“We will lead you to the republic” : the dynamic heterogeneity of Irish republicanism, 1968-1998

Abstract

This thesis combines archival research and oral histories to analyse and explain the dynamic heterogeneity of Irish republicanism between the ‘global ’68’ and the Good Friday Agreement of 1998. Across six thematic chapters, it discusses republicanism’s temporalspatial complexity, the variety of its influences, and internal dynamics of response to external conjuncture. Engaging concepts and analytical frameworks from social theory and social movement theory, this thesis analyses republican repertoires of action, strategic shifts, and cycles of protest. It situates Irish republicanism among transnational patterns of contestation after the ‘global ‘68’. The research examines republican ‘heteroglossia’, between leaderships portraying a unified, uniform movement, and dissonances, dilemmas, and transformations through the strata of republican organisations. Oral histories articulate entangled republican memory. This thesis posits three interconnected explanatory forces for republican heterogeneity: class, space, and networks. Republicans experienced class and interacted with class politics differently, and spatialised and historicised their struggle locally, nationally, and internationally. At moments of crisis and transformation in the republican campaign, activists mobilised alternately in ‘orthodox’ and ‘pragmatic’ networks. These competing milieux mediated subjective responses to power relations and strategic changes in the movement. These findings have implications for qualitative analyses of radical movements beyond Ireland, and for understandings of republicanism today.