Title of Project : The Politics of Commemoration: Unionist Governance in the early 1950s
Project Description :
In commemorative practice there are a number of fundamental concerns: for memory itself – how is the past remembered and constructed, what narrative is told and how accurate is it?; power – which events are remembered, whose history do they narrate and at what level?; the public / private distinction – to what degree does the narrative told by public commemoration reflect private lived experiences?; continuity and change – what is tradition and what is invented? and the social setting – to what extent does it reinforce or create identities, generate social cohesion within a group or exclude those who do not identify with the events? The study focuses on two state sponsored commemorative events in Northern Ireland in the 1950s: the Festival of Britain, 1951 and the Coronation Visit, 1953. In terms of temporality, this period has a particular relevance to memory and the processes of remembering and forgetting Northern Ireland’s past. As historian ATQ Stewart noted, the shape of Irish history is like a map of Australia with ‘a lot of names crammed into a small corner, and immense tracts of territory which are empty’ (Stewart, 2001:7) and the literature exhibits a similar pattern in that it has been dominated by periods of crisis, in particular the Troubles. Two main problems have arisen as a result. Most notably, eras of relative stability have been significantly under researched, glossed over as ‘The Quiet Years’(Bardon, 1992) or a period of ‘Social Change and Political Stagnation’(Wichert, 1999) and secondly, most of the literature has been written within a fixed dichotomy of unionism/nationalism. So from this perspective, the 1950s is remembered as relatively uneventful and therefore forgotten; the Unionist government is remembered as triumphalist and hegemonic and therefore the activities of the more liberal members are forgotten; the era is remembered as a precursor to the most recent Troubles and therefore is forgotten as a period in its own right. It is one of Stewart’s ‘black holes’ in Irish history. However, deploying the methodology of memory work enables the evolving character of memory and history to be addressed on two distinct levels; an analysis of public commemorations (the events themselves) provides a time-specific vignette of 1950s Northern Ireland while assessing how this period has been remembered subsequently sets the era in a wider temporal context. Drawing on Susannah Radstone’s concept of commemoration as being actively constructed through a process of negotiation (Radstone, 2000:5-9) necessitates an understanding of the politics of commemoration as one which considers the way in which issues of authority and power, responsibility and accountability unfold in practice. Therefore, investigating the political management demanded by the staging of these events may provide a useful insight into the calculations of political leadership in negotiating diversity and excluding dissonance while navigating a path between memory and history. Not only will this methodological approach provide an alternative perspective on Unionist governance, the response to these events will also reveal much about the rest of society during a period of Northern Irish history which is frequently overlooked. Significantly, since a great deal of ‘troubles’ literature is premised on the somewhat limited consideration of this period as a time of political stagnation and wasted opportunity, it demands contemporary reassessment.
Other Information
Student representative on Research Degrees Committee
Treasurer of Political Studies Association Graduate Network
Member of Political Studies Association
Publications:
Co-authored chapter ‘“Fantasy Echo” and Modern Britishness: Commemoration and Identity in Northern Ireland’, John Wilson and Karyn Stapleton (eds) Devolution and Identity (Ashgate, 2006)
If you would like to learn more about how we can help further your studies and career opportunities, please contact us.
Barnes-CA1@ulster.ac.uk
Project Description :
In commemorative practice there are a number of fundamental concerns: for memory itself – how is the past remembered and constructed, what narrative is told and how accurate is it?; power – which events are remembered, whose history do they narrate and at what level?; the public / private distinction – to what degree does the narrative told by public commemoration reflect private lived experiences?; continuity and change – what is tradition and what is invented? and the social setting – to what extent does it reinforce or create identities, generate social cohesion within a group or exclude those who do not identify with the events? The study focuses on two state sponsored commemorative events in Northern Ireland in the 1950s: the Festival of Britain, 1951 and the Coronation Visit, 1953. In terms of temporality, this period has a particular relevance to memory and the processes of remembering and forgetting Northern Ireland’s past. As historian ATQ Stewart noted, the shape of Irish history is like a map of Australia with ‘a lot of names crammed into a small corner, and immense tracts of territory which are empty’ (Stewart, 2001:7) and the literature exhibits a similar pattern in that it has been dominated by periods of crisis, in particular the Troubles. Two main problems have arisen as a result. Most notably, eras of relative stability have been significantly under researched, glossed over as ‘The Quiet Years’(Bardon, 1992) or a period of ‘Social Change and Political Stagnation’(Wichert, 1999) and secondly, most of the literature has been written within a fixed dichotomy of unionism/nationalism. So from this perspective, the 1950s is remembered as relatively uneventful and therefore forgotten; the Unionist government is remembered as triumphalist and hegemonic and therefore the activities of the more liberal members are forgotten; the era is remembered as a precursor to the most recent Troubles and therefore is forgotten as a period in its own right. It is one of Stewart’s ‘black holes’ in Irish history. However, deploying the methodology of memory work enables the evolving character of memory and history to be addressed on two distinct levels; an analysis of public commemorations (the events themselves) provides a time-specific vignette of 1950s Northern Ireland while assessing how this period has been remembered subsequently sets the era in a wider temporal context. Drawing on Susannah Radstone’s concept of commemoration as being actively constructed through a process of negotiation (Radstone, 2000:5-9) necessitates an understanding of the politics of commemoration as one which considers the way in which issues of authority and power, responsibility and accountability unfold in practice. Therefore, investigating the political management demanded by the staging of these events may provide a useful insight into the calculations of political leadership in negotiating diversity and excluding dissonance while navigating a path between memory and history. Not only will this methodological approach provide an alternative perspective on Unionist governance, the response to these events will also reveal much about the rest of society during a period of Northern Irish history which is frequently overlooked. Significantly, since a great deal of ‘troubles’ literature is premised on the somewhat limited consideration of this period as a time of political stagnation and wasted opportunity, it demands contemporary reassessment.
Other Information
Publications:
If you would like to learn more about how we can help further your studies and career opportunities, please contact us.