Lecture – The ‘Good Old IRA’

Free 7.30pm

Jack Hepworth: The ‘Good Old IRA’: Collective memory of Ireland’s revolutionary decade (1912-1923) during the Northern Ireland conflict, 1969-1989

Through the 1970s and 1980s, veterans of Ireland’s revolutionary decade (1912-1923) entered old age. When they died, local newspapers published reverential obituaries and lionised their military exploits. Meanwhile, in the north, a younger generation of militant republicans waged guerrilla warfare against British rule. They considered themselves successors to the revolutionary heritage of the ‘good old IRA’, but the connection was contentious for the public, press, and republican veterans alike. Examining archival sources, this paper will examine collective memory of a previous republican cohort, amid the conflict which engulfed the north through the later twentieth century.

Jack Hepworth is a PhD candidate at Newcastle University and is researching the heterogeneity of republicanism in Northern Ireland.