The
Provisional Irish Republican Army
(IRA) is an Irish
republican paramilitary
organisation whose aim was to remove Northern Ireland
from the United Kingdom and bring about a united Ireland by force of arms and political
persuasion. It emerged out of the December 1969 split of the
Irish
Republican Army due to differences over ideology and over how
to respond to violence against the nationalist community. This
violence had followed the community's
demands for civil
rights in 1968 and 1969, which met with resistance from the
unionist community and from the authorities, and culminated in the
1969 Northern Ireland
riots.
The Provisional IRA by Patrick Bishop and Eamonn
Mallie (ISBN 0-552-13337-X), p. 117. The IRA conducted an armed
campaign, primarily in Northern Ireland but also in England, over
the course of which is believed to have been responsible for the
deaths of approximately 1,800 people. The dead included around
1,100 members of the British security forces, and about 630
civilians. The IRA itself lost 275 - 300 members, of an estimated
10,000 total over the thirty-year period. The Provisional Irish
Republican Army is also referred to as the
PIRA,
the
Provos, or by its supporters as the
Army or the
RA; its constitution
establishes it as
Óglaigh na hÉireann ("The
Irish Volunteers") in the
Irish
language.
The IRA's initial strategy was to use force to cause the collapse
of the Northern Ireland administration and to inflict enough
casualties on the British forces that the British government be
forced by public opinion to withdraw from Ireland.O'Brien The Long
War, p. 119. This policy involved recruitment of
volunteers, increasing after
Bloody Sunday, and launching
attacks against British military and economic targets.O'Brien, Long
War, p. 107. The campaign was supported by arms and funding from
Libya and from some groups in the United States. The IRA agreed to
a ceasefire in February 1975, which lasted nearly a year before the
IRA concluded that the British were drawing them into politics
without offering any guarantees in relation to the IRA's goals, and
hopes of a quick victory receded. As a result, the IRA launched a
new strategy known as "the Long War". This saw them conduct a
war of attrition against the
British and increase emphasis on political activity, via
Sinn Féin.
The success of the
1981 Irish
hunger strike in mobilising support and winning elections led
to the
Armalite and
ballot box strategy with more time and resources devoted to
political activity. The abortive attempt at an escalation of the
military
part of that strategy led republican leaders increasingly to
look for a political compromise to end the conflict, with a
broadening dissociation of Sinn Féin from the IRA. Following
negotiations with the
SDLP and secret talks
with British civil servants, the IRA ultimately called a ceasefire
in 1994 on the understanding that Sinn Féin would be included in
political talks for a settlement. When this did not happen, the IRA
called off its ceasefire from February 1996 until July 1997,
carrying out several bombing and shooting attacks.
These included the
Docklands
bombing
and the Manchester bombing
, which together caused around £500 million in
damage. After the ceasefire was reinstated, Sinn Féin was
admitted into all-party talks, which produced the
Belfast Agreement of 1998.
On 28 July 2005, the
IRA Army
Council announced an end to
its armed
campaign, stating that it would work to achieve its aims using
"purely political and democratic programmes through exclusively
peaceful means", and shortly afterwards completed
decommissioning. In
September 2008, the nineteenth report of the
Independent Monitoring
Commission stated that the IRA was "committed to the political
path" and no longer represented "a threat to peace or to democratic
politics", and that the IRA's Army Council was "no longer
operational or functional". The organisation remains classified as
a proscribed
terrorist group in the UK and
as an illegal organisation in the Republic of Ireland.
Home Office - Proscribed Terror Groups —
Home Office website, retrieved 11 May
2007 Two small groups split from the Provisional IRA, first in 1986
(
Continuity IRA) and then in 1997
(
Real IRA). Both reject the Belfast
Agreement and continue to engage in violence.
Origins
In August
1969, a confrontation between nationalists and police in Derry
following an
Apprentice Boys of Derry
march led to the Battle of the Bogside
- three days of heavy fighting between rioters
throwing stones and petrol bombs and police who saturated the area
with CS gas. Fighting spread beyond
Derry over the following days.
Burning, damage or intimidation by loyalists forced 1,505 Catholics from their
homes in Belfast
in the
Northern Ireland
riots of August 1969, with over 200 Catholic homes being
destroyed or requiring major repairs. The
Irish Republican Army
(IRA) had been poorly armed and unable to adequately defend the
Catholic community, which had been considered its traditional rôle
since the 1920s.
Republicans were critical of the IRA's
Dublin
leadership which, for political reasons, had
refused to prepare for aggressive action in advance of the
violence. On 24 August, a week after the fighting ended,
Joe Cahill,
Seamus Twomey,
Dáithí Ó Conaill and several
other future Provisional leaders came together in Belfast intending
to remove the Belfast leadership and turn back to traditional
republicanism. Although the pro-Dublin commander
Billy McMillen stayed in command, he was told
it was only for three months and he was not to have any
communication with Dublin.
Traditional republicans formed the "Provisional Army Council" in
December 1969, when an
IRA Convention
voted to recognise the Parliaments of Northern Ireland, the
Republic of Ireland and the United Kingdom. Opponents of this
change in the IRA Constitution argued strongly against this move,
and when the vote took place,
Seán Mac Stíofáin, present
as IRA Director of Intelligence, announced that he no longer
considered that the IRA leadership represented Republican goals.
However, there was not a walkout. Those opposed, who include Mac
Stíofáin and Ruairi O Bradaigh, did refuse to go forward for
election to the new IRA Executive.
While others organised throughout Ireland, Mac Stíofáin was a key
person making a connection with the Belfast IRA, under
Billy McKee and
Joe
Cahill, who had refused to take orders from the IRA's Dublin
leadership since September 1969, in protest at their failure to
defend Catholic areas in August 1969. Nine out of thirteen IRA
units in Belfast sided with the Provisionals in 1969, roughly 120
activists and 500 supporters. The new group elected a "Provisional
Army Council" to head the new IRA. The first Provisional IRA Army
Council was: Seán Mac Stíofáin, C/S, Ruairi O Bradaigh, Paddy
Mulcahy, Sean Tracey, Leo Martin, and Joe Cahill. A political wing,
Provisional Sinn Féin,
was founded on 11 January 1970, when a third of the delegates
walked out of the Sinn Féin
Ard Fheis in
protest at the party leadership's attempt to force through the
ending of the abstentionist policy, despite its failure to achieve
a two-thirds majority vote of delegates required to change the
policy.
There are allegations that the early Provisional IRA got off the
ground due to arms and funding from the
Fianna Fáil-led
Irish government in 1969. This was not
found to be the case when investigated in the
Arms trial. However, roughly £100,000 was
donated by the Irish government to "Defence Committees" in Catholic
areas and, according to historian
Richard English, "there is now no doubt that
some money did go from the Dublin government to the
proto-Provisionals".
The main figures in the early Provisional IRA were Seán Mac
Stiofáin (who served as the organisation's first
chief of staff),
Ruairí Ó Brádaigh (the
first president of
Provisional Sinn Féin),
Dáithí Ó Conaill, and
Joe Cahill. All served on the first
Provisional IRA Army Council. The Provisional appellation
deliberately echoed the "Provisional Government"
proclaimed during the
1916
Easter Rising.
The Provisionals maintained a number of the principles of the
pre-1969 IRA. It considered British rule in Northern Ireland and
the government of the Republic of Ireland to be illegitimate. Like
the pre-1969 IRA, it believed that the IRA Army Council was the
legitimate government of the all-island
Irish Republic. This belief was based on a
complicated series of perceived political inheritances which
constructed a legal continuity from the
Second Dáil.
Most of these
abstentionist principles were abandoned in 1986, although Sinn Féin still refuses to take its seats in
the Parliament of the United
Kingdom
.
As the violence in Northern Ireland steadily increased, both the
Official IRA and Provisional IRA espoused military means to pursue
their goals. Unlike the Officials, however, who characterised their
violence as purely "defensive," the Provisionals called for a more
aggressive campaign against the Northern Ireland state. While the
Officials were initially, for a short period, the larger
organisation and enjoyed more support from the republican
community, the Provisionals came to dominate, especially after the
Official IRA declared an indefinite ceasefire in 1972. The
Provisionals inherited most of the existing IRA organisation in the
north by 1971 and the more militant IRA members in the rest of
Ireland. In addition, they recruited many young nationalists from
the north, who had not been involved in the IRA before, but had
been radicalised by the communal violence that broke out in 1969.
These people were known in republican parlance as "sixty niners",
having joined after 1969.
Although the Provisional IRA had a political wing,
Sinn Féin, which split with
Official Sinn Féin at the same time
as the split in the IRA, the early Provisional IRA was extremely
suspicious of political activity, arguing rather for the primacy of
armed struggle.
Organisation
The IRA is organised hierarchically. At the top of the organisation
is the
IRA Army Council, headed by
the
IRA Chief of Staff.
Leadership
All levels of the IRA are entitled to send delegates to IRA General
Army Conventions (GACs). The GAC is the IRA's supreme
decision-making authority. Before 1969, GACs met regularly. Since
1969, there have only been two, in 1970 and 1986, owing to the
difficulty in organising such a large gathering of an illegal
organisation in secret.
The GAC in turn elects a 12-member
IRA
Executive, which selects seven volunteers to form the IRA Army
Council. For day-to-day purposes, authority is vested in the Army
Council which, as well as directing policy and taking major
tactical decisions, appoints a Chief of Staff from one of its
number or, less commonly, from outside its ranks.
The chief of staff then appoints an
adjutant general as well as a
General Headquarters ,
which consists of a number of individual departments. These
departments are:
Regional command
At a
regional level, the IRA is divided into a Northern Command, which
operates in the nine Ulster counties as well as County Leitrim
and County
Louth
, and a Southern
Command, operating in the rest of Ireland. The Provisional IRA
was originally commanded by a leadership based in Dublin
.
However, in 1977, parallel to the introduction of cell structures
at local level, command of the "war-zone" was given to the Northern
Command. According to
Ed Moloney, these
moves at reorganisation were the idea of
Ivor
Bell,
Gerry Adams and
Brian Keenan.
Brigades
The IRA refers to its ordinary members as
volunteers (or
óglaigh
in Irish). Up until the late 1970s, IRA volunteers were organised
in units based on conventional military structures. Volunteers
living in one area formed a
company as part of a
battalion, which could be part of a
brigade, although many battalions were not attached
to a brigade.
For most of its existence, the IRA had five Brigade areas within
what it referred to as the "war-zone". These Brigades were located
in Armagh, Belfast, Derry, Donegal and Tyrone/Monaghan. The
Belfast Brigade had
three battalions, respectively in the west, north and east of the
city. In the early years of
the
Troubles, the IRA in Belfast expanded rapidly. In August 1969,
the Belfast Brigade had just 50 active members. By the end of 1971,
it had 1,200 members, giving it a large but loosely controlled
structure.
Derry
city had one
battalion and the South Derry Brigade. The Derry
Battalion became the Derry Brigade in 1972 after a rapid increase
in membership following
Bloody
Sunday when British paratroopers killed 13 unarmed
demonstrators at a civil rights march. County Armagh had three
battalions, two very active ones in South Armagh and a less active
unit in North Armagh. For this reason the Armagh IRA unit is often
referred to as the
South Armagh Brigade.
Similarly, the Tyrone/Monaghan Brigade, which operated from around
the Border of Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, is
often called the
East Tyrone Brigade.
Fermanagh, South Down and North Antrim had units not attached to
Brigades.O'Brien, p. 161. The leadership structure at battalion and
company level was the same: each had its own commanding officer,
quartermaster, explosives officer and intelligence officer. There
was sometimes a training officer or finance officer.
Active service units
In 1977, the IRA moved away from the larger conventional military
organisational principle owing to its perceived security
vulnerability. A system of two parallel types of unit within an IRA
brigade was introduced in place of the battalion structures.
Firstly, the old "company" structures were used for tasks such as
"policing" nationalist areas, intelligence gathering, and hiding
weapons. These were essential support activities. However, the bulk
of actual attacks were the responsibility of a second type of unit,
the
active service unit (ASU).
To improve security and operational capacity, these ASUs were
smaller, tight-knit cells, usually consisting of five to eight
members. The ASU's weapons were controlled by a
quartermaster under the direct control of the
IRA leadership. By the late 1980s and early 1990s, it was estimated
that the IRA had roughly 300 members in ASUs and about another 450
serving in supporting roles.
The exception to this reorganisation was the
South Armagh Brigade,
which retained its traditional hierarchy and battalion structure
and used relatively large numbers of volunteers in its
actions.
The IRA's Southern Command, located in the Republic of Ireland,
consists of a Dublin Brigade and a number of smaller units in rural
areas. These were charged mainly with the importation and storage
of arms for the Northern units and with raising finances through
robberies and other means. They also maintained a sizable presence
in North Kerry, where many training camps were based.
Strategy 1969–1998
"Escalation, escalation and escalation"
Following the violence of August 1969, the IRA began to arm and
train to protect nationalist areas from further attack. After the
split, the Provisional IRA began planning for an "all-out offensive
action against the British occupation".
The
Official IRA were
opposed to such a campaign because it would lead to sectarian
conflict, which would defeat their strategy of uniting the workers
from both sides of the sectarian divide. The IRA
Border Campaign in the 1950s had
avoided actions in urban centres of Northern Ireland to avoid
civilian casualties and resulting sectarian violence. The
Provisional IRA, by contrast, was primarily an urban organisation,
based originally in Belfast and Derry.
The Provisional IRA's strategy was to use force to cause the
collapse of the Northern Ireland administration and to inflict
casualties on the British forces such that the British government
be forced by public opinion to withdraw from Ireland. According to
journalist Brendan O'Brien, "the thinking was that the war would be
short and successful. Chief of Staff Seán Mac Stíofáin decided they
would 'escalate, escalate and escalate' until the British agreed to
go". This policy involved recruitment of volunteers and carrying
out attacks on British forces, as well as mounting a bombing
campaign against economic targets. In the early years of the
conflict, IRA slogans spoke of, "Victory 1972" and then "Victory
1974". Its inspiration was the success of the "
Old IRA" in the
Irish War of Independence
(1919–1922). In their assessment of the IRA campaign, the British
Army would describe these years, 1970–72, as the "insurgency
phase".
The British government held secret talks with the IRA leadership in
1972 to try and secure a ceasefire based on a compromise settlement
within Northern Ireland after the events of
Bloody Sunday when IRA recruitment and
support increased. The IRA agreed to a temporary ceasefire from 26
June to 9 July. In July 1972, IRA leaders Seán Mac Stíofáin,
Dáithí Ó Conaill,
Ivor Bell,
Seamus
Twomey,
Gerry Adams and
Martin McGuinness met a British delegation
led by
William Whitelaw. The IRA
leaders refused to consider a peace settlement that did not include
a commitment to British withdrawal, a retreat of the British Army
to its barracks, and a release of republican prisoners. The British
refused and the talks broke up.
Éire Nua and the 1975 ceasefire
The Provisionals' goal in this period was the abolition of both the
Northern Ireland and Republic of Ireland states and their
replacement with a new all-Ireland
federal republic, with decentralised governments
and parliaments for each of the four Irish historic provinces. This
programme was known as
Éire Nua
(
New Ireland). The Éire Nua programme remained policy
until discontinued by the Provisionals under the leadership of
Gerry Adams in the early 1980s in favour of the pursuit of a new
unitary all-Ireland Republic.
By the mid 1970s, the hopes of the IRA leadership for a quick
military victory were receding. The British military was unsure of
when it would see any substantial success against the IRA. Secret
meetings between Provisional IRA leaders Ruairí Ó Brádaigh and
Billy McKee with British
Secretary of State for
Northern Ireland Merlyn Rees secured
an IRA ceasefire which began in February 1975. The IRA initially
believed that this was the start of a long-term process of British
withdrawal, but later came to the conclusion that Rees was trying
to bring them into peaceful politics without offering them any
guarantees. Critics of the IRA leadership, most notably Gerry
Adams, felt that the ceasefire was disastrous for the IRA, leading
to infiltration by British informers, the arrest of many activists
and a breakdown in IRA discipline resulting in
sectarian killings and a feud with fellow republicans in the
Official IRA. The ceasefire broke down
in January 1976.
The "Long War"

IRA political poster from the
1980s
Thereafter, the IRA, under the leadership of Adams and his
supporters, evolved a new strategy termed the "Long War", which
underpinned IRA strategy for the rest of the Troubles. It involved
a re-organisation of the IRA into small
cells, an acceptance that their
campaign would last many years before being successful and an
increased emphasis on political activity through the
Sinn Féin party. A republican document of the
early 1980s states, "Both Sinn Féin and the IRA play different but
converging roles in the war of national liberation. The Irish
Republican Army wages an armed campaign... Sinn Féin maintains the
propaganda war and is the public and political voice of the
movement". The 1977 edition of the
Green Book, an
induction and training manual used by the Provisionals, describes
the strategy of the "Long War" in these terms:
- A war of attrition against
enemy personnel [British Army] based on causing as many deaths as
possible so as to create a demand from their [the British] people
at home for their withdrawal.
- A bombing campaign aimed at making the enemy's financial
interests in our country unprofitable while at the same time
curbing long term investment in our country.
- To make the Six Counties... ungovernable except by colonial
military rule.
- To sustain the war and gain support for its ends by National
and International propaganda and publicity campaigns.
- By defending the war of liberation by punishing criminals,
collaborators and informers.
Confidential documents released on 30 December 2008 from the
British state archives show that the IRA leadership proposed a
ceasefire and peace talks to the British government in 1978. The
British refused the offer. Prime Minister
James Callaghan decided that there should be
"positive rejection" of the approach on the basis that the
republicans were not serious and "see their campaign as a long
haul". Irish State documents from the same period say that the IRA
had made a similar offer to the British the previous year. An
Irish Defence Forces document,
dated 15 February 1977, states that "It is now known that feelers
were sent out at Christmas by the top PIRA leadership to interest
the British authorities in another long ceasefire."
1981 hunger strikes and electoral politics
IRA prisoners convicted after March 1976 did not have
Special Category Status applied in
prison. In response, over 500 prisoners refused to wash or wear
prison clothes (see
Dirty protest and
Blanket protest). This activity
culminated in the
1981 Irish
hunger strike, when seven IRA and three
Irish National Liberation
Army members starved themselves to death in pursuit of
political status.
The hunger strike leader Bobby Sands and Anti
H-Block activist Owen Carron were
elected to the British
Parliament
, and two other protesting prisoners were elected to
the Irish Dáil. In addition, there
were work stoppages and large demonstrations all over Ireland in
sympathy with the hunger strikers. Over 100,000 people attended the
funeral of Sands, the first hunger striker to die.
After the success of IRA hunger strikers in mobilising support and
winning elections on an
Anti H-Block
platform in 1981, republicans increasingly devoted time and
resources to electoral politics, through the Sinn Féin party.
Danny Morrison summed up
this policy at a 1981 Sinn Féin
Ard Fheis
(annual meeting) as a "ballot paper in this hand and an Armalite in
the other". (See
Armalite and ballot box
strategy)
"TUAS" – peace strategy
In the 1980s, the IRA made an attempt to escalate the conflict with
the so called "
Tet
Offensive". When this did not prove successful, republican
leaders increasingly looked for a political compromise to end the
conflict. Gerry Adams entered talks with
John
Hume, the leader of the moderate nationalist
Social Democratic and Labour
Party (SDLP) and secret talks were also conducted with British
civil servants. Thereafter, Adams increasingly tried to
disassociate Sinn Féin from the IRA, claiming they were separate
organisations and refusing to speak on behalf of the IRA. Within
the
Republican
Movement (the IRA and Sinn Féin), the new strategy was
described by the acronym "TUAS", meaning either "Tactical Use of
Armed Struggle" or "Totally Unarmed Strategy".
The IRA ultimately called an indefinite ceasefire in 1994 on the
understanding that
Sinn Féin would be
included in political talks for a settlement. When this did not
happen, the IRA called off its ceasefire from February 1996 until
July 1997, carrying out several bombing and shooting attacks.
The
bombings caused severe economic damage, with the Manchester
bombing
and the Docklands bombing
causing approximately £500 million in combined
damage. After its ceasefire was reinstated, Sinn Féin was
admitted into the "Peace Process", which produced the
Belfast Agreement of 1998.
Weaponry and operations

Mural in Derry depicting IRA weapons,
1986
In the
early days of the Troubles (1969–71),
the Provisional IRA was very poorly armed, but starting in the
early 1970s it procured large amounts of modern weaponry from such
sources as supporters in the United States, Libyan
leader
Colonel Muammar al-Gaddafi, and
arms dealers in Europe, America, the Middle East and
elsewhere.
In the first years of the conflict, the IRA's main activities were
providing firepower to support nationalist rioters and defending
nationalist areas from attacks. The IRA gained much of its support
from these activities, as they were widely perceived within the
nationalist community as being defenders of
Irish nationalist and
Roman Catholic people against
aggression.
From 1971–1994, the IRA launched a sustained offensive armed
campaign that mainly targeted the British Army, the
Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC),
the
Ulster Defence Regiment
(UDR), and economic targets in Northern Ireland. The first half of
the 1970s was the most intense period of the IRA campaign. In
addition, IRA units carried out
sectarian
killings such as the
Kingsmill
massacre of 1976, which in itself was a retaliation for the
Reavey and O'Dowd
killings the previous day, when the loyalist
Ulster Volunteer Force killed six
Catholic civilians.
The IRA was chiefly active in Northern Ireland, although it took
its campaign to England.
The IRA also targeted certain British
government officials, politicians, judges, establishment figures,
British Army and police officers in England, and in other areas
such as the Republic
of Ireland
, West Germany and the Netherlands. By the
early 1990s, the bulk of the IRA activity was carried out by the
South Armagh Brigade, well known through its
sniping operations and
attacks on British Army helicopters. The bombing campaign
principally targeted political, economic and military targets, and
approximately 60 civilians were killed by the IRA in England during
the conflict. It has been argued that this bombing campaign helped
convince the British government (who had hoped to contain the
conflict to Northern Ireland with its
Ulsterisation policy) to negotiate with
Sinn Féin after the IRA ceasefires of
August 1994 and July 1997.
Ceasefires and decommissioning of arms
On 31 August 1994, the Provisional IRA declared an indefinite
ceasefire. However, from December 1995 until July 1997, the
Provisional IRA called off its 1994 ceasefire because of its
dissatisfaction with the state of negotiations. They re-instated
the ceasefire in July 1997, and it has been in operation since
then.
The Provisional IRA decommissioned all of its arms between July and
September 2005. The decommissioning of its weaponry was supervised
by the
Independent
International Commission on Decommissioning (IICD). Among the
weaponry estimated, (by
Jane's
Information Group), to have been destroyed as part of this
process were:
Having compared the weapons destroyed with the British security
forces estimate the IRA weaponry, and due to the IRA's full
involvement in the process of destroying the weapons, the IICD
arrived at their conclusion that all Provisional IRA weaponry has
been destroyed.
Since the process of decommissioning was
completed, unnamed sources in MI5
and the
Police Service of
Northern Ireland (PSNI) have reported to the press that not all
IRA arms were destroyed during the process. This claim
remains unsubstantiated so far. In its report dated April 2006 the
Independent Monitoring
Commission (IMC) points out that it has no reason to disbelieve
the IRA or information to suspect that the group has not fully
decommissioned. Rather, it indicated that any weaponry that had not
been handed in had been retained by individuals outside the IRA's
control.
Other activities
Apart from its armed campaign, the Provisional IRA has also been
involved in many other activities, including policing, bank
robbery, fuel laundering and kidnapping for the purposes of raising
funds.
Policing of communities

The IRA saw itself as the police force of nationalist areas of
Northern Ireland during the Troubles instead of the RUC. There were
a number of reasons for this. In many Nationalist areas of Northern
Ireland, the RUC and British Army, as a result of their conduct and
perceived involvement in oppression and violence against
Nationalists, were considered biased and untrustworthy, and so were
not welcome. Also, the RUC and other forces of the authorities were
in some instances reluctant to enter certain Nationalist areas, or
patrol, unless it was in armoured Land Rovers and in convoy. Police
stations were also heavily armoured because of persistent attacks
from the IRA. This gave them the appearance of being fortresses.
These conditions led to a situation where in some areas, the
community would turn to the IRA first to deal with troublemakers or
those practising what came to be called "anti-social behaviour". In
efforts to stamp out "anti-social behaviour" and alleged instances
of drug dealing reported to or noticed by the organisation, it
killed or otherwise attacked suspected drug dealers and other
suspected criminals. These attacks varied in severity and depended
on various factors. In the first instance, the IRA may serve a
caution on the perceived offender, which if they transgressed again
might escalate to an attack known as a "punishment beating".
Shooting the offender was seen as a last resort, although the
process which the IRA went through to determine an offenders
"guilt" or "innocence" was never open to debate or scrutiny. The
IRA also engaged in attacks which broke the bones of alleged
offenders, or involved shooting through the hands, or
knees for persistent offenders of activities
such as
joyriding or drug dealing.
In certain cases, for persistent offenders the IRA would serve a
notice for the individual to leave the country, this was known as
being "put out" of the community/country, and the clear message
given to individuals served with these notices was that if they
returned to the community/country they would be killed. This
practice was frequently criticised by all sections of the political
establishment in Northern Ireland as "
summary justice".
Informers
In an effort to stamp out what the IRA termed "collaboration with
British forces" and "informing", they killed a number of Catholic
civilians, such as
Joseph Fenton.
Purges against these individuals, whom the IRA considered traitors
to their own community and to the cause of nationalism, were most
prevalent when the IRA found itself persistently vulnerable to
infiltration. Investigations into informers and infiltration are
suspected to have been dealt with by an IRA unit called the
Internal Security Unit (ISU)
known colloquially as the "Nutting Squad". This unit is said to be
directly attached to IRA GHQ. Where a confession was solicited, the
victim was often exiled or executed with a bullet in the back of
the head. The body was either buried or later in the IRA campaign
left in a public place often in South Armagh.
One particular example of the killing of a person deemed by the IRA
to have been an informer that is the source of continuing
controversy is that of
Jean
McConville from Belfast who was killed by the IRA.
Ed Moloney and IRA sources continue to claim she
was an informer despite the
Police
Ombudsman recently stating that this was not the case. The
Social Democratic and
Labour Party (SDLP) have described the killing as a "
war crime". Her family contend that she was killed
as a punishment for aiding a dying British soldier in West
Belfast.
In March 2007
Police Ombudsman
Nuala O'Loan announced that there would
be an inquiry into claims of collusion between IRA members and the
British security forces.
Attacks on other Republican paramilitary groups
The IRA has also feuded with other republican paramilitary groups
such as the
Official IRA in the 1970s
and the
Irish
People's Liberation Organisation in the 1990s.
Joseph O'Connor (26) was shot dead in Ballymurphy, west Belfast on
11 October 2000. He was a leading member of the
Real Irish Republican Army
(RIRA). Claims have been made by O'Connor's family and people
associated with the RIRA, that he was murdered by Provisionals as
the result of a feud between the organisations, but Sinn Féin
denied the claims. No-one has been charged with his killing.
Fundraising via organised crime
According to
Michael McDowell, the
Irish Minister of Justice from 2002 to 2007, the IRA was involved
in organised crime on both sides of the Irish border. These
activities include smuggling of counterfeit goods, contraband
cigarettes and oil.
Casualties
This is a summary. For a detailed breakdown of
casualties caused by and inflicted on the IRA see Provisional IRA
campaign 1969-1997#Casualties
The IRA was responsible for more deaths than any other group during
the Troubles. In addition, they have killed more Roman Catholics,
more Protestants, more civilians and more foreigners (those not
from Northern Ireland) than any other organisation. Members of the
IRA, however, have frequently disputed that the forces ranged in
opposition to the IRA throughout "the Troubles" represent separate,
distinct "organisations". In the republican analysis of the
conflict, organisations like the UDR, British Army, the UVF, and
the UDA represent an alliance of state and paramilitary forces,
making a tally of this type nonsensical as it does not represent
the nature of the conflict in their view.
Two very detailed studies of deaths in the Troubles, the CAIN
project at the
University of
Ulster, and Lost Lives, differ slightly on the numbers killed
by the Provisional IRA, but a rough synthesis gives a figure of
1,800 deaths. Of these, roughly 1,100 were members of the security
forces:
British Army,
Royal Ulster Constabulary and
Ulster Defence Regiment;
between 600 and 650 were civilians and the remainder were either
loyalist or republican paramilitaries (including over 100 IRA
members accidentally killed by their own bombs).
The IRA lost a little under 300 members killed in the Troubles. In
addition, roughly 50–60 members of
Sinn
Féin were killed. Far more common than the killing of IRA
volunteers, however, was their imprisonment. Journalists Eamonn
Mallie and Patrick Bishop estimate in their book
The
Provisional IRA that roughly 8,000 people passed through the
ranks of the IRA in the first 20 years of its existence, many of
them leaving after arrest, "retirement" or "disillusionment". They
give 10,000 as the total number of past and present IRA members at
that time.
Categorisation
The IRA is a proscribed organisation in the United Kingdom under
the
Terrorism Act 2000. In
Northern Ireland, the IRA are referred to as terrorists by the
Ulster Unionist Party, the
Democratic Unionist Party,
and the
Progressive Unionist
Party. Members of the IRA are tried in the Republic of Ireland
in the
Special Criminal
Court. On the island of Ireland, the largest political party to
state that the IRA is not a terrorist organisation is Sinn Féin,
which is currently the largest pro-
Belfast Agreement political party in
Northern Ireland. Sinn Féin is widely regarded as the political
wing of the IRA, but the party insists that the two organisations
are separate.
Peter Mandelson, a
former Northern Ireland Secretary (a member of the British cabinet
with responsibility for Northern Ireland) contrasted the post-1997
activities of the IRA with those of
Al-Qaeda, describing the latter as "terrorists" and
the former as "freedom fighters" (though Mandelson subsequently
denied this sentiment). IRA supporters preferred the labels
freedom fighter,
guerrilla and
volunteer.
The IRA described its actions throughout "The Troubles" as a
military campaign waged against the British Army, the RUC, other
security forces, judiciary, loyalist politicians and loyalist
paramilitaries in Northern Ireland, England and Europe. The IRA
considers these groups to be all part of the same apparatus. As
noted above, the IRA seeks to draw a direct descendancy from the
original IRA and those who engaged in the
Irish War of Independence. The IRA
sees the previous conflict as a
guerrilla
war which accomplished some of its aims, with some remaining
"unfinished business". The IRA considers its members guerrillas
fighting a war.
A process called "Criminalisation" was begun in the mid 1970s as
part of a British strategy of "Criminalisation, Ulsterisation, and
Normalisation". The policy was outlined in a 1975 British strategy
paper titled "The Way Ahead", which was not published but was
referred to by Labour's first Secretary of State for Northern
Ireland, Merlyn Rees, and came to be the dominant British political
theme in the conflict as it raged into the 1980s.
A less loaded categorisation of IRA violence exists. It does not
involve the terms "guerrilla" or "terrorist" but does view the
conflict in military terms. The phrase originated with the British
military strategist
Frank Kitson who
was active in Northern Ireland during the early 1970s. In Kitson's
view, the violence of the IRA represented an "insurrection"
situation, with the enveloping atmosphere of belligerence
representing a "
low intensity
conflict"—a conflict where the forces involved in fighting
operate at a greatly reduced tempo, with fewer combatants, at a
reduced range of tactical equipment and limited scope to operate in
a military manner.
Membership of the IRA remains illegal in both the UK and the
Republic of Ireland, but IRA prisoners convicted of offences
committed before 1998 have been granted conditional early release
as part of the
Good Friday
Agreement. In the United Kingdom a person convicted of
membership of a "proscribed organisation", such as the IRA, still
nominally faces imprisonment for up to 10 years.
Strength and support
Numerical strength
In the early to mid 1970s, the numbers recruited by the Provisional
IRA may have reached several thousand, but these were reduced when
the IRA re-organised its structures from 1977 onwards. An
RUC report of 1986 estimated that
the IRA had 300 or so members in Active Service Units and up to 750
active members in total in Northern Ireland. This does not take
into consideration the IRA units in the Republic of Ireland or
those in Britain, continental Europe, and throughout the world. In
2005, the then
Irish Minister for
Justice, Equality and Law Reform,
Michael McDowell told the
Dáil that the organisation had
"between 1,000 and 1,500" active members. According to the
book
The Provisional IRA (by Eamon Mallie and Patrick
Bishop), roughly 8,000 people passed through the ranks of the IRA
in the first 20 years of its existence, many of them leaving after
arrest, "retirement" or disillusionment. In later years, the IRA's
strength has been somewhat weakened by members leaving the
organisation to join hardline splinter groups such as the
Continuity IRA and the
Real IRA. According to former Irish Minister for
Justice Michael McDowell, these organisations have little more than
150 members each.
Electoral and popular support
The popular support for the IRA's campaign in the Troubles is hard
to gauge, given that Sinn Féin, the IRA's political wing, did not
stand in elections until the early 1980s. Most nationalists in
Northern Ireland voted for the moderate
Social Democratic and Labour
Party (SDLP) until 2001. After the
1981 hunger strike, Sinn Féin
mobilised large electoral support and won 105,000 votes, or 43% of
the nationalist vote in Northern Ireland, in the
United Kingdom general
election, 1983, only 34,000 votes behind the SDLP. However, by
the
1992 UK General
Election, the SDLP won 184,445 votes and four seats to Sinn
Féin's 78,291 votes and no seats. In the
1993 Local District
Council Elections in Northern Ireland, the SDLP won 136,760
votes to Sinn Féin's 77,600 votes.
Few Protestant voters voted for Sinn Féin. In 1992, many of them
voted for SDLP
West Belfast
candidate
Joe Hendron rather than a
unionist candidate in order to
make sure Gerry Adams of Sinn Féin lost his seat in the
constituency.

A Provisional IRA wall mural in
Coalisland, County Tyrone
The IRA enjoyed some popular support in the Republic of Ireland in
the early 70s.
However, the movement's appeal was hurt
badly by bombings such as the killing of civilians attending a
Remembrance
Day
ceremony at the cenotaph
in Enniskillen
in 1987 (Remembrance Day bombing
), and the death of two children
when a bomb exploded in Warrington
, which led to tens of thousands of people
demonstrating on O'Connell
Street
in Dublin
to call for
an end to the IRA's campaign. Sinn Féin did very badly in elections in the
Republic of
Ireland
during the IRA's campaign. For example, in
the December 1981 local government elections, Sinn Féin candidates
won just 5% of the popular vote. By the
1987 Irish General Election,
they won only 1.7% of the votes cast. They did not make significant
electoral gains in the Republic until after the IRA ceasefires and
the Belfast Agreement of 1998. Sinn Féin's highest proportion of
the popular vote was 7% in the
Irish general election,
2007.
Sinn Féin
now has 28 members of the Northern Ireland Assembly (out of 108),
five Westminster
MPs (out of 18 from
Northern Ireland) and four Republic of Ireland TDs (out of 166).
Support from other countries and organisations
The IRA have had contacts with foreign governments and other
illegal armed organisations.
Libya has been the biggest single supplier of arms and funds to the
IRA, donating large amounts: three shipments of arms in the early
1970s and another three in the mid 1980s, the latter reputedly
enough to arm two regular infantry battalions.
The IRA has also received weapons and logistical support from
Irish Americans in the United States,
especially the
NORAID group. Apart from the
Libyan aid, this has been the main source of overseas IRA support.
American support has been weakened by the
War against Terrorism, and the fallout from
the
events of 11 September
2001.
In the United States in November 1982, five men were acquitted of
smuggling arms to the IRA after they revealed the
Central Intelligence Agency had
approved the shipment (although the CIA officially denied this).
There are
allegations of contact with the East German
Stasi, based on the testimony
of a Soviet defector to British intelligence Vasili Mitrokhin. Mitrokhin revealed
that although the Soviet KGB
gave some
weapons to the Marxist Official IRA, it
had little sympathy with the Provisionals. The IRA has
received some training and support from the
Palestine Liberation
Organization (PLO).
In 1977, the Provisionals received a
'sizeable' arms shipment from the PLO, including small arms, rocket
launchers and explosives, but this was intercepted at Antwerp
after the Israeli
intelligence alerted its European
counterparts. In the 1980s, the Provisionals also had some
contact with
Hezbollah.
It has been alleged that the IRA had a co-operative relationship
with Basque militant group
ETA since the early
1970s. In 1973 it was accused of providing explosives for the
assassination of
Luis Carrero
Blanco in Madrid. In the 1970s, ETA also exchanged a quantity
of handguns for training in explosives with the IRA. In addition,
the leaders of the political wings of the respective Irish
Republican and Basque separatist movements have exchanged visits on
several occasions to express solidarity with each others' cause.
Prominent former IRA prisoners such as
Brendan McFarlane and
Brendan Hughes have campaigned for the
release of ETA prisoners. In the mid 1990s after the IRA ceasefire,
Basque media outlets followed the process carefully, sending a team
to follow the families of those killed on Bloody Sunday as they
campaigned for apology.
In May
1996, the Federal Security
Service (FSB), Russia's internal security service, publicly
accused Estonia
of arms smuggling, and claimed that the IRA had
contacted representatives of Estonia's volunteer defense force,
Kaitseliit, and some non-government
groups to buy weapons. In 2001, three Irish men, who later
became known as the
Colombia Three,
were arrested after allegedly training Colombian guerrillas, the
Revolutionary
Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), in bomb making and urban
warfare techniques. The U.S. House of Representatives Committee on
International Relations in its report of 24 April 2002 concluded
"Neither committee investigators nor the Colombians can find
credible explanations for the increased, more sophisticated
capacity for these specific terror tactics now being employed by
the FARC, other than IRA training".
The Belfast Agreement
The IRA
ceasefire in 1997 formed part of a
process that led to the 1998 Belfast (Good Friday) Agreement. One
aim of the Agreement is that all paramilitary groups in Northern
Ireland cease their activities and disarm by May 2000.
Calls from Sinn Féin led the IRA to commence disarming in a process
that was monitored by Canadian General
John de Chastelain's decommissioning
body in October 2001. However, following the collapse of the
Stormont power-sharing government
in 2002, which was partly triggered by allegations that republican
spies were operating within Parliament Buildings and the Civil
Service, the IRA temporarily broke off contact with General de
Chastelain.
In December 2004, attempts to persuade the IRA to disarm entirely
collapsed when the Democratic Unionist Party, under
Ian Paisley, insisted on photographic evidence.
Justice Minister Michael McDowell (in public, and often) insisted
that there would need to be a complete end to IRA activity.
At the beginning of February 2005, the IRA declared that it was
withdrawing from the disarmament process, but in July 2005 it
declared that its campaign of violence was over, and that
transparent mechanisms would be used, under the de Chastelain
process, to satisfy the Northern Ireland communities that it was
disarming totally.
End of the armed campaign
On 28 July 2005, the IRA Army Council announced an end to its armed
campaign. In a statement read by
Séanna Breathnach, the organisation
stated that it had instructed its members to dump all weapons and
not to engage in "any other activities whatsoever" apart from
assisting "the development of purely political and democratic
programmes through exclusively peaceful means". Furthermore, the
organisation authorised its representatives to engage immediately
with the
Independent
International Commission on Decommissioning (IICD) to
verifiably put its arms beyond use "in a way which will further
enhance public confidence and to conclude this as quickly as
possible".
This is not the first time that organisations styling themselves
IRA have issued orders to dump arms. After its defeat in the
Irish Civil War in 1924 and at the
end of its unsuccessful
Border
Campaign in 1962, the IRA Army Council issued similar orders.
However, this is the first time in Irish republicanism that any
organisation has voluntarily decided to dispose of its arms.
On 25 September 2005, international weapons inspectors supervised
the full disarmament of the IRA, a long-sought goal of Northern
Ireland's peace process. The office of IICD Chairman John de
Chastelain, a retired Canadian general who oversaw the weapons'
decommissioning at secret locations, released details regarding the
scrapping of many tons of IRA weaponry at a news conference in
Belfast on 26 September. He said the arms had been "put beyond use"
and that they were "satisfied that the arms decommissioned
represent the totality of the IRA's arsenal."
The IRA permitted two independent witnesses, including a
Methodist minister, Rev. Harold Good, and Father
Alec Reid, a
Roman Catholic priest close to Sinn Féin
leader Gerry Adams, to view the secret disarmament work. However,
Ian Paisley, the leader of the
Democratic Unionist Party (DUP),
complained that since the witnesses were appointed by the IRA
themselves, rather than being appointed by the British or Irish
governments, they therefore cannot be said to be unbiased witnesses
to the decommissioning. However, Nationalists and Catholics, viewed
his comments as reflecting Paisley's refusal to support devolution
in Northern Ireland with Catholics in power.
Continuing activities of IRA members
The 10th report published in April 2006 from the
Independent Monitoring
Commission (IMC), an organisation monitoring activity by
paramilitary groups on behalf of the British and Irish governments,
prefaced its remarks about IRA activity by commenting that the IRA
leadership has committed itself to following a peaceful path and
that in the last three months this process has involved the further
dismantling of the IRA as a military structure.
The report commented that there was no paramilitary or violent
activity sanctioned by the leadership; there is a substantial
erosion in the IRA's capacity to return to a military campaign;
and, that the IRA had no intentions of returning to violence.
The IMC has come in for criticism (mainly by Republicans) as having
been set up outside the terms of the Good Friday Agreement as a sop
to Unionism. Sinn Féin MP Conor Murphy stated that the IMC was
established outside and in breach of the terms of the Good Friday
Agreement and that it is politically biased, and had an anti-Sinn
Féin agenda.
On 4 October 2006, the IMC ruled that the IRA were no longer a
threat.
In late 2008, the
Sunday Times
newspaper quoted a senior Garda intelligence officer as saying
that "the IRA had recruited in recent years, still held arms
despite apparently decommissioning the lot, and was being
maintained in 'shadow form.'"
P. O'Neill
The IRA traditionally uses a well-known signature in its public
statements, which are all issued under the
pseudonym of "P. O'Neill" of the "Irish Republican
Publicity Bureau, Dublin". According to Ruairí Ó Brádaigh, it was
Seán Mac Stiofáin, as chief of staff of the IRA, who invented the
name. However, under his usage, the name was written and pronounced
according to
Irish orthography and
pronunciation as "P. Ó Néill". Ó Brádaigh also maintains that there
is no particular significance to the name. According to
Danny Morrison, the
pseudonym "S. O'Neill" was used
during the 1940s.
Infiltration
The IRA has been infiltrated by British Intelligence agents, and in
the past some IRA members have been informers. Members suspected of
being informants were usually executed after an IRA
"court-martial". The IRA executed 63 people as informers in the
Troubles.
The first large infiltrations of IRA structures occurred in the mid
1970s, around the time of the ceasefire of 1975. Many IRA
volunteers were arrested when this ceasefire broke down in 1976. In
the 1980s, many more IRA members were imprisoned on the testimony
of former IRA members known as "
supergrasses" such as
Raymond Gilmour and
Martin McGartland.
Sean O'Callaghan, one of the IRA commanders
in the Republic of
Ireland
, was an informer for the Garda Siochana throughout the 1980s until he
was discovered and placed in protective custody in
Britain.
In recent years, there have been some high profile allegations of
senior IRA figures having been British informers. In May 2003, a
number of newspapers named
Freddie
Scappaticci as the alleged identity of the British
Force Research Unit's most senior
informer within the Provisional IRA, code-named
Stakeknife, who is thought to have been head
of the IRA's internal security force, charged with rooting out and
executing informers. Scappaticci denies that this is the case and,
in 2003, failed in a legal bid to force the then NIO Minister,
Jane Kennedy, to state he
was not an informer. She has refused to do so, and since then
Scappaticci has not launched any libel actions against the media
making the allegations.
On 16 December 2005, senior Sinn Féin member
Denis Donaldson appeared before TV cameras
in Dublin and confessed to being a British spy for twenty years. He
was expelled from Sinn Féin and was said to have been debriefed by
the party. Donaldson was a former Provisional IRA volunteer and
subsequently highly placed Sinn Féin party member. Donaldson had
been entrusted by Gerry Adams with the running of Sinn Féin's
operations in the U.S. in the early 1990s.
On 4 April 2006,
Donaldson was found shot dead at his retreat near Glenties
in County
Donegal
. When asked whether he felt Donaldson's role
as an informer in Sinn Féin was significant, the IRA double agent
using the pseudonym "
Kevin Fulton"
described Donaldson's role as a spy within Sinn Féin as "the tip of
the iceberg".
The former Force Research Unit and MI5
operative
using the pseudonym "Martin Ingram"
concurs with "Kevin Fulton" and has alleged that Gerry Adams knew
that Donaldson was an agent. Ingram was described in court
as a
Walter Mitty type
character. Ingram has also claimed that
Martin McGuinness is a British agent. As
evidence for this claim he alleges that McGuinness was involved in
the death of IRA volunteer and FRU agent Frank Hegarty in May 1986.
McGuinness has denied any involvement in the Hegarty case and
brushed off allegations that he is a spy. McGuiness also brushed
off the most recent allegations made by Ingram in the
Sunday World newspaper on 28 May
2006.
On 8 February 2008, Roy McShane was taken into police protection
after being unmasked as an informer. McShane, a former IRA member,
had been Gerry Adams' personal driver for many years. Adams said he
was "too philosophical" to feel betrayed.
See also
References
- Moloney, Ed (2002). A Secret History of the IRA. Penguin Books.
p. 246. ISBN 0-141-01041-X.
- 1969 - 2001: 1,821 deaths, including 621 civilians. Source:
2002 online update of 1994 book — Malcolm Sutton (1994)
Bear in mind these dead ... An Index of Deaths from the
Conflict in Ireland 1969-1993, Belfast: Beyond the Pale
Publications, ISBN 0-9514229-4-4. Update hosted at CAIN research
project at the University of Ulster, CAIN: Sutton Index of Deaths - extracts from Sutton's
book
- 1969 - 2004: 1,781 deaths, including 644 civilians. Source:
Lost Lives: The Stories of the Men, Women and Children Who Died
Through the Northern Ireland Troubles (2004. Ed's David
McKitrick, Seamus Kelters, Brian Feeney, Chris Thornton, David
McVea), Mainstream Publishing, ISBN 978-1840185041, page 1536
- Lost Lives (2004), p1531 - 294 members; Sutton (2002)
- 276 members.
- Bowyer Bell, J. (1997). The Secret Army: The IRA. Transaction
Publishers, pp. 556–571. ISBN 1560009012
- The Irish Troubles: A Generation of Violence 1967-1992
by John Bowyer Bell (ISBN 0-7171-2201-8), page 555
- Nineteenth Report of the "Independent Monitoring
Commission"
- " IRA army council 'no longer operational'".
RTE, 3 September 2008. Retrieved
2 April 2009
- The Provisional IRA by Patrick Bishop and Eamonn
Mallie (ISBN 0-552-13337-X), pp. 108–112.
- Bishop and Mallie, p. 125
- Mallie, Bishop p. 136.
- Robert White, Ruairi O Bradaigh, the Life and Politics of an
Irish Revolutionary, 2006, Indiana University Press.
- Armed Struggle: The History of the IRA by Richard
English (ISBN 0-330-49388-4), p. 105.
- Mallie, Bishop p. 141.
- Patrick Bishop and Eamonn Mallie, The Provisional IRA.
- English, pp. 111–113.
- English, p. 106.
- Taylor, pp. 289–291.
- Moloney, p. 80.
- Taylor, pp. 104–105.
- English, pp. 114–115.
- English, p. 43
- Moloney, pp. 155–160.
- O'Brien p. 158.
- Moloney, p. 103.
- 1974: Compensation for Bloody Sunday
victims
- Bowyer Bell, p. 437.
- Moloney, p. 377.
- O'Brien, p. 158.
- Patrick Bishop, Eamon Mallie, The Provisional IRA, p. 40, "It
aimed at destroying people rather than property and all units were
under instruction to avoid civilian bloodshed. For this reason and
because there were doubts about the Belfast IRA, which GHQ in
Dublin to contain a traitor, there would be no action in the
city".
- AC 71842 Operation BANNER
- Taylor, p. 139.
- Taylor, p. 156.
- O'Brien, p. 128.
- O'Brien, p. 23.
- Irish
Times, 30 December 2008, Britain rejected secret IRA peace talks offer, 1978
archives reveal
- Richard English, Armed struggle: the history of the
IRA, p. 200
- O'Brien, p. 127.
- Moloney p345. "Adams was frustrated but nevertheless later
managed to put some formal distance between Sinn Féin and the IRA.
Sinn Féin let it be known in January 1991 that the party would no
longer act as 'proxy spokepersons' for the IRA. A Sinn Féin source
told the Irish Times, 'The IRA can speak for itself'.
- Moloney, p. 432.
- English, pp. 134–135.
- Moloney, p. 472.
- Colonel al-Gaddafi is known to have given the British
Government a detailed inventory of weapons he gave to the IRA in
the 1970s and 1980s, this list was handed to British intelligence
in 1995. See Bowyer Bell Page 578
- 10th Report of the IMC Page 15 April 2006, available here.
-
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-britain/sinn-feins-leaders-gave-green-light-for-ira-robberies-key-report-finds-482864.html
-
http://www.independent.ie/national-news/fuellaundering-still-in-full-swing-1586776.html
-
http://www.independent.ie/national-news/ira-kidnap-gang-captured-seven-gardai-and-soldiers-1409654.html
- This feeling, that the RUC, B-Specials, UDR, British Army and
other arms of the Governmental apparatus in Northern Ireland were
biased against the Nationalist & Roman Catholic members of the
community was not new. It predates the current "Troubles" and
predates organisations like the "Ulster Defence Volunteers" (Home
guard) of WW2 who were also widely considered sectarian. For
details see Robert Fisk, In Time of War (Gill &
Macmillan) 1983 p. 189.
- Critics of the Provisional IRA in the Unionist orientated media
and political parties such as the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP)
maintain that the IRA itself was involved in "antisocial behaviour"
and operated a policy of kneecapping drug dealers not under its
control, or not paying it protection money. This was consistently
rejected by the IRA as a fantasy.
- IRA "collusion" inquiry launched, BBC News
- Richard English (2003), Armed Struggle - The History of the
IRA, p.378
- These accusations were particularly prevalent during the
Miami Showband massacre, the 1980s
Stalker Shoot to kill
inquiry, the assassination of Pat
Finucane, and the Brian Nelson/Force Research
Unit controversy. During these episodes Republicans were quick
to highlight overlap of personnel between loyalist paramilitary
organisations and arms of the British security services.
- Lost Lives (2004. Ed's David McKitrick, Seamus
Kelters, Brian Feeney, Chris Thornton, David McVea)
- Lost Lives, p. 1531.
- O'Brien, Long War, p. 26.
- Mallie, Bishop, p. 12.
- Recently released (3 May 2006) British Government documents
show that overlapping membership between British Army units like
the Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR) and loyalist paramilitary groups
was a wider problem than a "few bad apples" as was often claimed.
The documents include a report titled "Subversion in the UDR" which
details the problem. In 1973; an estimated 5–15% of UDR soldiers
were directly linked to loyalist paramilitary groups, it was
believed that the "best single source of weapons, and the only
significant source of modern weapons, for Protestant extremist
groups was the UDR", it was feared UDR troops were loyal to
"Ulster" alone rather than to "Her Majesty's Government", the
British Government knew that UDR weapons were being used in the
assassination and attempted assassination of Roman Catholic
civilians by loyalist paramilitaries. 2 May 2006 edition of the
Irish News available here.
- Gerry Adam's 2006 Easter Message was that "unfinished business"
remains, available here. "But in truth The Proclamation is also
unfinished business. It is unfinished business which the vast
majority of the Irish people want to see brought to
completion."
- Parliamentary Debates (Official Report - Unrevised)
Dáil Éireann Thursday, 23 June 2005 - Page 1
- O'Brien, p. 115.
- O'Brien, p. 198.
- 1993 local election results
- (Coogan p284)
- Mallie, Bishop, p. 444.
- O'Brien, p. 199.
- Mallie, Bishop, the Provisional IRA, p 307
-
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/viewArticle.arc?articleId=ARCHIVE-The_Times-1973-12-27-04-013&pageId=ARCHIVE-The_Times-1973-12-27-04
- Mallie, Bishop, p. 308.
- for example http://www.anphoblacht.com/news/detail/17845
- IRA in arms breakthrough
- Maintaining belief in peace aided N. Ireland
transformation By Kevin Cullen, The Boston Globe, 27 September
2005.
- Tenth report of the Independent Monitoring Commission April
2006 available in PDF here NOTE: the IMC report is issued every six
months.
- IMC should be scrapped
- Who is P O'Neill? — BBC News article, 22 September
2005.
- "Kevin Fulton" (not his real name) made the comments on a BBC
News 24 interview 10 April 2006, Realmedia available here or available on googlevideo here
- Ingram claims that Hegarty was an agent he ran as part of his
duties working in the Force Research Unit.
- For a discussion of the issue, listen to the Radio Free Éireann
interview Ingram gave; see links. Also see this summary of the
allegations against McGuinness here.
- See synopsis of allegations available here.
- The
Irish Times, 11 February 2008, p. 8.
Sources
- Martin Dillon, 25 Years of
Terror – the IRA's War against the British
- Richard English, Armed
Struggle – A History of the IRA, MacMillan, London 2003,
ISBN 1-4050-0108-9
- Peter Taylor,
Provos – the IRA and Sinn Féin
- Ed Moloney, A Secret History of the
IRA, Penguin, London 2002,
- Eamonn Mallie and Patrick Bishop, The Provisional IRA,
Corgi, London 1988. ISBN 0-552-13337-X
- Toby Harnden, Bandit
Country – The IRA and South Armagh, Hodder &
Stoughton, London 1999, ISBN 0-340-71736-X
- Brendan
O'Brien, The Long War – The IRA and Sinn Féin.
O'Brien Press, Dublin 1995, ISBN 0-86278-359-3
- Tim Pat Coogan, The
Troubles,
- Tim Pat Coogan, The IRA: A History (1994)
- Tony Geraghty, The Irish
War, 1998 ISBN 0801864569
- David McKittrick, Seamus
Kelters, Brian Feeney, Chris Thornton, David McVea, Lost
Lives.
- J Bowyer Bell, The Secret
Army – The IRA, 1997 3rd Edition, ISBN 1-85371-813-0
- Christopher Andrews, The Mitrokhin Archive (also
published as The Sword and the Shield)
External links