Abstract

This thesis is a historical examination of the multi-layered processes of memory transmission in post-Troubles Northern Ireland. The focus is primarily Ardoyne, a working-class and traditionally Catholic Nationalist Republican enclave in North Belfast, segregated along sectarian lines from the Protestant Unionist Loyalist community of Woodvale. Ardoyne has historically experienced the divisions, sectarian violence, death, and displacement during the Troubles, and it has more recently experienced the ambivalent implications of “peace.” To understand these enduring histories, this thesis centres on forty oral history interviews with members of the Ardoyne, Greater Shankill and also Rathcoole and Ballynafeigh communities to examine how we remember, how memory is communicated, and finally, how memory is transmitted to the ceasefire generations.
Building on the theoretical insights of historians, memory studies scholars and oral historians, this thesis analyses the specific contours of conflict memory by considering the voices of the “ceasefire generation” in conversation with the voices of older generations who directly experienced widespread violence. To hear these voices together illuminates the everyday mechanisms of memory transmission and the subsequent outcomes on issues of culture, belonging, and identity as they have transformed since the conflict.
Applying the methodology of oral history to examine and engage with emotions and senses in the process of remembering, this thesis pushes the boundaries of Troubles-related knowledge further by considering how fear, anxiety, and loss can shape the type of stories told, or not told. Through an examination of place, commemoration, private memories, cultural histories and identity, the connections between the past and present are illuminated in the go-along interviews. The shadow of the unresolved past casts itself over the present as living memory in the historical context of violence and division. The stories elicited from the oral history interviews highlight the normalisation of conflict and bring some of those stories to light. The thesis presents hopeful conclusions on the role of the ceasefire generation as political actors and the role they will continue to play in shaping the future of Northern Ireland through an engagement and consideration of the past whilst continuing to move forward as memory activists.