Reference no: EM133587436

Assignment:

IRA Reading Assignment One: READ THIS FIRST!

First: you will notice that in the reading scans, some text is in italics and some is not. The only reading for which you are directly responsible in the pages assigned below are the sections in italics. There are quite a few pages scanned, but, you can skip the parts not in italics. Altogether there are about 25 pages worth of italicized material.

These scans are from a book called Voices from the Grave: Two Men's War in Ireland. The "two men" are those featured on our Canvas home page, Brendan Hughes and David Ervine. Hughes was a key player in the IRA's terror campaign, while Ervine was the opposite: participant and leader in a violent, non-state counter-campaign, also carried out in the form of terrorism.

The pages I have included here are 13-41, about Hughes, and 301-323, about Ervine. Again, remember, focus on the parts in italics, because these sections are taken directly from interviews with the two men. Here they explain their early lives, family history and attitudes, and reasons for joining their respective terrorist groups.

There are a great many proper nouns here - people, places, events - and you don't need to worry about them. The key thing to focus on is how each man describes his family, his community, and his reasons for joining up.

Both are from northern Ireland, where British Protestants who had settled in Ireland were concentrated, along with a smaller community of Irish Catholics. Catholics there had long been victims of discrimination and violence.

But when Catholics like Hughes adopted terrorist tactics to fight back, many Irish Protestants felt that the British government was not as aggressive as they wanted. So Ervine and many others formed paramilitary forces that were just as violent as the IRA, and that were considered just as dangerous by many English.

Please choose ONE of the following questions to address in your short response. Be specific in your answers and be sure to include the name of the person you are referring to!

• How does each man describe his childhood and his parents' influence on him? What is similar and what is different about their accounts?
• How does each describe their community, and the relations between Protestants and Catholics there?
• What event serves as the catalyst for joining their respective terrorist organizations, and why?
• Though we aren't too concerned with dates, what are the key incidents of violence described by each man? Exactly what happened in each - who were perpetrators, who were victims, what were weapons, what were psychological effects?
• How would you describe their personalities, judging from what they say and how they say it? What characteristics do they share, and how are they different?
• Ultimately, think about, from these two accounts alone, some of the structural factors in Northern Irish society and politics that set the stage not just for violent conflict, but for two opposing campaigns of terror?