Research Methods, 193.

35 Topics Map

Self- References to determination Historical for the Irish Injustices Endured “25 Years is too by the Irish long” (against people occupation)

Calls for Voting/ Rights Mandates/ a Bill of Claims Rights Will of the Demilitarize majority Now! Against employment Civil Rights discrimination Right to Criticism of Fair soldiers/police/ Housing security forces Freedom Calls for of Marches/ Movement Demonstrations Claims of Abuse of Irish State Power Criticism of language Censorship Investment Calls for Civil in cultivating Disobedience Criticism of Unionist Irish culture Majority in Stormont Government Boycotts, “Money talks” Buy Irish, Boycott Against “British British Terror” and harassment/collusion

36 Topics Map Continued

End Oppressive British Rule Calls for All-party Power sharing inclusive talks/ agreements negotiations Calls for Peace No negotiations while under duress (internment) “Concentration Camps” References to other injustices e.g. Mandela End “legal” internment Calls to end Calls for injustice Justice everywhere

Calls for Inquiry Economic Health/ into deaths Survival hospital cuts

This table was created by the author and was split over two pages to improve readability. Some of the topics relate to one another, as the arrows indicate. Arrows point in the direction of topics that are related to the topic where the arrow originated. Several of the types of political speech found pertain to more than one category, as indicated by arrows from multiple sections. There are certainly more relationships between types of political speech and specific examples of political speech than this diagram can illustrate.

37 ROM and noted several categories of speech beginning to emerge. After reviewing

3,000+ images, the author created a diagram of various categories of speech that were found in the poster collection. That diagram is reproduced here; see figure on pages 36 and 37. Specific examples of representative posters within these distinct categories will be described, and some poster images will be included in later pages.

The texts analyzed were the posters in the Linen Hall Library’s Troubled Images

Collection, which includes digitized copies of posters and letters from the conflict. The collection housed in Linen Hall Library is unique. Even library staffers are unsure about the origins of some of the posters in the collection, which, they maintain, was vital to the inclusivity of the collection. Most posters arrived at the library via staffers who were instructed to bring in any political document they found or were given. Some posters were dropped off in the middle of the night to be found the next morning by library staff, a welcome discovery by staffers who did not want the fear of being questioned about the material to deter people from contributing to the collection. That policy explains the lack of dates, sources, and other information for many of the posters, as well as the remarkable size of the collection.72 The conclusions formed after viewing all of the primary documents are informed by the context of said documents as well as the theoretical frameworks that were applied. It is important to note that subjectivity has a part to play in qualitative textual analysis. That is obvious given the necessity in textual analysis research of searching for both manifest meanings, the meanings that can be easily

72 This information was gained from speaking with library staff, and from a tour of the library in 2013. Word of the collection being started at Linen Hall spread around Belfast. The library tour guide explained that loyalists and republicans alike respected the effort to collect the images and posters from the conflict, which explains the late-night drop-offs: revealing support for either cause on the streets of Belfast could very likely result in death. Still, the collection remained independent and inclusive and continued to grow in size.

38 understood on the surface, and latent meanings, those that require a deeper understanding of the context in which the meaning is being created. Interpreting latent meanings require more than just superficial analysis of a text, or specifically in this case, a poster. Besides being influenced by semiotic theory, this research is influenced by other researcher’s use of reflexivity. Specifically, the author relied on Clifford Geertz’ theories about reflexivity, which the author uses to frame her perspective on the conflict. In his article published in 1972, Geertz uses a first person perspective to describe a raid of a cockfight he and his wife were observing while conducting ethnographic research in Bali. Through recounting the events of the raid and his interactions with locals following the raid,

Geertz gives a fuller understanding of the cultural subtleties of Balinese society.

Sociologist Laurel Richardson notes the place for reflexivity in scholarship as it helps researchers to “[attend to feelings, ambiguities, temporal sequences, blurred experiences, and so on.” She adds that “[researchers] struggle to find a textual place for ourselves and our doubts and uncertainties.”73 Scholars have criticized reflexivity’s use in scholarly research as being autobiographical, self-indulgent and non-academic. Yet, sociologist

Eric Mykhalovskiy, who received the above criticism about his doctoral studies application, argued for the importance of reflexivity in feminist research, and in other fields. He noted specifically the contributions to feminist scholarship of many women of color who used autobiographical writing to explain social phenomenon.74 Kim

Etherington notes the benefits of reflexivity on the subjects of research as well as on the conclusions drawn in research. She argues that:

73 Laurel Richardson, “Writing: A method of Inquiry” Handbook of Qualitative Research (eds) N.K. Denzin and Y.S Lincoln (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2000). 74 Eric Mykhalovskiy, “Reconsidering ‘table talk’: Critical thoughts on the relationship between sociology, autobiography, and self-indulgence,” Reflexivity and Voice (ed.) R. Hertz, (London: Sage, 1997).

39 By using reflexivity in research we close the illusory gap between researcher and researched and between the knower and what is known. By viewing our relationship with participants as one of consultancy and collaboration we encourage a sense of power, involvement, and agency.75 The subjective nature of much of the knowledge about the Troubles is such that reflexivity will serve to place the conclusions in context. It will also situate the research that will follow within its place of origin, creating the backdrop for the study of the republican movement.

5. Researching the Troubles

My research in Northern Ireland began completely by accident. I signed up for a week-long study abroad trip as a freshman in college and was shocked by the incredibly complicated, horrific, inspiring, gut-wrenching conflict that sprawled out in front of me.

In one week, I walked more miles, held back more tears, and drank more Guinness than any other consecutive seven days prior to that. The words to describe my experience of visiting Belfast and Derry in 2013 and again for a month in 2015 to study the conflict that raged there for more than three decades could fill the pages of a dozen books, but if I may indulge in a few stories in my early pages, I will try to summarize how I came to know this place to the limited extent that I do. I will also try to explain some key events that are not integral to what I will discuss in later chapters but are extremely important to the study of the Northern Irish conflict.

5.1. A student walks down the Falls Road

The Falls Road is a long thoroughfare leading from Belfast’s city center all the way to the Southwest side of the city, ending in a roundabout that continues down a road

75 Kim Etherington, Becoming a Reflexive Researcher: Using Our Selves in Research, (London: Jessica Kingsley, 2004), 32.

40 by a different name. Leaving city center along the Falls Road, one of the first things one might see is a multi-story red and white apartment complex, called Divis Tower, which was described in the opening of this thesis. That building marks the beginning of the

Divis neighborhood, which is located just off of the Falls Road and which many Catholic republicans call home. Located on a short bit of road called Divis Street, which quickly changes its name to the Falls Road, the base of the building sees the beginning of the

West Belfast murals. The first, which announces the entrance to West Belfast depicts many staples of Irish culture, including Gaelic football and Irish dance. The mural covers most of a wall approaching Divis Tower, but toward the end of the wall are more divisive political messages. One such message reads “Oppose British Political Policing,” with the all too well-known image of hands in metal cuffs. Another mural illustrates 32 counties that would make up a united Ireland, proclaiming, “Join in Defense of the Nation.” The mural is claimed by the “32 County Sovereignty Movement,” which is written at the bottom. At the base of the Divis Tower is a small mural reading “One Race, One Love,

One World.” The words encircle four conjoined hands of varying skin color.

Today the Divis Tower is a residential building, and many of the windows have

Irish and even Palestinian flags hanging from them. Beginning in 1972, after construction on the building was finished, the police turned the top two floors and the roof of the building into an observation post, which they often accessed by helicopter due to the difficulty of entering from the street once the police became such an unwelcome presence in republican areas of Belfast.76 From the top of the 200-foot tower, police could see the

76 Megan Deirdre Roy, “Divis Flats: The Social and Political Implications of a Modern Housing Project in Belfast, Northern Ireland, 1968-1998,” Iowa Historical Review (University of Iowa, 2007), 21. Soldiers also periodically patrolled the inside.

41 entirety of the Falls Road neighborhood and often used that vantage point to shoot at people on the ground. The observation post, called a “spy” post by Sinn Fein, the political party of the Irish republican movement, remained at the top of Divis Tower until August of 2005.77

As one walks down the Falls Road it would be easy to miss the history that is etched into every crack of the sidewalk, or, more accurately still wedged into brick walls, bullets that were never pried out. The street is lined with residential buildings and small businesses, such as pubs and quaint, glass-front grocery stores. Soon after passing the

Divis Flats, one approaches a large, but short brick building with paintings of children playing, a soccer player balancing a ball on his foot, a smiling family, behind some overgrown plants. If one were to cross the street, they would be able to see dozens of bullet holes strewn along the side of the building. The fence in front of it is just a bit too high and the tops of the bars too sharp to not stand out on what could be a cheery residential street. The building, formerly St. Comgalls’ School before it was shut down in the mid-1990s, is now dilapidated, its roof and walls crumbling.78 Every few blocks one could find small plaques memorializing people who died on that very street corner, many of them civilians.

77 Ibid., 2. Dismantling of the observation post at the top of Divis Tower was part of the peace process that began in 1998 with the signing of the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement. Parts of the tower were demolished in 1993 after outcry from the community who came to despise the tower because of the military post that remained until demilitarization finally began in 2005. 78 Maurice Fitzmaurice, “St Comgall's School in West Belfast to be transformed into international visitor centre,” Belfast Live, February 3, 2017, Accessed March 27, 2017, http://www.belfastlive.co.uk/news/belfast-news/st-comgalls-school-west-belfast-12548359. An article published in February 2017 announced that the building would be repaired and remodeled, turned into an “international visitor center” by the falls Community Council, a community organizing group located in West Belfast.

42 Continuing down the Falls Road, one would pass a large building with the words

Sinn Fein on the front in gold letters. Sinn Fein began as the political arm of the Irish

Republican Army, but broke off from the militant group in order to present itself as a legitimate political organization. Among the ranks of Sinn Fein are well-known politicians, including Gerry Adams, who has served as president of Sinn Fein since 1983, and Martin McGuinness, an IRA member who went on to become Deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland. On the side of the Sinn Fein office is one of the most famous murals in Belfast, the Bobby Sands mural. Covering the entire side of the building the mural of

Sands’ jovial expression seems at odds with the story behind his life, activism, and tragically meaningful death.

Bobby Sands joined the IRA as a young man after experiencing the prejudicial violence that Catholic families in Belfast endured for many years leading up to the start of the Troubles. In 1977, Sands was convicted for possession of a handgun and sentenced to 14 years in prison with three other IRA volunteers.79 During the four and a half years he spent at Long Kesh Prison, Sands was selected to lead the IRA volunteers who were imprisoned there. In 1981, he led the second hunger strike in the prison, protesting the denial of special category status for political prisoners. The next year, after the sudden death of a member of Parliament in a strongly nationalist district, Sands’ supporters began a campaign to elect him in the special election that was called. Sands won the seat in April by a very small margin, but less than a month later on May 5, 1981, he died in the prison hospital, the first of ten to die in the 1981 hunger strike. Sands was an outspoken activist for equal treatment of Catholics and published letters and articles from

79 Toolis, Rebel Hearts, 116.

43 prison on the subject.80 A quote on his mural reads: “Everyone, Catholic or otherwise has their own particular role to play…our revenge will be the laughter of our children.”81

Walking a bit farther down the Falls Road, one would arrive at a large brick wall with barbed wire wrapped haphazardly around the top. Tattered flags of many different colors are tangled in the barbed wire. Covering the length of the wall, called the International

Peace Wall, are more than two dozen different murals, many of them expressing solidarity for rights and justice struggles around the world. Though some murals are painted over, some remain on the wall and are restored. One such mural depicts important figures in the African American struggle for equal rights. Pictured in the mural are

Frederick Douglass, Rosa Parks, Nelson Mandela, Barack Obama, Bob Marley, Dr.

Martin Luther King, and many others. Other murals call for the release of POWs around the world, including some people from the Troubles who remain behind bars. Some murals call for an end to strip searches in prisons and the end of an internment policy that began in the early days of the Troubles in Catholic areas of Belfast. Other murals on the wall remember fallen members of the IRA and other organizations. One such mural remains, one of thousands of memorials to people who lost their lives in the Troubles whose family members still walk those very same streets.

As a 20-year-old researcher visiting Belfast in December of 2015, I took a tour with a friend to go look at the former site of Maze Prison on the outskirts of Belfast. A company offers what are called Black Cab Tours of the city, and mainly visit sites of political and historical importance. Many of the drivers are people who had active roles

80 Bobby Sands, Writings from Prison, (Cork: Mercier Press, 1998). 81 David Beresford, Ten Men Dead: The story of the 1981 Irish hunger strike (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2007).

44 in the conflict, and can speak from personal experience about the events that occurred.

The massive, 347-acre lot where the prison once stood was fenced off, with guards at the front who would not allow us to go through the tall electronic gate. 82 The land where the prison once stood was slated to become the site of a peace center in late 2013, initially receiving 18 million euros from the European Union’s PEACE III Programme. The designs, which were approved in April 2013, included maintaining one of the “H” blocks where prisoners were housed, the emergency control building, chapel and hospital alongside the new buildings to be built.83 Before the end of 2013, however, the EU withdrew the funding, stating that the project was “no longer viable.”84 On the drive back into the city our driver, who was probably in his late 30s, began to tell us about growing up in Belfast near the Falls Road and the last time he had been at Maze Prison. Like many other men living in Belfast, he grew up in the Divis neighborhood and his family was involved in the conflict. He told us that his older brother had been a member of the

Irish National Liberation Army, (INLA) an organization with similar goals as the IRA though with a much lesser media presence.

Like most of the young men who had an active role in the conflict, his brother spent time in prison. Maze prison is not a normal tour spot for the Black Cab Tours, the

82 There is a debate currently in Northern Ireland, the Republic and in other parts of the UK about what will be done with the massive plot of land. Some are in favor of turning the land into a museum and memorial for the ten hunger strikers who perished inside. Others are outraged at that idea. Some want to turn the huge lot into a sports stadium. That information was all gathered during the tour. 83 Julian O’Neill, “What now for Maze site?” BBC News, August 15, 2013, Accessed March 27, 2017, http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-northern-ireland-23713605. 84 Gareth Gordon, “EU body withdraws Maze Prison peace centre money,” BBC News, October 4, 2013, Accessed March 27, 2017, http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-northern-ireland-24399418. In its statement the EU body reported that the change was spurred by their meetings with the First Minister, Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) leader Peter Robinson, who called their decision sensible, and Deputy First Minister, Sinn Fein Leader Martin McGuinness, who said he had not given up on the project. Analysis of the decision in the sidebar of the article blames the withdrawal of funding on Peter Robinson’s announcement in August that the DUP no longer supported the project.

45 reason for which quickly became apparent when they wouldn’t let two young female college students through the gates to take a peek. It also became quickly apparent that few people had made the same request to see the prison. We had to make several convincing calls to the Black Cab company before they agreed to drive us the more than

30-minute drive out to the former prison, because, as they correctly insisted, there was nothing to see. The security at the front gate seemed extremely surprised to be getting visitors. Our driver told us the last time he had been there was the day his brother was released, the same day his brother was killed by bullets raining down from Divis Tower in the incident detailed at the beginning of this thesis.

At the end of the Falls Road, off to the left, are sprawling hills dotted with hundreds of tombstones. The heart of Milltown Cemetery includes a small paved walkway with gravel on either side, an important site for the republican movement, called the New Republican Plot. Black marble headstones rise out of the gravel, each with between three and five names etched into them. Among those names are the ten hunger strikers who died inside the H-blocks of Long Kesh Prison, including Bobby Sands MP, and 75 other Irish republican volunteers who were killed in the conflict.85

In March 1988, Milltown Cemetery was the site of one of the most violent days of the conflict. Hundreds of mourners were attending the funerals of three IRA volunteers who were killed in Gibraltar, the details of which led many to question the ethics of

British Special Air Service, an undercover unit of the British army. Mairead Farrell, Sean

Savage and Daniel McCann were shot dead as they attempted to run away from British

SAS members. British officials initially told the public that the three had planted a bomb

85 Toolis, Rebel Hearts, 156.

46 and were killed because they made “suspicious movements,” but several days later, as their bodies remained in a Royal Navy morgue in Gibraltar, officials admitted that all three were unarmed and no bomb had been found.86 The memorial service was attended by hundreds of people, mostly republicans and Catholics. The service was roiling with anger over the British security forces’ “shoot first, ask questions later,” or “shoot-to-kill” policy, as it was known then. Despite the anger in republican communities, the service was peaceful, until a man, Michael Stone, charged at mourners inside the cemetery, firing shots and throwing grenades. Three people were killed and more than 50 people were injured in the attack. Republican leaders condemned the police and British security forces for their lax security at the funeral. When Stone was attacked by mourners, he was protected by the few policemen who were there to provide security and was arrested with minimal injuries.87

A few days after Christmas in 2016, I actually did walk down the Falls Road in

Belfast, for the first time since I’d been there two years before. Having spent most of my time at the library or in pubs around the city center, my research partner and I hadn’t had much time to walk out to West Belfast, but when we did, we were both struck by a feeling of nostalgia for a place where we hadn’t spent very much time. We both remarked on the peculiar feeling while we sat in a pub, and chatted idly about it before we finally landed on what was on both of our minds: We knew this place. We had studied it and read about it, and we knew that there was an impossible number of untold stories here. It is difficult to unearth stories that have not been extensively codified in a mainstream narrative, which explains the value of primary documents like those to be analyzed in

86 Ibid., 178. 87 Ibid, 207.

47 later pages. The purpose of this thesis is not to diminish anyone’s identity, to excuse violence or to demonize any group, but merely to give voice to just a few of the largely untold stories that are contained in the Troubled Images Collection.

6. Media censorship during the Troubles

Though this thesis argues that the republican use of “propaganda” represents political speech by a long-disadvantaged minority group of the Northern Irish population, that political speech would not necessarily be coming from such an unorthodox source were it not for the systematic and targeted censorship, specific to republican groups, of

British, Irish and Northern Irish media. Political scientist Doris A. Graber notes that “in the post-World War II era, national security risks have appeared in a number of guises.

Formal declarations of war have become less common while military confrontations involving terrorism, counter-terrorism, guerrilla warfare, peacekeeping operations, and similar so-called ‘low-intensity conflicts’ have increased.”88 Though Graber frames her discussion through the American perspective, a common theme in terrorism research since 2001, she notes that all over the world, “public officials equate the dangers posed by such low-intensity operation with the dangers posed by open warfare.”89

Graber outlines governmental strategies for curtailing what they deem irresponsible reporting that might threaten national security. “Formal censorship,” the most common form of censorship used by governments, sets up formal laws to control what the press can print. The “free press” approach, in contrast, provides government-

88 Doris A. Graber, “Terrorism, Censorship and the 1st Amendment: In Search of Policy Guidelines,” in Framing Terrorism: the News Media, Government, and the Public, ed. Pippa Norris, Montague Kern, and Marion Just (New York: Routledge, 2003), 27 89 Ibid.

48 approved guidelines for the press to follow, but gives full discretion to the press.

“Informal censorship,” which Graber calls “an ingenious combination of the [other] two,”90 implements no formal censorship laws, but utilizes an extremely effective type of coercive narrative to force the press into self-censorship. Journalists printing criticism of government policy will be met with condemnation by high-ranking officials who follow up that condemnation with reports of governmental success in dealing with the crisis in question.

David Miller details a long history of coercion by British officials against the

BBC, including a 1956 statement from Prime Minister Eden’s Press Adviser William

Clark, in which he reported that “every dispute with the BBC had been ‘settled by persuasion so far.’” Miller’s analysis of the British government’s censorship efforts details the use of both formal and informal censorship, which, as described above, rarely needed the “veto,”91 of formal censorship. Importantly, during the Troubles, the government instituted more formal sanctions than before under the guise of anti-terrorist policies.

Miller’s assessment of the British press as a group that exercises a high degree of freedom but seldom reported the news in a way that the government disliked, especially during the Troubles, is supported by the legal foundations of press freedom in the U.K.

Like the United States, which today guarantees an extremely high degree of press freedom written into its Constitution, the greatest obstacle to early press freedom was

90 Ibid, 28. 91 David Miller, Don’t Mention the War: Northern Ireland, Propaganda and the Media, Pluto Press, London, 1994, 13. Miller includes a quote from Sir Hugh Greene, where he states “On paper, the government of the day has the power to veto any BBC broadcast. The BBC – and this is the important point – has the right to broadcast that this veto has been exercised.”

49 licensing. The licensing of the Press Act of 1662 was the last legal measure in a long history of complicated licensing laws and was in effect until 1694. A vocal opponent of licensing, which he viewed as government censorship, British philosopher John Milton wrote pamphlets calling for an end to licensing. Under the Licensing Act of 1662, any printing without a government issued license was outlawed.92 Several decades after

Milton’s writings, his concept of the marketplace of ideas, which postulated that in an arena of open debate, good ideas would be widely accepted and bad ones would be rejected by a majority and through that system society would undeniably see continual progress, resonated and was presented as an argument for increased press freedom. One type of censorship which Milton’s ideas did not help to eliminate was seditious libel which was considered a crime in spite of the truthfulness of the statements printed.93

Another British philosopher John Stuart Mill wrote in his book On Liberty that free expression should not be abridged unless it harms others or society as a whole. He argued that any censorship of speech that does not cause harm runs the risk of silencing some important truth.94 American press freedom traces its roots back to the days of the British colonies, with the libel trial of John Peter Zenger in 1734. Zenger’s lawyers successfully argued that truth was a legitimate defense for libel, providing the basis for the strong

American press freedom that still exists today as a Constitutional guarantee, protections that British journalists have not been guaranteed.

92 Charles II, An Act for preventing the frequent Abuses in printing seditious treasonable and unlicensed Books and Pamphlets and for regulating of Printing and Printing Presses. Statutes of the Realm: Volume 5, 1628-80. Originally published by Great Britain Record Commission, 1819. 428-435. 93 John Milton, Areopagitica; a speech of John Milton for the liberty of unlicensed printing, (London: Routledge, 1644). Public domain. 94 John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, (Boston: P.F. Collier & Son, 1909). Public domain

50 The legal roots of media censorship during the Troubles stretch back as far as

1911 with the Official Secrets Act, which was intended as a safeguard against espionage.

Amended in 1920, 1939, and 1989, the act prohibits any member or former member of any governmental security agency from disclosing information pertaining to security. The section that initially affected journalists most strongly was section 2, which prohibited the

“communication or receipt of official information.”95 Even after its amendment in 1989, the act was criticized for being “‘even more repressive’ and as ‘imposing tighter controls than ever before in peacetime.’”96 The 1989 revisions include section 5, which makes it illegal to publish information protected under the act. Protections for the press are difficult to find in the act, the only discernable one being the “no damage” defense, which allows the reporting of statements from former security officials as long as the information will not harm national security. The discretion to decide whether information harmed national security undoubtedly rested with the government. Sociologist David

Miller lamented that the act contained “no public interest defense or protection for exposing wrongdoing or illegality by the government or security services.”97 The

Defense, Press, and Broadcasting Committee, called the ‘D’ notice, which included members of the media, was created to issue notices to other media organizations about subjects that might be deemed illegal if printed or broadcast under the act. This committee had very little legal standing, a status that was made more obvious by the fact that citing a notice from the committee that approved a topic for printing did not serve as a defense against prosecution under the act.

95 Miller, Don’t Mention the War, 30. Emphasis mine. 96 Ibid. Includes cited quotes from O Maolain, (1989, 80) and Ponting (1990, 79). 97 Ibid.

51 By 1973, shortly after the most violent part of the conflict, it was clear to officials in the UK government that the anti-terrorist strategies thus far were largely ineffective. In

July, they hurried another act through parliament as part of the U.K.’s anti-terrorist policies. The Emergency Provisions Act was intended to facilitate “the punishment of certain offences, the detention of terrorists, the preservation of the peace, the maintenance of order and the detection of crime and to proscribe and make other provision in connection with certain organizations.”98 Besides granting extremely strong search and seizure privileges to any member of the state security forces, the act effectively outlawed any interview with any member of the IRA, and, by extension, Sinn Fein. The act was considered broad enough as to “cover normal journalistic activities. Part III of the act makes any “proscribed organization,” including the IRA, INLA, UVF and UDA, illegal, and subjects any person confirmed or suspected of being a member to arrest and prosecution. The act goes on to explain that anyone who “solicits or invites financial or other support for a proscribed organization, or knowingly makes or receives any contribution in money or otherwise to the resources of a proscribed organization,” is subject to the same penalties. Finally, the act says:

“No person shall, without lawful authority or reasonable excuse (the proof of which lies on him), collect, record, publish, communicate or attempt to elicit, any information with respect to the police or Her Majesty's forces which is of such a nature as is likely to be useful to terrorists, or have in his possession any record of or document containing any such information.” Not surprisingly, the act was interpreted by most media organizations as prohibiting interviews or publication of statements by any person speaking on behalf of a paramilitary organization or espousing their political message. That prohibition meant

98 Emergency Provisions Act. Text of the act.

52 that the most popular and legitimate organization supporting the republican movement was denied from circulating its political messages.

Irish journalist Ed Moloney has been a vocal critic of the media censorship orchestrated by British officials, condemning it for extending the conflict by inhibiting republican leaders from participating in peace talks. He maintains that the lack of coverage of the conflict prolonged the violence rather than lessening it. 99 Although this paper argues that the republican movement successfully communicated its messages through unofficial means, that situation would not have existed without the widely restrictive media censorship policy of the British government. The phenomenon that occurred through extensive censorship of the British and Irish media is explained by the spiral of silence theory. Continually portraying, and coercing the media to portray organizations which were integral to the peace process as apolitical terrorists undoubtedly contributed to the much slower, less respected form of political speech to which republicans were forced to resort. There were publications, such as An Phoblacht/

Republican News, a newspaper that was continually circulated throughout republican areas of the North and throughout the south, which espoused republican ideas. Total censorship is extremely difficult in a society with such a high degree of personal freedom, high enough that the government was not able to completely silence every voice, or even any small printing operation, because individuals were never stopped from speaking their minds. They faced consequences for it, some of which were grave, but the most damage done by censorship are the delegitimizing effects of being blackballed by the industry that reports the truth. Distributing posters and painting murals became a

99 Ed Moloney, “Media censorship during ‘the Troubles’: A leading Irish journalist ponders the consequences,” Nieman Reports, June 15, 2000.

53 symbol of the conflict, and particularly of the republican struggle. Posters were plastered on poles, walls, and the sides of buildings, often next to murals, which besides having the effect of reaching more people, stood as a defiant protest against the elimination of republican ideas from mainstream discussions. The merits of that method, which under the British anti-terrorist policies was called propaganda, will be discussed in later sections of this thesis.

7. Finding meaning in the posters from the Troubles

After a preliminary immersion in the entire collection of more than 3,000 posters, images and documents collected, the researcher determined that certain themes began to emerge, as explained in the research methods section above. Those themes are defined by specific rhetorical strategies used in circulated material. Characteristic samples of the themes presented will be discussed at length in later pages. Speech, though it takes many forms, is widely accepted in most democratic societies, as a protected right. As such, political speech also takes many forms. The categories of speech laid out in the following pages are numerous, and it is important to note that many of the posters analyzed fit into multiple categories. For organizational purposes, posters were not shuffled into exclusive categories. Instead, themes that recurred in many different posters will be described using illustrative examples. In the following pages, all posters discussed, unless otherwise indicated, were pulled from the collection of political posters and images, Troubled

Images.100

100 Troubled Images: Posters and Images of the Northern Ireland Conflict from the Linen Hall Library, Belfast.

54 The five major themes to be discussed include 1) claims of abuse of state power,

2) calls for peace, 3) rights claims, 4) calls for justice, and 5) calls for civil disobedience.

Those categories represent the broadest versions of the themes found in the posters, and most include subsections of themes that were found in a significant number of posters.

A timeline will give a fuller understanding of how the messaging changed over the course of the conflict. Posters with years printed on them were catalogued and analyzed for the same type of political messaging that was gleaned from the entire collection. When arranged by year, the posters tell a story about the different messages that were circulated during the different periods of the conflict. Those findings will be compared to the timeline of the conflict described by Queen’s University Law Professor

Fionnuala Ni Aolain in The Politics of Force: Conflict Management and State Violence in Northern Ireland. Ni Aolain breaks down the conflict into three stages: militarization, normalization, and counter-insurgency. Ni Aolain’s distinctions are based primarily on the actions of the state. By combining the timeline of posters with a timeline based on state action, this author seeks to understand how republican messages changed as state policies changed.

Ni Aolain’s militarization period (1969-1974) began with the deployment of the

British army in Northern Ireland. Nationalists originally welcomed British soldiers, who they saw as a trustworthy barrier between them and attacks and brutality by a predominantly loyalist Northern Irish police force. The introduction of the army, Ni

Aolain argues, was “a resort to crisis management without reflection on the underlying

55 tensions which precipitated the civil disorder.”101 She notes, importantly, that British military officers were under very few legal restrictions in their capacity assisting the civil police force. Ni Aolain notes that 90 percent of those killed by security forces between

1969 and 1974 were killed by members of the army, and 65 percent of those people were unarmed at the time of their death.102 Those figures explain the escalation in violence when soldiers were brought in to supplement the Northern Irish police force. Internment, imprisonment and interrogation techniques intended to seek out

IRA members are also notable characteristics of that period of the conflict.

This period saw the most depictions and encouragement of violence in republican posters.103

One poster drew a direct link Circulated in 1974, this poster includes a substantial amount of violent imagery, and is indicative of the high between the violence that began levels of violence that characterized the early years of the conflict.

101 Fionnuala Ni Aolain, The Politics of Force: Conflict Management and State Violence in Northern Ireland, (Belfast: The Blackstaff Press, 2000), 30. 102 Ibid., 32-3. 103 This assertion is the authors and is made based on close reading of every poster in the collection. The assertion is limited in its scope because only a small number of the posters have years printed on them and no other information is available about the individual posters.

56 in 1969 and the creation of the Provisional IRA. It included individual portraits, the faces of an entire PIRA battalion, and read: “out of the ashes of ’69 arose the Provisionals.”

Another poster, issued in 1973 contained a drawing, in vibrant color, of a uniformed man holding a gun captioned by the words “Irish Freedom Fighter.” The rejection of internment in republican communities was immediate and nearly universal. Images of weaponry and violence were common in early posters that criticized the imprisonment policies of the British government. One poster was topped with the word “Freedom ‘74” surrounded by the smoke from a gun being held by a silhouetted male figure. The poster also includes an image of a prison yard, walls topped with barbed wire and watchtower visible behind them, but with the door broken off its hinges and prisoners bursting out, arms raised high. Bright orange flames, the only color on the poster, climbed high above the prison walls, symbolizing the destruction of the prison system. Interestingly another poster was circulated the same year, making a similar demand for “freedom [in] ’74.”

Below the call for freedom, however, were the words “but not from the barrel of a gun.”

The second phase, which Ni Aolain defines as normalization, took place from

1975 to 1980. Ni Aolain calls the normalization phase a response to the failure of internment. She cites the 1972 Diplock Report as the driving force behind a transition from militarization to normalization. The report suggests changes be made to the criminal justice system in Northern Ireland to deal with “the escalation of terrorist activities since

1969.”104 Suggestions from the act include increased discretion to arrest those suspected of terrorist activities, a trial process with a single judge and no jury, and a shifting of the

104 “Report of the Commission to Consider Legal Procedures to deal with Terrorist Activities in Northern Ireland,” last modified September 1, 2016, http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/hmso/diplock.htm#2. The Diplock Report was presented to Parliament in 1972 by the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland and included recommendations for changes to court proceedings when dealing with “terrorist crimes.” The court system it advised would eventually be called the Diplock system, and would be shut down after claims of injustice.

57 burden of proof of possession of firearms or explosives onto the accused. The report also suggested loosening restrictions on the courts’ ability to sentence juveniles to longer sentences in more serious detention areas. The changes suggested, according to the act, should only apply to cases of terrorist activities. The intention of the policies that followed the Diplock Report, Ni Aolain argues, was to “eliminate the political context of the violence, effectively neutralizing political legitimacy for the opponents of the state and re-establishing the legitimacy of the statist order.”105 Reminiscent of Comaroff’s lawfare, the legal strategies associated with the new strategy of criminalization had a profound effect on the rest of the conflict, especially after the revocation of special category status for political prisoners in 1976. This period saw much less state violence than the early 70s, with 54 deaths, as compared to 188 deaths between 1969 and 1974.106

The criminalization of political violence, however, ultimately normalized British antiterrorist policies, which would then be directed at a large portion of the Northern Irish population. Many of the posters circulated during this time depict republican criticisms of the criminalization of political dissent and of the increased levels of imprisonment.

One poster protests the criminalization of Irish prisoners, defiantly stating that they are not criminals. This all black and white poster is referencing the tendency in prisons to give prisoners of the conflict the title “ODC,” or “ordinary decent criminal.”

The process of normalizing political behavior as ordinary criminal behavior was integral to the normalization phase Ni Aolain describes. Another poster, circulated around 1977, based on the printing of the year on the poster, includes the words “prisoners of war in black capital letters. The poster includes a sketch of three individuals entwined in barbed

105 Ni Aolain, The Politics of Force, 44. 106 Ibid., 33, 52.

58 wire. One of them is a shirtless man, ribs clearly visible, nailed to a cross. Next to the man’s bowed head are the words “he too was a prisoner of conscience.” The other two figures are a woman holding a candle and a man wrapped in a blanket. The man clearly represents a participant in the blanket protest, wherein prisoners refused to wear prison clothes and instead wrapped their bodies in blankets to protest the withholding of political status. The poster intends to communicate, using the religious comparison of

Jesus Christ, criticism of internment and imprisonment. The comparison between the truncated trials of the period following the

Diplock Report and the trial that led to the crucifixion of Jesus yields an effective criticism of the Diplock system.

The final phase

(1981-1994) described by Ni

Aolain as “the alliance of Anti-criminalization poster depicting a blanket protester, active counter-insurgency and including the five demands. The message of the poster is intended to contradict a narrative that defined prisoners and extraordinary law,” who were arrested for actions related to their political beliefs as ordinary criminals.

59 was a response to the failure of the previous phase to shift public opinion, primarily in nationalist areas, about terrorist violence.107 A catalyst for the shift into a new phase was the 1980 and 1981 hunger strikes.

The two separate hunger strikes, one of which ended in the death of ten prisoners, including newly elected MP Bobby Sands, resulted in renewed and A poster circulated in 1977, criticizes the imprisonment of political dissenters. “H Block” refers to the prison where increasing political support many prisoners were housed, Long Kesh. for Sinn Fein, which was still classified as a terrorist organization. The diminished ranks of the British Army in Northern Ireland, which would continue to drop after the beginning of normalization policies, were replaced by the now highly militarized Royal

Ulster Constabulary, (RUC) which served as a civil police force. In addition to their role as a policing force, the RUC began to branch out into many other specialized units, all of which were equipped with high-powered arms, and emboldened by loosened restrictions on the use of force by state agents.

107 Ibid., 57.

60 This period saw a rapid increase in calls for justice, including one poster from

1990 that described “British Justice” as “summary executions.” Countless posters were circulated supporting the hunger strikers, including one in 1981 that announced Murder

#5 [of] Joe McDonnell… in Britain’s Long Kesh Death Camp.” The rhetoric in posters about British prisons, especially in those about the hunger strikes, was often very strong and intended to portray the inhumanity of the system. That exact rhetoric is common in most of the posters about the hunger strikers. Another poster from 1993 called for an assembly in honor of the 1916 rising. The words of encouragement on the poster are nonviolent and read as follows: “They have given us strength and the vision that will shape an Ireland free from injustice.” The narrative of republican posters largely shifted toward a campaign for justice rather than one of violence.

As state security forces increased their resources, their intelligence capabilities became substantially more far-reaching. Ni Aolain describes the “super grass” system as a cornerstone of the British counter-insurgency policies. A questionable legal model that was introduced after the hunger strikes, super grass trials were based – often solely – on evidence obtained from confidential informants, who were, in theory, turning on their compatriots by testifying on behalf of the state in exchange for protection. In practice, the information provided by the testimony in super grass trials was often proved false and most of the convictions were ultimately overturned on appeal.108 The failure of the super grass system left the entire network of British intelligence-seeking services, including the

RUC, without the legal apparatus that allowed for quick and easy convictions. Many republicans believe, as several organizational reports and inquiries have suggested, that a

108 Ibid., 60-1.

61 shoot-to-kill policy was instituted against people suspected of paramilitary involvement.

Ni Aolain labels deaths believed to be the result of shoot-to-kill “set-piece killings,” because they usually involved interception of intelligence about a paramilitary attack or gathering. It was common practice in those situations for an RUC or Special Air Service

(SAS) unit to lie in wait in a location where they knew paramilitary members would be, and to shoot dead every person present, including on several occasions, civilians and paramilitary members who were not armed. The extreme use of force on joyriders was another symptom of the organization of set-piece killings. Officers would often fire on a car with little warning or knowledge of who was driving, according to Ni

Aolain.109

Ni Aolain critically describes the changes in state policy as attempts to control conflict through force and systemic legal control. While the Circulated around 1990, this poster criticizes the illegality of state forces who, more than once, were following pages will not dispute seen shooting people who were on the ground, already hit, or running away. that assessment of the conflict,

109 Ni Aolain, The Politics of Force, 66-9.

62 they will include posters, unchanged from their day of publication that will shed light on the civilian response to these policies during the time of their implementation.

Ni Aolain’s phases are triggered mostly by changes in British policy, but are also somewhat shaped by the republican response to those policies. Circulated posters support

Ni Aolain’s assertions about the aim of British policies, by providing a first-hand account of the republican response. One poster calls for a boycott of the 1981 census to protest the withholding of special category status for political prisoners. The poster notes the effectiveness of the same boycott ten years earlier against the policy of internment. The responses apparent in the republican posters align with Ni Aolain’s breakdown of the conflict stages. What follows is the author’s analysis of the five major themes from the

3,000 posters that make up the Linen Hall Library collection.

7.1. Claims of abuse of state power

The widest and most varied of the categories, this category contains most social, political and economic grievances made by republicans as well as criticism of government officials, police and security service misconduct. Posters in this category also included allegations of collusion between state forces and loyalist paramilitary groups and criticism of government censorship.

Calling for people to “support the republican movement,” one poster tells the nationalist community: “British troops murder, injure, gas and imprison your people,” and urges the government to “stop British terror!” The poster’s black letters give their ominous warning, and draw a link between terrorism and the republican movement, but not the link that is normally made. Similar to the British antiterrorism policy, though

63 without the force that the government had, the poster paints a graphic picture of

British troops as agents of the state and agents of terror, further arguing that the only way to stop said terror is by supporting the republican movement. A semiotic analysis of the poster’s accusations combined with the realities of the violence on the streets in Northern

Ireland, which has been explained above, affirms the connections made by the poster. Another poster pictured

British troops clashing with angry citizens and at the bottom in tattered lettering were the words “Brit Thugs Out.” That term is important, because, as mentioned in an earlier section of this thesis, “thug” was a term used to label terrorists in the early stages of shaping the common use of the term, to describe the most vile, useless members of society, as defined by Edmund Burke and further defined by Isaac Land.

7.1.1. Social, political or economic grievances

The filing of grievances by the citizens of a democratic government is paramount to the functioning of a legitimate democratic state. In most societies, ancient or newly formed inequalities give rise to grievances by one segment of the population or another.

Economists Paul Collier and Anke Hoeffler cite a political scientist’s definition of grievance as the driving force behind violent conflict, but this analysis will consider

64 grievances of economic, social or political nature as the collective motive behind political protest.110 In the case of Northern Ireland, grievances against what nationalist communities perceived as a tyrannical unionist-run government led to the protests of the late 1960s that would erupt in violence. As such, claims of employment and housing discrimination, and political marginalization are common throughout the Troubles in republican posters and images. Much of the political speech found in republican posters constitutes filing grievances even in such an unofficial medium, while certain posters contain more specific criticisms. Overall, the author’s analysis will discuss how the more specific types of grievance-making served the republican political movement.

One poster presented by the republican movement accurately encapsulated the grievances and suggested remedies for them. The poster lists the positions of the republican movement and asks the “people of Ulster” to support them. The positions include “One man, one vote… houses on need… jobs on merit…free speech… fair boundaries… [and] repeal of the Special Powers Act [on the grounds that it] gives the police power to take away …rights… [and] prevent strikes.” Republican grievances were based on their claims that many working-class republicans were not allowed to vote in local elections, many of them didn’t have adequate housing, and those who were granted a vote did so in a system that ensured their votes would not result in a majority of seats going to republicans. Pressing the point, the poster asks if it is fair that “in Derry, a substantial majority elects eight councilors and a definite minority elects twelve councilors.” Donald Horowitz would argue that the grievances filed by the poster are in response to the effects of differential modernization and uneven distribution of colonial

110 Paul Collier and Anke Hoeffler, “Greed and Grievance in Civil Wars,” Oxford Economic Papers 56 (2004): 564.

65 capital. Their rights to assert these grievances, they maintain in their demand for free speech, arguing that “every man has the right to express them [his grievances] publicly.”

No reference to violence is made; nor is the list of grievances claimed by any specific political party. The poster does not even make any specific mention of republicanism,

Irishness, or Catholicism, and only makes specific distinctions between economic groups, rather than political, cultural or religious ones. The source of the poster can be inferred as some republican-leaning group because a majority of the total population in Derry is republican. Declining any political or cultural attachment adds legitimacy to the political statements being made, because the statements critiquing the system stand on their own.

Many of republicans’ social, political and economic grievances stemmed from their argument that “unionists exercised absolute power in order to keep nationalists subjugated,” as one of their posters reads, and their grievances illuminate the extent to which that discriminatory practice pervaded society.

People living in Catholic communities saw unionist marches, especially those by the Orange Order, as adding insult to injury, as the marches went through predominantly nationalist areas of Belfast, where people were already struggling to gain basic rights.111

That social grievance manifested as calls in posters for organizers or authorities to

“reroute Orange marches.”

The obvious way to address political grievances in a democratic society is to get involved with local government, so the creation of Sinn Fein was an inevitable step for

111 The Orange Order is a historical organization named after William of Orange, a Protestant Dutchman who took the throne from King James II, a Catholic, and was the first to establish Protestant dominance in Ireland. The Orange order is one of the most important formal organizations for loyalists. They are most well-known for marches, which were highly contested, especially during “marching season” in Belfast. “Who are the Orangemen?” BBC News, July 11, 2012. Accessed April 10, 2017. http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-northern-ireland-18769781.

66 republicans. Gaining political ground as the party formerly attached to the IRA was no easy feat, and many posters released by Sinn Fein and others voiced their frustration at their political exclusion. In one poster, Sinn Fein proclaimed itself “the largest nationalist party in Belfast… standing up to loyalism,” and urged nationalists to “strengthen [their] voice” by voting for Sinn Fein. One poster included 16 political candidates running for local office in different areas of Belfast. Their attempts to legitimize themselves extended into creating a Sinn Fein Youth Party, which advertised a conference at which attendees could learn important political skills like “mural painting, computer aided design, and organizational skills.” The conference also promised a discussion of “militant street politics,” among other things. The fact that the discussion was planned only confirms what anyone who was a teenager during the Troubles would also confirm: teenagers engaged in militant political action on the streets. Whether it was because they were bored or because they were legitimately aggrieved and had no other outlet for political speech, most often “militancy” took the form of throwing rocks. The political grievances of the republican movement were only due to increase as the unionist majority minimized their legitimacy at every point. The system of elections, which allowed unionist elites to maintain the majority in parliament and in local government because of university and business votes, was abolished in favor of a proportional representation (PR) system.

Unionists were quick to criticize the PR system, calling it “anti-British and undemocratic” and urging “Loyalists [to] demand British standards for the British people in Ulster.” The language used in that poster catering to loyalists follows what instrumentalist thinkers might call ethnic favoritism by powerful elites hoping to encourage ethnic dominance over a minority. Sinn Fein’s response to criticism of the

67 voting rules can be understood by a poster circulated with only a few words: “200,000 votes for Sinn Fein IS a mandate.” The use of the language of democracy against a critique of the voting system as being undemocratic sends the message effectively that

Sinn Fein trusts democratic processes to legitimize them.

7.1.2. Criticism of government officials

Although the revitalization of the Official Secrets Act, which was originally intended to safeguard against sedition, might seem like an attempt to silence criticism of the state, the British government’s limits on speech only extended to known terrorist organizations. Critiques of the government by politically empowered citizens were never outlawed under even the strongest of the emergency provisions implemented. The chief criticism of government officials began with the Civil Rights movement in the late 1960s when republicans and others argued that the reason they were being denied their rights was improper and disproportionate representation in their government by predominantly

68 unionist officials. Continuing into the later years of the Troubles, criticisms became more specifically targeted at the missteps of officials in the Northern Irish government and in the British government which were perceived as inciting violence, prolonging conflict, or damaging legitimate rights of citizens.

Criticism of individual officials in the Northern Irish government was common.

For example, one poster criticized Unionist MP Ian Paisley for inciting sectarian violence, reprinting a statement from June 1986 wherein he “gave notice [that] a

Protestant backlash” was the only way to “destroy the Anglo-Irish Agreement,” and said he would “not stand in its way.” The poster cited below the quote the deaths of three young men by loyalist paramilitaries within the month following Paisley’s statement.

Paisley, whose election fliers occasionally included the phrase “Smash Sinn Fein…

Reject republicanism,” did not have many friends in the republican movement, and in political talks surrounding the vote to join the European Economic Community, (EEC)

Paisley led a group of unionists in disruptive tactics to kill a proposed power-sharing agreement between Dublin and London.112 Criticism of Paisley is indicative of a population that recognized nationalistic or ethically preferential rhetoric, as described by

Mark Beissinger.

Margaret Thatcher, who was the British prime minister for much of the Troubles, probably received more criticism from the republican movement than any other individual politician. Criticism of her and her policies often involved using her own words against her. In one instance a poster quotes British MP Tony Benn, who said, “the partition of Ireland was a crime against the Irish people.” Thatcher is pictured below

112 Coogan, The Troubles, 162-7.

69 Benn, flanked by her famous response to republican demands for special category status for political prisoners: “A crime is a crime is a crime.” The bottom of the poster reads,

“The original crime was the English conquest of Ireland.” That argument is reminiscent of post-colonial reasoning behind revolutionary steps, as well as echoing what some scholars, including this author have criticized about the British policy of criminalization.

One poster from the Anarchist Federation, plastered on the side of a telephone pole in

Derry, which was spotted and photographed by this author in late December 2015, depicted Margaret Thatcher sternly pointing out at the viewer. Beside her image, in white lettering were the words “I was radicalized by a hate preacher.” The poster’s use of the word “radicalized” indicates that it is a more recent poster in a sparse patchwork of other political posters stuck to poles near Free Derry Corner.113 The use of a religious term also holds significance, as Catholicism was occasionally equated with terrorism during the conflict, and in post-conflict literature. The use of the word preacher and not priest also prohibits any association with Catholicism. The same messages were not found in any of the documents from during the conflict.

Another poster made a strong critique against the post-colonial dimensions of the conflict by arguing that “if the British troops in Ireland were Russian, the I.R.A would be considered freedom fighters by the U.S.A.” Had the British not previously established an imperialist presence in Ireland, the poster argues, other countries, like the U.S. would likely support the campaign by nationalist organizations like the I.R.A. claiming to be using force in their fight against an oppressive government. The notion that the label

113 Free Derry Corner refers to a mural that simply reads “You Are Now Entering Free Derry,” which was painted shortly before Bloody Sunday in the Bogside, a nationalist area of Derry. The area surrounding the mural was the site of Bloody Sunday in 1972.

70 “terrorist” had an incredible amount of power, but was being used for political reasons but will do little to reduce violence is supported by Bigo and Guittet’s theory of terrorist labelling.

Perhaps a more common form of governmental criticism was general criticism of what was viewed as a unionist-run government that discriminated against Irish Catholics and republicans. One poster even went so far as to call the Stormont government a

“unionist junta.”114 Another began with the words “the Orange State must go,” referring to the Orange Order, a primarily protestant unionist organization with historical roots in

Ulster. Authoritarian accusations aside, the makeup of Stormont before its abolition at the onset of direct rule from London, supports a claim that unionists controlled the government in Northern Ireland. Business and University votes granted to the elites, as well as the system of gerrymandering, meant that even in areas that were two thirds nationalist, unionists would win about two thirds of the seats in parliament and most local elections.115 Cited in David Miller’s book, Rethinking Northern Ireland, a Scottish former press officer in the Northern Irish government recalled an interaction she had with an official in the Stormont building who told her “Of course we’ve got two of them working here.” When she asked what he was referring to, he responded “Catholics! … with such venom [she] was shocked [and] appalled… [having] never seen such blind prejudice.”116

Circulated unionist posters could also support a claim that unionists held animosity toward their Irish republican counterparts. Unionist rhetoric included such sayings as

“Keep Ulster Tidy—Throw your litter in the Irish Republic,” and one poster included the

114 Junta: a military or political group that rules a country after taking control by force. Most often, this takes the form of a government run by the military. 115 Coogan, The Troubles, 32. 116 Miller, Rethinking Northern Ireland, 14.

71 phrase “There are good republicans” and “R.I.P” in the center of a Celtic cross.

(Emphasis theirs) Also called St.

Patrick’s cross, this image simultaneously encapsulates Irish as well as Catholic identities, which were already very closely linked, and equates those identities with the republican movement. Another poster phrased the same sentiment even more clearly, outlining not only the threat to republican resistance, but also the investment in British nationalism. The top of the poster reads: “To all independent Irish spirits, choose… under the flag or under the sod,” telling Irish people in the North with thoughts of independence that they would be British or they would be killed. Again ethnic favoritism has vestiges in the posters circulated by the loyalist side. That is explained as a contributor to conflict by Beissinger. The next section will explain how republican complaints about discrimination by a primarily unionist government often took the form of complaints against the use of force by agents of that government whom they perceived as extensions of that discriminatory unionist “junta.”

72 7.1.3. Criticism of the police, army, or security forces

As discussed above, the police forces in all their forms, played a major role in the conflict. Increased discretion granted to police paired with decreased restraint on search, detainment and imprisonment inevitably led to complaints, especially after evidence piled up suggesting that police violence was unequally directed toward certain sections of the population. Criticism of security officials varied from criticism of brutality to accusations of collusion. Some of the posters aren’t actually directed at police, army, or the government that put them on the streets, and merely warn fellow republicans of the environment they live in, a threatening world where any person on the street could be

capable of killing a rep ublican, and many of them could do so with impunity.

Republican frustration with unbalanced attention from army and police was reflected in the posted signage. For example, one poster depicted a line of various security personnel in the military armor that they were nearly always wearing, and above them announced the 15-year anniversary of Bloody Sunday. The poster poses an important question, especially given the rhetorical and military strategies of the British government in the late 1980s, 15 years after the 1972 massacre: “Who are the real terrorists?” That question is reminiscent of Isaac Land’s analysis of the term “terrorist,” and to whom it has historically been used to refer. Land questions whether the term can legitimately be used for political dissenters and the poster in turn posits that anyone who would use that label on civilian protesters, and would use violence to continue to silence dissent is deserving of the same label.

73 Another common rallying cry of the republican movement was to “disband the

RUC.” One poster circulated by Sinn Fein Youth called for the disbanding of the organization in crooked, bright red lettering, and included below that demand, in block letters, “The armed wing of

Unionism.” Unionism was written in the same bright red as above. Above the text, in jarring contrast to the blood-red letters, are black and white images of RUC members in full body armor, yanking plain- clothed people by their jackets.

Above that are black and white images of calm-faced unionist politicians. The powerful imagery and juxtapositions in this poster do not encourage reciprocal violence toward police, but rather call for an end to politically driven, disproportionate levels of violence toward republicans. Another poster took the claims of discrimination a bit further, including above the call to disband the RUC, the demographics of the Royal Ulster Constabulary: “93% Protestant… 100%

Unionist.” Those statistics, and the accusations of discriminatory treatment that are undeniably attached to them, are set beside the image of a stony-faced man in full body armor, firing a plastic bullet rifle, which despite the government’s claims about their

74 safety, killed 17 people, eight of them children between 1972 and 1986.117 The top of the poster makes claims of “Shoot-to-kill…Collusion… [and] torture.” A stamp of “guilty” is next to those accusations. The accusations made in that particular poster are succinct, and

include the understood explanations behind the treatment of republicans by the RUC.

Many of the other calls to disband the RUC were attached to advertisements for marches and demonstrations. One such poster which also included a criticism of the restrictions on freedom of movement, read:

“Tyrone march for freedom of movement and against British force harassment/collusion.” More specific accusations of collusion were made in some of the circulated posters, including one that called for a picket in favor of disbanding the

RUC, planned for “the first anniversary of the killing of Robert Hamill, a young nationalist kicked to death by loyalist thugs in full view of R.U.C. officers who stood idly by.” The use of the word “thugs” represents an attempt by republicans to turn back the terrorist rhetoric used to describe their movement on those who they had been claiming discriminated against them since partition.

Criticism of RUC violence continued throughout the Troubles. As late as 1995, republicans continued to circulate posters calling for the disbanding of the RUC,

117 Martin Melaugh, “Violence: List of People Killed by ‘Rubber’ and ‘Plastic’ Bullets,” CAIN, 2016, http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/issues/violence/rubberplasticbullet.htm.

75 including one poster advertising a picket on “the 3rd anniversary of the murder by the

RUC of Pat McBride, Paddy Loughran and Michael O’Dwyer in the Sinn Fein office on the Falls Road.” The picket was advertised as a protest against that specific instance of violence, which was actually committed by an off-duty RUC man officer who later committed suicide.118 The fact that he was off duty held little significance for republicans, because to a republican, or a Catholic, the presence of an RUC man was always a danger. That fear was apparent in the warnings circulated on posters urging people to be wary of soldiers and security personnel who were not in uniform, but were still known to commit violent acts toward republicans. One such warning depicted a man standing in the center, one half of his body clothed in a suit jacket, his left arm holding a pint. His right side is clothed in a military uniform, with that hand clutching a rifle.

Above that stylized sketch are the words, “This Brit could be standing beside you…loose talk costs lives.” Other circulated posters warned republicans about getting into cabs, walking alone at night, and even opening their front doors when they weren’t expecting anyone. One poster, issued by the Sinn Fein Publicity Department, represents their views of the RUC more bluntly, placing on either side of the seal of the Royal Ulster

Constabulary a hooded figure holding a rifle. Below each of those figures are stamped the names of two paramilitary organizations: the UDA and the UVF. Below those images, in black, capital letters, the poster reads, “The RUC is at your service 24 hours a day.” The morbid sarcasm apparent in that particular poster was not unique. The exhaustion of the

Catholic and nationalist community over the perpetual unwelcome presence of the RUC is apparent in several posters. The rejection of the RUC is an example of a population

118 “3 Shot Dead in Belfast Office of Pro-I.R.A. Group,” New York Times, February 5, 1992, accessed February 25, 2017, http://www.nytimes.com/1992/02/05/world/3-shot-dead-in-belfast-office-of-pro-ira- group.html.

76 rejecting the doctrine of necessity, which Mark McGovern explained as a policy tactic that gives ultimate power to a government to combat terror, but also grants them the ability to restrict rights.

As was common in the republican movement, many of their posters made references to other conflicts and the international community, pledging solidarity or asking for support. Some of those appeals referenced the support of the international community in the campaign to disband the RUC. One such poster read: “RUC must go…The RUC have been condemned by: [the] UN Human Rights Committee…UN

Committee Against Torture… Amnesty International… European Court of Human

Rights… U.N. Special Rapporteur Dato Param Cumaraswamy… International Relations

Committee of the US Congress… European Parliament…We need a new police service now.”

Claims of discrimination often took their aim at the British state, and the most obvious symbol of their imperialist control in Northern Ireland: the British army. Many republicans clearly viewed the militarization of Northern Irish cities as a major obstacle to “self-determination for the Irish people as a whole,” as one poster put it. Above that demand, the poster encourages Northern Irish people to “demonstrate for withdrawal.”

Another poster that made similar claims to march in favor of a united Ireland and the withdrawal of British troops included an image of an armor-clad soldier. Next to that image, scrawled in pencil, was a slightly less articulate, and more emotive demonstration of the Irish desire for British withdrawal. Written in all capital letters are the words “Fuck off, Tommy!” The term Tommy, which has been most often attributed to British soldiers

who fought in World War I holds special significance, because Irish regiments we re an

77 instrumental portion of the British forces during that war, and it was less than a decade after its conclusion that Irish rebels organized the Easter Rising.119 Scholars have argued the early revolutionary roots of Sinn Fein originated in the Republic of Ireland with a campaign of refusal to support and join British forces in World War I.120 Sinn Fein became a label for radical nationalism in Ireland, and even became an alternate label for the Easter Rising.121

The rejection of

British “Tommies” constitutes a total rejection of the

British identity that some Irish assumed when they fought for the British Crown in

World War I.

Posters occasionally called for violence toward soldiers and police, mostly in the spirit of

119 Tommy, short for Tommy Atkins, was used as short hand for British soldiers, because it was assumed to be a generic British name. It was used on sample forms within the British military. 120 Mike Rast, “Tactics, Politics, and Propaganda in the Irish War of Independence, 1917-1921,” (Thesis, Georgia State University, 2011), 19. The earliest establishment of Sinn Fein dates back to 1905. 121 Sinn Fein Rebellion Handbook, Irish Times (Dublin: 1917).

78 the saying “Every bullet in the back of a British soldier in Northern Ireland is another nail in the coffin of imperialism,” which was an occasional rallying cry for those who had grown tired of nonviolent resistance. Parallels between the plight of Nelson Mandela and republican combatants were also common and were occasionally used to incite and rationalize violent resistance. One poster places Mandela’s image next to that of Bobby

Sands MP, and includes a quote from Mandela that reads: “Our resort to armed struggle was purely a defensive action… The factor which necessitated the armed struggle still exists today. We have no option but to continue… We have waited too long for freedom.” Mandela’s significance will be discussed more thoroughly later in this thesis.

Despite some calls for violence, which were most common in the earlier years of the conflict,122 the majority of posters having to do with the British military contain some variation of the call to “Demilitarize now.” Similar to complaints about the RUC, most republicans wanted military troops off the streets.

7.1.4. Criticism of media or censorship of media

This thesis argues that the failure of the mass media to accurately cover the conflict was met by a sufficient supplementary response from political organizers utilizing alternative forms of political communication. Yet the cultivators of that content were not always satisfied with the methods they were forced to use. As part of their critique of the democratic society that perceptively marginalized them, republicans occasionally resorted to chastising state censorship and mainstream media outlets for their subscription to the dominant narrative put forth by the British government.

122 Posters which contained dates from the 1970s, and some from the early 1980s, saw the most calls for violence, and images of the military strength of the IRA. This assertion is made by the author based on a complete survey of the entire collection of 3,000+ posters and images contained in the Troubled Images disk compilation.

79 For example, a poster advertising an Irish forum promised a discussion of “Mass

Media and Censorship” as well as “Racism against the Irish.” Censorship was seen as predominantly affecting those who would advocate for a United Ireland. As discussed in an earlier section, the banning of certain opinions from broadcast and print media did not go unnoticed by republicans who understood the rights of free speech. One poster pictured a sketch of a gagged person struggling to speak into a microphone, surrounded by the words “beat the ban.” A microphone appeared in another poster, its cord about to be snipped by some scissors. That image was accompanied by a call to “end censorship” and advertised a march to the BBC in protest of the media ban. Another poster put the blame directly on the British government, asking people to imagine living under a government that censored people’s views…” among other offenses, before concluding that the people of Northern Ireland do live under such a government. Another poster connected the censorship of Sinn Fein specifically with the democratic value of suffrage, arguing:

“Although nationalists now have the vote. Their democratically elected representatives are denied proper access to the media and the British public are denied the truth about what the government is doing in their name. Sinn Fein are censored along with the 100,000 people who voted for them.” Some criticism of British censorship focused specifically on how the press in

England reported on the conflict, because, as John Conroy illustrates, British media portrayal of Ireland have been prolonging the struggles of the Irish people for decades.

Conroy points out that “up to 1948, the BBC, the government-owned broadcasting company, would not allow mention of partition, [of Ireland] as this would suggest

80 disunity.”123 The omission of a plain fact about the border between the North and the

Republic of Ireland represents an example of the spiral of silence theory at work.

Unpopular opinions are systematically eliminated from news coverage so as to maintain

the legitimacy of an already hegemonic narrative. One poster places blame on British tabloids, giving them credit for helping to free Lee Clegg, a British soldier who was convicted in 1993 and sentence to life in prison for the murder of two teenage joyriders in

West Belfast, a republican area. He was released in 1995 when his conviction was

123 Conroy, Belfast Diary, 25.

81 overturned. Many republicans attributed his release to coverage in British media that

claimed Clegg was just doing his job.124

Some circulated

materials from

republicans calling for

“free speech on Ireland”

put the blame for

undemocratic censorship

on the military. One such

poster contained a

drawing of a man in

uniform pulling the

strings of a puppet which

went from his hand

behind a television set

with a newscaster on its

screen. A quote from

General Frank Kitson,

who, as discussed in The author was unable to read the bottom portion of the quote, due previous sections, was to the illegibility of the poster. instrumental in shaping British counterinsurgency policies, especially when it came to

control of the media, sits atop the image in very small type. Part of that quote says that,

124 Coogan, The Troubles, 388-97.

82 “the government must promote its own cause and undermine that of the enemy and this involves a carefully planned and coordinated campaign of what for want of a better word

125 must regrettably be called psychological operations…”

Other posters criticizing censorship insist that the censorship is criminal and harmful because it is censoring political speech. One poster, likely circulated around

Christmas 1988, depicted Santa Claus with a stamp reading “CENSORED” across his mouth. As is the case with many conflicts, Christmas was a time when violence weighed more heavily on people’s minds, and calls for peace intensified. This particular poster simply reads “oppose political censorship.” Similarly, another poster includes a highly symbolic illustration of republican claims about censorship. Four panels include the profile of a man whose face is colored in the style of the Irish tricolor. In the first panel he is gagged by a bandana with the coloring of the Union Jack. In the second, a colorless hand pries its fingers under the gag, pulling it away in the third panel. In the fourth panel, a verbal box is drawn coming from the man’s mouth, with the image of a dove inside it, representing peace talks. That poster, which contained the words “oppose censorship” is reminiscent of arguments by Irish journalist Ed

Moloney that the censorship of nationalist and republican views prolonged violence by

125 This quote comes from a poster. See image.

83 prohibiting inclusive peace talks.126 Moloney’s sentiments were echoed on the front page of An Phoblacht Republican News, a publication that consistently printed republican views that were censored everywhere else. The publication articulates its purpose as providing “the uncensored views of Irish nationalists and republicans,” which it argued were instrumental to achieving peace.

7.2. Calls for Peace

Many of the posters circulated during the Troubles called for peace in the face of widespread violence. Those calls often included specific suggestions for concrete changes in government policy. Those suggestions often took the form of calls for British withdrawal, or demands for all-party, inclusive peace talks. Peace in Northern Ireland was a difficult thing to achieve, and those involved in the conflict came close many times, with several ceasefires throughout the thirty-year period of the conflict. The desire for peace was often easily added to murals and posters using the image of a dove. The

Bogside artists, whose murals in Derry include famous ones of Bernadette Devlin, the civil rights protests and the events of Bloody Sunday. A short walk from Free Derry

Corner is a mural of multi-colored squares and a large dove, painted with a single, unbroken line. The symbolism of the dove, a tour guide explained to the author during a

2013 visit to the site, was not only to encourage peace talks, but ultimately a lasting peace. The unbroken line was also intended to symbolize unity. The Bogside artists outsourced the idea for that mural to local schoolchildren.127

126 Ed Moloney, “Media Censorship During ‘the Troubles’: A leading Irish journalist ponders the consequences,” Nieman Reports, June 15, 2000. 127 Information gained from guided tour of the Bogside neighborhood and Free Derry Corner with the Bogside artists in March 2013.

84 If it was obvious to the children of the time, the imagery was likely ubiquitous in society. The dove appears again and again in images from the conflict. One poster pictures a dove pulling ribbon around a tall holiday tree in the city center. That image appeared on a poster from 1995 announcing a visit from President and Mrs. Clinton on

November 30. Former President Bill Clinton is well known in Northern Ireland, and many give him and his administration a considerable amount of credit for finalizing the peace talks that yielded the Good Friday Agreement.

The dove appears again and again in posters that call for peace. One such poster is from one of several women’s organizations. Women’s role in the conflict is important, and has been studied by a few scholars who have shed light of women’s contributions to the conflict and the peace process.128 It is regrettable that this research will not address that role directly, but this author would like to note that women played an important role in organizing and resistance more so on the republican side than on the loyalist, but women in both communities had parts to play in the conflict. Women also had a substantial impact in the peace process, as explained by Fidelma Ashe, who argued that women’s roles as local organizers were the most effective in the post-conflict peace process.129 Many of the posters from the Troubles demonstrate that involvement, including one poster from 1990 that calls “women together [for a] festival of peace.”

Below that wording, the poster includes the phrase “knocking down walls,” and the

128 For information and analysis on women’s role in the conflict, see the following articles: Stapleton, K and Wilson, J. “Conflicting categories? Women, Conflict and identity in Northern Ireland,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 37 (2013), 20-72 for analysis of female identity during the conflict. Monica McWilliams, “Struggle for Peace and Justice: Reflections on Women’s Activism in Northern Ireland” Journal of Women’s History, 6 (1995): 13-39 for analysis of female activism during the conflict. For female resistance and analysis of the significance of the home, see Sharon Pickering, “Women, the Home and Resistance in Northern Ireland,” Women and Criminal Justice, 11 (2000): 49-82. 129 Fidelma Ashe, “Gendering Demilitarization and Justice in Northern Ireland,” British Journal of Politics and International Relations, 17 (2014): 665–680.

85 image of two walls on either side of a gap being disassembled by a figure on each side, both of whom are using the stones from their walls to build a bridge across the gap.

Above the middle of the gap is a dove with outstretched wings. Much of the imagery used in other posters demonstrated the need to break down the divisions of Northern Irish society.

7.2.1. Calls for inclusive, all-party peace talks

Calls for peace talks were constant from the start of the conflict until the signing of the treaty to officially end the conflict. Republicans, importantly, made a point of demanding inclusive, all-party peace talks, likely as a response to their long-held belief that the unionist-led government was prone to marginalizing republicans and Catholics.

As was previously explained, the numbers also support that claim, but they gain more legitimacy by demanding participation for their own political party in peace talks and the creation of a new government than they would just filing grievances with the government.

The opposing sides of Northern Irish society, because they lived and worked so closely with those whom they had developed animosity, often called for ceasefires. A statement released by the IRA on June 22, 1972, stated: “the IRA will suspend offensive operations… provided that a public reciprocal response is forthcoming from the Armed

Forced of the British Crown.” See the image for the rest of the statement. It is important to note that this statement came less than six months after Bloody Sunday, when outrage over the killing of 13 unarmed civilians by British paramilitary forces in Derry caused the ranks of the IRA to swell. That statement came at a time when the IRA had the numbers to escalate their offensive campaign, but the fact that the shooting occurred at the same

86 time republicans were demonstrating for their civil rights reinforced the notion that what republicans really wanted was equality and peace.

Pushing for peace negotiations in their “propaganda” became more prominent in the republican movement as the conflict drew on and the public desire for an agreement to stop the violence continued to build. Those messages were as subtle as the

Sinn Fein poster urging citizens to vote Sinn Fein and proclaiming at the bottom that Belfast was “Our city also.” Contrasted with the many unionist election posters urging voters to “Keep Ulster

British” and promising to “get back to the Stormont way,” that type of inclusivity from an organization, considered a terrorist group under British law, might surprise many. The most overt of their calls for peace were the dozens of variations on posters demanding negotiations or “all-party peace talks” in order to “make peace work.” Such rhetoric was specifically intended to urge unionists and the British government to negotiate with Sinn

Fein as a legitimate political organization. Such calls also argued for the involvement of

Ireland, urging citizens to support power-sharing agreements with input from both

87 London and Dublin. The rejection of power-sharing deals resulted in a resurgence of criticism of the Direct Rule government in London for being undemocratic. One poster articulated that sentiment by calling for an “end [to the] British/Unionist Veto [in order to] save the peace process.” That poster from Sinn Fein was intended to draw more attention to the disproportionate levels of power held by unionists in Northern Ireland as well as an indictment of a peace process where republican voices were considered inferior to their unionist counterparts.

Involvement in the conflict outside the UK was not exclusive to the Republic of

Ireland. Other countries, including Germany, Australia, the United States, and France weighed in on the conflict, or at least someone circulated their opinion, publishing posters of their own about the conflict. One poster, written entirely in French, reads

“Enough! The British government must negotiate.” One poster, which likely came from an Australian group, though the exact source is unknown, protested the presence of

Margaret Thatcher and the Queen in Sydney, lending their voice to calls for protests of

British occupation, which republicans argued was the primary obstacle to peace. While suggestions for more inclusive peace talks remained central to the republican movement, their vision of peace most often contained demands for the exclusion of their British oppressors.

7.2.2. British withdrawal as the solution

The republican movement primarily framed the Troubles as a conflict that involved occupation, specifically the continuation of the British occupation of Ireland.

Especially after it became clear to many republicans that the British army was not there to protect them from the brutality of loyalists or the police, but to enforce British policies

88 which they were already fighting against, republicans, calls to withdraw British forces from the North were plentiful. In fact, calls for British withdrawal are replete throughout

Irish history, which is made clear by the number of references to the 1916 Easter Rising and its organizers in posters that call for withdrawal.

Many of the posters circulated calling for British withdrawal were quite blunt in their messaging, like the Sinn Fein poster with massive, blue block letters reading “Peace through British Withdrawal.” More symbolic calls for British withdrawal can also be found. One poster depicts a small, blonde toddler, pushing aside with his right hand a green curtain, and with his left hand an orange one. Bright light from behind the smiling, rosy-cheeked child casts a slight shadow and provides the center white section of the Irish tri-color. Above the image is the text “25 Years—Time to go!” and a popular image of the Island of Britain stylized to look like a paratrooper about to bash the island of Ireland with a club. Below the image text reads “SLÁN—a bright new dawn of hope and peace.” The imagery of the poster strongly associates hope and a bright future with Irish nationalism, making a hopeful case for a United Ireland, and combining that with a blunt call for

British withdrawal, the Irish word

“slán,” which means goodbye. The

89 image is also reminiscent of a popular phrase from Bobby Sands MP that became a rallying cry for the republican movement before and after his death: “Our revenge will be the laughter of our children.” In a fascinating linguistic twist, despite being reproduced countless times in artwork, literature, and several circulated posters, the phrase is very often reprinted in a shortened form as simply “…the laughter of our children.”130 That reprinted version emphasizes peace for the next generation, rather than revenge against

the last one.

Another popular phrase reproduced throughout the conflict also comes from an

Irish revolutionary hero, organizer of the 1916 Easter Rising, Padraig Pearse. He concluded a speech at the graveside of another leader of the movement, with the words:

“Ireland unfree will never be at peace.”131 That sentiment, spoken less than a year before the Rising, roused the spirit of independence among the Irish people and contributed strongly to the resistance that fueled the Easter Rising. In one case, the text is reproduced on a poster about prisoners’ struggles, from before Irish independence up to the struggle during the Troubles, for special category status for political prisoners. The use of Pearse’s words creates a direct link between the independence in the south, the political grievance of republicans in the North and an eventual peace. As one poster put it, “there can be no

British solution but complete military and political withdrawal.”

130 This assertion is the author’s and is based on her time spent on the streets of Belfast, Derry, Omagh, Dublin, and a few other places in the North and the South of Ireland, observing murals and writings about the conflict. If someone were to dispute the frequency with which this phrase was shortened, compared to the number of times it was printed in its full form, that would be valid; The fact remains that it has been reprinted in the aforementioned shortened form on no fewer than two occasions, according to this author’s personal experience. 131 Toolis, Rebel Hearts, 338.

90 7.3. Appeals to Rights, Freedom, or Liberty

Rights discourse is strong in democratic societies. The articulation of social, political, or economic desires in the form of a right carries special weight in a society that was built on a document like the Magna Carta, which guaranteed the citizens of Great

Britain with rights that could not be abridged by a tyrannical government. Specifically, the Magna Carta granted those rights to the people by situating the entire society, including the agents of government, who at the time were monarchs, under the rule of law. As explained above, the legal standing of the British response to the conflict in

Northern Ireland has been questioned by many. Rights-based claims made during the conflict contributed much to developing that body of criticism.

Many of the articles in the Magna Carta were repealed over the years, diminishing the potency of the document. In 1904, Edward Jenks argued that the Magna Carta did not constitute a guarantee of rights and liberties to the people, but actually ascribed rights to an elite class of barons.132 As Jenks explained then, and other historians have concurred since, the “myth of the Magna Carta” has led to the creation of more all-encompassing rights discourses such as that which yielded the U.S. Bill of Rights.

Of the remaining three clauses not repealed in the Magna Carta, the last one is the most important and reads: “No freeman shall be taken or imprisoned, or be disseized of his Freehold, or Liberties, or free Customs, or be outlawed, or exiled, or any other wise destroyed; nor will We not pass upon him, nor condemn him, but by lawful judgment of his Peers, or by the Law of the land. We will sell to no man, we will not deny or defer to

132 Edward Jenks, “The Myth of the Magna Carta,” 1904.

91 any man either Justice or Right.”133 As discussed above, that article places all people under the authority of the law, but Edward Jenks and John Comaroff would agree it leaves a lot of room for legal rights discrimination and thus gives way to the use of

“lawfare,” as previously discussed. The language of freedom and rights is replete throughout the poster collection. Republican posters generally maintain a similar theme in their use of rights talk, which can be summed up by one poster, which included an image of civilians being battered by uniformed officers. The poster reads: 1969-

Nationalist Rights Do Not Exist…1996- Nationalist Rights Do Not Exist.”

7.3.1. Demands of the Civil Rights Movement

Beginning in the late 1960s, civil rights discourse became more popular in

Northern Ireland, especially in republican and nationalist communities where the people felt discriminated against, as was explained in earlier sections. Inspired by the U.S. civil rights movement, organizers took to singing “We Shall Overcome,” rather than the usual nationalist anthem, “A Nation Once Again,” a tune which longs for the return to a United

Ireland. Nearly all civil rights organizations, however, were undeniably connected to the republican movement.134 One poster summarized the beginning of the Troubles by explaining how the “1968/9 Civil Rights protesters marched for one person – one vote, and for an end to the ‘Special Powers Act’ and to discrimination in housing allocation.

The ‘sectarian’ six county state, founded by Britain to protect British interests, reacted with force and violence.”

133 Text of the Magna Carta, Article 29. UK Statute Law Database. http://www.legislation.gov.uk/aep/Edw1cc1929/25/9/section/XXIX 134 Coogan, The Troubles, 62-3.

92 In the spirit of what many people assumed they were guaranteed by the Magna

Carta, the republican movement, especially organizations focused on civil rights began calling for a Bill of Rights. One poster printed by NICRA demanded “a Bill of Rights now to end violence and defuse sectarianism,” and included the image of a pair of scissors poised to snip off the lit fuse on a bundle of explosives.

Probably the most popular form of rights claim during the Troubles was an appeal to the democratic franchise. Many groups, including, but certainly not limited to Sinn

Fein stressed the importance of voting as a means of gaining political capital, having grievances addressed and gaining peace. One poster, a small page with the words “their weapon” and “your weapon” and next to each an “X,” on first glance, illustrates the equalizing nature of democracy and its “one person, one vote” framework. Upon closer examination, though, the X symbolizing “their weapon” is made of two crossed clubs, one of which has bent nails jutting out of the end. Besides encouraging participation in the democratic system, the artist of this poster is also arguing that the franchise is a noble weapon in the face of state violence.

Many of the posters circulated in the early part of the Troubles and throughout the conflict made similar claims in line with what civil rights protesters originally demanded.

One poster summarized the demands with black capital letters reading: “Jobs for all!

Houses for all! Votes for all! Now!” Another poster implores Sinn Fein to “Save our

Hospital Services,” adding a more nuanced critique of the everyday discrimination that republicans were subjected to because of inequality between nationalists and unionists.

The poster concludes with the words: “No to cutbacks… no to closures… no to job losses.” As discussed in earlier sections, civil rights were important at the start of the

93 Troubles and they remained important throughout the conflict. In the context of

Comaroff’s and Horowitz’ colonial explanation for systemic discrimination, republican grievances regarding uneven distribution of society’s assets gain more legitimacy.

7.3.2. The Right to Self-Determination

An important part of the rights discourse cultivated in the republican movement was the right to self-determination. That demand by republicans has a history, like many of their political demands. One poster, clearly informed by the civil rights movement gaining traction around the world, which republicans were highly aware of, said: “there can be no civil rights without national rights.” Many nationalists demanded the right to reform the nation of Ireland as it existed before partition, and equated that right with any other civil right they claimed they should be guaranteed in a democracy.

More than the desire to fully reform the nation of Ireland, demands for self- determination became about cultivating Irish culture and demanding respect for it after decades of post-colonial repression of indigenous Irishness in the North. One poster, issued by prisoners inside Long Kesh Prison, asks “is Irish freedom Criminal? Is English

Rule Patriotic?” The question is apt, and points to larger questions about the criminalization of dissent and state criticism. The question is addressed more directly by a different poster which reads, “The British Government says those who oppose them in the North of Ireland are criminals… yet there is special legislation, special holding powers, special interrogations, special juryless courts, special prisons… Support the Irish hunger strikers’ call for special status—political status.” Referring specifically to those people who had already been imprisoned, the poster places their situation within the

94 political context created by those specific uses of state power. Another poster directly addresses the strategy used to criminalize political prisoners:

They will not criminalize us…rob us of our true identity…steal our individualism…depoliticize us… churn us out as systemized, institutionalized, decent law-abiding robots. Never will they label our liberation struggle as criminal.

A major strategy of the republican movement involved circulating posters encouraging the celebration of Irish culture, and the right to do so without being criminalized. One poster advertised an upcoming census, telling the nationalists community that if they are “proud to be Irish,” they needed to write it in as their ethnic group on the census, because it wasn’t an available category. The poster laments “yet again the Irish are forgotten.”

Several posters encouraged people in the North to “learn Irish,” including some that were issued by

Sinn Fein. One poster the organization put out included a quote from Irish Minister for Foreign Affairs Peter Barry, who said in 1986, “What the Northern Ireland Office has done for the Irish language was worthy of commendation.” Below Barry’s statement, “the facts” contradict him and criticize the British government for cultural disintegration. Sinn Fein criticizes the

Northern Ireland Office for instituting a “complete ban on Irish in prisons…no official

95 recognition of Irish…no bilingual street, road or traffic signs… [withdrawing Action for

Children in Education] grants … [and providing no] grant-aid for Naionaraithe, (Irish preschools) Irish arts or language groups.” At the bottom of the poster it says, in

Irish, “Irish in – England Out.”

Sinn Fein’s criticism is reminiscent of concerns of international organizations like the United Nations

Educational, Scientific and

Cultural Organization

(UNESCO) about the intentional destruction of cultural heritage, of which language is an important aspect. The UNESCO

Declaration Concerning the Intentional Destruction of Cultural Heritage states: “cultural heritage is an important component of the cultural identity of communities, groups, and individuals, and of social cohesion, so that its intentional destruction may have adverse consequences on human dignity and human rights.” The declaration specifically includes a section outlining the need for the “protection of cultural heritage in the event of armed

96 conflict, including the case of occupation.”135 As mentioned above, Irish culture was not just unprotected, it has been actively destroyed for decades. One anti-republican poster136 called on “Loyalists and Protestants [to]… refuse Eire money [and] boycott all her goods,” extending the criminalization of Irish identity so that it had financial punishments attached to it as well as social ones. A boycott on goods from either Ireland or Britain is no new concept. In fact, republican posters call for a boycott of British goods frequently.

The difference between republican boycotts and that particular loyalist poster is that currency has a political and cultural context in a way that goods do not. Refusal of certain currency in an area where it had previously been accepted amounts to cultural discrimination. No republican poster in the whole of the collection called for Irish shops to refuse the British pound. The start of the Troubles could also be classified as a demand for respect for the Irish culture and people that was met with force by the British state, and the people in the North committed to maintaining British supremacy. One poster demanded an “end [to the] harassment of the nationalist community.” As the next section will explain, the criminalization of Irish and republican identity, which was explained with Bigo and Guittet’s terrorist labelling theory, had a negative sociocultural effect, but also manifested in the loss of the right to free movement for many people who held those identities.

7.3.3. Against Imprisonment and Internment without Trial

The policy of internment, intended to detain indefinitely without trial suspected members of the IRA, was introduced in Northern Ireland on August 10, 1971. The policy

135 Text of the UNESCO Declaration Concerning the Intentional Destruction of Cultural Heritage. http://portal.unesco.org/en/ev.php-URL_ID=17718&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html 136 More of the posters in the collection came from republican leaning sources, though the author estimates that as high as 30 percent of the posters in the collection are anti-republican.

97 drew wide criticism from much of the republican community and others. There was ample of mistreatment, including interment, imprisonment, and detainment in the early days of the Troubles, following the introduction of internment, but the messages continue to crop up frequently throughout the conflict, because, for many republicans, internment policies allowed for indefinite detainment. Much of the criticism of those policies used the language of rights to explain the inhumanity of imprisonment without trial.

One poster from the Irish Solidarity Campaign was part of the overall goal of reducing injustice for everyone involved in the conflict. Below the words “a Nation that enslaves another can never itself be free,” is the familiar image of the island of England stylized to look like a paratrooper with a shield and helmet, holding a club up high, about to clobber its Irish neighbor, an image that is recurring throughout the poster collection.

The sentiment communicated in that poster is part of a common thread in republican posters that denounced the violation of freedom and rights for any people, not just the

Irish, Catholic and republicans in Northern Ireland. That culture of anti-oppression manifested in solidarity campaigns, one of the strongest of which was with the

Palestinian people. That solidarity campaign was represented in murals, flags and posters often throughout the Troubles and the peace process. Other solidarity campaigns were organized around the notion that Ireland was a “small nation,” and like other small nations, including the “Catalans…Welsh… Scots…Sardinians… [and] Basques,” just to name a few mentioned in one poster, deserved the same freedom and autonomy that larger countries had. Another poster depicted Uncle Sam pointing a revolver at a miniscule figure holding a Nicaraguan flag, advertising Sinn Fein speakers in honor of the anniversary of the Nicaraguan Revolution. The bottom of the poster reads “US out of

98 Central America.” Despite the solidarity between the republican movement and people in

America, many of whom emigrated from the island of Ireland, the importance of rejecting imperial oppression of smaller nations takes precedence. The message of that poster discredits the theory that the IRA and Sinn Fein, as a collective unit, cared solely about their public image and using it to gain local, and more importantly, international supporters.

Outrage over the actions of state actors carrying out the policy of internment quickly shifted into more rights claims being made on behalf of people locked up and by the prisoners themselves. Much of that rhetoric surrounded the idea that people locked up as suspected IRA members were prisoners of war. One poster called for people to support the hunger strike. The poster continues, “Irish republican prisoners in Northern Ireland are fighting for their rights as prisoners of war… no prison work; no prison uniforms; free association; restored remission, [and] parcels & letters,” reciting the “five demands” that became the cornerstone of republican policy suggestions for reforming Northern

Irish prisons. Again, republican posters use the language of democracy and rights discourse to make demands in a system where their political voices were silenced.

Republican posters made strong claims about the rights of republican prisoners who had been interned, largely because republican areas were most strongly affected by the internment policies. Yet, as the policy continued and started to be used to imprison all actors in the conflict, some posters called for a complete end to internment of all people.

One poster, published by NICRA in the third year after internment was introduced read:

“internment rule is not okay!” Below an image of a prison watchtower and fence with many people silhouetted behind it, the poster reads: “NICRA says release all internees

99 loyalist and republican." Those posters were released in contrast to some that were circulated on behalf of their loyalist counterparts in Northern Irish prisons, which were a substantially smaller group. The posters from loyalist organizations are committed to the narrative that those being interned were only interned because of their involvement in the

IRA and anyone else who was interned was a prisoner of war, but a specific war: the war on terror. One poster, which simply reads, in large capital letters, “Why punish loyalist

P.O.Ws?” poses the question of why the government would have any need to lock up someone with loyalist views if all of the terrorists were part of the republican movement.

The poster also uses nearly the exact rhetoric that republican posters used to portray loyalist prisoners as prisoners in a war against one main enemy: The IRA. Another poster depicted a seal representing unionism behind bars, surrounded by the words: “We demand the release of the Ulster Loyalist Political Prisoners,” using the same rhetoric used to discuss republican prisoners arrested during the conflict. The bottom of the poster reads “their only crime is loyalty,” bringing back themes of criminality that were introduced in the earlier discussion of criminalized Irishness and republicanism. That poster lends legitimacy to the theory that the largest factor contributing to criminality was how critical a person was of the state. According to that logic, loyalist paramilitary members, even those who killed civilians, were not criminally liable because they acted out of loyalty to the state.

In another politically charged complaint about the imprisonment strategies of the

British government, some posters compared the prisons to world renowned injustices from the past. A pair of posters, both containing the words “Long Kesh Concentration

Camp” and “Lest we forget” at the bottom were printed one year apart: the first in

100 Christmas 1971, and the second in 1972 around the same time. The poster from 1971 included an image of hands in cuffs and a sketch of the highly militarized prison compound at Long Kesh, including the heavily armed watch towers. The poster from

1972 contained more symbolic imagery that referenced the religious aspects of the conflict. The image was of the island of Ireland, with the North shaded black. A cross made of barbed wire stood, casting a shadow onto the dark section in the North. That imagery is reminiscent of another poster which is mentioned above, and made similar demands about the rightness of prison protests. It depicted Jesus Christ, nailed to a cross, and below his broken body were the words: “he too was a prisoner of conscience.”

Besides the ethical and political dimension to the rights claim being made by such a statement, the poster also attempted to reach the majority of people in Ireland who were religious, whether that religion was Catholicism or Protestantism.

Another poster which labeled Long Kesh a concentration camp depicted a candle and flame not unlike the one that represents Amnesty International. Barbed wire snakes around the candle. This poster makes a stronger political claim than many of the others because it references not just the rights of those imprisoned according to their political and social grievances. It brings a legal dimension to the claims being made by including, in large, white capital letters, the words “600 imprisoned without trial.” The mention of the trial that interned prisoners were not granted makes a legal claim against a state which professed a reliance on law and order, and, as the Magna Carta seemed to state, placed everyone including kings and politicians, under the same rule of law.

Legal claims of rights discrimination are extremely important, especially in conflicts that lead us to question the legitimacy of state power. Another poster that was

101 released as part of the campaign for the rights of imprisoned people made a legal claim against the government. The poster depicted a woman, shielding both her bare breasts and her eyes, next to a call to “Stop strip searches.” The top of the poster reads “Strip searching is naked torture,” dropping another somewhat legal term. Torture has a very specifically defined meaning according to the European Court of Human Rights. The

Irish government and various republican actors tried to bring the weight of international law into their struggle against their British oppressors on other occasions with little success. The minimal success they had in the ECHR came to be known as the “hooded men” case.137 The ECHR held that the interrogation tactics used against the prisoners did constitute degrading and inhuman treatment, and thus was a violation of the European

Convention on Human Rights. They stopped short of declaring the tactics to be torture.

That partial victory, whether or not it held substantial legal weight capable of swaying

British policy, gave legitimacy to legal claims made by those fighting for republican or nationalist goals. Legal claims by republicans come as a response to what John Comaroff explained as the legal means of discrimination. Demands for redress are a natural response to a society that espoused equality under its law, but in this situation those demands are strengthened by the history of legal discrimination.

7.4. Calls for justice or legal redress

In the absence of satisfaction under the law, citizens of a democracy make claims for legal redress. In many cases, that claim is articulated as a call for justice. Because failures by the criminal justice system are perceived as societal wounds, calls for justice,

137 Ireland v. UK, (ECHR) questions the legality of five different types of interrogation used in UK prisons against Irish prisoners. Those techniques were wall-standing, subjection to loud noise, deprivation of sleep, food and water, and hooding. The prisoners in the case came to be known as the hooded men.

102 with their many steps, are understood as the remedy for whatever shortcomings the law may have. In Northern Ireland, calls for justice were often articulated as the right of family members to have justice. For some, however, calls for justice were about pointing out the systemic flaws in an unequal system.

One poster, photocopied from a handmade paper booklet titled “A Republican

ABC” emphasizes how important justice was to the republican movement. The page for the letter “J” contained the words “J is for Justice that we’ve never known.” A recurring slogan printed on Sinn Fein election fliers was “Freedom, Justice, Peace.”

The above discussion of the allegations of rights discrimination often resulted in calls for justice by individuals or by families. In response to the policy of internment, many republicans upgraded their claims of rights discrimination to full claims of legal injustice. The call for justice was legitimated by placing the practice of internment within a historical context. Republicans are especially known for relating their political struggle to that of other groups engaged in resistance.138 Their networks of solidarity expand much wider than those cultivated by their loyalist counterparts. Including their solidarity with the Palestinian people, republicans voiced overwhelming struggle with the people of

South Africa living under apartheid. Consequently Nelson Mandela’s words and his image are replete throughout the posters and murals of the conflict. Mandela’s image was reproduced in many of the murals around Belfast, and republicans often drew parallels between his imprisonment and the internment and imprisonment of their supporters. One series of posters included photographs of several members of the republican movement

138 This observation is based on the author’s time in Northern Ireland, as well as the information in many posters in the Troubles Images collection. Solidarity networks are an important part of the republican movement.

103 who were imprisoned at the time. The text of each of those posters read: “We have our

Nelson Mandelas,” and included the number of years each person spent in an “English

Gaol.”139

7.4.1. Calls for Inquiry into Wrongful Death

Once the failures of internment policies became more apparent and the shift to a more militarized state was underway, republicans’ legal claims increasingly demanded justice for wrongful death caused in some way by state actors. Many of those claims were in response to what became known as the “shoot-to-kill” policy of the British state.

Generally, many legal complaints about British forces accused them of using lethal force too often and too quickly. One poster included a black and white photograph of a corpse on a city sidewalk. A police officer stood nearby and people in plain clothes looked down at the body. The poster read, “British justice: Summary executions.” Below that was a quote from an eyewitness from the incident in the photograph, which had a caption labeling it as an image of the Falls Road on January 13, 1990. The eyewitness’ statement reads: “They were finished off as they lay wounded on the ground.” (See photo on page

58). Beyond complaints about the legality of the use of force by state agents, some complaints from republicans were based on their claim that the government was hiding the causes of many of the deaths caused by security forces. The importance of truth in achieving justice was not lost on republicans. Calls for truth are prolific in republican posters, including one that advertised the 2000 anniversary of Bloody Sunday and adding that it was “time for truth.” One poster reads “You killed Leo Norney… You tried to kill

Sandy Lynch…You tried to kill Brian Stewart… You are destroying our children.” On

139 Gaol, the Irish spelling of “jail,” has been used often in place of the English word, especially by rebellious Irishmen and women.

104 this particular poster the printed words “you tried to kill Brian Stewart has been crossed out in pen and changed to “You killed Brian Stewart.” The poster continues, “We want life protected—not destroyed... We want truth—not lies…Your actions destroy life. Your words are lies. Bring your criminals to justice.” Though this poster makes a strong call for the removal of British troops, it also makes a very important legal claim. The state response to wrongful death claims was an important facet of British anti-terrorist policy, because it produced a military strategy that granted impunity to troops under the guise of fighting terror. That military policy led to a breakdown of the legal system meant to bring real criminals to justice. Essentially, the culture which criminalized Irishness had the opposite effect on Britishness, forcing the legal system to change to fit that paradigm, again illustrating Comaroff’s phenomenon of lawfare. The rationalization and exemption of “British terror” and “para terror,” as many posters labeled it, meant a bastardization of due process. Protesting those systematic legal shortcomings became central to the republican movement and can be found in many of their posters. One poster articulated the grievances against the British legal system by using specific legal language that has concrete meaning in a society governed by rule of law. The poster depicts two uniformed soldiers dragging a civilian by the collar and above in red lettering are the words “Judge,

Jury, Executioner.”

Shooting deaths by state forces became a more common subject for legal claims when reports of collusion between British troops and loyalist paramilitaries began to increase and be substantiated. One poster issued by Sinn Fein very plainly illustrates the link between the RUC and various loyalist paramilitary organizations. The poster includes a sketch of three uniformed men, each with a patch that reads “RUC,” “UDR,”

105 and “UFF,” respectively. The RUC man in the front is passing behind his back to the UDR and

UFF men, a piece of paper that reads

“Cross-border security operations.” The image is accompanied by a crossword puzzle of paramilitary acronyms all built off of the letters “RUC.” Another

Sinn Fein poster describes one of the most well-known wrongful death collusion cases from the conflict, the death of Robert Hamill, claiming that he was “kicked to death by loyalist thugs in full view of R.U.C. officers who stood idly by.” Hamill’s case, like other cases of wrongful death, was the subject of inquiries by the British state and by independent organizations. The Robert Hamill Inquiry began in 2005 and was intended to determine whether the RUC officers present during Hamill’s murder “facilitated his death or obstructed the investigation of it.” The inquiry has yielded no conviction to date. The inquiry into Hamill’s death was one of the several individual inquiries prompted by the

106 Cory Collusion Inquiry, which began in 2002.140 Another case was that of Hamill’s family’s solicitor, Rosemary Nelson. The full inquiry into her murder by loyalist paramilitaries found that the RUC had no culpability in her murder, even though she was assaulted and verbally abused by RUC officers in 1997, an incident which was caught on film.141 The death of another solicitor, Pat Finucane, became the subject of many inquiries, including the Cory Inquiry. His murder was also the subject of a report by an

American organization, Lawyers Committee for Human Rights, wherein they accused the

RUC of colluding with paramilitaries in Finucane’s murder.142 Many posters call for justice in the face of confusing and frustrating circumstances, where the truth is nearly impossible to find.

As mentioned above, the republican movement developed solidarity with the struggles of other similar groups. Nelson Mandela’s story served as a source of strength for those experiencing injustice and attempting to control the response to it. Mandela’s story also served as a rallying point for members of the republican movement who wanted to resist that oppression, both peacefully and not so peacefully. One poster depicts Mandela and Bobby Sands, both with a fist raised high. The poster includes a statement from Mandela in 1990, after he was released from prison: “Our resort to armed struggle was purely a defensive action… the factor which necessitated the armed struggle

140 The Cory Collusion Inquiry was intended to investigate collusion between British and Irish security forces and paramilitaries from both sides. The six cases of collusion included two investigations into collusion between the Provisional IRA and Irish security forces: the shooting deaths of two RUC officers, a case in which there was evidence of collusion, and the deaths of Lord Justice and Lady Gibson in a car bomb explosion, wherein no evidence of collusion was found. The four cases of suspected collusion between British forces regarded the deaths of four civilians: Two local solicitors, Pat Finucane and Rosemary Nelson, and two civilians, Billy Wright and Robert Hamill. In all four of those cases, evidence to suggest collusion was uncovered. 141 The Rosemary Nelson Inquiry Report, 2011. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the- rosemary-nelson-inquiry-report. 142 Martin Melaugh, Collusion- Chronology of Events in the Stevens Inquires,” CAIN, 2016, http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/issues/collusion/chron.htm.

107 still exists today. We have no option but to continue… we have waited too long for freedom.” Mandela’s words, though often used to reinforce a strategy of peaceful disobedience, were also used to justify armed struggle against the British. That strategy, weakened from the outset because of the ease with which any armed struggle could be labeled as IRA terrorism, has a colonial past, as mentioned in earlier sections. The use of an internationally revered peace-building figure like Mandela leads to the question of how armed resistance by Irish nationalists is any different from other resistance by formerly colonized peoples like those in South Africa. Calls for resistance based on historical colonial injustice and other grievances previously mentioned will be explained in the following section.

7.5. Calls for resistance or civil disobedience

Civil disobedience is emblematic of the Troubles. People were using it before the

Troubles began and many families still implement it as a strategy in their campaigns for justice and proper accountability after the conflict. Some posters made simple calls to republican supporters, asking for just that: support. As can be expected, the calls for support vary throughout the conflict, as the need for support for different causes changed.

One poster called for the release of all internees. Another demanded “the demilitarization of the six counties…the release of all political prisoners… [and] the disbanding of the

RUC.” Another poster urged republicans to “support the hunger strike… [and attend a] public meeting… [to] force the government to implement the five demands.143” Another

143 The five demands were central to the fight of prisoners for political status and included no prison work, no prison uniform, free association, restricted remission (the ability to be released after serving a shorter sentence than originally set) and the ability to receive parcels and letters.

108 called for people to support the hunger strike. Acts of resistance cannot stand on their own, as the posters suggest, and need the support of the people.

Republican resistance during the Troubles took many forms, the most popular of which, for obvious reasons, was marching. The Troubles began after civil rights marches in 1969 were met with violence, and marches remained a popular form of protest throughout the conflict. Many posters included images of various marches. Many of the posters advertised upcoming marches. Many of them occur around Easter and urge those attending to “wear an Easter Lily,” both as a celebration of the holiday and to honor those who died in 1916 and every day since in the fight for Irish independence and unity.

Announced on a poster in 2000, a candlelight procession was organized in Derry, calling for the truth about Bloody Sunday. Another poster, below a sketch of a dumbfounded soldier whose rifle muzzle was inexplicably knotted around itself, told people: “March with the weapons of peace: non-violence [and] civil disobedience.”

Taking their inspiration from the peaceful protests led by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, republican protestors, especially in the early days of the civil rights campaign, used civil disobedience to voice their concerns. A very specific type of protest, civil disobedience places protestors within a special legal category. Though they are technically breaking a law, that violation is inseparably attached to a critique of that law as unjust or inadequate, an organized pushback against lawfare. One poster, issued by the Civil Disobedience Co- ordination urged: “no co-operation with civil authorities,” as the strategy to “end repression and internment.” By the end of the conflict, posters often included a laundry list of demands, all of which have been previously discussed. The forms of noncooperation also included pickets, like the one advertised to take place at Grovensor

109 Road Barracks, and boycotts, which were advertised on countless posters. Another protest took the form of rent and rate strikes, which were advertised on many posters and called for support. Boycotts were typically organized to stop Irish people from buying

British goods, but they occasionally had other targets. One poster urged people to boycott the census with the phrase: “Don’t return it. Burn it!” The poster elaborated:

The British government places great store in the ten-yearly census, which they use for social, economic and political planning… [The 1971 census boycott and burning campaign against internment] undoubtedly frustrated the uses to which the British government – and the British Army would have liked to put the

information gathered.”

As described above, many organizations with varying levels of republican association advocated voting as a useful tool for political empowerment in Northern Ireland. Some, however, argued for more aggressive means of asserting political will. A poster circulated by People’s Democracy urged people to “Fight! Don’t Vote!” Like many republican tactics borrowed from the American civil rights movement, urging aggression against oppression was nothing new. One poster summed up that sentiment with a quote from

Mairead Farrell, who was killed in Gibraltar in 1988 by British SAS agents, an incident that would be the subject of a great deal of ethical scrutiny. Farrell said, “I’ve always believed we had a legitimate right to take up arms and defend our country and ourselves against the British occupation.” Farrell’s use of rhetoric is important because she is not encouraging reciprocal violence or terrorism. She is arguing for the legitimate right of indigenous people to fight for their home and their lives, a statement that is far too prophetic in Farrell’s case, because she and the two other IRA volunteers who were killed in Gibraltar were unarmed at the time of their deaths, leading people to question the actions of the SAS agents. Another poster put Farrell’s statements more simply:

110 “Wherever there is oppression there is resistance.” The bottom of that poster includes a quote from James

Connolly, a leader in the 1916 Rising:

“We cannot conceive of a free

Ireland with a subject working class; we cannot conceive of a subject Ireland with a free working class.” It was common in the republican movement to relate the present struggle to other struggles in other countries and in their own past. Still, the most important recurring theme in the rhetoric of republican resistance is their demand to end British oppression and gain civil rights.

111 7.6. Explanation of Findings

The findings of this analysis contradict a narrative that would portray republicans as terrorists and present a counter narrative that represents ideological republicans as a social group who, despite some associations with violent groups, had political motivations, legitimate social grievances, and valid criticisms of government censorship.

When reframed within the context of their colonial past, and the oppressive environment that contributed to unrest in republican areas, texts rampant with angry rhetoric take on new political meaning. Disregarding the method of delivery of a poster, separates the messages communicated from stereotypical ideas about propaganda and where it comes from. Many of the political messages found in the posters analyzed are hidden under angry rhetoric, outrage, or threats, the use of which makes complete sense given the social and political circumstances of their authors. Criticizing unionist government officials for inciting violence is, when looking at representation disparities in

Northern Irish government, is equivalent to a constituent criticizing an official for ignoring a large portion of his electorate, but with the added weight of the violence stemming from that disregard. A poster demanding the British to “get out,” in the context of a colonial society currently under direct rule, is a poignant political statement from a group experiencing occupation. Calling an RUC officer a “bigot,” when taking into account the numbers of unarmed Catholic civilians who were killed at the hands of the

RUC, is an indictment of a system that allowed, and some might argue persuaded, the allowance of prejudice in military strategy. Claiming the right to self-determination goes beyond dreams of changing borders, and, in the context of a society where certain people were vilified speaks to the yearning of a people to celebrate their culture. Labelling

112 prisons where people were detained because of their ideological beliefs, or even the neighborhood they lived in, as concentration camps, is a critical commentary on the ability of the government to circumvent legal and human rights in favor of their own version of law and order. Calling for a reexamination of deaths amid well-researched and meticulously documented evidence of collusion and prejudice, is the natural response to potential miscarriage of justice in democratic countries. Boycotts, marches and demonstrations, though they have been called disruption by those who are unaccepting of the political motivations behind them, are an important tool of populations in democratic societies seeking change.

The reframing of the conflict allows recognition of political messages as having even more weight because, as described, there was no mainstream platform available for republicans to communicate political dissent. Just as some authors have argued that the exclusion of parties angling to be involved in the peace process made further violent actions almost inevitable, the exclusion of republican ideas from the political marketplace almost guaranteed the creation of alternative strategies of political expression.

8. Conclusion

The conflict in Northern Ireland is one of the most heavily studied and theorized conflicts, and one scholar said, “Northern Ireland has just claim to the title of most over- narrativized region on Earth.”144 Liam Harte was referring to the ease with which the realities from Northern Ireland can be turned into stories, movies, or books, but his point is well-made. Scholars, authors, and filmmakers have been trying for years to make sense of the conflict in Northern Ireland, to give it a story. This thesis analyzed posters

144 Liam Harte, “The Thriller and Northern Ireland since 1969: Utterly Resigned Terror,” Modern Language Review 103 (2008): 1.

113 circulated during the conflict, working under the assumption that those posters were circulated in order to contradict an overarching narrative about the criminality of dissenters which was largely constructed by the British government and its supporters.

The Apparatus of Impunity, a report released by the independent nongovernmental organization, the Committee on the Administration of Justice (CAJ) addresses accusations that any attempt to understand the conflict independent of the mainstream narrative that has successfully portrayed republicans as terrorists, is an anti- state witch hunt. The language used in those allegations often reveals as much as any alternative analysis of the conflict, a category within which the author will place this analysis. One allegation from the Northern Ireland Retired Police Officers Association read as follows: “We will not be drawn into participation in any alternative forum, commission, or other body that is intent on pandering to the wholly spurious, cynical and absurd attempts currently underway by various ‘justice’ groups and other apologists to rewrite history by equating the actions of police in combating terrorism with those of so called freedom fighters.”145 By ignoring the political dimensions of both the police and the people they malign as terrorists, these statements remove themselves from the context of the situation whose agents they seek to proscribe labels to. Interestingly, the NIRPOA alleges a similar complaint at the Police Service of Northern Ireland Historical Enquires

Team (PSNI HET). They claim that the HET, which was primarily involved in investigating cases of wrongful death against the PSNI, included in their investigations “a lack of contextualization and understanding of the realities of the times about which they

145 NIRPOA, “Written Submission by NIRPOA to Dr. Richard Haass on Dealing with the Past,” Executive Summary, 15.

114 are writing.”146 Another researcher ran into similar problems when trying to schedule academic interviews with members of the RUC. In his proposal to the RUC, then PhD candidate Graham Ellison described “the prevalence of sectarian attitudes” among RUC officers, which he then concluded was a naïve way of framing his analysis, instead opting for a more neutral proposal which avoided “explicit reference to what the force hierarchy would regard as sensitive or controversial issues.”147 His omission of well-documented attitudes within the RUC was an obvious necessity for conducting his research, but is also a consequence of powerful hegemonic coercion that still reinforces the narrative of the conflict.

This author has argued that an understanding of the context and realities of the

Northern Ireland conflict makes a reframing of the conflict inevitable. Such a reframing, this author has argued, provides new understanding of the violence and the rhetoric of different actors in the conflict.

The arguments of this thesis undeniably build on one another, and are informed by other scholarship to do so. The author argued that the colonial past of Northern Ireland contributed to inequalities within society. As a result of their inability to articulate their struggle as colonial, protesters who were primarily republican and Catholic, though not entirely, framed their struggle as one for civil and political rights. Existing societal fractures and differences in claimed as well as ascribed identity based on past difference were strengthened by state rhetoric that demonized dissent. Legal methods of social control were also employed to quash minority dissent, which yielded further minority

146 NIRPOA, “Written Submission by NIRPOA to Dr. Richard Haass on Dealing with the Past,” Executive Summary, 7-8. 147 Graham Ellison, “Professionalism in the RUC: an Examination of the Institutional Discourse,” unpublished PhD, (Jordanstown: University of Ulster, 1997), 96-98.

115 resistance and an expansion of resistance strategies, which included political violence by the previously defunct Irish Republican Army. Increased violence gave more ammunition to state forces which took the opportunity to crack down harder on dissenters, and anyone who espoused the same ideas as those who were attempting to use violence to remedy their grievances. Strategies of silencing dissent included internment, imprisonment, and violence. The most important method of silencing political dissent, this author has argued, was censorship. Media censorship, including the encouragement of self- censorship had a profound effect on the ability of minorities to counter the construction of their identity as being compatible with terrorism.

Theoretical frameworks for these research were taken from the media studies, political science, and anthropology disciplines. Those theories included Harold Lasswell and Roger Brown’s theorizations about propaganda, which helped framed a discussion of what messages constitute political speech, Elisabeth Noelle-Neuman’s spiral of silence theory, which describes the ability of mass media to work as a mechanism of social control, and semiotic theory, which seeks to find more complex meanings through contextualized analysis of signs in a text. Those theories were used in the analysis of the media’s role in the conflict as well as the supplemental response by the republican movement to perceived failures by the media The author also used political theories about the origins and explanations of ethnic conflict, specifically the primordialist, instrumentalist, and constructivist schools of thought. Mark R. Beissinger’s theories about ethnic nationalism and democratization were also used to inform a discussion of the factors that increase tension in society. The author also paired Donald Horowitz’ theory of differential modernization as a product of colonialism with John Comaroff’s

116 theory of lawfare to discuss reframing the Troubles as a post-colonial struggle. Finally, the author introduced Mark McGovern’s theory of the doctrine of necessity and Didier

Bigo and Emanuel-Pierre Guittet’s theory of terrorist labelling to discuss the relationship between social control and the counterterrorism policies of the government. The author also combined Edmund Burke’s early theories about terrorism with commentary from

Isaac Land in the discussion of the goals achieved in the war on terror. Those theories, and the relevant literature about the conflict form the basis of the author’s argument that the conflict needs to be reframed as colonial and that the counterterrorist strategies implemented during and after it have had at the least unrecognized negative effects, and at the most authoritarian goals. They also build on the argument that, in the face of powerful mechanisms of social control during the Troubles, the republican movement’s circulation of posters was a formidable response and a legitimate form of political speech.

The author used textual analysis in her study of the 3,000 posters in Linen Hall Library’s

Troubled Images Collection, which allowed her to draw contextualized conclusions about the denotative and connotative meanings in the messages, and their political relevance.

Most of the limitations of this research stem from the shortages that are inevitable when writing an undergraduate thesis. The amount of time spent on this research was regrettably shorter than would have been preferable. Full access to sources also would have made the research more complete. Some information that might have been gathered, say, if the author worked in Linen Hall Library for months instead of studying and writing in Athens, Ohio, however, may not even exist at all. It is unknown exactly how much information is missing from this thesis that would be impossible to find given unlimited time and resources, simply because of the complicated nature of the conflict.

117 The major limitation of this research is that it only analyzes a small aspect of what the narrative of the conflict controlled: the media. While it is a primary component of the social control made possible by the narrative which this author discussed, presenting the other areas of social control would have given a more complete idea of how totalizing the narrative was. The author was also only able to address one method of creating a counter narrative: the distribution of posters. Just one example of another massive mode of counter narrative creation is the painting of murals. Analysis of such a massive medium would certainly add to the analysis of political narrative creation, but there was not time to include that in this thesis.

This thesis presents large concepts that leave a great deal of space for further research. The author argues that the tendency to dismiss any violent action as terrorism without analyzing its origins or potential political context, will not decrease violence. The year in which this thesis was primarily written, 2016 was scarred with violence that spanned the globe. Some groups claimed responsibility for many of the incidents, and this author has no expertise on that topic, so it’s not helpful to discuss. Another example of the phenomenon occurred during that same year. During the summer, people became terrified all around the United States that people in clown costumes were running around hurting and killing people. Seven people in Alabama were brought up on felony charges for “making a terrorist threat connected to ‘clown-related activities.’”148 People attributed the word terrorist to people, who, in contrast to what republican dissenters in Ireland were and claimed to be, are ordinary criminals. The comparison between the people who were the subject of this thesis and violent clowns is stark and a little ridiculous, but it is

148 Melissa Chan, “Everything You Need to Know About the ‘Clown Attack’ Craze” Time Magazine, October 4, 2016. http://time.com/4518456/scary-clown-sighting-attack-craze/.

118 revealing. The perceived capricious nature of the violence the clowns committed is what made them fit the terrorist label, this author argues. Terrorism has been associated with an unrelenting hatred for western culture, when, as this author argued in the case of

Northern Ireland, so-called acts of terrorism or in support of terrorism are often the inevitable reaction to development and excess at the expense of whichever group has been labelled the “other.”

A more dangerous example of the tendency to label dissenters as terrorists arose while this thesis was being written. A petition was started on the White House’s website on January 22, 2017 to “formally recognize Black Lives Matter as a terrorist organization.”149 The petition only received 906 signatures, but was not singular in its message. Milwaukee County Sherriff David Clarke wrote in a column for Fox News that

Black Lives Matter should be labeled a hate group and that the deaths of four Dallas police officers was “mission accomplished” for the group.150 Horrifying accusations aside, the power to label dissenters as terrorists and effectively silence them with that label was abused in Northern Ireland and echoes of that abuse are being seen in American society.

While this thesis was being written, the United Kingdom elected to leave the

European Union (EU), though a majority of people in Northern Ireland voted to remain a member, along with the Republic of Ireland. The potential unrest that may stem from that complicated transition may lead important questions about the role of Northern Ireland

149 Petition “Formally recognize black lives matter as a terrorist organization” last modified January 22, 2017, https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/formally-recognize-black-lives-matter-terrorist-organization 150 David Clarke, “Sheriff David Clarke: It's time to stand up to Black Lives Matter,” Fox News, July 11, 2016. http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2016/07/11/sheriff-david-clarke-its-time-to-stand-up-to-black- lives-matter.html

119 within the U.K. to be asked. Furthermore, as the U.K. government attempts to sell the decision to its people, especially the majorities in Northern Ireland and Scotland who did not vote in favor of leaving the EU, the methods of narrative creation which were essential to their handling of the Troubles may be seen again.

Suggestions for further research, this author suspects, will continue to expand as the U.K. government continues with the process that follows their referendum. The importance of the North’s Border with the Republic cannot be overstated. Just a winding line snaking back and forth across roads, the border goes unnoticed by most bus or car travelers, but tension surrounding the border could spell trouble.

9. Glossary of Terms

Republican: Republican refers to the group of people, which includes Sinn Fein and the IRA, who support a republic rather than a monarchy. Their general goal is to achieve a united Ireland. Nationalist: Related to republicans, and containing many of the same people, nationalists are committed to preserving Irish heritage and culture. They identify most strongly with their Irish identity. Along with republicans, most of the people in this group are Catholic. Loyalist: The more extreme label, because like republican, it is associated with groups that committed violence during the Troubles. Loyalists, most simply, were loyal to Britain and wanted to see the union remain intact. Unionist: Unionists supported the union of Northern Ireland and Britain. Most were of the Protestant faith. Those who claimed or were assigned this label were not necessarily supportive of loyalist paramilitaries.

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