The Conduct of Irish Disputes: The Issue of Processes and the Processing of Issues in a Marine Environment

Abstract

This article argues that the high-profile, obdurate public disputes which characterise the time we live in can only be understood in relation to their contexts and the long-drawn-out natures of their ‘careers’: the manner they develop and change, the issues and parties involved, and the means utilised. From the vantage-point of newspaper evidence - in many cases the only extant source of evidence to detail the public course of a dispute - the article analyses one example, the Bantry Bay fishing dispute which began in 1975. This data yields an account which emphasises the nature of the analytical approach appropriate for understanding it.