This work examines the general question of Irish Fascism, considering the Blueshirts as evidence of the crises within the government party, Cumann na nGaedheal (CG), and of its attempt at resolving them. With a European perspective, it intends to demonstrate how CG's political crisis was comparable to the inter-war one when, confronted by increasing level of people's participation and mass militancy, European liberal-conservative parties feared for the established order, its social bases and the freedoms associated with a restrictive interpretation of the constitution. With an Irish perspective, this work snows the plurality of nationalist traditions and their adaptive capabilities to provide a version of history useful and meaningful for political practice. In this regard CG's crisis was due to a paralyzing dichotomy of traditions, O'Higgins' Statist defence of a bourgeois hierarchy - big farmers, big landowners, free marketers - and Collins' legacy of pro-Treaty populist republicanism. That dichotomy corresponded to the instable alliance between social and political groups, the Catholic hierarchy, former Unionist, IPP supporters, ex-1916 insurgents. Both sides held an elitist approach that weakened the democratic adaptability of the party. The elitist defence of the social status quo enshrined in the Treaty drifted into the neutralization of politics (emergency legislation, rumours of a coup) and, once in opposition, the formation and hiring of a self-defence paramilitary force. This thesis contends that refutations of Irish Fascism overstated ideological correctness at the expense of fascism's pragmatic ambiguity, its violence conservative and revolutionary in terms of order.

The delineation and emergence of the Irish border radically reshaped political and social realities across the entire island. For those who lived in close quarters with the border partition was also an intimate and personal occurrence - profoundly implicated in everyday lives. Otherwise mundane activities such as shopping, visiting family or travelling to church were often complicated by customs restrictions, security policies and even questions of nationhood and identity. The border became an interface, not just of two jurisdictions, but also between the public, political space of state territory, and the private, familiar spaces of daily life. This thesis argues that the effects of political disunity were combined and intertwined with a degree of unity of everyday social life that persisted and in some ways even flourished across, if not always within, the boundaries of both states. On the border, the state was visible to an uncommon degree - as uniformed agents, road blocks and built environment - at precisely the same point as its limitations were uniquely exposed. For those whose life-worlds continued to transcend the border, the power and hegemony of either of those states, and the social structures they conditioned, could only ever be incomplete. As a consequence, border residents lived in circumstances that were burdened by inconvenience and imposition, but also endowed with certain choices. Influenced by microhistorical approaches, this thesis uses a series of discrete 'histories' - of the Irish Boundary Commission, the Foyle Fisheries dispute, cockfighting tournaments regularly held on the border, smuggling, and local conflicts over cross-border roads - to explore how the border was experienced and incorporated into people's lives; emerging, at times, as a powerfully revealing site of popular agency and action.

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The thesis addresses three issues which have not been sufficiently addressed in previous research. Within northern Nationalism there is a palpable impatience with the present peace process. Twenty years after the IRA ceasefire and fifteen years since the Good Friday Agreement many of the key issues which divide society here have not been addressed, as expected. There is a sense of drift, prevarication and a reluctance to address the big contentious issues. "Fudge" has become an overused term of the political lexicon of Northern Ireland. Unionism has been primarily blamed for equivocation: the monolith, the rock in the stream. Historically, Unionism has been cast as the villain. Border Unionism has been at the forefront of the resistance to change. Fermanagh Unionists always believed that the prevailing view of virtually all other parties [from Gladstone to Wilson] was that a resolution of the Irish problem was based on the Nationalist interpretation. Naturally, they believed this to be a flawed interpretation and saw their role as frustrating the aims of Irish Nationalism. The thesis has three aims. The first is to study regional Unionism in Fermanagh which has not been sufficiently addressed in other research. The second is to test the theory that Unionism is a monolith. This issue has been comprehensively researched but the thesis refines the research by its focus on one region. The thesis asked whether these people were Unionists from Fermanagh or whether they belong to a distinct category called "Fermanagh Unionists". The third aim attempts to establish the political outlook of Fermanagh Unionism. This entails examining the origins of Fermanagh Unionism which created a distinct negative political posture and a political organisation which had a major influence on politics in the 1960s. The thesis will attempt to establish whether their political mentality was valid and whether their subsequent influence on events was negative, benign or constructive. The thesis covers the period from 1945 to 1973. The end of World War Two was the beginning of a period of social, economic and political change. It is within these changes and this time frame that Fermanagh Unionism reacted as it did. The thesis examines the clash between traditional Unionism with modernity. The thesis cites the nuances of the cosy parochial political world of Fermanagh and the clash with the technocratic political realities of a much more complicated political world created by more composite interdependent economic reliance and changing relationships. Finally, the thesis questions whether the political analysis of Fermanagh Unionism was valid.

This thesis examines how an armed group understands and manages the operation of informers against it, using the case-study of the Irish Republican Army (IRA). The research argues that the IRA's policies and discourses in relation to the practical and political threat of informing are located within their wider governance efforts, during and after the Northern Ireland conflict. The study is based on interviews with former IRA members and others as well as extensive archival research, and draws upon a wide variety of literature from criminology, sociology and other disciplines. It argues that although rarely used for the context of armed groups, the framework provided by the "punishment and society" field in particular offers the most appropriate theoretical backdrop to analyse the IRA's response to informing. The first part of the thesis analyses how the punishment of informers by the IRA during the Northern Ireland conflict was shaped by a range of goals, including deterring informers, maintaining the organization's legitimacy, and finding the most effective way to reduce the threat of informing. It also looks at how the IRA developed a range of adaptation strategies, such as “defining-down" informing and employing public pedagogy campaigns; and how informing, while a major security problem for the IRA, was also an important resource in facilitating and legitimizing its governance efforts. The second part examines how during the post-conflict era the issue of informing continued to both challenge and enable the governance efforts of the IRA and the Republican Movement more broadly. It analyses, for example, the enduring hostility to informers and how they became useful post-conflict enemies for Republicans; the importance of rumours in relation to alleged informers; and the way the issue has been used by "dissident" Republicans who oppose the peace process. Several themes cut across these questions and issues, such as the tension between ideology and pragmatism in the response to informing, the complex relationship between armed groups and the communities from which they operate, and the importance of local context in shaping armed groups' policies and practices. The shadow of the informer, omnipresent and ever-shifting, is therefore a key prism to understand punishment, governance and dealing with the past by armed groups.

By synthesising an analysis of historical documents with a series of interviewees with former detainees in Northern Ireland, the thesis examines the motivation, significance and consequences of narrating state violence. As a result of the conflict, a number of testimonies exist in which former detainees describe human rights abuses committed by agencies of the state, particularly during internment, interrogations in Castlereagh and in the prison setting of the H-Blocks. Through a multi-disciplinary approach, the thesis deconstructs the language of state violence and brutality alongside former detainees. It examines the existence of healing as a motivation to make public experiences of violence. It analyses the meaning and significance of masculinities for men whose personal experiences of pain form a contested part of the history of the conflict. It also explores the extent to which former detainees felt their narratives. were significant as propaganda, and discloses in depth the lived reality of the denials seen in the official discourse of the state. The thesis finds that there is a lack of homogeneity within former detainees' motivations, significance and consequences of narrating state violence, and that there are many complex and multifaceted factors which intersect when making private experiences part of a public history of the conflict

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This research looks at the Irish temperance movement in Ulster between 1858-1914. It focuses on the organisation, the Irish Temperance League that was formed in Belfast in 1858. The League’s fundamental aim was to provide a platform upon which all total abstinence reformers in Ireland could unite. This research considers how successful the organisation was in its aspiration. It argues that while the League was successful in unifying the temperance movement in Ireland, there were limitations and issues within this agenda. The League successfully incorporated a dual methodology, encompassing both moral suasion and legislative prohibition, which had not been seen before in the Irish temperance movement. This enabled a range of different temperance reformers to work together under the auspice of the ITL. In particular the League was successful in uniting both religious and secular temperance reformers. The breadth of the League’s work also meant that it united individuals from all classes in society under its organisation. That being said, despite the League’s rhetoric contemporary social structures were maintained. For the members of the ITL, total abstinence was their political and religious dogma which superseded contemporary political and religious concerns. However this ultimately caused tension within denominational and political peers. The League aimed to function as a national organisation and it attempted to become an all-Ireland body, providing an inclusive teetotal culture for its members where they were safe from the temptations of the intemperate society around them. This research shows that while the League could claim an all-Ireland status by 1912 it continued to struggle to overcome its Protestant and Ulster roots and become an inclusive organisation in terms of religious affiliations. However against a backdrop of political tension in Ireland this was not the League’s fault but a consequence of the religious divide.

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