Browse

This book explores how different publics make sense of and evaluate anti-terrorism powers within the UK, and the implications of this for citizenship and security. Since 9/11, the UK’s anti-terrorism framework has undergone dramatic changes, including with the introduction of numerous new pieces of legislation. Drawing on primary empirical research, this book examines the impact of these changes on security and citizenship, as perceived by citizens themselves. We examine such impacts on different communities within the UK, and find that generally, whilst white individuals were not unconcerned about the effects of anti-terrorism, ethnic minority citizens (and not Muslim communities alone) believe that anti-terrorism measures have had a direct, negative impact on various dimensions of their citizenship and security. This book thus offers the first systematic engagement with ‘vernacular’ or ‘everyday’ understandings of anti-terrorism policy, citizenship and security. Beyond an empirical analysis of citizen attitudes, it argues that while transformations in anti-terrorism frameworks impact on public experiences of security and citizenship, they do not do so in a uniform, homogeneous, or predictable manner. At the same time, public understandings and expectations of security and citizenship themselves shape how developments in anti-terrorism frameworks are discussed and evaluated. The relationships between these phenomenon, in other words, are both multiple and co-constitutive. By detailing these findings, this book adds depth and complexity to existing studies of the impact of anti-terrorism powers. The book will be of interest to a wide range of academic disciplines including Political Science, International Relations, Security Studies and Sociology.

At the heart of the European integration process is the political economy debate over whether the EU should be a market-making project, or if it should combine this with integration in employment and social policy. What has been the impact of the 2004 and 2007 rounds of enlargement upon the political economy of European integration? EU enlargement, the clash of capitalisms and the European social dimension analyses the impact of the 2004 and 2007 enlargements upon the politics of European integration within EU employment and social policy. This book analyses the main policy negotiations in the field and analyses the political positions and contributions of the Central and Eastern European Member States. Through an analyses of the negotiations of the Services Directive, the revision of the Working Time Directive and the Europe 2020 poverty target, the book argues that the addition of the Central and Eastern European states has strengthened liberal forces at the EU level and undermined integration with EU employment and social policy.

Interrogation, Intelligence and Security examines the origins and effects of a group of controversial interrogation techniques often described as torture, known as the ‘five techniques’. Focusing on the colony of Aden at a time when British rule was being challenged by nationalist insurgents (1963–67), on the height of ‘the troubles’ in Northern Ireland (1971) and the conflict in Iraq (2003), the book explores the use of hooding to restrict vision, white noise, stress positions, limited sleep and a limited diet. Through its in-depth analysis the book reveals how British forces came to use such controversial methods in counter-insurgency, counter-terrorism and internal security contexts. In Aden and Northern Ireland the techniques were a part of policy, used because of the British military’s belief – a belief adopted by members of government – that the techniques would increase the amount and quality of intelligence obtained during interrogation. In Iraq the techniques were used for a much more complex set of factors that can be categorised into facilitating and motivating factors. The book finds that while it is likely that some intelligence was produced from these interrogations, the techniques had widespread and long-lasting negative effects that should be taken into account when judging whether these and similar techniques can be justified.

A Matter of Intelligence is a book about the British Security Service MI5. More specifically, it concerns one particular aspect of its work, the surveillance of anti-Nazi German refugees during the 1930s and 1940s. When Hitler took power in 1933, the Nazis began a reign of terror against their political opponents: communists, socialists, pacifists and liberals, many of whom were forced to flee Germany. Some of these ‘political’ refugees came to Britain, where MI5 kept them under close surveillance. This study is based on the personal and organisational files that MI5 kept on them during the 1930s and 1940s – or at least those that have been released to the National Archives – making it equally a study of the political refugees themselves. Although this surveillance exercise formed an important part of MI5's work during that period, it is a part which it seems to have disowned or at any rate forgotten: the recent official history of MI5 does not even mention it, nor do its ‘unofficial’ counterparts. This study therefore fills a considerable gap in historical research. It traces the development of MI5 surveillance of German-speaking refugees through the case files of some of its individual targets and of the main refugee organisations; it also considers the refugees’ British supporters and the refugee informants who spied on fellow-refugees, as well as MI5's tussles with the Home Office and other official bodies. Finally, it assesses how successful – or how useful – this hidden surveillance exercise actually was.

No Solution uncovers the transition from a point in the Northern Ireland conflict where British governments’ sought a quick-fix solution to one where key ministers and civil servants had accepted that attrition would continue for many years. A number of other accounts have tended to assume that the British state, enjoying more resources than other parties to the conflict, had the capacity to impose a solution in Northern Ireland but lacked the insight to do so. This book reveals that such resources could not overcome political conditions in Northern Ireland during these key years. Those who have argued that the Good Friday Agreement could have been achieved twenty years earlier are shown to have failed to appreciate the context of the 1970s. Utilising a wide range of archival correspondence and diaries, this monograph covers the collapse of power-sharing in May 1974, the secret dialogue with the Provisional IRA during the 1975 ceasefire, the acquiescence of Labour ministers in continuing indefinite direct rule from Westminster, efforts to mitigate conflict through industrial investment, a major shift in security policy emphasizing the police over the army, the adaptation of republicans to the threat of these new measures and their own adoption of a ‘Long War’ strategy. It sheds light on the challenges faced by British ministers, civil servants, soldiers and policemen and the reasons why the conflict lasted so long. It will be a key text for researchers and students of both British and Northern Irish politics.

The central premise of this book is that the use of internment without trial in Northern Ireland from 1971 to 1975 has not been given proper academic investigation. The book provides a more comprehensive account of internment and assesses previously unexplored aspects of its use. Three main areas are examined. The high politics and intelligence surrounding the introduction of internment is explored; in doing accepted narratives regarding the measure are challenged. It is demonstrated that there was ample intelligence available on both republican and loyalist paramilitaries. Additionally it is shown that a policy of not interning loyalist paramilitaries was pursued, firstly by Stormont and then Westminster, until 1973. It is argued that the introduction of internment was actively supported by both administrations. The book also highlights that the main consequence of this period was that the IRA was left with enough support to ensure that the conflict would not be over quickly. Finally the book examines the evolution of the conflict in Northern Ireland between 1970 and 1972 outside of Belfast and Derry. This is a substantial part of the book which concentrates on four towns: Lurgan, Newry, Dungannon and Enniskillen. It is shown that the development of the dynamics of the conflict, was certainly more gradual and possibly less inevitable in these areas than in Belfast and to a lesser extent Derry, and did not become uniform across the whole of Northern Ireland until after the introduction of internment.

Sixteen years have passed since the signing of the Good Friday Agreement closed a chapter on Northern Ireland’s tragic past. But not everyone has moved on as far as the architects of peace would have wished. In many of the state’s Protestant communities loyalist paramilitaries remain a visible part of life, active reminders of the continuing reality of the division, fear and anger still deeply felt in the long shadows of the peace walls. Paramilitary Loyalism: Identity and Change takes a provocative second look at this enduring aspect of Northern Ireland’s post-conflict world. Based on extensive documentary and oral evidence from a range of key players, the book traces a line from the chaotic, violent birth of the modern paramilitaries to their stubborn endurance today. It considers this evolution through the lens of identity, moving beyond simplistic black and white portraits and positioning loyalism firmly in the shades of grey often obscured by the heat of conflict. Charting the powerful bonds between identity and conflict, the narrative seeks to draws out the defining humanity of the loyalist story. Never angelic, but never entirely demonic, the resulting picture is of a loyalism that is profoundly complex, contradictory and multi-dimensional.

This book assesses the security threat and political challenges offered by dissident Irish republicanism to the Northern Irish peace process. The 1998 Good Friday Agreement failed to end entirely armed republicanism. The movement of Sinn Féin into constitutional politics in a government of Northern Ireland and the eschewing of militarism that followed, including disbandment of the Provisional IRA (PIRA), the decommissioning of weapons and the supporting of the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) proved too much for a minority of republicans. This book begins by examining Sinn Féin’s evolution from the margins of political existence to becoming mainstream constitutional players. It then assesses how the compromises associated with these changes have been rejected by republican ‘dissidents’. In order to explore the heterogeneity of contemporary Irish republicanism this book draws upon in-depth interviews and analyses the strategies and tactics of various dissident republican groups. This analysis is used to outline the political and military challenges posed by dissidents to Northern Ireland in a post-Good Friday Agreement context as well as examine the response of the British state towards continuing violence. This discussion places the state response to armed republicanism in Northern Ireland within the broader debate on counter-terrorism after 9/11.

This book is about states’ use of “terrorism” to label others, especially specific groups within their own political territories and how such usage is legitimated and challenged. By examining how the Nepali state used the label of “terrorism” to refer to Maoists in the post September 11, 2001 era, and comparing it with previous usage of the term by the British state in relation to the Irish Republican Army (IRA), this book provides a comparative and historical analysis of states’ use of the rhetoric of terrorism. As such, it questions conventional understandings that a) states cannot be “terrorists” and b) that post September 11, 2001 terrorism is new. It does so by outlining how states have used the language of terrorism to establish a specific counterterrorist identity for themselves and by indicating how similar strategies of representation were used by the British and Nepali states while labeling others as “terrorist”. Thus, rhetorical practices and ways of describing others (as “terrorist”) exhibit similarities across geographical regions and before and after September 11, 2001. Overall, this book focuses attention on the inconsistency of the usage of “terrorism” and its sociopolitical implications.

The book considers the issues surrounding the political apology. These include the relationship between the personal and the political apology, reasons for the emergence of the political apology and the principal issues relating to the coherence of the political apology as a project. It also considers the dynamics of apologies between states and those within states and tries to explain the basis of support and opposition to different apologies.

This book examines attempts by the British Conservative party in the interwar years to capture and train the minds of the new electorate and create a counter-culture to what they saw as the intellectual hegemony of the Left. It is an important contribution to the political culture of Conservatism from the late 1920s to the early 1950s with a particular emphasis on the social and intellectual history of the Conservative milieu. This volume tells the fascinating story of the Bonar Law Memorial College, Ashridge, founded in 1929 as a ‘College of citizenship’ to provide political education through both teaching and publications. The College aimed at creating ‘Conservative Fabians’ who were to publish and disseminate Conservative literature, which meant not only explicitly political works but literary, historical and cultural work that carried implicit Conservative messages. After 1945, as the Conservative party sought to jettison its Baldwinian Past, Ashridge lost its political anchor, and moved, through complex stages, to being refounded as a management training college in 1954. This book modifies our understanding of the history of intellectual debate in Britain and it sheds new light on the history of the ‘middlebrow’ and how that category became a weapon for the Conservatives. It will become necessary reading both for scholars and students of modern British history and politics and more generally for those interested in the history of Conservatism.

This book examines the militant Irish republican movement in the United States from the final months of the Irish Civil War through to the Second World War. The narrative, crafted to appeal to both an academic and general audience, carefully and creatively intertwines the personalities, events and policies that shaped the militant republican movement in the US during this period and shows the evolution of its deep transnational nature. Most importantly, through a bottom-up historical analysis that incorporates an examination of more than eighty archival collections in the US, Ireland and Britain, the work presents for the first time an account of the anti-Treaty Irish Republican Army (IRA) veterans who emigrated to the United States after the Irish Civil War. Upon their settlement in Irish-American communities, these republicans directly influenced and guided the US-based militant republican organisation, Clan na Gael, transformed the overall dynamics of militant Irish republicanism in America and provided leadership and co-ordination for an IRA bombing campaign. The inclusion of these IRA veterans in the narrative creates a fresh and revised interpretation of the militant Irish republican activism that occurred in the US in the immediate decades after the Irish revolutionary period.

Transforming Conflict examines lessons learned from the Northern Ireland and Border Counties conflict transformation process through social and economic development and their consequent impacts and implications for practice and policymaking, with a range of functional recommendations produced for other regions emerging from and seeking to transform violent conflict. It provides, for the first time, a comprehensive assessment of the region's transformation activity, largely amongst grassroots actors, enabled by a number of specific funding programmes, namely the International Fund for Ireland, Peace I and II and INTERREG I, II and IIIA. These programmes have facilitated conflict transformation over more than two decades, presenting a case ripe for lesson sharing. In focusing on the politics of the socioeconomic activities that underpinned the elite negotiations of the peace process, key theoretical transformation concepts are firstly explored, followed by an examination of the social and economic context of Northern Ireland and the Border Counties. The three programmes and their impacts are then assessed before considering what policy lessons can be learned and what recommendations can be made for practice. This is underpinned by a range of semi-structured interviews and the author's own experience as a project promoter through these programmes in the Border Counties for more than a decade.

The book’s main idea is to study why and how successful forms of workers’ interest representation could emerge in a hostile context. The post-communist context makes it difficult for workers and trade unions to mobilize, pose threats to employers, and break out of their political isolation. But initial fieldwork uncovered many instances of worker groups and trade unions that overcame such difficulties, something that led to the following overarching research question: What specific strategies can succeed in advancing the rights and living standards of workers? The book’s main argument is that strategy matters even under the harshest conditions. Successful unions ensured a situational definition connecting the workers' and the union leaders' perceptions about employers and thus ensuring that workers would back the actions of the union. Furthermore, successful unions calibrated threats they addressed to employers to the production intentions of the employer and to the employer's organizational structure. They also ensured outside support, at least in the form of state intervention. The cases studied in this book are 18 conflict episodes at 10 privatized plants in the Romanian steel industry and Ukraine's civil machine-building sector in the 2000s.