The School of Political Science and Sociology research seminar ‘External and Internal Learning Processes of IRA Prisoners’

The School of Political Science and Sociology invite you to a research seminar with:

 Dr. Dieter Reinisch

‘External and Internal Learning Processes of IRA Prisoners’

January 19^th, 2023

1-2pm

AS203 River Room, Arts Science Building,

University of Galway

All Welcome!

Abstract: Western European prisons have been described as spaces of radicalisation towards political violence and terrorism. Contrary, Provisional IRA in the 1980s and 1990s played a crucial part in supporting the Northern Irish peace process. Moreover, Provisional Irish republican prisoners held in the high-security prisons on both sides of the Irish border had a decisive role in shaping the politics of the political party Sinn Féin and winning support for the emerging peace process. In this paper, I will present a theoretical framework to analyse the learning processes of politically-motivated violent prisoners and how political prisoners can shape political developments outside the prison walls. To do so, I will use the Northern Ireland Troubles as a case study.

The paper presents empirical data and a theoretical framework to analyse politically-motivated violent prisoners’ internal and external learning processes beyond the Northern Irish Troubles. In so doing, I demonstrate how the prisons provided an environment for developing critical thinking and how prisoners used this experience to initiate the debates that eventually led to the acceptance of the peace process in Northern Ireland. Furthermore, I demonstrate how prisoners can shape the politics of political parties aligned with their militant social movements. The paper is based on 34 qualitative, semi-structured interviews with former Irish republican prisoners and archival material in Dublin, Belfast, and Galway.

Bionote: Dieter Reinisch FRHistS FHEA is an Irish Research Council Government of Ireland Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Galway. He recently published “Learning Behind Bars: How IRA Prisoners shaped the Peace Process in Ireland” (University of Toronto Press, 2022) and “Irish Republican Counterpublic: Armed Struggle and the Construction of a Radical Nationalist Community in Northern Ireland, 1969-1998” (with Anne Kane, Routledge, 2023).