From Armed Struggle to Political Struggle

The recently released documents of the Irish and British governments from the early to mid-1980s indicate the concern felt at those levels by the rise of Sinn Féin in Northern Ireland, despite the party attaining consistently only 10–11 per cent of the vote. Were we to have access to government papers from the 1990s, particularly after 1998 (when Sinn Féin became the largest nationalist party in the North), we would probably find evidence of escalating concern and panic. It is on this point—the process of legitimising Sinn Féin as it were—that Graham Spencer’s research is both ambitious and compelling, where he sets out to explore how the shift from armed struggle to political struggle has been managed and achieved. Spencer likens this shift or movement to a republican pilgrimage where ‘the journey outwards (towards politics) has also changed the journey inwards (imagination)’ (p. 250). This transformation (and Spencer regards it as such) is demonstrated through two foci in the book

Ancient history · Economic history · Ethnology · Government (linguistics · Irish · Nationalism · Northern ireland · Pilgrimage · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Sociology · History · Irish and British Studies · Law · Philosophy · Southeast Asian Sociopolitical Studies · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies