Yet it is through participation on these occasions that diverse classes of Protestants have come to express and interpret their political position in a locality, their understanding of specific political issues, and their group identity. At various times the Twelfth of July has been used both by and against the state, by those demanding parliamentary … Read more
Current developments in women’s history did not just happen. They grew directly from the contemporary feminist movement. The roots of feminism lie in the behaviour-patterns societies have prescribed for women and men. While these have differed over time and place, feminism has always grown from women’s perception that the sex roles prescribed by their own … Read more
Popular culture has long been used in Europe in the construction of ‘national’ ideologies. With the development of the strong nation-state in Europe, elites have also tried to suppress or assimilate elements of popular culture which they regarded as threatening to order, whether civil or moral. In many countries, dance has been prominent in this … Read more
Sir Roger Casement deserves better. The former senior British Consular official 1895-1913 had, as his friend, the highly respectable Presbyterian minister /.B. Armour of Ballymoney put it, ‘an inborn hatred of tyranny and cruelty’ which led him to expose cruelties in the Congo and in the rubber plantations of Brazil. But his three professionally authenticated … Read more
On 27 and 28 April 1894 one hundred and nineteen delegates of labour organisations assembled in the Trades’ Hall, Capel Street, Dublin to found the Irish Trade Union Congress. Those present were the inheritors of a labour movement which at that time had over a century of tradition behind it. In Ireland, as elsewhere in … Read more