The Northern Ireland Troubles was Britain's longest and largest post-war conflict, involving the deployment of some 300,000 military personnel over a 35-year period. Curiously, however, while the formal ending of the conflict in 1998 has generated profuse memorialisation in Northern Ireland, remembrance of the conflict in Britain has been conspicuously muted. This article uses newspaper reportage, popular cartoons, official reports and the records of a public campaign to explore the origins and evolution of negative attitudes towards the Troubles in Britain, focusing especially on reactions to military intervention during its early years. Where mainstream histories of post-war Britain emphasise popular ‘indifference’ to the Troubles in Britain, the article suggests attitudes to Northern Ireland reflected popular aversion, transmuted into apathy over the longer term as a result of an active and state-managed process of forgetting. These processes, it is suggested, continue to affect how Northern Ireland is perceived in the present.

北爱尔兰问题是英国战后最长，规模最大的冲突，涉及在35年的时间内部署约30万军事人员。然而，令人感到奇怪的是，虽然1998年冲突的正式结束在北爱尔兰引起了广泛的纪念，但对英国冲突的纪念却明显地被忽略了。本文使用报纸报道文学，流行漫画，官方报道以及一次公共运动的记录，来探讨对“麻烦”在英国的否定态度的起源和演变，尤其着重于对早期军事干预的反应。战后英国的主流历史强调对英国麻烦的普遍“漠视”，而这篇文章则表明对北爱尔兰的态度反映了民众的反感，长期而言，由于积极的，由状态管理的遗忘过程而转变为冷漠。建议这些过程继续影响当前对北爱尔兰的看法。