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International Journal of Transitional Justice Advance Access originally published online on November 25, 2007
International Journal of Transitional Justice 2008 2(1):42-62; doi:10.1093/ijtj/ijm029
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© The Author (2007). Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org.

A Trojan Horse? Unionism, Trust and Truth-telling in Northern Ireland

Patricia Lundy* and Mark McGovern{dagger}

* Lecturer, Department of Sociology, University of Ulster, Jordanstown, Northern Ireland. E-mail: p.lundy{at}ulster.ac.uk
{dagger} Reader, Department of Social and Psychological Sciences, Edge Hill University, UK. E-mail: mcgoverm{at}edgehill.ac.uk

The aim of this article is to examine the relationship between trust, testimony and truth recovery processes as part of post-conflict transition. The paper uses the case study of unionist attitudes toward a community-based truth-telling project in Northern Ireland to demonstrate the impact an absence of trust can have upon what the French philosopher Paul Ricoeur has described as the ‘space of controversy’ that emerges between the ‘certification’ and the ‘accreditation’ of testimony. The paper suggests such distrust is a legacy, not only of conflict, but also of the particular circumstances of transition and the specific mechanisms of truth recovery adopted. Ultimately the paper argues for a holistic, community-centred approach towards truth-telling and raises issues relevant to other violently divided societies undergoing transition and grappling with ways in which to deal with the legacy of political conflict.


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