The Labour Party in Scotland: Religion, The Union and the Irish Dimension

This is a study of the Labour Party in Scotland and the loss of its traditional electoral support base. This theme is related to religion and its relevance to Scotland's identity politics. The book also assesses the significance of the Irish dimension in Scotland's political development, in particular the impact of the conflict in nearby Northern Ireland.

Divided Conquerors: the Rump Parliament, Cromwell's Army and Ireland

This article reassesses the relationship that existed in the period 1649–53 between war in Ireland and politics in England. Drawing upon a largely overlooked Irish army petition, it seeks to remedy an evident disconnect between the respective historiographies of the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland on the one hand and the Rump Parliament on the other. The article reconstructs some of the various disputes over religion, authority and violence that undermined the unity of the English wartime regime in Ireland. It then charts the eventual spilling over of these disputes into Westminster politics, arguing that their impact on deteriorating army-parliament relations in the year prior to Oliver Cromwell’s expulsion of the Rump in April 1653 has not been fully appreciated. The key driver of these developments was John Weaver, a republican MP and commissioner for the civil government of Ireland. The article explains how his efforts both to place restraints on the excessive violence of the conquest and to exert civilian control over the military evolved, by 1652, into a determined campaign at Westminster to strengthen the powers of Ireland’s civil government and to limit the army’s share in the prospective Irish land settlement. Weaver’s campaign forced the army officers in Ireland to intervene at Westminster, thus placing increased pressure on the Rump Parliament. This reassessment also enables the early 1650s to be viewed more clearly as a key phase in the operation of the longer-term relationships of mutual influence that existed between Dublin and London in the seventeenth century.

Musically Consonant, Socially Dissonant: Orange Walks and Catholic Interpretation in West-Central Scotland

This article examines the music used by the Orange Order, in its public parades, more commonly referred to as “Orange Walks.” The Orange Order is an exclusively Protestant fraternal organization, which traces its roots to 1690 and the victory of the Protestant Prince William of Orange over the Catholic King James. Yet, as in Northern Ireland, many consider the group to be sectarian and view its public celebrations as a display of ethno-religious triumphalism. This article explores the extra-musical factors associated with Orangeism’s most iconic song, “The Sash My Father Wore,” how other groups have misappropriated the song, and how this has distorted its meaning and subsequent interpretation.

Recent statistics have shown that Glasgow hosts more Orange parades each year than in Belfast and Derry/Londonderry combined, yet while there have been many anthropological and ethnomusicological studies of Northern Ireland’s Orange parades, very little research has focused on similar traditions in Scotland. This article seeks to address that gap in the literature and is intended as a preparatory study, laying the groundwork for further analysis.

‘Should we try to Self Remember while playing Snakes and Ladders?’: Dr. Gambit as Gurdjieff in Leonora Carrington’s The Hearing Trumpet (1950)

Arising from the Paris surrealist group, the English-born writer and painter Leonora Carrington (England 1917 - Mexico 2011) was perpetually suspicious of orthodoxy and she often pokes fun at, parodies, and, ultimately, upsets traditional hierarchies of power. In her work animals impart wisdom, Goddesses loom large, and domestic spaces become sites of occult power. In this paper I will investigate Carrington's suspicion of gurus with claims to esoteric truth. Carrington participated in Fourth Way groups run by students of Gurdjieff (Christopher Fremantle) and Ouspensky (Rodney Collin). However, while she had a deep interest in the teachings, Carrington remained suspicious of the group practices of the Fourth Way, as can be seen in Elena Poniatowska’s fictionalised biography Leonora (2015). This articles explores Carrington's contact with the ‘Work’ in order to shed light on the character of Dr. Gambit in her 1950 novel, The Hearing Trumpet, commonly thought to be a parody of Gurdjieff. In doing so, it will investigate Carrington’s feminist objections to the role of the guru, while also contributing to a discussion of the unease some felt toward the praxis of the Fourth Way, despite their attraction to the philosophy.

Influence of Heterogamy by Religion on Risk of Marital Dissolution: A Cohort Study of 20,000 Couples

Heterogamous marriages, in which partners have dissimilar attributes (e.g. by socio-economic status or ethnicity), are often at elevated risk of dissolution. We investigated the influences of heterogamy by religion and area of residence on risk of marital dissolution in Northern Ireland, a country with a history of conflict and residential segregation along Catholic–Protestant lines. We expected Catholic–Protestant marriages to have elevated risks of dissolution, especially in areas with high concentrations of a single religious group where opposition to intermarriage was expected to be high. We estimated risks of marital dissolution from 2001 to 2011 for 19,791 couples drawn from the Northern Ireland Longitudinal Study (a record linkage study), adjusting for a range of compositional and contextual factors using multilevel logistic regression. Dissolution risk decreased with increasing age and higher socio-economic status. Catholic–Protestant marriages were rare (5.9 % of the sample) and were at increased risk of dissolution relative to homogamous marriages. We found no association between local population composition and dissolution risk for Catholic–Protestant couples, indicating that partner and household characteristics may have a greater influence on dissolution risk than the wider community.

Addressing conflict and tolerance through the curriculum

Political, religious and national divisions in Northern Ireland go back many hundreds of years so it is not surprising that the lack of a common national narrative has made the teaching of history in schools difficult. The fact that schools have largely been organized on a denominational basis has added to the challenge. When political violence broke out in the late 1960s many looked to schools to contribute to the promotion of reconciliation and the way history had been taught received significant critical attention. This chapter will outline the evolving nature of the history curriculum and review evidence on the impact of this curriculum on the historical understanding of students and young people. In addition, the chapter will briefly consider other ways in which students engage with historical issues through the teaching of citizenship, and wider family and community influences. Whereas the teaching of history in the past either was largely absent or often took on a partisan character, the development of a statutory curriculum in the 1990s helped promote a more dispassionate, skills-based approach which emphasized critical engagement with evidence and a multiperspectivity. While this represented a significant improvement on what had gone before, evaluation of the impact of this approach has highlighted the need for a consideration of the emotional impact of historical understanding and the need better to connect the lessons of history to contemporary society.

Peace Building and Conflict Transformation: A Case Study of Northern Ireland

This paper provides an overview of the transition from armed conflict to peace in Northern Ireland between 1994 and 2016. It discusses the main stages of the peace process and the main elements of the peace Agreement in relation to the development of global thinking around peacebuilding as set out in the United Nations 1992 report Agenda for Peace and the 2000 Brahimi Report. The paper argues that while Northern Ireland is often highlighted as a positive example of peacebuilding, it is not without its limitations and overall the experience of the past twenty years emphasises the importance of ensuring a broadly inclusive process and the need for a sustained commitment over a long period of time.