Funerals are an age-old, spiritual way of saying a final goodbye to loved ones. But during the Northern Ireland ‘Troubles’ they took on a far more political significance with the Irish Republican Army using them to make statements around their struggle for a United Ireland. The laying of the tricolour on coffins and the presence of armed, masked men playing a major part in funeral processions and ceremonies brought the republican organisation into conflict with the traditions of the Irish Catholic Church. Funerals were also used as a way to circumvent the ban on large public gatherings directed at the IRA and its supporters in the North. Indeed, the use of funerals as propaganda had been a source of extreme tension between the Irish Catholic Church and the IRA throughout the twentieth century but it was the 1980s when things came to a head as British security forces greatly increased the policing of these republican funerals. Violent clashes between the police and mourners regularly made the headlines as the conflict appeared to escalate. For members of the Provisional IRA, funerals provided the opportunity to publicly and ‘peacefully’ mourn the loss of a comrade while also drawing attention to their aims and objectives. The decision to use funerals in this way embroiled the Irish Catholic Church in the public debate as controversy surrounding Christian burial on consecrated ground with a full requiem mass for paramilitaries received full media scrutiny. These funerals forced the Church into the political arena, with journalists, civilians, and politicians alike asking why the Church allowed such occasions to happen. Through archival research and oral history testimony, this paper will present early findings on how republican paramilitary organisations used funerals as a means of protest. This paper is part of a wider project, which will provide the first in-depth study of funerals in conflict societies, illustrating how they can reflect or antagonise the relationship between Christian churches and paramilitary organisations.

‘Church and State: The Politics of Irish Republican Funerals’ by Dr Maggie Scull

Dr Maggie Scull is a modern historian whose work explores religious institutions, secularisation, political violence, sectarianism, and peace. She is an adjunct professor of history and politics at Syracuse University London. Previously, she held an Irish Research Council postdoctoral fellowship at NUI Galway. After graduating from Boston University, Dr Scull earned a Master’s and PhD at King’s College London while beginning her teaching career. Her interdisciplinary research explores the relationship between religion and politics in the contemporary period. Her current work examines the role of funerals throughout the conflict in Northern Ireland. Oxford University Press publishes her first book, The Catholic Church and the Northern Ireland Troubles, 1968-98, in 2019. She has been a regular contributor to the international press including the BBC, the Irish Times, and RTÉ Brainstorm.