ABSTRACT
Reconciliation activity in Northern Ireland emerged in the early 1960s through students involved in post war European reconciliation, ecumenical church activists, trade unionists, returning development volunteers and teachers and youth workers promoting Catholic-Protestant school programs (Wilson 1994).Later more people committed themselves, motivated by concern for the increasing inter-communal violence and clashes with security forces that accompanied the emergence of the Civil Rights campaign (NICRA, formed on February 1967) and internment on 9 August 1971 (Barton 1998; CAIN Web Service). These ‘intentional’ reconciliation activities included residential programs outside Belfast, holiday play schemes, ‘education for mutual understanding’ programs between schools and youth facilities, and support groups for the families of both victims and imprisoned perpetrators of violence. They helped to transform reconciliation from something that occurred on the periphery, narrowly defined in terms of conflict between two opposed traditions, to a task that today makes a significant claim on the policy and expenditure profiles of the governments of the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland.
