The 'Conceptual Archive': A Genealogy of Security in 1970s Britain and Northern Ireland

This thesis argues for greater historical depth in political scholarship. It introduces the ‘conceptual archive’: as a way of thinking about ‘interpellation’ between past and present in politics, and an analytic for pursuing that interpellation in practice. The thesis employs a mixed methodology to assess the UK’s transition to a ‘counter-terrorism’ paradigm during the 1970s (against the background of the Northern Ireland ‘Troubles’). I combine quantitative and qualitative analyses of linguistic and spatial data to trace the roots of Britain’s 1970s counter-terrorism ‘moment’, over a longer genealogy of Anglo-Irish politics. I begin by establishing the continuity and parameters of a long-term ensemble of logics for thinking/speaking about Northern Ireland in British political discourse, from the former’s 1920 ‘emergence’ to its 1970s ‘emergency’. I employ quantitative corpus linguistics to trace conceptual logics’ percussive recirculation, across a new database of all parliamentary debates on Northern Ireland, 1920-1984. I suggest this recirculation indicates the presence of a ‘conceptual archive’ in British discourse on Northern Ireland: a system of continuous rules for thinking/speaking about its politics. I turn to Britain’s 1970s counter-terrorism ‘moment’. I assess new laws introduced to contain Troubles violence: flagging these laws’ ‘unpalatability’ amongst parliamentarians, and the requirement for Government to develop a careful argument by which to legitimise them. Assessing this argument’s conception/delivery, I find Government actors acquired consent for counter-terrorism by recycling conceptual archive vocabularies with which parliamentary stakeholders were already familiar: framing ‘exceptional’ provisions in an ‘accepted’ fabric of concepts. I end by considering 1970s security’s spatial manifestations. I establish conceptual archive logics’ footprint in planning for/effects of ‘peace walls’ built in Northern Irish cities. However, I also flag the walls’ appropriation to mural-painting, by communities through which they run. This appropriation diverges from my ‘archive’ in important senses: affording new ways for thinking about Northern Irish politics.