Abstract

The existing historical literature dealing with the period that immediately precedes the Northern Ireland 'Troubles' (1969-1998) does not fully appreciate the extent to which international events influenced the Northern Ireland civil rights movement. Traditional approaches (i.e.: Nationalist, Unionist and Marxist) focus almost exclusively on the domestic causes of the movement and little on the impact of foreign events. This thesis takes an international approach to Northern Ireland history to suggest that while the civil rights movement was composed in large part of Catholics with a nationalist or republican slant, the civil rights movement was, in essence, a coalition of moderate and radical socialists spurred on by the international context of the late sixties. The speeches, pamphlets, and memoirs generated by former leaders of the Northern Ireland civil rights movement demonstrate how deeply influenced this movement was by the struggle for human rights and socialism taking place simultaneously in the world beyond Irish shores. These sources also reveal profound ideological and methodological cleavages that divided the movement's leadership into three major ideological factions. These factions are identified here as constitutional nationalists, institutional Marxist republicans (or 'red republicans'), and unaligned revolutionary socialists (or 'New Leftists'). Because of this ideological diversity, the movement was unable to congeal into a united front and rapidly disintegrated into its component parts in the face of rising sectarian violence.