From Terrorists to Peacemakers? Analysing Shifting Official Discourses on Northern Irish Republican Prisoners in Times of War and Peace

This chapter analyses a wide range of primary sources to investigate the various ways in which the authorities ruling over Northern Ireland from 1922 to the present categorised armed Republicanism, and how such labels materialised in incarceration regimes. The chapter highlights the lack of coherence in the official conceptualisations of armed Republicanism over time and argues that this “categorical confusion” depends, not only on practical reasons, but also on the Republican movement’s own agency and engagement in a power-knowledge conflict with the authorities. The close-up analysis of the primary sources and of the literature also indicates that the extended treatment of Republican inmates as de facto political prisoners may betray an implicit perception of the IRA as a legitimate Army, rather than as a criminal organisation.