They recruited carefully to ensure that volunteers were disciplined, reliable and loyal to the cause. The Provisional IRA was formed in late 1969 by young militant Republicans. [371] Following the end of the ceasefire the incident centres remained open as Sinn Féin offices where crime continued to be reported, to be dealt with by the IRA. [371] The incident centres were seen by locals as "IRA police stations" and gave some legitimacy to the IRA as a policing force. [n 5][25] The delegates that walked out reconvened in Kevin Barry Hall in Parnell Square, where Seán Mac Stíofáin, Ruairí Ó Brádaigh and Paddy Mulcahy from the "Provisional" Army Council were elected to the Caretaker Executive of "Provisional" Sinn Féin. [222] He said that some of its structure remains, but that the group is committed to following a peaceful political path and is not engaged in criminal activity or directing violence. [222] The statement was in response to the recent killings of two former IRA members. Authors: Rebekah Poole, Jennifer Llewellyn [255][256] Overall, the IRA was responsible for 87–90% of the total British security force deaths, and 27–30% of the total civilian deaths. How do we know she had not just turned the corner?
The vote was a show of hands and the result is disputed. During the early 1970s, the Official IRA remained under the leadership of neo-Marxists like Cathal Goulding. Though not as prominent as the Provisional IRA, the Official IRA, the INLA and the IPLO (a splinter group of the INLA) were responsible for hundreds of deaths during the Troubles. The three judge Special Criminal Court was re-introduced following a series of regional court cases where IRA volunteers were acquitted or received light sentences from sympathetic judges and juries, and also to prevent. [28] The IRA initially focused on defence of Catholic areas, but it began an offensive campaign in 1970,[29][30] using guerrilla tactics against the British Army and RUC in both rural and urban areas. Its volunteers increased military activities in 1970, though their priority was the defence of Catholic civilians rather than attacks on British security forces. 2.
[264], Libyan leader Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, was a supplier of arms to the IRA, donating two shipments of arms in the early 1970s,[320] and another five in the mid-1980s. In its first years (1919-23) this IRA served as the military wing of the Dáil Éireann, the first Irish republican parliament, leading the armed struggle for an independent Ireland. [55] In January 1967 the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association (NICRA) was formed by a diverse group of people, including IRA members and liberal unionists. URL: https://alphahistory.com/northernireland/official-ira/ With southern Ireland now a republic in all but name, the IRA turned its attention to Northern Ireland, the last British stronghold in the island.
[381] In December 2005, Sinn Féin member and former IRA volunteer Denis Donaldson appeared at a press conference in Dublin and confessed to being a British spy since the early 1980s. CAIN: Revised and Updated Extracts from Sutton's Book, "The Provisional Irish Republican Army and the Development of Mortars", "Chief Constable's statement – PSNI's assessment of the current status of the Provisional IRA", "IRA's hardline faction gets a stronger voice", "Playing the 'Green Card' - Financing the Provisional IRA: Part 1", "Twelfth report of the Independent Monitoring Commission", "Dreaming of an "Irish Tet Offensive": Irish Republican prisoners & the origins of the Peace Process", "Sutton Index of Deaths: Crosstabulations (two-way tables)", "Sutton Index of Deaths: Organisation responsible for the death", "Revised and Updated Extracts from Sutton's Book", "Sutton Index of Deaths: Select and Crosstabulations", "Sutton Index of Deaths: Status of the person killed", CAIN (Conflict Archive Internet) Archive of IRA statements, Dean Peter Krogh Foreign Affairs Digital Archives, Dragonworld (II): Deception, Tradecraft, and the Provisional IRA, International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence, "Operation Banner: An analysis of military operations in Northern Ireland", Óglaigh na hÉireann (Continuity IRA splinter group), Óglaigh na hÉireann (Real IRA splinter group), Bombings of King's Cross and Euston stations, Belfast, Crumlin, Killyleagh & Coleraine attacks, Ceasefires of the Provisional IRA, UVF, UDA and RHC, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Provisional_Irish_Republican_Army&oldid=986485949, Proscribed paramilitary organisations in Northern Ireland, Organisations designated as terrorist by the United Kingdom, Organizations designated as terrorist in Europe, Short description is different from Wikidata, All Wikipedia articles written in Irish English, Wikipedia articles with SUDOC identifiers, Wikipedia articles with WORLDCATID identifiers, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, Unknown, estimated at 8,000 to 10,000 over the course of the Troubles. IRA membership dwindled rapidly in the 1920s, falling from around 5,000 in 1925 to less than 2,000 by 1930. This group finalised their mission at a January 1970 meeting of the Provisional Army Council. [230] The IRA was blamed for the Abercorn Restaurant bombing in March 1972, when a bomb exploded without warning killing two women and injuring many people. [131][132] The IRA was also involved in tit for tat sectarian killings of Protestant civilians, in retaliation for sectarian killings by loyalist paramilitaries. The first IRA was formed in 1919 during the Irish War of Independence.
New recruits were required to understand and embrace the group’s values and long-term mission. These veterans maintained their opposition to the Free State and vowed to continue the struggle for Irish Republicanism. [411] Also in 2008, Republican Action Against Drugs (RAAD) was formed in Derry. [192] The IRA's campaign continued with the Manchester bombing on 15 June, which injured over 200 people and caused an estimated £400 million of damage to the city centre. To sustain the war and gain support for its ends by National and International propaganda and publicity campaigns. There were many women in the front line. 2. R. Poole and J. Llewellyn, “The IRA: 1919 to 1968”, Alpha History, accessed [today’s date], https://alphahistory.com/northernireland/ira-1919-1968/. [127][128] A series of meetings took place between the IRA's leadership and British government representatives throughout the year, with the IRA being led to believe this was the start of a process of British withdrawal. [217] Since then, there have been occasional claims in the media that the IRA had not decommissioned all of its weaponry. [55] In 1966 Ireland celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Easter Rising, prompting fears of a renewed IRA campaign. IRA bomb warnings included a code word known to the authorities, so it could be determined if a bomb warning was authentic. The Official IRA (or OIRA) was the oldest faction of the Irish Republican Army. [334] In 2001, three Irishmen, known as the Colombia Three, were arrested and accused training Colombian guerrillas, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).
[396][397] There was also a group of sixteen people known as the Disappeared who were secretly buried between 1972 and 1985, which included alleged informers, agents for the security forces, and people that stole IRA weapons and used them in armed robberies. The growing trouble in Northern Ireland in 1969 had a significant impact on the Irish Republican Army (IRA). [122][123] The British government held secret talks with the republican leadership on 7 July, with Seán Mac Stíofáin, Dáithí Ó Conaill, Ivor Bell, Seamus Twomey, Gerry Adams, and Martin McGuinness flying to England to meet a British delegation led by William Whitelaw. [412] RAAD, "the IRA", and some smaller groups merged with the Real IRA in 2012 to form the New IRA. [343], Protestants in the rural border areas of counties Fermanagh and Tyrone, where the number of members of the security forces killed was high, viewed the IRA's campaign as ethnic cleansing. [347][348] The IRA also raised funds by running legitimate businesses such as taxi firms, nightclubs, offices, and nursing homes. America won her independence this way and this is of course, the only effective means of fighting an indigenious occupying army. [98] Seán Mac Stíofáin decided they would "escalate, escalate and escalate", in what the British Army would later describe as a "classic insurgency". An Irish Republican Army handbook on guerrilla warfare (1956), © Alpha History 2018. [297], During the 1980s, the IRA's commitment to socialism became more solidified as IRA prisoners began to engage with works of political and Marxist theory by authors such as Frantz Fanon, Che Guevara, Antonio Gramsci, Ho-Chi Minh, and General Giap. [298] Members felt that an Irish version of the Tet Offensive could possibly be the key to victory against the British, pending on the arrival of weapons secured from Libya.