IBIS ANNUAL CONFERENCE 2009
Protestant Traditions and the Paths to Peace: Beyond the Legacies of Plantation
Global Irish Institute
9 June 2009
Sir George Quigley addressing the audience at the 2009 conference
The IBIS Annual Conference - Protestant Traditions and the Paths to Peace: Beyond the Legacies of Plantation - took place at the Global Irish Institute, UCD on Tuesday, 9th June, 2009.
The conference examined the concept of the plural Protestant traditions in Ireland. Approximately 400 years after the plantation of Ulster, it asked how far that plantation set the parameters for a prolonged pattern of conflict. Clearly it did not generate a monolithic community with a uniform political programme . If its legacy was a core Protestant political tradition, that tradition was consistently challenged from two directions: on the one hand, by radical Protestants committed to post-Reformation principles; on the other, by a more secular and more accomodationist tradition. The interplay between these traditions was crucially affected by their relation to the other community (comprising Catholics of Gaelic Irish and “old English” backgrounds) and Catholics’ views of the Protestants in their midst.
The conference was not, however, intended as primarily a historical conference. The relevance or irrelevance of the past in its various guises and interpretations, for present politics and for current political progress in Northern Ireland, was also explored.