Irish Republican Army

Irish Republican Army (IRA). The Irish Volunteers, formed in 1913/14 and reorganized along conventional military command lines after the Easter Rising, became known as the IRA from 1919. During the Anglo-Irish War, 1919–21, it became the dominant military arm of the Dáil government, and fought a limited successful guerrilla war until stalemate was acknowledged by the truce of July 1921. Divided over the Anglo-Irish treaty of December 1921, the minority formed the Provisional Government/Free State Army, while the majority armed against the new state in the civil war 1922–3. Guerrilla warfare tactics were then less successful, and defeat was implicit in the cease-fire of April 1923. The raison d'être of the organization remained because of partition and the allegiance to the British crown. For four decades, the IRA was undecided whether to concentrate on a campaign against the border, or against British and Free State/Republic government, or to focus on social and economic issues. It waged an unsuccessful border campaign 1956–61, and shifted into being a Marxist pressure group. The outbreak of violence in Derry and Belfast from 1969 found the movement wanting in its traditional protective role for the catholic minority: graffiti claimed IRA stood for ‘I ran away’. A split occurred between the Belfast-based traditional nationalist Provisional IRA and the Marxist Official IRA, with the latter shrinking and splintering into smaller republican organizations. The Provisional IRA waged a high-profile terror campaign, which was instrumental in the collapse of Stormont in 1972 and in power-sharing initiatives, but it lost support and momentum as a result of an unsuccessful truce 1974/5, though continuing operations in the province and in Britain. Gaining considerable support from the hunger strike crisis of 1981, the movement adopted a more political strategy with Sinn Fein's Armalite and ballot policy. The decision of the IRA to agree to a cease-fire in the 1990s led to the ‘Real’ IRA taking over the mantle of violence. A Northern Ireland Assembly was established and Sinn Fein ministers appointed, but the reluctance of the IRA to begin serious decommissioning of arms led to the dissolution of the Assembly in 2003.

Michael Hopkinson