ABSTRACT
Starting in 1968, the Catholic civil rights movement for equality in Northern Ireland, its coercive reception by the Unionist government and Protestants, and armed Republican insurgency against the British Army and government set the stage for almost 30 years of violence, insurgency, terrorism, and counterinsurgency known as “the Troubles.” The Troubles were a complex mixture of conventional electoral politics, peaceful marches and demonstrations, huge public gatherings and protests such as the Orange Order parades and the Ulster Workers’ Council strike, communal rioting and ethnic cleansing at sectarian interfaces of Protestant and Catholic residential areas, prison hunger strikes, terrorist shootings and bombings by paramilitaries, house searches, the internment of terrorist suspects, and other collective reprisals typical in counterinsurgency. In conflict and conciliation processes, parallel to and interspersed with violence and coercion there are varied peace-making initiatives for opening channels of communication between the adversaries, for a ceasefire, for an agreement on procedures for peace talks, and for peace negotiations themselves, and that was also true for the Troubles. Some were overt, others “backdoor”; some were conducted by advisors and lower-echelon officials, others by the prime ministers of the UK and Republic of Ireland (Eire); and some were negotiations among political leaders chaired by mediators.
