Search results for ""author peter shirlow""

The end of Ulster loyalism? explores the dynamics and divisions within paramilitary groups since the mid-1970s. It, despite contrary public opinion, details and explains the nature of Loyalist conflict transformation. A key model of transition that is relevant to arenas beyond Northern Ireland. The book also discusses the nature and extent of loyalist violence and provides a rarely heard voice regarding State-led collusion. It locates Loyalist ideas and opinions that have been largely invisible and highlights how an extensive element of positive Loyalist renewal has been purposefully suppressed and unmentioned. It is a key text for any student of politics, criminology, human geography and conflict and conflict transformation and is particularly relevant to the scholarship of pro-State groups who are infrequently considered in academic deliberations. A book of both hope and despair that emerges from a destabilising past and a yet-to-be-decided future.

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This book provides the first detailed examination of the role played by former loyalist and republican prisoners in grass roots conflict transformation work in the Northern Ireland peace process. It challenges the assumed passivity of former prisoners and ex-combatants. Instead, it suggests that such individuals and the groups which they formed have been key agents of conflict transformation. They have provided leadership in challenging cultures of violence, developed practical methods of resolving inter-communal conflict and found ways for communities to explore their troubled past. In analysing this, the authors challenge the sterile demonisation of former prisoners and the processes that maintain their exclusion from normal civic and social life. The book is a constructive reminder of the need for full participation of both former combatants and victims in post-conflict transformation. It also lays out a new agenda for reconciliation which suggests that conflict transformation can and should begin 'from the extremes'. The book will be of interest to students of criminology, peace and conflict studies, law and politics, geography and sociology as well as those with a particular interest in the Northern Ireland conflict.

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Drawing on over 150 interviews with former IRA, INLA, UVF and UFF prisoners, this is a major analysis of why Northern Ireland has seen a transition from war to peace. Most accounts of the peace process are ‘top-down’, relying upon the views of political elites. This book is ‘bottom-up’, analysing the voices of those who actually ‘fought the war’. What made them fight, why did they stop and what are the lessons for other conflict zones?Based on a Leverhulme Trust project and written by an expert team, the book offers a new analysis, based on subtle interplays of military, political, economic and personal changes and experiences. Combined, these allowed combatants to move from violence to peace whilst retaining core ideological beliefs and maintaining long-term constitutional visions.

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