• An earnest endeavour for peace? Ulster Unionism and the Craig/Collins Peace Pact of 30th March 1922

      Norton, Christopher (Villeneuve d'Ascq, France: Presses Unversitaires, 2007)
      Article in English, abstract in French. "Cet article considère la tentative, ratée, de réconcilier unionisme et nationalisme en Irlande du Nord en mars 1922. Les forces en présence au sein du camp unioniste sont réévaluées, entre opposants et partisans du pacte Craig-Collins de mars 1922, et il est suggéré que la position belligérante et obstructionniste finalement adoptée n'était au départ ni automatique ni inévitable. Les éléments qui indiquent une plus grande diversité de réactions (bienveillantes ou malveillantes) vis-à-vis du Pacte sont également présentés. La signification et l'influence variables des différents points de vue sont considérées au vu du contexte de violence et d'instabilité politique, et au vu de la stratégie politique de Michael Collins." (Centre Nationale de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS))
    • Europe's Last Red Terrorists: The Revolutionary Organization 17 November

      Kassimeris, George (London: C. Hurst & Co. Ltd. / New York: New York University Press, 2001)
      Since the 1970s, Europe's last Marxist-Leninist terrorists the Greek Revolutionary Organization 17 November have waged a violent campaign against US and NATO personnel, Turkish diplomats and members of the Greeks military and business elite. In May 2000 they assassinated a top British diplomat in Athens in a daring daylight attack. Yet no one suspected of belonging to the organization, let alone of being involved in its terror campaign, has ever been arrested. This book deals with revolutionary terrorism in Greece. Tracing the history of 17 November, Kassimeris demonstrates how it has persevered with a one-dimensional view of a world peopled by heroes and villains, that has precluded the emergence of a coherent ideology. Combining fanatical nationalism, contempt for the existing order, and the cult of violence for its own sake, 17 November has stubbornly refused to accept that its eclectic belief system is incompatible with modern democratic principles. Unlike Italy's Red Brigades or Germany's Red Army Faction, which both assailed "the capitalist state and its agents," 17 November hopes to create an insurrectionary mood that will propel the Greeks into revolutionary political action without disrupting society as a whole. As such, 17 November's terror campaign has been an audacious protest aimed at discrediting and humiliating the Greek establishment and the US government, but one that has never sought to develop widespread revolutionary guerrilla warfare.
    • Last Act in a Violent Drama? The Trial of Greece's Revolutionary Organization 17 November

      Kassimeris, George (2006)
      By strange coincidence, Greece's Revolutionary Organization 17 November (17 N) met its end almost exactly a year after Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda terrorists felled New York's twin towers, when the group's leader of operations, Dimitris Koufodinas, turned himself in to the police after months on the run, on September 5, 2002. The capture of Koufodinas and his group marked the demise of the last and most stubborn of a generation of ideological terrorists whose campaigns caused serious political and security problems in Western Europe for more than a quarter of a century. Drawing on the judicial investigation findings and the courtroom testimonies of the terrorists, this article attempts to tell the stories of the four most senior group members in order to understand what led them to act in the way they did and, more crucially, what kept them inside a terrorist organization with no prospects and community support for so long. (Informaworld)
    • Republican ideals and the reality of patronage: a study of the Veterans’ Movement in Cuba, 1900-24

      Kapcia, A; Henderson, P; Hewitt, Steven (University of Wolverhampton, 2009)
      This thesis analyses the emergence of Cuba as a sovereign nation, and the political corruption that plagued the republic. It investigates in detail, not only the independence movement that established this republic in its various wars against the Spanish empire, and its fracture and fission under the emerging power of the United States, but also the impact that this had on Cuban politics, and the consequences for Cuba’s native would-be rulers. The aim is to develop an understanding of what became of the veterans of the wars of liberation, and further the somewhat neglected subject of the relationship of the official Veterans’ organisations with the political parties and associations of the republican period. A short conclusion summarises the arguments and suggests further avenues of research.
    • The internment of Cahir Healy MP, Brixton Prison 1941-42

      Norton, Christopher (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007)
      The arrest and internment in Brixton prison of the leading Northern Ireland nationalist politician and Stormont MP, Cahir Healy, in 1941 has long remained something of an historical enigma. Contemporaneous accounts that his arrest amounted to little more than an unwarranted act of anti-nationalist persecution or was the result of his alleged involvement in ‘acts prejudicial’ during time of war both benefited from the blanket of secrecy that surrounded the case. This article casts light on this affair. It offers an insight into the strategic considerations of Northern nationalist politicians at a time when British victory in the war was uncertain. It argues that some senior nationalist activists, including Healy, did envisage a situation in which British defeat and German victory could bring closer the prospect of Irish unity, did contemplate a policy of cooperation with Germany and did take steps to make this known to the German Legation in Dublin. The article also examines Healy's relationship with fellow internees in Brixton prison and his continued post-war association with figures on the British far-right, particularly Sir Oswald Mosley. (Oxford University Press)
    • Urban Guerrilla or Revolutionary Fantasist? Dimitris Koufodinas and the Revolutionary Organisation 17 November

      Kassimeris, George (London: Routledge, 2005)
      The end of Greece's Revolutionary Organization 17 November (17N) finally came on 5 September 2002 when the group's leader of operations, Dimitris Koufodinas, turned himself to the police. Unlike Alexandros Giotopoulos, the group's chief ideologue who denied any involvement in 17N, Koufodinas took responsibility for the entire 17N experience and sought to defend and justify their violent actions. Drawing on Koufodinas's court testimony this article suggests that the world of 17N was a closed, self-referential world where terrorism had become for the members a way of life from which they could not walk away. Defending the group's campaign from beginning to end, Koufodinas contended that 17N was an authentic revolutionary alternative to a barbaric, inhumane and vindictive capitalist order that was running amok. An emblematic personality of 17N terrorism, Dimitris Koufodinas embraced the view that Greece's “self-negating democracy” necessitated exactly the kind of political violence they had undertaken. (Ingenta)