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Irish Republican Army (IRA)

The Irish Republican Army (IRA) originated from the Irish Volunteers, a nationalist militia established in 1913. Following Sinn Féin's establishment of a national parliament, Dáil Éireann, in 1919 and its declaration of an Irish republic, the Volunteers became known as the Irish Republican Army. Under the resourceful leadership of Michael Collins, from 1919 to 1921 the IRA fought an effective guerrilla-warfare campaign against British rule in Ireland. In July 1921, when both sides had fought to a stalemate, a truce was agreed to allow Sinn Féin and the British government to negotiate a settlement.

The Anglo-Irish Treaty, which was signed in December 1921 and narrowly accepted by the Dáil in January 1922, split the republican movement. The treaty offered a significant degree of autonomy for southern Ireland but entailed dominion rather than republican status and required the swearing of a loyalty oath to the British crown. The partition of the unionist-dominated six northeastern counties (constituted as Northern Ireland in 1920) was not a central issue. Despite broad public support for the treaty, many Volunteers who had sworn an oath to the Republic viewed the compromise as a betrayal. Led by Michael Collins, much of the IRA's leadership supported the treaty, but many republicans, particularly those from the areas most active in the preceding war, opposed it in the Irish Civil War (1922–1923). The antitreaty IRA also drew support from rural areas with a tradition of land agitation and opposition to authority. After a short but bitter conflict the IRA dumped its arms and suspended its violent campaign.

Despite defeat, Irish republicans rejected the Irish Free State and professed loyalty to the republican Dáil, which was composed of antitreaty Sinn Féin deputies. The relationship between the military and political wings of the republican movement remained strained as many IRA figures blamed politicians for the events preceding the Civil War. Even Eamon de Valera, the leading antitreaty figure, was regarded with suspicion because of his earlier support for a settlement that fell short of establishing an independent republic. At the 1925 IRA convention, amid rumors that de Valera might enter the Free State Dáil, the IRA withdrew its allegiance to the republican Dáil and vested authority in its own executive. It restructured itself as a secret army under the command of a seven-member army council whose principal enemy was the Irish Free State rather than Britain or Northern Ireland. Abstention from parliament, suspicion of politics, and commitment to physical force became the characteristics of militant republicanism in independent Ireland.

Although too weak to militarily threaten the Free State, the IRA engaged in periodic acts of violence, notably the assassination of the deputy head of government, Kevin O'Higgins, in 1927. The ensuing spiral of IRA violence and government coercion destabilized the state, while the IRA's increasingly socialist rhetoric also provoked concern. The IRA's political initiative, Saor Éire (1931), the first of several opportunistic attempts to harness social and economic grievances to republican objectives, aroused clerical and public disapproval and the subsequent "red scare" was used by the protreaty government to suppress the IRA.

The election of Fianna Fáil (a constitutional republican party which maintained links with the IRA despite entering the Dáil) in 1932 proved a greater threat to the IRA, as the party which comprised much of the Civil War antitreaty leadership demonstrated the possibility of achieving republican objectives through peaceful means. De Valera's reforms, such as scrapping the loyalty oath and the 1922 constitution, reconciled all but the most militant republicans to the southern state government and increased dissension within the IRA. In 1934 the IRA's left-wing minority, led by Peadar O'Donnell, split to form the Republican Congress, a short-lived socialist organization. In 1936, following several murders, de Valera banned the IRA. A disastrous bombing campaign in England, begun in 1939, soon petered out. The outbreak of World War II offered the IRA an opportunity to ally with Germany, but despite some IRA-German contact, the main consequence of the emergency (as World War II was known in Ireland) was de Valera's ruthless suppression of the IRA with much public support. Draconian legislation, including the introduction of internment and the death penalty, crushed the IRA in southern Ireland. Subsequent IRA activism would focus on the North.

THE PROVISIONAL IRA

The IRA's border campaign (1956–1962) appeared to confirm the ineffectiveness of physical force and led to a process of politicization as figures such as IRA Chief of Staff Cathal Goulding urged republican participation in the Catholic civil-rights movement. However, the resurgence of sectarian violence in the summer of 1969 revived tensions between the left-wing Dublin leadership led by Goulding and northern republicans who emphasized the IRA's role as armed defenders of the Catholic community. The leadership's decision to support a left-wing united front and end abstention from the Dáil led to a split in December 1969. The dissidents, led by Seán MacStiofáin, established a rival "provisional" IRA and a rival Sinn Féin (under Ruairí Ó Bradaigh) to continue the armed struggle. The "provisional" and "official" movements coexisted uneasily, but the original IRA's Marxism and ambiguity toward physical force resulted in further splits (including one that resulted in the formation of the extremist Irish National Liberation Army in 1975) and eventual terminal decline.

The early 1970s saw the escalation of the IRA's armed campaign which, despite ruthless tactics, won support in republican areas, partly due to the Unionist government's failed security policy that resulted in mass searches, curfews, internment, and "Bloody Sunday" (when the British army killed thirteen unarmed Catholic civilians). Bloody Sunday prompted direct rule from London in 1972 and several years of intense violence. A brief cease-fire in 1975 produced no results, the IRA leadership offering a politically unrealistic "Brits out" ultimatum, and a greatly weakened IRA resumed the armed campaign. Military setback was again followed by internal debate and calls for politicization. The subsequent "long war" strategy, developed by the rising northern IRA leadership, advocated the development of a broad political base but, crucially, not at the expense of armed struggle. The IRA turned to a cell system of organization that rendered British penetration more difficult by limiting the amount of information which volunteers who were turned by security forces could provide. The 1981 hunger strikes, the culmination of a lengthy struggle between republican prisoners and the British prison authorities, appeared to end in defeat after the deaths of ten prisoners, but the public sympathy it generated provided the first evidence of a potentially strong political base for Sinn Féin, which won seats in the British parliament and the Irish Dáil.

The "armalite and ballot box" strategy produced some gains in the 1980s, but the IRA faced increasing pressure from the penetration of informers, "supergrass" trials (the mass conviction of IRA volunteers based on the evidence of a former member), and the effective deployment of Britain's Special Air Service (SAS). The strategy also produced dissension as the younger northern leadership (led by Gerry Adams, who became Sinn Féin president in 1983) began dumping Sinn Féin's historical baggage. In 1986 Ó Bradaigh resigned from the party to protest the ending of abstention from the Dáiland founded the splinter Republican Sinn Féin, which would later be associated with the dissident Continuity IRA, who oppose the "peace process."

Talks that began in 1988 between the Social Democratic and Labour Party leader, John Hume, and Gerry Adams (along with secret British-IRA contacts) raised hopes for peace. Over the next six years, republicans modified their demands and formed a closer understanding with northern nationalists, the southern government, and Bill Clinton's White House. The 1993 Anglo-Irish Downing Street Declaration, setting out the principles underpinning any settlement (most importantly, the validity of the aspiration to national self-determination and the necessity for unionist consent), was followed by an IRA cease-fire in 1994. Following the British government's reluctance to initiate further talks, the IRA returned to violence seventeen months later. A second cease-fire in 1997 was followed by all-party negotiations that produced the Good Friday Agreement in April 1998. Since then, the resulting power-sharing executive and associated institutions have functioned fitfully, constrained by the IRA's failure to fully decommission and cease all operations, disagreements over policing, dissident republican violence, and substantial unionist hostility to the agreement itself. The IRA's cease-fire has, with some transgressions, held, and Sinn Féin continues to expand, for the first time out-polling the Social Democratic and Labour Party as the largest nationalist party in the June 2001 British general election.

SEE ALSO Adams, Gerry; Civil War; Collins, Michael; Decommissioning; Hunger Strikes; Loyalist Paramilitaries after 1965; Political Parties in Independent Ireland; Politics: Nationalist Politics in Northern Ireland; Special Powers Act; Ulster Politics under Direct Rule; Primary Documents: Proclamation Issued by IRA Leaders at the Beginning of the Civil War (29 June 1922); Republican Cease-Fire Order (28 April 1923); On Community Relations in Northern Ireland (28 April 1967); Irish Republican Army (IRA) Cease-Fire Statement (31 August 1994); Text of the IRA Cease-Fire Statement (19 July 1997)

Bibliography

CAIN: Conflict Archive on the Internet. Available at http://cain.ulst.ac.uk.

Coogan, Tim Pat. The IRA. 1995 edition.

English, Richard. Radicals and the Republic: Socialist Republicanism in the Irish Free State, 1925–37. 1994.

O'Brien, Brendan. The Long War: The IRA and Sinn Féin. 1999 edition.

Patterson, Henry. The Politics of Illusion: A Political History of the IRA. 1989.

Taylor, Peter. Provos: The IRA and Sinn Fein. 1998 edition.

Fearghal McGarry