Provisional Irish Republican Army

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The Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA) is a paramilitary group demanding the reunification of Ireland. It has been on ceasefire since 1997.

It is also known as the Provisional IRA, the 'Provos' and the Irish Republican Army, but is most commonly referred to simply as the IRA, although several groups claim that title. For a history of these groups see the Irish Republican Army entry.

Contents

Formation of the Provisional IRA

The PIRA was formed in 1969, with the stated aim of severing the political Union between the Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and achieving the unification of Ireland by force. It is organized into small, tightknit cells under the leadership of the PIRA Army Council. Due to its frequent use of bombings, its assassination of politicians and diplomats, its killing of hundreds of policemen and soldiers predominantly though not exclusively in Northern Ireland and its alleged role in racketeering, it is generally described as a terrorist group. Its supporters prefer the label guerrilla.1

Split from the 'Officials'

The Provisional IRA were initially a splinter group of the Official IRA, which claimed descent from the Old IRA, which was the army of the Irish Republic, (1919-22), and which split into pro and anti-treaty factions in the Irish Civil War. The 'Officials', or Official IRA, moved to a more Marxist analysis of the 'Irish Problem' in the mid 1960s. The PIRA held to a more traditional republican analysis and became larger and more successful, eventually overshadowing the original group. The name arose when those who were unhappy with the IRA's Army Council formed a "Provisional Army Council" of their own, echoing in turn the "Provisional Government" proclaimed during the Easter Rising of 1916.

The split in the armed wing of the republican movement was mirrored in the separation of their political wing, Provisional Sinn F�in (later known simply as [[Sinn F�in]]), from the older organisation (which itself eventually became the Workers' Party). The new Provisional group was less committed to a revolutionary class-based socialist view of the Northern Ireland problem.

The PIRA has several hundred members and several thousand sympathisers, although its strength may have been affected by operatives leaving the organisation to join hardline splinter groups. While it and its political wing, [[Sinn F�in]], operated on the belief that it 'spoke for Ireland', at no stage has it ever had mass support. Even with the end of its war and the entry of its ministers into government in Stormont, and with all the resulting media exposure and good will from some, it still receives relatively small support in the Republic of Ireland (5 TDs out of 166). In Northern Ireland its support base is stronger but still remains anything but politically dominant, though recently it has won more MLAs (Members of the Legislative Assembly at Stormont) a member of the party may become Deputy First Minister. (That post was most recently held by Mark Durkan, leader of the nationalist Social Democratic and Labour Party, which then had more MLAs2 than Sinn F�in.) However at present Stormont is in suspension.

In the past, the movement's appeal was hurt badly by more notorious PIRA bombings widley perceived as 'atrocities', such as the killing of civilians attending a Remembrance Day ceremony at the cenotaph in Enniskillen in 1987 and the killing of two children at Warrington, which led to tens of thousands of people descending on O'Connell Street in Dublin to call for an end to the PIRA's campaign of violence.

The PIRA received funds and arms from sympathisers in the United States, notably from an organisation called Noraid (Irish Northern Aid) and has received aid from a variety of groups and countries and considerable training and arms from Libya and, at one time, the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO), as well as profiting from drug dealing. This support has been weakened by the so called "War against Terrorism", the events of the 11th September 2001 and the discovery of three PIRA suspects in Colombia who were allegedly training Colombian FARC paramilitaries.

The peace process

Calls from Sinn F�in have lead the PIRA to commence disarming in a process that has been overviewed by General John de Chastelain's decommissioning organisation in October, 2001. However, following the collapse of the Stormont power-sharing government in 2002, which was partially triggered by allegations that republican spies were operating within Parliament Buildings and the Civil Service, the PIRA abandoned their association with General de Chastelain. It is expected that if and when power-sharing resumes, the PIRA disarmament process will begin again, though it is already considered by some to be behind schedule. Increasing numbers of people, from the Ulster Unionists under David Trimble and the SDLP under Mark Durkan to the Irish Government under Bertie Ahern and the mainstream Irish media, have begun demanding not merely decommissioning but the wholesale disbandment of the PIRA.

Activities

The Provisional IRA's activities have included bombings, assassinations, kidnappings, so-called 'punishment beatings', extortion and robberies. Previous targets have included the British military, the Royal Ulster Constabulary, and civilians in Northern Ireland, senior British Government officials, and Northern Ireland Members of Parliament. Members of the [[Garda S�och�na]] (The Republic of Ireland's police force) have also been killed, most notoriously Detective Garda Gerry McCabe, who was shot and killed after the commencement of the PIRA ceasefire. It is claimed that elements of the PIRA have been involved in a spate of bank robberies throughout the island of Ireland, allegedly to build up funds to 'pension off' PIRA members and so facilitate disbandment. Loyalist paramilitary groups such as the UVF and the UDA are currently not on cease-fire and are engaged in internal feuding. PIRA bombing campaigns have been conducted against rail and London Underground (Subway) stations and shopping areas on the island of Great Britain, and a British military facility on Continental Europe. The IRA has been observing a ceasefire since July 1997 (although hardline splinter groups such as the Real IRA are still active on the island of Great Britain) and previously observed a cease-fire from 1 September 1994 to February 1996.

Notable events included:

  • 21 July 1972 Bloody Friday. 22 bombs killed 9 and seriously injured 130. 30 years later the PIRA officially apologised for this set of attacks.
  • 1974 The Guildford pub bombing killed 19 and injured 182. Four people, dubbed the 'Guildford Four', were convicted for this and were imprisoned with life sentences. 15 years later Lord Lane of the Court of Appeal overturned their convictions noting "the [investigating] officers must have lied".
  • 1974 The Birmingham Pub Bombings. Bombs in two pubs killed 19. The 'Birmingham Six' were tried for this and convicted. Many years later, after new evidence of police fabrication and suppression of evidence, their convictions were quashed. Appeals by the Birmingham Six that the real IRA bombers had admitted responsibility for the bombings were ignored.
  • 1975 The Balcombe Street siege.
  • 1976 A PIRA bomb killed the newly appointed British ambassador to the Republic of Ireland, resulting in the declaration of a State of Emergency in the Republic. The PIRA also threatened to kidnap or kill Irish cabinet ministers and the President of Ireland.
  • 1979 An IRA kills Earl Mountbatten of Burma, members of his family and a local child off the Irish coast. During an Irish visit Pope John Paul II called for the PIRA campaign of violence to come to an end.
  • 1981 IRA prisoner Bobby Sands, imprisoned in connection with his involvement in an attack involving a bomb and subsequent gun battle, was elected Member of Parliament for the Northern Ireland constituency of Fermanagh and South Tyrone after the moderate nationalist Social Democratic and Labour Party decided not to run a candidate, leaving Sands as the main nationalist candidate in the by-election. Sands had been on a hunger strike for 'Prisoner of War' status for 41 days prior to being elected. He died 23 days later.
  • 1981 The PIRA killed Ulster Unionist Party Belfast MP Rev Robert Bradford along with the caretaker of a community centre. Irish Taoiseach Dr. Garret FitzGerald and former taoiseach Charles Haughey condemned the killings in [[D�il �ireann]]. SDLP party leader John Hume accused the Provisionals of waging a campaign of "sectarian genocide".
  • 1982 Hyde Park. 2 bombs killed 8 members of the Household Cavalry and Royal Green jackets units performing ceremonial duties in one of the few attacks to occur on the island of Great Britain that targeted soldiers. 7 of their horses were also killed.
  • 1983 A Harrods department store bomb planted by the PIRA during Christmas shopping season killed 6 (3 police) and wounded 90.
  • 1984 Brighton hotel bombing: a bomb in the Grand Hotel killed 5 in a failed attempt to assassinate members of the British cabinet, including Margaret Thatcher, the Prime Minister.
  • 1987 The Enniskillen 'massacre': the PIRA bombing of a Remembrance Day parade killed 11 civilians (including nurse Marie Wilson, whose father Gordon Wilson went on to become a leading campaigner for an end to violence in Northern Ireland) and injured 63. The PIRA later claimed that their target was a colour guard of British soldiers. On Remembrance Day 1997 the leader of [[Sinn F�in]], Gerry Adams, formally apologised for the bombing.
  • 1989 10 Royal Marines bandsmen were killed and 22 injured in a bombing of their base in Deal, Kent.
  • 1990 Car bombings in Northern Ireland killed 7 and wounded 37.
  • 1991 2 IRA members were killed by their own bomb detonated early in St Albans.
  • 1992 8 Protestant builders killed by a PIRA bomb on their way to work at an Army base near Omagh.
  • 1993 A PIRA bomb in Warrington killed 2 children.
  • 1993 The PIRA detonated a huge truck bomb in the City of London at Bishopsgate, which killed 2 and caused approximately �350m of damage, including the near destruction of St. Ethelburga's Bishopsgate.
  • 1993 A bomb at a fish and chip shop underneath a UDA office on the Protestant Shankill Road, Belfast went off prematurely and killed 10 people, including 2 children and the bomber.
  • 1996 The PIRA broke their cease-fire and killed two in a bomb at the Canary Wharf towers in London.
  • 15 June 1996 The PIRA detonated a 5,000lb bomb in Manchester which injured 206 people and damaged 70,000 square meters of retail and office space.

Infiltration

There have been persistent rumours that the Provisional IRA had been infiltrated by British Intelligence agents, and that senior PIRA members were 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 Provisional IRA's internal security force, charged with rooting out informers like himself. Scappaticci denies that this is the case and is taking legal action to clear his name.

See Also

Other paramilitary organisations in Ireland

Footnotes

1 The PIRA is described as a terrorist organisation by the governments of the Republic of Ireland, the United Kingdom, the United States, Spain, Germany and Italy, the latter three of whom have alleged the existence of IRA links with terrorist organisations within their own jurisdictions including ETA and the Red Brigade. It has also been described as such by the European Union. In the island of Ireland it is described as a terrorist organisation by An Garda S�och�na, the police force of the Republic of Ireland, and the Police Service of Northern Ireland, (PSNI). It is generally called a terrorist organisation by the following media outlets: The Irish Times, the Irish Independent, the Irish Examiner, the Sunday Independent, the Evening Herald, the Sunday Tribune, Ireland on Sunday, the Sunday Times and all the tabloid press. On the island of Ireland among political parties [[Fianna F�il]] and the Progressive Democrats who together form a coalition government in the Republic of Ireland refer to it as a terrorist organisation, as do the main opposition parties Fine Gael, the Labour Party, the Green Party, and the Workers Party, while in Northern Ireland it is described as a terrorist movement by the mainly nationalist Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP), the cross community Alliance Party, and from the unionist community the Ulster Unionist Party, the Democratic Unionist Party and the Popular Unionist Party. Members of the PIRA are tried in the Republic in the Special Criminal Court, an extra-constitutional court set up by emergency legislation and which is described in its functioning as dealing with "terrorism". On the island of Ireland the only political party to suggest that the IRA is not a terrorist organisation is [[Sinn F�in]], currently the second largest political party in Northern Ireland. Sinn F�in used to be widely regarded as the political wing of the IRA, but today the party insists that the two organisations are completely separate.

2 MLA means Member of the Legislative Assembly, the local parliament created under the Belfast Agreement.


References

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