New and Old issues during the 39th G8 Summit in Northern Ireland

This paper discusses findings from research on participants in three protest events during the 39th G8 Summit in Northern Ireland. These were composed by wo protest rallies in Belfast and Enniskillen and the IF event in the Botanic Gardens of Belfast. A range of face to face structured interviews (total no. 128) were conducted and a number of participants also agreed to complete and return a postal questionnaire (91 returned out of 400 distributed). The guidelines offered in the Manual for Data Collection on Protest Demonstrations by the CCC-Project (Klandermans et al., 2011) were strictly followed with a view of facilitating cross-national comparative studies. After situating these mobilizations in the global justice (alter-globalization) protest cycle and identifying unique features (policing, media framing, and environmental factors), the paper proceeds towards analysing the collected data whilst making close reference to findings from the available literature. In terms of political identification, (left-right placement), it’s apparent that the two rallies were evidently marked by extensive participation by veteran, predominantly left (old and new), activists whilst that type of self-placement appears to have been very limited in the IF event. Furthermore, it is noted that a substantial number of participants in all three cases viewed the policing as mild and in contrast to past anti-G8 mobilizations, there was very limited participation by activists travelling from abroad. The paper concludes by supporting that although these mobilisations have certain unique features that set them apart from protest in past summits, they still confirm the bridging of old and new issues that has been apparent in the latest wave of global justice mobilizations.