Official Irish Republicanism 1962 To 1972

A history of the Official Irish Republican movement, from the IRA's 1962 ceasefire to the Official IRA's permanent ceasefire in 1972. The civil rights movement, the outbreak of violence in August 1969, the links with the communist party, the Official IRA's campaign, the ceasefire, and later developments towards 'Sinn Fein the Workers' Party', are explored. "This book is the first in-depth study of this crucial period in the history of Irish republicanism. Using his unprecedented access to the internal documents of the movement and interviews with key participants Swan's work will transform our understanding of this transformative period in the history of the movement.", Henry Patterson, Author of 'The Politics of Illusion: A Political History of the IRA' and 'Ireland Since 1939'. "There is much fascinating material ... and also much good sense.", Richard English, Author of 'Armed Struggle, A History of the IRA' and 'Radicals and the Republic: Socialist Republicanism in the Irish Free State'.

An 'Irish Cuba' - on Britain's doorstep? This book studies perceptions of the Soviet Union's influence over Irish revolutionaries during the Cold War. The Dublin authorities did not allow the Irish state's non-aligned status to prevent them joining the West's struggle against communism. Leading officials, such as Colonel Dan Bryan in G2, the Irish army intelligence directorate, argued that Ireland should assist the NATO powers. British and Irish officials believed communists in Ireland were directed by the British communist party, the CPGB. If Moscow's express adherents were too isolated to pose a threat in either Irish jurisdiction, the republican movement was a different matter. The authorities, north and south, saw that a communist-influenced IRA had potential appeal. This Cold War nightmare arrived with the outbreak of the Northern Ireland Troubles. Whitehall feared Dublin could become a Russian espionage hub, with the Marxist-led Official IRA acting as a Soviet proxy. To what extent did the Official republican movement's Workers' Party serve the Soviets' Cold War agenda?

At Easter of 1916 an armed insurrection, launched by paramilitary republicans, took place in Ireland. When the General Post Office in Dublin was seized on Easter Monday, the rebels declared a free Irish Republic, independent from Great Britain. In the century that has passed since the Easter Rising, each generation of Irish republicans has mounted their own paramilitary campaign to bring about an independent united Ireland, from the War of Independence, to The Troubles, and right up to the modern-day dissident republican violence. By bringing together a range of researchers, from across a variety of academic disciplines, this edited volume analyses the one hundred years of Irish republican violence from 1916 to 2016. The assembled authors assess the evolution of paramilitary violence through a variety of themes, including the IRA from 1919-21, the case of ‘the Disappeared’, the relationship between counterterrorism killings and Provisional IRA bombings, and the analysis of modern-day violent dissident republican statements. Bringing the volume to a close are two long-form interviews with two key actors within the Troubles, Danny Morrison and Billy Hutchinson. In these interviews they discuss their own perspective on one hundred years of Irish republican paramilitary violence. This book was originally published as a special issue of Terrorism and Political Violence.

This groundbreaking book is the first to detail, with startling new revelations, just how integral the Republic of Ireland was to the Provisional IRA’s campaign at every level. The sheer level of sympathy and support that existed for militant republicanism in Southern Irish society demonstrates that the longevity of the ‘Troubles’ was due in large part to this widespread tolerance and aid. No Irish political party was without members who aided the Provisional IRA in their early years of their campaign, as former IRA volunteers attest to in interviews and previously unpublished accounts of training camps in the Republic. Juried courts for IRA suspects were phased out as both juries and judges were regularly acquitting republicans in cases of blatant IRA activity, and juries often celebrated with or congratulated the defendants: in discussion with the British government Taoiseach Jack Lynch even named judges who were deemed overly sympathetic to the IRA. The extent of activity, training, financing, armed robberies, demonstrations and goodwill for the IRA in the Irish Republic is rarely if ever acknowledged in Irish mainstream media or the education curriculum. A Broad Church: The Provisional IRA in the Republic of Ireland, 1969–1980 will dramatically change that view forever.

This book examines the post-ceasefire evolutions and histories of the main Irish republican terrorist factions, and the interconnected character of politics and militarism within them. Offering the first comparative study of the two leading Irish republican terrorist movements the Official IRA and the Provisional IRA (PIRA), this book presents the lesser-known Officials’ political-military evolution and analyses whether they could have been role models for the Provisionals. Not only does it compare the terrorism and the politics of the Officials and Provisionals in the aftermath of their seminal ceasefires of 1972 and 1994, it also presents the Irish republican history in a new light and brings to the fore the understudied and disregarded Officials who called their seminal ceasefire twenty-two years before their rivals in 1972. In doing this, the work discusses whether the PIRA might have learned lessons from the bitter and ultimately unsuccessful experience of the Officials. This book goes beyond traditional interpretations of the rivalry and competition between the two factions with the Officials usually seen as non-violent but unsuccessful and the Provisionals less politically inclined and mostly concerned with their armed struggle. Simultaneously, it dispels the myth of the alleged Provisional republican copying of their Official republican counterparts who seemed ready for a political compromise in Northern Ireland more than twenty years before the Good Friday Agreement of 1998. Finally, it comprehensively compares the Officials and the Provisionals within the identified key areas and assesses the two factions’ differences and similarities. . This book will be of much interest to students of Irish politics, terrorism studies, security studies and politics in general.

This is a wide-ranging analysis of the internal dynamics of Irish republicanism between the outbreak of 'the Troubles' in 1969 and the Good Friday Agreement of 1998. Engaging a vast array of hitherto unused primary sources alongside original and re-used oral history interviews, 'The Age-Old Struggle' draws upon the words and writings of more than 250 Irish republicans. This book scrutinises the movement's historical and contemporary complexity, the variety of influences within Irish republicanism, and divergent republican responses at pivotal moments in the conflict. Yet it also assesses the centripetal forces which connected republican organisations through decades of struggle. Across five thematic chapters, 'The Age-Old Struggle' offers new insights into republicanism's multi-layered interactions with the global '68, tactical and strategic change, revolutionary socialism, feminism, and religion. Drawing on political periodicals, ephemera, and interviews with activists throughout the ranks of several republican groups, the book roots its analysis in republicanism's temporal and spatial complexity. It contends that the cultural significance of place, interactions with class and revolutionary politics, and shifting intra-movement networks are essential to understanding the movement's dynamics since 1969.

This pioneering three-part work is the definitive history of Irish Republican prisoners detained in England’s maximum security prison ‘dispersal system’ during the entire period of the ‘Troubles’. A resurgence of IRA violence in Britain resulted in a steady stream of prisoners that ensured the organisation maintained a significant jail population. Based on private correspondence, British state archives, declassified government documents, international media reports, and memoirs of key protagonists, account is taken of all major riots, roof top protests, sabotage attacks and escape attempts undertaken by the IRA, as well as the little-known ‘blanket protest’ undertaken in several locations in England. Special Category Volume 2 tells the full story of the Wormwood Scrubs ‘riot’ of August 1979, Brixton breakout of December 1980 and the pivotal Albany ‘mutiny’ of May 1983, told for the first time using fresh eye-witness accounts as well as official and public sources. The perspectives of the Irish and British governments, various judiciaries, international legal forums, ‘ordinary decent criminals’ and prisoner solidarity groups are outlined in detail. This ground-breaking book establishes that the ‘prison war’ in England was a far more important IRA theatre of action than hitherto realised.

The historian A. T. Q. Stewart once remarked that in Ireland all history is applied history—that is, the study of the past prosecutes political conflict by other means. Indeed, nearly twenty years after the 1998 Belfast Agreement, "dealing with the past" remains near the top of the political agenda in Northern Ireland. The essays in this volume, by leading experts in the fields of Irish and British history, politics, and international studies, explore the ways in which competing "social" or "collective memories" of the Northern Ireland "Troubles" continue to shape the post-conflict political landscape. The contributors to this volume embrace a diversity of perspectives: the Provisional Republican version of events, as well as that of its Official Republican rival; Loyalist understandings of the recent past as well as the British Army's authorized for-the-record account; the importance of commemoration and memorialization to Irish Republican culture; and the individual memory of one of the noncombatants swept up in the conflict. Tightly specific, sharply focused, and rich in local detail, these essays make a significant contribution to the burgeoning literature of history and memory. The book will interest students and scholars of Irish studies, contemporary British history, memory studies, conflict resolution, and political science. Contributors: Jim Smyth, Ian McBride, Ruan O’Donnell, Aaron Edwards, James W. McAuley, Margaret O’Callaghan, John Mulqueen, and Cathal Goan.