*Originally published in 2022 and preserved as part of our archive project.Get E-International Relations delivered to your inbox, free of charge. As you sign up, consider becoming a paid subscriber to support our work.

In Northern Ireland, the former high-security prison, HMP Maze, known euphemistically as “Long Kesh,” is politically idiomatic of the province’s torturous conflict archaeology. It is symbolic of unresolved issues many see as a crypto peace process. The spectacular failure of the site’s re-purposing points to reluctance to confront the ghosts of a tragic past and historical specters in the day-to-day life of the province. Northern Ireland exudes “dark heritage” and few sites are as iconic as this prison which witnessed sectarian murders, mass protests, hunger strikes, prisoner escapes, and alleged state misuse of battle-grade CR gas, all in barely thirty short years of life. These events are forensically chronicled by Laura McAntaney and bolster the argument for active community participation in post-conflict heritage.

The post-conflict heritage of Long Kesh/Maze is a microcosm of the polarization exposed by the burdening decades of “the troubles”. The sensitivity of “dark heritage” of this era is over-powering. The 1998 Good Friday Agreement provided for the advance release of prisoners on conflict-related charges. As the prison emptied, the contested nature of the heritage of Long Kesh/Maze effectively tarnished its future. Indeed, it split the power-sharing government and the future of the former prison is tied to resolution of the endgame of conflict itself. Current theories of heritage certainly favor “participative heritage” whether tangible or intangible. As Laurajane Smith has argued, ‘Heritage is not a thing, site or place, nor is it ‘found’, rather heritage is the multiple processes of meaning making that occur as material heritage places or intangible heritage events are identified, defined, managed, exhibited and visited’. If Smith’s argument is taken seriously, the heritage of Long Kesh/Maze has hardly begun because access is closed. Its heritage could be permitted to unfold through forms of participation; its histories revealed by people connected to the site i.e., “participatory heritage practice”. The global heritage project, Sites of Conscience, has supported many such dialogues about the relationship between past and present at sites across the world. All are dependent upon the genuine participation that should be encouraged for Long Kesh/Maze

Nationalists regarded the re-named “HMP Maze” as whitewashing a site which had become notorious due to years of murder, hunger strike and protest. It closed in 2000 after the Good Friday Agreement. In the early years, suspects were held indefinitely, in conditions of internment without trial under the Special Powers Act. Another term of nomenclature conflict archaeologists will come........

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