Post-Conflict Transition in Northern Ireland

“State Violence, Truth Recovery and Post-Conflict Transition in the North of Ireland”

Prof Mark McGovern, Edgehill University

Thursday 25th March
6.30

Lecture Theatre G7, School of Humanities, Faculty of Arts, University of Brighton, Pavilion Street (opposite The Royal Pavilion)

ALL WELCOME

Abstract:

This talk will explore why it remains important to fully understand the role and nature of state violence during the 30-year conflict in Northern Ireland, (and the impact it had upon the victims and relatives of state violence) both as part of the process of post-conflict transition in the North and because of the lessons it provides for elsewhere. Since the signing of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998 there has been much debate about whether or not, and in what form, Northern Ireland might develop a process for dealing with the legacy of a violently divided past. In January 2009 a way forward for ‘dealing with the past’ in the North was outlined in what is known as the Bradley-Eames Report. Yet, some reactions to its release revealed ongoing and deep divisions on victims’ issues, and particularly around the question of state violence.

The talk will therefore examine something of the record state violence and collusion in the North and the spectrum of denial and impunity that allowed it to occur. It will also explore the ongoing influence of the ‘discourse of terrorism’ (evidenced, it will be argued, in some of those reactions to Bradley-Eames) and its role not only in the exercise of state violence in Northern Ireland and the debate on post-conflict truth recovery, but for what it also reveals about the ‘War on Terror’ and the way that Muslims in Britain have become a new ‘suspect community’

Professor Mark McGovern is a Professor of Sociology the Department of Social and Psychological Sciences at the University. He has published widely on truth recovery and post-conflict transition including the co-authored book (with Dr Patricia Lundy) Ardoyne: the Untold Truth (2002) and in international journals such as Law and Society, International Journal of Transitional Justice, and Sociology.