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Beleaguered Resonance: Loyalist Entrenchment And Division In The Early Troubles, 1963–1985, Bradley J. Watkins

Master's Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

Taking as a starting point the framework that the Northern Ireland Troubles were largely fought on confessional sectarian, ethno-national grounds, this essay will analyze the internal and external forces that incited Ulster Protestant political responses from the premiership of Terence O’Neill, beginning in 1963, to the 1985 signing of the Anglo-Irish Agreement. Through an extrapolation of socioeconomic class dynamics, and geographical imperatives informed by such source material as population demographics, election results, distribution of political violence, as well as numerous Protestant organizational publications, it is clear that throughout the early Troubles Protestant Northern Ireland increasingly undertook strategies of various modes …