ILPC 2026

 This paper will briefly explore Ireland’s cultural colonisation as part of the wider British imperial project that ultimately led to the demise of the Irish language as Ireland’s spoken language in the late 19^th century. The decline of the Irish language, it will be argued, was dictated by the political, economic and cultural necessities of British imperialism in Ireland. In the form of comparative analysis, this process will be framed into a wider understanding of cultural shift in colonial and neo-colonial contexts. 

In the Irish context, the consequences of colonisation will be seen to have inspired and shaped an ideology of decolonisation and resistance which has been a central motivating factor in the contemporary Irish language revival movement.

Drawing from original primary source interview material, it will assess the co-operative social, cultural, educational and economic projects stemming from the pre-dominantly working-class Irish language movement in Belfast from the late 1960s until the present as counter-hegemonic forms of community resistance which have successfully straddled the intersection between race and class.

In addition, it is argued that these forms of cultural revival correspond with Frantz Fanon’s radical vision of decolonisation as integral to the wider struggle to establish national sovereignty which articulated a theoretical template that defined the ideological rationale of radical Irish language activists in the highly charged period of Irish history following the Irish Hunger Strikes in the North of Ireland of 1980-81.

In conclusion, this paper will analyse the current campaign for language rights in the north, which has become central to the current political crisis having contributed to toppling the Stormont power-sharing executive in January 2017. This campaign and many corresponding grassroots community projects have been led by a new generation of activists whose intense politicisation and radicalisation during the campaign has recast them in the classic mould of Gramscian organic-intellectuals who ‘elaborate, modify and disseminate’ their ‘class conception of the world’ and give it homogeneity and awareness of its specific function and potential in economic, political and social fields (Larrain 1979:84.)

In practical terms, these locally based activists have constructed what Gramsci describes as ‘earthworks and fortifications’ within civil society that seeks to build counter hegemonic campaigning, organisations and projects that exemplify and embody the social forces that have the potential to exploit the contradictions that exist within modern society whilst simultaneously challenging continued British Neo-colonial politico-economic hegemony in the North of Ireland.

Horizontally organised, open and democratic, these modes of organisation have breathed fresh life into the belief that ‘a better world is possible’. As a radical form of grassroots decolonisation, this contemporary language revival movement can arguably become a constituent element of a newly energised and transformational form of civic republicanism. Such a movement can inspire other excluded groups and dynamic rights-based campaigns by connecting issues and promoting intersectional alliances that yield more liberating future trajectories.

Notes

Jorge, Larrain. The Concept of Ideology (London, 1979)