Civil Rights Movement, Loyalist Countermobilization and Political Violence in Northern Ireland in the Late 1960s

• In Event: 594 - Section on Political Sociology Roundtable Session (one-hour).
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 14. Political Violence

Abstract

Political opportunities, constraints and threats are usually indicated as key external factors affecting social movement strategies. Hostile counter-mobilization is an important, yet relatively understudied, factor in radicalizing movement tactics and generating political violence. In this paper, I focus on the mobilization of loyalist organizations against the Civil Rights Movement in Northern Ireland to clarify the emergence and intensification of political violence in the late 1960s. The relationship between the Civil Rights Movement and the loyalist countermobilization is systematically examined to unveil how their strategic interactions created the conditions to fuel both protest-based and sectarian violence, setting the terrain for the eruption of the Troubles. Relying on quantitative data on the actors participating to contentious collective events, as well as original archival research, this paper shows how the loyalist countermobilization activated mechanisms of object shift and tactical codependency that led to the rise of political violence in Northern Ireland.

Author

• Gianluca De Fazio, Towson University