Speaker
Description
Operation Banner was the longest operational deployment of the British Army in its history, lasting from 1969 to 2007. Although the last soldiers on this deployment left Northern Ireland in 2007, the impacts of their service are still very much felt today. While many scholars have studied Operation Banner and the role of the British Army in detail, recent historiography has failed to include the individual experiences of veterans through oral history interviews.
The main objective of this paper is to discuss and explore how oral history can be used to investigate the neglected history of the individual experiences of British veterans who served in Operation Banner. As outlined, recent historical literature on the Troubles has failed to include these important testimonies and has therefore created a significant gap in the studies of Operation Banner, counterterrorism and memory studies. The paper, therefore, argues that oral history is an invaluable tool for addressing this gap in the literature.
By studying the individual veteran experiences of the conflict from this new and important perspective that has been previously underutilised, we can look to better understand the actual lived experiences of these veterans.
| Institutional Affiliation | Institute of Irish Studies, University of Liverpool |
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