Unionists, Loyalists, and Conflict Transformation in Northern Ireland

Northern Ireland provides a valuable case study of a seemingly intractable conflict undergoing transformation. Lee Smithey offers a grassroots view of that transformation, through interviews and field research in the region, and provides essential models for how ethnic and communal-based conflicts can shift from violent confrontation toward peaceful co-existence. Smithey focuses particularly on Protestant unionists and loyalists in Northern Ireland, who maintain varying degrees of commitment to the Protestant faith, the Crown, and British governance. He argues that antagonistic collective identities in ethnopolitical conflict can become less polarizing as partisans adopt new conflict strategies and means of expressing identity. Consequently, the close and recursive relationship between collective identity and collective action forms a crucial element of conflict transformation. Smithey closely examines attempts in Protestant/unionist/loyalist communities and organizations to develop more constructive means of pursuing political agendas, expressing collective identity, and improving community relations. Key leaders and activists have begun to reframe collective narratives and identities, making community support possible for negotiations, demilitarization, and political cooperation while also diminishing out-group polarization. As Smithey shows, this kind of shift in strategy and collective vision constitutes the heart of conflict transformation, and the challenges and opportunities faced by grassroots unionists and loyalists in Northern Ireland prove instructive for other regions of intractable conflict.

Lee A. Smithey coordinates the Peace and Conflict Studies program at Swarthmore College in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania. He is an Associate Professor of Sociology in the college's Department of Sociology and Anthropology, where he teaches and studies social movements, ethnopolitical conflict transformation, and nonviolent conflict methods.