Genealogising the Troubles: Tracing Roots of British Security and Peacebuilding in Northern Ireland, 1920-1998

Northern Ireland's 'Troubles' were post-Napoleonic Europe's 'longest war': causing fully half as many deaths per capita as WWII did for the rest of the UK; and precipitating the longest continuous deployment in British military history. Moreover, though formally ended with the signing of the Good Friday/Belfast Agreement (GFA) in 1998, the Troubles continue to shape UK/Irish politics.

Counter-terrorism powers initially framed as a temporary response to paramilitarism remain on Britain's statute book today. 'Peace walls' erected by the British Army to physically separate Catholic/Protestant communities still dominate Northern Ireland's urban landscape. And power-sharing institutions established under GFA find themselves trapped in cycles of repeat suspension - with party rivalries having left Northern Ireland government-less for 40% of the period since 1998.

My fellowship advances important research to help us understand the Troubles' historical evolution, and persistent political legacies. My work situates Troubles-era security and peacebuilding policies in relation to a long-term 'genealogy' of Anglo-Irish relations, and provides a framework for tracing the historical roots of contemporary politics more generally.

During my PhD, I created a new database of all UK parliamentary debates on Northern Ireland - from the latter's creation in 1920, to the outbreak of Troubles violence in the 1970s. I used quantitative methods of text analysis to establish patterns in ways British parliamentarians spoke about Northern Ireland, over these years. I found parliamentarians became habituated to knowing Northern Ireland according to a specific vocabulary - one framing Northern Ireland as an 'abnormal' 'problem' in need of 'solving'.

I then set out to establish intersections between this historical scheme for knowing Northern Ireland on the one hand, and security policies advanced to contain its 1970s 'Troubles' on the other. I employed quantitative and qualitative methods of archival and spatial analysis to consider: 1) the introduction of the UK's first-ever 'counter-terrorism' laws in 1973/1974; and 2) the erection of peace walls between Catholic/nationalist and Protestant/unionist neighbourhoods in Belfast.

I found that, in both conceiving and legitimising these interventions, British governmental and military actors relied on the same long-term vocabulary for knowing Northern Ireland I had established in my research's first phase. Troubles-era security policy grew out of historical patterns for thinking and speaking about Northern Ireland in British politics.

My research on Northern Ireland affords important empirical, conceptual, and methodological insights. Empirically, it gives us tools to understand the origins of Troubles-era British security. Conceptually, it resolves problems in the treatment of history in scholarship on politics: illuminating how historical inheritances shape present political possibilities, and establishing a conceptual framework for assessing this shaping.

Methodologically, my research offers an original and repeatable research design - combining quantitative and qualitative methods of analysis, to assess multiple 'modes' of data (textual, spatial, visual).

My fellowship brings these contributions together through publication of a book on the histories of British security in Northern Ireland. It enables me to share my analysis with members of the public, policymakers, and disciplinary peers. Finally, it adds urgent research on Northern Irish peacebuilding to my existing findings on security: situating the Good Friday Agreement in relation to the same patterns of Anglo-Irish politics that produced 1970s security policies - and, in the process, demonstrating fault-lines at the heart of the GFA, which require addressing if Northern Ireland's devolved administration is to move beyond patterns of repeat suspension.