ABSTRACT
In 1956, authorities in Northern Ireland banned the Irish republican party, Sinn Féin, the political wing of the Irish Republican Army (IRA). In 1967, they banned Republican Clubs, at that time a Sinn Féin successor party. The British government legalized the parties almost immediately after reintroduction of direct rule from Westminster in 1972 following the eruption of sectarian violence in Northern Ireland. This chapter examines these party ban decisions using archived government files, parliamentary debates and newspaper reports. Sinn Féin’s support for the IRA’s 1956 Border Campaign and Republican Clubs’ integration within a movement which in the mid-1960s had not completed the process of renouncing armed insurgency, facilitated securitization, by the dominant Ulster Unionist Party, of these parties as integral to a terrorist organization and a threat to the existence of Northern Ireland as a territory within the United Kingdom. However, against expectations and in contrast to the similar case of legalizations in Spain, the legalization of republican parties by British authorities occurred during a security emergency in which many hundreds died. Paradoxically, the chapter argues, the context of violence facilitated the desecuritization of the republican parties. Labour and Conservative governments emphasized the role the banned parties could play in mobilizing republican supporters in the search for solutions to the conflict.
