Chapter three measures the political influences of ‘new’ and ‘old’ Irish nationalisms in Britain from the aftermath of the 1916 Rising to the aftermath of the 1918 general election. It profiles the political languages and cultures of ‘Irish-Ireland’ nationalism in British centres: Gaelic League-Sinn Féin-I.S.D.L.; charts the decline of the Irish Parliamentary Party’s British political influence; and evaluates the impact of the 1918 Representation of the People Act on Irish political representation in Britain. While advanced Irish nationalist associations were central to the organisation of relief campaigns for interned rebels in British centres, the 1916 Rising, this chapter submits, did not fundamentally change Irish nationalist politics in Britain. Conflicted over Redmond’s earlier refusal to join the British Cabinet, the Irish Party was instead debilitated by the absence of political leadership, and a post-war political manifesto, in Britain. While the Irish Party in Ireland was decisively defeated by Sinn Féin at the 1918 general election, the Irish Party in Britain was effectively displaced by the Labour Party. The ‘victory’ of Sinn Féin in Britain was predicated less on the democratic legitimacy of Dáil Éireann and more on its recognisable post-war mandate: an Irish Self-Determination League.

This chapter compares the foreign policy decision-making style and diplomatic priorities of Éamon de Valera and Franklin D. Roosevelt during the period 1932 to 1939. Before coming to presidential office, both men also saw value in promoting national interest through international engagement albeit within limits. Both men had to repay many political favours when it came to forming cabinets and administrations and in turn the existing diplomatic culture. Decisions about appointing an amateur or professional were influenced by a myriad of factors. Who were the men and women interested in the Dublin and Washington posts respectively? The chapter argues that the appointment revealed much about Roosevelt and de Valera’s interest in the other country and that the quality of the appointee would only emerge when they had to establish political and personal networks to assist in the promotion of national interests and when dealing with daily events

After 1975, British policymakers no longer believed that the IRA would settle for a political compromise. Instead, the British government sought to reduce IRA activity to a level at which it would not interfere with potential political agreements between constitutional nationalists and unionists. Continuing IRA activity convinced the Thatcher government to continue this strategy towards Irish republicans. The aim of enticing Irish republicans to fully politicise via backchannel negotiations would only be readopted under Peter Brooke in 1990. In order to force republicans to promptly agree to a political compromise, John Major’s government followed a similar strategy to that of Harold Wilson’s government between 1974 and 1975. There would be a combination of backchannel conversations alongside a continuing intelligence campaign to erode the IRA’s armed capacity. This chapter also outlines how the IRA and Sinn Féin leadership privately only sought a return to talks after 1975. They sought to persist with the IRA’s campaign and to maximise Sinn Féin’s share of the vote in order to get the British government to return to talks and provide concessions towards Irish republican objectives.

Chapter 10 suggests that the Irish government and the SDLP talked to Sinn Féin from the late 1980s for two primary reasons: Sinn Féin’s sizeable minority of nationalist support in Northern Ireland, and the IRA’s persistence. Continuing IRA activity, Sinn Féin’s electoral mandate in Northern Ireland, and the pan-nationalist talks also encouraged a shift in British government strategy towards trying to bring republicans into a political settlement in the 1990s. The IRA’s aim of encouraging the British government to return to talks had succeeded by the 1990s. Nonetheless, this chapter suggests that the electoral stagnation of Sinn Féin alongside the stalemate that the conflict had reached by the 1990s convinced the republican leadership to make political concessions in talks. But the prospect of further increasing Sinn Féin’s electoral mandate and achieving concessions for Irish nationalists via the pan-nationalist alliance also influenced Irish republicans to end the armed campaign. This chapter also explores how various grass-roots republicans agreed with the peace process strategy, and why Denis Donaldson and other Sinn Féin informers were not pivotal to the peace process strategy being formed and accepted within republicanism. I emphasise the importance of political factors, rather than the intelligence war, in leading to peace.

This chapter largely focusses on the behaviour of Protestants from unionist backgrounds who adopted nationalist politics. The first section assesses the ideology of pre-1916 Sinn Féin, whose efforts to encourage Protestant participation led certain intellectuals to believe it posed a threat to unionist hegemony, but whose failure to develop a secular programme ultimately impeded its efforts. The next section discusses ‘synthetic Gaels’, those Protestant converts to nationalism whose extravagant attempts to fit in could raise smiles or prompt hostility. In the next section, Protestant advanced nationalist women are assessed as a group, by means of a denominational, socioeconomic, and geographical examination. Their writings are used to assess their motivation for converting to an advanced nationalist position. The final section deals with conversion to Catholicism, and argues that religious conversion was rare, being mostly confined to advanced nationalist women.