Performing the Peace Process and Performing the Past in the Irish Republican Commemoration

In the years since the signing of the 1998 Good Friday Peace Agreement in Northern Ireland, there has been a structural realignment of the Irish republican activist milieu. The agreement delivered the end of armed struggle for the largest republican militant group, the Provisional IRA, and provided the opportunity for the electoral growth of its formerly subordinate political wing, Sinn Féin. The latter has become the dominant gatekeeper of republican identity, defining ideologically important performative rituals, like commemorations. During the period of the Peace Process, these rituals self-consciously eschewed armed and uniformed displays of military force that were central to the propaganda war of the Troubles, such as those of the Hunger Strikes in 1981. New performative rituals of commemoration symbolized the political transformation in Provisional republicanism’s strategy. In terms of typology, rituals such as graveside orations on important commemorative dates, were reimagined to signify not military strength, but political and cultural development, with street theatre taking the place of parading and drilling. However, the peace agreement did not deliver the reunification of Ireland and the end of British rule, which had been the central aims of republican resistance. Dissident groups, who split from the Provisionals as a result of opposition to the Peace Process, have grown in support. Militant groups like the Real IRA (RIRA) have contested the internal cultural hegemony of Sinn Féin by emphasizing paramilitarist traditions at their own commemorations and funerals. By utilizing masked volunteers to deliver graveside orations and employing armed guards to fire gunshots over the coffins of dead members, they have sought to reclaim the ideologically potent performative rituals of the recent past to establish their claims to being the true keepers of republicanism’s ideological soul

From Fanzines to Foodbanks: football fan activism in the age of anti-politics

This article is concerned with an emerging trend in political participation: the role played by football fans in engendering activism and protest. The role of fan activism in the debate on patterns of civic and political (dis)engagement – in the age of so-called anti-politics – has been ignored by the scholarly literature thus far. As a corrective, this article examines the development of football fan activism over the last thirty years, since the creation of the English Premier League in 1992. It adopts a case study approach centred on supporters’ movements since 1992. It argues that the political activism of football fans has both quantitatively and qualitatively changed over this period. Employing the sociological theory of Manuel Castells it claims that collective identities developed in resistance to the commercialisation and commodification within football have developed into more distinct ‘project identities’ that seek bring about more profound social change through football

Le Tea Party Francais: the Bonnets Rouges, the Tea Party and mirror movements of grassroot protest

Abstract The presence of grassroots social protest movements which agitate against economic concerns is a prevalent issue in modern politics. While populism on both the political left and right is evident in national electoral contests there also exists activism at the grassroots level. The campaigns of the Bonnets Rouges in Brittany witnessed many ideas and understandings similar to the Tea Party protests in the United States. Both founded movements based upon historical nostalgia, both mobilised against economic discontent and both perceived themselves to be rooted outside the conventional political parameters of left and right. In this article we examine whether there is evidence of movements learning from one another and how peer-peer observation of grassroots activism may influence activist organization