This chapter begins by surveying the linguistic history of Ireland. Although it is situated on the periphery of the British Isles, there is evidence of contact between the island, other regions of Britain and indeed other countries in western Europe for centuries. It explores early and later contacts between the indigenised Celts and more recent colonisers and immigrants, including the Normans, the English, the Scots and twentieth-century settlers from the European Union prior to Brexit. These contacts have created a set of contemporary Irish English varieties that are not only distinctive with respect to other world Englishes but are also differentiated diatopically, ethnically and socially. Two main topics are addressed. The degree to which Irish English from different time frames is structurally similar to other dialects spoken elsewhere is considered alongside evaluating the extent to which contemporary Irish Englishes vary internally and externally with respect to their lexis, phonology, morphosyntax and discourse pragmatics. Some space is also devoted to examining how the study of Irish English has developed and what directions research might take in the twenty-first century in response to new approaches to modelling linguistic contact as well as the availability of larger and more diverse digital datasets.

International pressures, Brexit and the resurgence of nationalism have created new divides in the regions of the United Kingdom. Brendan O’Leary examines the impact of Conservative policy in Scotland, Northern Ireland, and Wales, focusing on how prime ministers have handled campaigns and support for Scottish independence, the ruling coalitions in Wales, and also the new post-Brexit framework and demographic pressures in Northern Ireland. The chapter ends with a dire overall evaluation of the condition of the union as a result of Conservative policy.

This chapter traces Ireland as a foundational zone of influence and creative disruption in the British imagination. Ireland’s political status has been altered by the Anglo-Irish relationship across centuries, while Britain, in turn, has been shaped by its interaction with the otherness of its closest island neighbour. Twelfth-century texts demonstrate that Ireland has acted as a foil to Britain’s imperial imagination, and it continued to do so throughout the subsequent literary and political history. The chapter discusses depictions of Ireland from Gerald of Wales to Edmund Spenser to William Shakespeare. Then it turns to examine the influence of Irish literature on the British imaginary. The enduring influence of Maria Edgeworth, W. B. Yeats, James Joyce, Elizabeth Bowen, Samuel Beckett, and Seamus Heaney allows Britain to see itself through Irish eyes. Often, they reveal the occlusions and silences that exist within Britain’s self-imaginings. With Brexit shadowing the contemporary relationship between Britain, Ireland, and, of course, Europe, this dialogical Anglo-Irish relationship, whereby Ireland both reflects and distorts Britain’s image, becomes all the more significant.

This chapter sets out why a history of Ulster loyalism in the three counties after partition matters and outlines the literature on ethnic conflict, Ulster loyalism, and terrorism and political violence in Ireland. The chapter then sets out the book’s two main arguments. First, memories of the violence experienced by one generation of Protestants in the three counties entrenched a sense of separation from the new Irish state on the part of subsequent generations. Intergenerational grievance and inter-communal distance kept loyalism alive and set the conditions for militancy and revenge in the future, including during the Troubles. Three-county loyalists played an important role in Ulster loyalist militant movements in Northern Ireland after partition.

This chapter examines the phenomenon of three-county loyalists’ considerable impact on Northern Ireland’s security forces and radical or militant Ulster movements since partition. It describes how these individuals generally came from families that were threatened with, or experienced, republican or agrarian violence after partition. The chapter also explores the important roles played by three-county loyalists in paramilitary organisations such as the Ulster Defence Association during the Troubles. A number of these individuals came from areas that had seen high levels of loyalist militancy in the first half of the century, suggesting an intergenerational consistency across the twentieth century.

This chapter underlines the main contribution of the book. It argues that Ulster loyalism has survived within the Irish state to the present day. The ’affective bonds’ or culture created in previous generations persisted. Three counties’ loyalists were still willing to embrace an Ulster identity even after the partition of the province. What mattered more than political logic or calculation was sentiment. It also observes an enduring strain of frontier militancy in Ulster, summarises the tactical successes of three counties’ loyalists and their wider movements in the 1920s and again in 1970s but concludes that militancy in successive conflicts only served to delay conciliatory reforms, truces and peace agreements.

This chapter examines the resurgence of suspicions among republicans towards real or imagined loyalists in the three counties, that some Protestants were acting as a loyalist ’fifth column’ for the security forces and/or paramilitaries in Northern Ireland. A successful loyalist cross-border paramilitary campaign in the early 1970s precipitated an IRA counter-intelligence operation to eliminate spies in the three counties. Families that were well known locally for their historical involvement in loyalism were again targeted by the IRA in the 1970s. The chapter outlines the suspicions and inter-communal violence in County Monaghan that led to the murder of Senator Billy Fox and the burning of the family home of his fiancée, Marjorie Coulson.

This chapter considers relations between the European Union and other European States. The European Economic Area establishes something close to a single market, with non-EU States transposing swathes of EU law into their national law. A customs union with Turkey in non-agricultural goods requires Turkey to align its laws with EU laws relating to external trade and free movement of goods. A hybrid regime exists with the United Kingdom. Northern Ireland aligns its external trade and free movement of goods law with EU law. A free trade agreement exists for the rest of the United Kingdom which abolishes tariffs on movement of goods but allows regulatory barriers. A free trade agreement also operates with Ukraine under which it aligns its laws with EU law in free movement of goods, most of free movement for services, environmental, labour and competition law. A limited free trade agreement exists with Switzerland, alongside a number of agreements in which Switzerland aligns its laws with EU law in return for access to the EU market or territory. The chapter also considers the ‘Brussels effect’ under which non-EU States and industries voluntarily adopt EU law to access the EU market.

This chapter examines the potential impact of Brexit on the future of the Union, providing a snapshot of public opinion and attitudes as the full implications of the UK’s departure start to become clear. In the first section, an overview of devolution in the UK is provided. In the second section, data on public opinion are provided from Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, as well as consideration of attitudes to the Union in England and to Irish unification in Ireland. In the third section, the case of Northern Ireland is examined in more depth. In conclusion, it is argued that the future of the Union depends upon a combination of factors: the UK government’s policy towards Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland; the economic impact of Brexit; demographic change in Northern Ireland; and attitudes in Ireland to unification.

The parameters of British literature, much like the bonds of British unionism, are becoming increasingly mutable and open to renegotiation. As a multinational state, the United Kingdom is looking more like a disunited kingdom in the wake of independence referendums, withdrawal from supranational constellations and the emergence of post-pandemic nationalisms. Given such tumultuous geopolitical developments, not least the EU referendum result of 2016, the question of whether British literature is still capable of synthesising English, Scottish, Welsh, Northern Irish and wider transnational affiliations into a coherent whole becomes more urgent. Drawing on the diverse perspectives of major literary voices, this chapter will question the purpose and value of British literature in a divided cultural landscape and consider whether writers are anticipating the disintegration of the United Kingdom or seeking ways of reimagining a national structure of feeling.

In this chapter we summarise the key aspects of the mental health legislation (mainly the Mental Health Acts) applicable to people with intellectual disability and autism spectrum disorder as they apply to England and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, as well as proposed new legislation or existing legislation not yet implemented.

No western country experienced as protracted a debate on contraception as Ireland. The longstanding ban on contraception has commonly been seen as the consequence of Catholic church teaching and the near-universal religious observance by Irish Catholics. But the Irish debate went far beyond Catholic teaching. The merits of large families and the laws banning contraception (as well as prohibition of divorce and abortion) came to be seen as a symbol of Ireland’s national identity; the Irish approach to contraception was intimately bound up with ideas of Irishness. The logic of opposition to the use of contraception shifted over the decades. Initially, the belief that ‘artificial’ contraception was contrary to the teaching of the Catholic church was the engine that drove state policy and broader opposition. By the 1970s this argument was being abandoned, in favour of claims that permitting contraception would destroy the fabric of the family and society. The battle to protect Irish society from the “menace” of contraception, abortion and divorce continued into the present century in the face of falling fertility, many single mothers, and a significant abortion trail to Britain.

Chapter 3 explores the social conditions and normative constraints that influence the achievements that can be obtained through partition. The chapter’s main argument is that although novel ideas for “homogenizing” territories may arise, a reasonable theory for peace must assume that forcible transfers of population in any form are prohibited, and consequently that demographically homogenous territories are unattainable. By looking at the social realities in the four cases of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Northern Ireland, Cyprus, and Israel–Palestine, the chapter illustrates that in most actual cases of ethno-national conflict, partition does not offer a viable course of action, if the goal is the creation of ethnically homogenous territories that can become “defensible enclaves” or “true” nation-states. Even in those cases where territorial partition make sense – as in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, in postdivision Cyprus, or in Bosnia and Herzegovina after the ethnic cleansing – peace must be attained not on the basis of ethnically homogenous nation-states, but rather on the basis of ethnically heterogenous territories and states. Thus, the chapter concludes that while territorial partition may be considered as one tool for peacemaking in ethno-national conflicts, its limitations must be recognized, and attained with other policies for accommodating ethno-national diversity.

Peacemaking practice shows that national minorities are aware of the shortcomings of liberal democracy and human rights to secure their fundamental interests, and when they come to the negotiating table their focal points are not bills of rights, but rather inclusive political institutions. This political inclusivity often involves the use of power-sharing democracy, a political framework that intentionally accommodates competing ethno-national groups within the state’s governing structures. Many experts, nongovernmental organizations, scholars, and policymakers have also recommended power-sharing as the more adequate institutional design for such places. This chapter evaluates democratic power-sharing vis-è-vis the more common model of majoritarian democracy to support the argument that a revision of our taken-for-granted assumptions about what “proper” democracy looks like is needed. To illustrate the general observations, the chapter reviews the use of power-sharing systems in Cyprus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Northern Ireland.

Chapter 2 starts with an overview of the modern phenomena of ethnicity, nationalism, and ethno-national conflicts, and about the probable causes and background conditions that provide fertile ground for their outbreak, as these understandings are essential for evaluating the prevailing theoretical assumptions about justice and democracy in places of ethno-national conflict. To deepen the understanding of the sociology of ethno-national conflicts, the chapter introduces the four conflicts of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Northern Ireland, Cyprus, and Israel–Palestine. This chapter singles out political exclusion, the struggle over public goods of the nation-state, and group inequalities along ethno-national lines as leading factors that explain the outbreak of violent conflicts.