Neutral Northerners during the Irish Civil War: A Biographical Study

One could be forgiven for assuming that the Irish Civil War was a conflict that split the entire nation, with everyone clearly taking one side or the other. The term "civil-war politics" dominated political discourse and analysis in the Twenty-Six Counties until quite recently and perpetuated the notion that supporters of the two main political parties in the Republic of Ireland were the descendants of those who had fought for or supported one side or the other during the Civil War.1 It would be more accurate to describe this twentieth-century political phenomenon as "Treaty-split politics," given the fact that a large proportion of not only the general population but also the IRA itself remained neutral during the Civil War. As Bill Kissane has demonstrated, numerous civil-society organizations maintained a neutral line throughout the conflict, advocating peace to no avail.2 The Labour Party also maintained a neutral position, or as its leaders perhaps more accurately termed it, an "antimilitarist" one. Labour assumed the role of official opposition in Dáil Éireann, and in doing so, signaled its intention to accept the institutions of the Free State that emerged from the Anglo-Irish Treaty. Sensing the lack of appetite for further violence in the country, the Labour leadership believed that this strategy presented the best means of advancing a progressive agenda on social and economic issues.3 However antimilitarist the [End Page 139] country may have become in 1922, the constitutional issue remained at the forefront of Irish political discourse. Republicans generally viewed Labour supporters with contempt for this strategy, arguing that they had effectively taken the pro-Treaty side and were actively legitimizing the Free State through their actions.4While the IRA was definitively split over the Treaty, not all members were willing to carry their strongly held opinions into a violent confrontation with former comrades. The Neutral IRA Association was formed in December 1922, and its membership was open to those who had been active during the War of Independence but were opposed to the Civil War. It claimed a membership of around 25,000 and advanced peace proposals to the political and military leaders of the civil-war belligerents.5 These went unheeded, despite the strength in numbers of neutral IRA members and public support from a large number of local-government bodies. Again, while these individuals remained neutral in the Civil War, it is clear that most of them were not supporters of the Treaty or the Free State.6 In Ulster the IRA generally followed the national trend, with its divisions declaring either in favor of or against the Treaty. The exception was the 4th Northern Division under the command of Frank Aiken; this was the only division in Ireland to declare a formally neutral position on the Treaty. Aiken and some of his men later took the anti-Treaty side in the Civil War, but only after their garrison at Dundalk Barracks had been attacked by the National Army in July 1922. Previously, Aiken had been a prominent advocate of seeking unity in the IRA to ensure that internal conflict did not distract from what he saw as a priority—the destabilization of Northern Ireland.7 Volunteers in the 4th Northern [End Page 140] Division later revealed that a swift decision to maintain neutrality was reached once the Civil War had broken out, and that they would also cease all operations in Northern Ireland given that "all hopes of a united Ireland effort against the British forces in the North was smashed for the time being."8 While the 4th Northern Division was unique in its formal declaration of neutrality, there were many more IRA Volunteers from within the Six County area who saw the Civil War as a distraction from the main task at hand—the destabilization and destruction of Northern Ireland.This article explores the attitude taken to the Civil War by IRA members from the Six Counties, with a focus on those who took a decidedly neutral position. If we consider the stance attributed to the IRA divisions covering the Six..

Case study : a patient-clinician collaboration that identified and prioritized evidence gaps and stimulated research development

Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.Peer reviewedPostprin

U(1)_A symmetry in two-doublet models, U bosons or light scalars, and psi and Upsilon decays

psi and Upsilon decays may be used to search for light neutral spin-1 or spin-0 bosons associated with a broken extra-U(1) symmetry, local or global, acting axially on quarks and leptons, as may be present in supersymmetric theories with a lambda H_1 H_2 S superpotential term. Recent data on Upsilon --> gamma + invisible neutral constrain an axial, pseudoscalar or scalar coupling to b to f_bA < 4 10^-7 m_U(MeV)/ sqrt B_inv, f_bP < 4 10^-3/ sqrt B_inv or f_bS < 6 10^-3/ sqrt B_inv, respectively. This also constrains, from universality properties, couplings to electrons to f_eA < 4 10^-7 m_U(MeV)/ sqrt B_inv, f_eP < 4 10^-7/ sqrt B_inv or f_eS < 6 10^-7/ sqrt B_inv. The pseudoscalar a (possibly traded for a light gauge boson, or scalar particle) should then be, for invisible decays of the new boson, for > 96 % singlet and < 4 % doublet, for tan beta > 1. Or, more generally, < 4 % /(tan^2 beta B_inv) doublet, which implies a very small rate for the corresponding psi decay, B (psi --> gamma + neutral) B_inv <~ 10^-6/ tan^4 beta. Similar results are obtained for new spin-1 or spin-0 neutral bosons decaying into mu+ mu-.Comment: 10 pages, to appear in Physics Letters

Relationships Between Stream Order and Management Priority: a Water Quality Case Study

Seagrass, which once dominated the habitat of Oyster Harbour on the south coast of Western Australia has been replaced by macroalgae because of increased nutrient and sediment discharge from the rural dominated catchment. Total Phosphorus (TP), Total Nitrogen (TN), Suspended Sediment (SS) and Electrical Conductivity (EC) concentrations from a catchment – wide (168 sites), event-driven snapshot, water quality monitoring program conducted from 1994 to 1996, were analysed in relation to stream order and published survey data on riparian zone condition. This analysis was performed to examine relationships between stream order, riparian zone condition and water quality, and implications for the allocation of limited resources for stream fencing, rehabilitation and stock exclusion towards the moderation of nutrient loss for the benefit of the harbour at the catchment exit. Eighty percent of the stream length was in low order streams (stream order 1 and 2) and the remainder in order 3 and above. Riparian zone condition worsened as stream order decreased. Total Phosphorus, and to a lesser degree TN and SS, decreased with increasing stream order, whilst EC increased with increasing stream order. Amongst many factors, one factor influencing the change in water quality is that low order streams exhibit the poorest riparian zone condition and therefore have little capacity to moderate paddock nutrient runoff. The systematic change in EC implies that low order streams are dominated proportionally more by surface runoff than groundwater, and hence represent a greater relative opportunity to moderate surface derived nutrients and sediment. In summary, low order streams in this case study represent the greatest length, have the poorest condition, show the highest nutrient and sediment concentrations, have greater surface runoff, and therefore are priority candidates for the purpose of minimising the downstream impacts of nutrients when limited funds are available

New postnatal urinary incontinence: obstetric and other risk factors in primparae.

Objective To identify obstetric and other risk factors for urinary incontinence which occurs during pregnancy or after childbirth. Design Questionnaire survey of women. Setting Maternity units in Aberdeen (Scotland), Birmingham (England) and Dunedin (New Zealand). Population 3405 primiparous women with singleton births delivered during one year. Methods Questionnaire responses and obstetric casenote data were analysed using multivariate analysis to identify associations with urinary incontinence. Main outcome measures Urinary incontinence at three months after delivery first starting in pregnancy or after birth. Results The prevalence of urinary incontinence was 29%. New incontinence first beginning after delivery was associated with higher maternal age (oldest versus youngest group, odds ratio, OR 2.02, 95% CI 1.35 to 3.02); and method of delivery (caesarean section versus spontaneous vaginal delivery, OR 0.28, 95% CI 0.19 to 0.41). There were no significant associations with forceps delivery (OR 1.18, 95% CI 0.92 to 1.51) or vacuum delivery (OR 1.16, 95% CI 0.83 to 1.63). Incontinence first occurring during pregnancy and still present at three months was associated with higher maternal body mass index (BMI > 25, OR 1.68, 95% CI 1.16 to 2.43), and heavier babies (birthweight in top quartile, OR 1.56, 95% CI 1.12 to 2.19). In these women, caesarean section was associated with less incontinence (OR 0.39, 95% CI 0.27 to 0.58) but incontinence was not associated with age. Conclusions Women have less urinary incontinence after a first delivery by caesarean section whether or not that first starts during pregnancy. Older maternal age was associated with new postnatal incontinence, and higher body mass index and heavier babies with incontinence first starting during pregnancy. The effect of further deliveries may modify these findings

The introduction of new interventional procedures in the British National Health Service : A qualitative study

Copyright © 2010 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.Peer reviewedPostprin

The Energy Sector and Groundwater

No abstract available