In 1967 Fr Walter Forde, an activist in the field of youth welfare work, noted ‘signs of unrest’ amongst Irish youths growing up in the sixties. He identified the ways in which they were ‘being influenced by English teenage culture’:

Seán Lemass remains an enigmatic figure in the study of contemporary Ireland. He became taoiseach in 1959, after a long and successful career in the leadership of Fianna Fáil. Notwithstanding this, he is widely associated with the transformation of Irish life that began under his stewardship between 1959 and 1966. In 1966, he convened the Informal Committee on the Constitution, often considered to be the most surprising initiative of his career. While change had not occurred by the time he died in 1971, the constitution had by this time become the focus for discussion, controversy and in some cases vilification. The questions this article seeks to answer are why Lemass promoted constitutional change and what were the consequences of this decision. More generally, it will assess the nature of constitutional change in a stable democratic state that is undergoing modernisation.

‘Since our foundation, the S.D.L.P. has been proudly nationalist and is 100 per cent for a United Ireland.’ This description, from the website of the Social Democratic and Labour Party (S.D.L.P.), advances a claim which might be thought not to sit easy with the party's founding ideals which claimed it as a ‘radical socialist party’ and insisted that, while a united Ireland was one of the party's main aims, it would prioritise the socio-economic above the constitutional question. This article will argue that while the S.D.L.P. was widely recognised as a major advance in nationalist politics in Northern Ireland when it was formed in August 1970, it had lost its avant-garde approach to the constitutional question and become a more organised form of the old Nationalist Party by 1975. Although initially the S.D.L.P. combined socialist rhetoric with a discourse that linked social justice with the reunification of the island – its ideal was a ‘completely new constitution for the whole of Ireland, a constitution which will provide the framework for the emergence of a just, egalitarian and secular society’ – there existed an uneasy tension between nationalist and socialist aims within the party, with the former taking precedence by the time of the powersharing Executive of 1974.

This article examines one of the most intense divisions between Irish nationalists during the Northern Ireland conflict. The Provisional I.R.A. claimed to be waging a similar war to that of the I.R.A. of the revolutionary era (1916–1921); an assertion disputed by many. The argument was significant because all the major political forces in the Irish Republic honoured the memory of what they called the ‘old’ I.R.A. (defined in a popular school history book as ‘the men who fought for Irish freedom between 1916 and 1923’). They argued that in contrast to the Provisionals, the ‘old’ I.R.A. possessed a democratic mandate and avoided causing civilian casualties. Echoes of these disputes resurfaced during Sinn Féin's bid for the Irish presidency during 2011. Commemorating Denis Barry, an anti-treaty I.R.A. prisoner who died on hunger strike in 1923, Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin claimed that in contrast to men like Barry ‘those who waged war in Northern Ireland during the more recent Troubles were an impediment to Irish unity and directly responsible for causing distress and grief to many families. Yet they still seek to hijack history and the achievements of the noble people who fought for Ireland in our War of Independence … to justify their terrorist campaign.’

The 1970s was a time of crisis internationally, when governments struggled to cope with rising inflation and public indebtedness in the aftermath of the first oil shock. It was also a period of social change, of demands for divorce and abortion, and second-wave feminism campaigned for greater rights for women. But as many of the contributors to The shock of the global have shown, amidst the political, social and economic turmoil, there was development and transformation. Ireland was not isolated from many of these trends that marked the 1970s. This article is concerned with the Fine Gael–Labour government of 1973 to 1977, in particular with the social reform agenda pursued by a coalition of one party (Fine Gael) that had advocated a ‘Just Society’ in the 1960s, and another (Labour) that had declared that the seventies would be socialist. They presented themselves at the 1973 general election as the socially progressive parties in the political system, attempting to outflank Fianna Fáil, which, in contrast, emphasised the Northern Ireland security question during the campaign. As the National Coalition grappled with fiscal expansion and the effects of stagflation, important changes occurred in the realm of social policy. Legislation affecting the status of women, recognising female heads of household and offering support to families of physically and mentally disabled children were all indicators of change.

On a plane leaving Baidoa refugee camp in Somalia in late 1992, an Arab doctor offered John O'Shea, head of the relief agency Goal, a glimpse of how the Irish were viewed in that civil war-ravaged state. ‘Ah, Ireland’, he remarked on learning of O'Shea's country of origin, ‘the caring nation’. He had reason to be complimentary. In addition to the aid agencies and aid workers involved in the ongoing relief effort, Somalia had recently hosted two highprofile visitors from the Irish state. In August 1992 the minister for Foreign Affairs, David Andrews, spent three days in the country to view at first-hand its escalating civil war. He was followed less than two months later by President Mary Robinson, whose arrival at Baidoa on 2 October marked the beginning of a tour – the first by a Western head of state – of the feeding stations and refugee camps that provided succour to those displaced by the conflict.

In 1206, the year after he was created earl of Ulster by King John, the forces of Hugh II de Lacy (d. 1242) devastated the ecclesiastical civitas of Armagh for ten successive days and nights. Then, turning southwest into Monaghan, de Lacy laid waste ‘Teach Damhnata’ (Tydavnet), ‘Ceall Muragáin’ (Kilmore), and Clones, before striking northwards into Tír Eógain. There, he attacked Tullaghoge, seat of the king of Cenél nEógain, Áed Méith Ua Néill (d. 1230), reaching as far north as Ciannachta (bar. Keenaght, County Londonderry). This campaign, undertaken with the ‘Foreigners of Meath and of Leinster’, was followed up in the beginning of 1207 with another assault on Armagh around St Brigid’s day (1 February), which was severe enough to prompt Eugenius (Echdonn mac Gilla Uidir), archbishop of Armagh (d. 1217), to cross to the court of King John in order to ‘succour the churches of Ireland and to accuse the Foreigners’.