Scholarly and public interest in Northern Ireland’s conflict shows no sign of abating. In recent years, we have seen a resurgence in academic tomes about the conflict and the parties to it,Footnote ¹ books which explore aspects of life during the conflict, including the experiences of minoritised groups or previously marginal voices,Footnote ² and popular journalistic and biographical accounts about controversial events and key figures.Footnote ³ The volumes reviewed here are diverse in their topics and scope, but largely fit into the first category — that is, they are books about the conflict or its aftermath. Yet, following trends in some of this later work, they are united in centring ‘lived experiences’ in the subjects they explore.Footnote ⁴ Whilst this offers significant opportunities for innovation, there may be instances where the narratives of those with lived experience of the conflict are considered problematic. Might historians be reduced to the role of enabler or censor of certain perspectives?

Oral history predominates in these works, but we have not yet witnessed the ‘death of the archive’, as documentary evidence remains central to two of the books reviewed here (Ó Dochartaigh and Etchart). All bring something new to the table in terms of subject or sources and, whilst some may not please everyone, they will certainly stimulate fierce debate, which is always welcome. They epitomise, perhaps, a trend away from metanarratives that seek to treat of the broader explanations for the conflict.Footnote ⁵ Rather, the tendency is for closeness and detail, shedding new light on specific aspects of Northern Ireland’s recent past. All the volumes demonstrate both the potential risks and rewards of this approach.

None more so than Death in the fields by Jonathan Trigg. Trigg has a British military background but is no stranger to oral history. His previous work includes a fascinating study of former Flemish Waffen-SS volunteers.Footnote ⁶ Contemporary Irish historians might spot a familiar name in the footnotes of that book: Albert Luykx. Luykx, a Flemish ultranationalist paramilitary, fled to Ireland after the war to avoid a lengthy prison sentence. He was better known for his acquittal in the Dublin Arms Trial of 1970, alongside Charles J. Haughey and others. Many who feature in Trigg’s East Tyrone study were not afforded the luxury of court proceedings.

Death in the fields is not a conventional history. For one thing, it contains only thirty-eight endnotes (268). Interviewees are not catalogued systematically. And whilst the preference for anonymity is understandable, endnotes providing more detail about the origin of specific quotes could have been used. Granted, academic historians are probably not the target audience, and the book remains a worthwhile read.

Referencing aside, Trigg’s interviews are a key strength of the book, offering uniquely personal insights into the lived experiences of those direct parties to the conflict in east Tyrone. Such accounts should be treated with caution, scepticism even, but there is value in cataloguing them. Not least because surviving protagonists are advancing in years, and time is of the essence.

A key focus for Trigg is the Loughgall ambush. Here, an IRA unit was intercepted whilst bombing the town’s RUC station in May 1987. When the bomb detonated, Special Air Service (SAS) operatives shot the IRA men, killing all eight. An innocent civilian was tragically killed by SAS fire after inadvertently driving close to the scene. The ambush was a serious blow to the brigade and the biggest single loss of life suffered by an IRA unit during the conflict. It raised the spectre of potential informers within this east Tyrone brigade. Trigg is circumspect about whether or not an informer was crucial to the ‘Loughgall ambush’, noting the range of intelligence available to the security forces, including electronic surveillance. Testimonies from those involved offer further, if partial, insights into this highly contested event.

The broader question of security force collusion with loyalists is also addressed. Trigg echoes commentators who see collusion as sporadic rather than systemic — what might be called the ‘bad apple’ theory. However, whilst Operation Kenova (hardly a bastion of republican propaganda) recently found no evidence of government sanctioned collusion, it noted the ‘extent of involvement in sectarian attacks by some members of the security forces was shocking’.Footnote ⁷ Whilst a book of this sort will have many detractors, Trigg nevertheless offers a compelling account of the personal impacts of a ‘dirty war’ at its most intense.

Conflict can require the parties to it to do unpalatable things. This is the subject of Niall Ó Dochartaigh’s Deniable contact: back-channel negotiation in Northern Ireland. Ó Dochartaigh offers an ambitious and often insightful examination of negotiation, backchannels and political strategy during the conflict. An early strength is his insistence that scholars should pay as much attention to the forces that inhibited violence as to those that escalated it. This includes examining the role of the state (19).Footnote ⁸ Whilst he engages admirably with a range of theoretical literature, the book is, primarily, an exploration of Brendan Duddy’s role as an interlocutor between the IRA and UK government representatives over many years.

Chapters 3 and 4 examine Duddy’s role as a ‘private peace entrepreneur’ (82). Whilst sympathetic to Duddy, it concedes he sometimes exaggerated his access to both British and IRA contacts. Ó Dochartaigh argues that maintaining a backchannel kept ‘British options open’ (100), though ultimately these were tactical rather than strategic options. The fundamentals of British policy — power-sharing, an Irish dimension and the consent principle (unionist veto) — were fixed, and the IRA had to adapt to them over time.

The 1975 ceasefire continues to puzzle many scholars, but Ó Dochartaigh attempts to challenge ideas that the IRA was duped into it by the British government. In doing so, he downplays the central point that any discussion of ‘withdrawal’ in Whitehall discourse was always highly conditional and never synonymous with Irish unity (139). The IRA’s shock at learning that no declaration of intent to withdraw was forthcoming remains strong evidence that it was, in fact, duped. Oddly, consideration of some accounts challenging Ó Dochartaigh’s own, including Stuart Aveyard’s monograph on the Labour government and Northern Ireland, 1974–9, are absent.Footnote ⁹

Later chapters explore the run-up to the peace process and usefully link developments in Northern Ireland to theoretical work on conflict resolution, a key strength of the book. One interesting argument made is that the IRA’s ‘Long War’ can be read as a ‘bargaining move’ (151). However, if it were a bargaining move, it was remarkably unsuccessful for the IRA. Few, if any, of the IRA’s core objectives were conceded or even meaningfully acknowledged. Indeed, Northern Ireland’s direction of travel was long fixed. It involved acceptance of a unionist veto on unity, power-sharing and an Irish dimension.

Ó Dochartaigh’s tendency to read defeat as victory is particularly evident in the discussion of the Downing Street Declaration (DSD) of 1993 and its wider significance. Whilst the treatment of the infamous ‘the conflict is over but we need your advice to bring it to an end’ message, allegedly ‘forged’ by Duddy and others, is plausible (235), the interpretation of the DSD is less so.

Ó Dochartaigh correctly notes that references to self-determination in the DSD were highly qualified but nevertheless frames it as a concession by the British to republicans. This interpretation leans heavily on some interview testimonies. However, republicans wanted a right to self-determination on an all-island basis, not in two parts, as the DSD offered. The DSD was thus a simple acknowledgement of the unionist veto on a united Ireland and a practical recognition that the Republic would have to consent to any eventual unity. Acknowledging it as a basis for discussion was a concession by republicans, not to them. In fairness, Ó Dochartaigh is not alone in accepting this interpretation of the DSD.Footnote ¹⁰ A reminder, perhaps, that interview testimonies, although compelling, require critical scrutiny.

Deniable contact’s lesson that back-channel contacts can foster accommodation between antagonists is a valuable one, and the focus on individuals adds colour and depth to previous accounts. Whilst arguably less persuasive on key debates, such as the 1975 ceasefire or the significance of the DSD, it provides a significant platform for advancing those debates.

The sensitive issue of those disappeared and secretly buried is explored in The disappeared: the hidden victims of Northern Ireland’s conflict by Sandra Peake and Orla Lynch. In keeping with the theme of lived experiences, the book begins with a disclaimer that it is not ‘intended to be a factual timeline of events, but a presentation of the testimony of the families of the Disappeared’ (xix).

There is an interesting comparative exploration of disappearances in other conflicts and of historical examples of this crime in the third chapter, including cases where disappearances were carried out in large numbers, such as Colombia, Peru and Sri Lanka. Whilst the individual families involved feel these crimes very intensely, there is a difference of scale and extent when it comes to Northern Ireland. Indeed, what makes these acts so shocking in an Irish context, as well as their callous brutality, is their relatively infrequent occurrence (24–5). This, perhaps, means that Northern Ireland pays less attention to the disappeared than those other places, creating further trauma for victims.

That trauma comes through most strongly in the chapter on victims’ voices. Whilst an important part of the book, the presentation of the interview material is fragmentary, with short, clipped quotations. It is sometimes unclear whether indented quotes come from the same or different participants. Regardless, the sense of injustice comes through strongly: from a lack of support within the community, to the cruelty of those who, in some cases, led victims to believe their relatives were still alive (46–9).

The book details the significant role played by Bill Clinton’s administration in pushing republicans towards co-operation with the Independent Commission for the Location of Victims’ Remains. US intervention was crucial, given the lack of success that pressure from the British government had yielded (82). Clinton, however, could leverage access to an Irish-American community that was so lucrative for republicans. That is not to say that that co-operation came without its own challenges, including attempts by the paramilitaries to infer that the disappeared were informers (83). The case of Jean McConville, of course, sensitively handled in this book, continues to provoke widespread debate and discussion. The book reminds us, however, that the task of locating all the disappeared remains unfinished, despite the efforts and bravery of their families over generations.

Whilst this monograph meets its aim of giving voice to the victims, there is a sense that more space could have been afforded to their testimonies. Although, for a short book, The disappeared does an admirable job of highlighting the challenges faced by the victims and their relatives in their ongoing search for justice. It is a timely reminder that whilst the guns may be (primarily) silent, structural violence and injustice remains.

Community relations policy during the conflict is the subject of Joana Etchart’s monograph. Several scholars have explored this thorny topic,Footnote ¹¹ but Etchart’s book is one of few to trace the development of community relations policy from the ‘old Stormont’ through the lengthy period of direct rule. This fresh and original approach is surely welcome.

Etchart focuses on the process of policy-making. She persuasively notes how under-theorised the concept of ‘community relations’ remains. Perhaps it is more often ‘taken as read’ than elucidated. In terms of method, Etchart takes a ‘micro-historical’ approach, accumulating details and traces of relevant evidential sources. However, how this diverges from more conventional historical methods is less clear. Perhaps the difference is one of perspective, where what Etchart calls ‘experiential truths’ (217) are brought into dialogue with other sources.

The book sets community relations in an historical context going back to the era of partition. As a microhistory, it recalls interesting vignettes such as the abortive attempts to introduce a ‘Human Rights Bill’ to discourage discrimination on grounds of race, gender, colour and religion during the 1960s by the Dublin-born Liberal MP, Sheelagh Murnaghan. Whilst such a microhistory might lead to the seductive hope that this was evidence of a hitherto buried liberalising tendency during this time, it is important to note that Murnaghan was very much a marginal figure in these attempts. Progressive politics was still a minority sport.

The creation of the Northern Ireland Community Relations Council (NICRC) is also explored. Influential civil servant Maurice Hayes’s vision of community relations is discussed. Hayes stressed that good relations depended on showing concern for the poor, the homeless and the disabled, which Etchart describes as a ‘pioneering intersectional definition of community relations’ (66). But if there was intersectionality in Hayes’s approach, it was of a very limited order, since there was no mention of race, gender, sexuality or privilege. Again, whilst analytically tempting, there is risk in linking such ideas to a time and place when they were not in the vernacular.

The later section of the book, drawing on interviews with Community Relations Officers working in Dungannon (chapter 4), is arguably its strongest. Here, the benefit of Etchart’s approach is most apparent. It would have been interesting to see these experiences contrasted with similar workers in other locations across Northern Ireland. Perhaps such a project would make an interesting sequel to this volume.

The book concludes by expressing a desire for a ‘perennial, deliberative machinery’ to be established to enshrine the principles of human rights, to complement the existing power-sharing mechanisms and which could function even in the absence of an executive (232). Such a mechanism seems politically very unlikely, since it is not in the interests of the parties — not least because it could lead to difficult questions about the executive’s purpose. Is it there to foster ‘good relations’, or is it there to simply share power and ensure the peace process keeps trundling along? As with many of the important questions posed in this book, and the other volumes reviewed here, the answer may be influenced by one’s lived experiences, past and present.