Settlement Colonialism and Transnational Solidarity: Irish Republicanism and the Palestinian Cause during the Troubles in Northern Ireland (1968-1998)

From the 1970s onwards, Sinn Féin, the political wing of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) organised in both the North and South of the island of Ireland, defined a foreign policy based on the rejection of the colonial experience and solidarity with the nations that were subjected to it. Palestine was seen as the object of Israeli settlement colonialism, just as Ireland had been colonised by Great Britain. Irish republicans offered their support to the Palestine Liberation Organisation and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and created transnational links of solidarity with them based on a resistance to colonialism built on shared experiences of imprisonment and hunger strike. This paper examines how Ireland’s colonial history gave rise to transnational Palestine solidarity movements within the Irish Republican movement during the period of the Troubles in Northern Ireland (1969-1998). It shows how the paradigm of settlement colonialism can be used not only to understand colonisation but also to account for the existence of transnational solidarity networks between colonised territories, or those that have suffered colonisation. The article draws on a systematic analysis of the archives of the publications of the republican weekly An Phoblacht from the late 1960s to the late 1990s. It explores the discourse that accompanies the empirical development of transnational solidarity networks between Irish republicans and certain Palestinian groups. This discourse on a colonial identity common to Palestine and Ireland, which theorises and frames the deployment of transnational solidarity actions, is at the heart of the proposed analysis.