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| From 1969 until 1997, the ] (PIRA) conducted an armed campaign (or ]) in the ] aimed at overthrowing British rule in ] to create a ]. The PIRA is widely regarded as a ] organisation and is proscribed in as such in the ] and the ] This article aims to provide details of this campaign. | From 1969 until 1997, the ] (PIRA) conducted an armed campaign (or ]) in the ] aimed at overthrowing British rule in ] to create a ]. The PIRA is widely regarded as a ] organisation and is proscribed in as such in the ] and the ] This article aims to provide details of this campaign. | ||
Revision as of 17:42, 3 January 2007
From 1969 until 1997, the Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA) conducted an armed campaign (or guerrilla war) in the United Kingdom aimed at overthrowing British rule in Northern Ireland to create a united Ireland. The PIRA is widely regarded as a terrorist organisation and is proscribed in as such in the Republic of Ireland and the UK This article aims to provide details of this campaign.
Other aspects of the PIRA's campaign are covered in the following articles:
- For IRA armament, see Provisional IRA arms importation
- For the Provisional's political strategy see Provisional IRA Strategy.
- For a chronology see Chronology of Provisional IRA Actions
Beginnings
In the early days of the Troubles from around 1969-71, the Provisional IRA was very poorly armed, having available only a handful of old fashioned weapons left over from the IRA's Border campaign of the 1950s. The IRA had split in December 1969 into the Provisional IRA and Official IRA factions, in part over the failure of the IRA to defend nationalist areas of Belfast from loyalist attack - leading to the burning of many Catholic homes during the Battle of the Bogside in Derry and in Belfast during the Northern Ireland riots of August 1969. In the first years of the conflict, the Provisionals' main activity was providing firepower to support nationalist rioters, and as they saw it, to defend nationalist areas against attacks from loyalists, the Royal Ulster Constabulary, the B-Specials. In contrast to the IRA's relative inaction during the rioting of 1969, Provisional IRA members in the summer of 1970 mounted determined armed defences of the nationalist Short Strand and Clonard areas of Belfast against loyalist attackers, killing a number of loyalists in the process. The PIRA gained much of its support from these activities, as they were widely perceived within the nationalist community as being defenders of Irish nationalist and Catholic people against aggression.
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Initially, the British Army, deployed into Northern Ireland in August 1969, was welcomed in Catholic nationalist areas as a neutral force compared to the Protestant unionist-dominated Northern Ireland security forces, but this perception did not last. The Army was discredited in the eyes of many nationalists by incidents such as the Falls Road Curfew of July 1970, when 3000 British troops imposed a curfew on the nationalist Lower Falls area of West Belfast. After an attack on troops by PIRA members, the British fired over 1500 rounds of ammunition in gun battles with both the Official IRA and Provisional IRA in the area, killing six civilians . Thereafter, the Provisionals began targeting British soldiers. The first to die was Robert Curtis, killed in a gun battle in February 1971 .
The years 1970 and 1971 also saw persistent feuding between the Provisional and Official IRA's in Belfast, as both organisations vied for supremacy in nationalist areas. Five Republicans were killed in such violence before a truce was brokered between the two factions.
Early campaign 1970-1980
In the early 1970s, the IRA imported large quantities of modern weapons and explosives, primarily from supporters in the United States and Libya.
As the conflict escalated in the early 1970s, the numbers recruited by the IRA mushroomed, in response to the nationalist community's anger at events such as the introduction of internment without trial and Bloody Sunday (1972) when the Parachute Regiment of the British army shot dead 13 unarmed civil rights marchers in Derry. The IRA leadership took the opportunity to launch an Offensive, believing that they could force a British withdrawal from Ireland by inflicting severe casualties, thus undermining public support in Britain for its continued presence.
The first half of the 1970s was the most intense period of the PIRA campaign. About half the total of 500 or so British soldiers to die in the conflict were killed in the years 1971-1973 . In 1972 alone, the IRA killed 100 British soldiers and wounded 500 more. In the same year, they carried out 1,300 explosions and lost over 90 guerrillas killed themselves . Up to 1972, The Provisionals controlled large urban areas in Belfast and Derry, but these were eventually re-taken by a major British operation known as Operation Motorman. Thereafter, fortified Police and military posts were built in republican areas throughout Northern Ireland. During the early 1970s, a typical IRA operation involved sniping at British patrols and engaging them in fire-fights in urban areas of Belfast and Derry. They also killed local police and soldiers when off-duty. These tactics produced many casualties for both sides and for civilian by-standers.
Another element of their campaign was the bombing of commercial targets such as shops and businesses. The most effective tactic the IRA developed for its bombing campaign was the car bomb, where large amounts of explosives were packed into a car, which was driven to its target and then exploded. The most spectacular example of the Provisionals' commercial bombing campaign was Bloody Friday in July 1972 in Belfast city centre, where 22 bombs were exploded, nine people were killed and 130 injured . While most of the IRA's attacks on commercial targets were not designed to cause casualties, on many occasions they killed civilian bystanders. Other examples include the bombing of the Abercorn restaurant in Belfast in 1972, where two people were killed and 130 wounded and the La Mon Restaurant Bombing in county Down in February 1977, where 12 customers were killed by an incendiary bomb .
In rural areas such as South Armagh (which is a majority Catholic area near the border with the Irish Republic), the IRA units most effective weapon was the "culvert-bomb" - where explosives were planted under drains in country roads. This proved so dangerous for British army patrols that all troops in the area had to be transported by helicopter, a policy which they have continued down to 2006, when the last British Army base was closed in South Armagh. The highest military death toll from an IRA attack came in August 1979, at Warrenpoint, County Down, when 18 British soldiers from the Parachute Regiment were killed by two "culvert bombs" placed by the Provisional IRA South Armagh Brigade. On the same day the IRA killed one of their most famous victims, the uncle of Prince Philip, Lord Louis Mountbatten, assassinated along with two children and his cousin on 27 August 1979 in County Sligo, by a bomb placed in his boat. Another very effective IRA tactic devised in the 1970s was the use of home-made mortars mounted on the back of trucks that were fired at police and army bases. These mortars were first tested in 1974 but did not kill anyone until 1979. The most lethal of these attacks came in February 1985, when 9 RUC officers were killed by mortar rounds fired at a police station in Newry. As in Warrenpoint, the South Armagh IRA unit was responsible. .
Ceasefires - 1972 and 1975
The Provisional IRA declared two ceasefires in the 1970s, temporarily suspending its armed operations. In 1972, the IRA leadership thought that Britain was on the verge of leaving Northern Ireland. The British government held secret talks with the PIRA leadership in 1972 to try and secure a ceasefire based on a compromise settlement within Northern Ireland. The PIRA agreed to a temporary ceasefire from 26 June to 9 July. In July 1972, Provisional leaders, Seán Mac Stíofáin, Dáithí Ó Conaill, Ivor Bell, Seamus Twomey, Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness met a British delegation led by William Whitelaw. The IRA leaders refused to consider a peace settlement that did not include a commitment to British withdrawal, a retreat of the British Army to barracks and a release of republican prisoners. The British refused and the talks broke up .
By the mid 1970s, it was clear that the hopes of the PIRA leadership for a quick military victory were receding. Secret meetings between IRA leaders Ruairí Ó Brádaigh and Billy McKee with British Secretary of State for Northern Ireland Merlyn Rees secured an IRA ceasefire from February 1975 until January of the next year. The republicans believed that this was the start of a long term process of British withdrawal, however, it seems that Rees was trying to bring the Provisionals into peaceful politics without giving them any guarantees. Critics of the IRA leadership, most notably Gerry Adams, felt that the ceasefire was disastrous for the IRA, leading to infiltration by British informers, the arrest of many activists and a breakdown in IRA discipline - leading to sectarian killings (see next section) and a feud with fellow republicans in the Official IRA. The ceasefire broke down in January 1976 .
In response to the 1975 ceasefire and the arrest of many IRA volunteers in its aftermath, the Provisionals re-organised their structures in the late 1970s into small cell based units that were thought to be harder to infiltrate. They also embarked on a strategy known as the "Long War" - a process of attrition based on the indefinite continuation of an armed campaign until the British government grew tired of the political, military and financial costs involved in staying in Northern Ireland.
Accusations of sectarian attacks
The IRA has always argued that its campaign was aimed not at the Protestant/Unionist community, but at the British presence in Ireland, manifested in the British Army and the Northern Ireland security forces. However, many Unionists believe that the IRA's campaign was sectarian and there are many incidents where the organisation targeted Protestant civilians.
The 1970s were the most violent years of the Troubles. As well as its campaign against the security forces, the IRA became involved, in the middle of the decade, in a "tit for tat" cycle of sectarian killings with loyalist paramilitaries. The worst examples of this occurred in 1975 and 1976. In September 1975, for example, IRA members machine-gunned an Orange Hall in Tullyvallen, killing five Protestants. On January 5 1976, an IRA unit in Armagh shot dead ten Protestant building workers at Kingsmills, in reprisal for Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) killings of six Roman Catholics the previous day . In similar incidents, the IRA deliberately killed 91 Protestant civilians in 1974-76 (CAIN). The IRA did not officially claim the killings, but justified them in a statement on January 17 1976, "The Irish Republican Army has never initiated sectarian killings ... if loyalist elements responsible for over 300 sectarian assassinations in the past four years stop such killing now, then the question of retaliation from whatever source does not arise" . In late 1976, the IRA leadership met with representatives of the loyalist paramilitary groups and agreed to halt random sectarian killings and car bombings of civilian targets. The loyalists revoked the agreement in 1979, after the IRA killing of Lord Mountbatten but the pact nevertheless halted the cycle of sectarian revenge killings until the late 1980s, when the loyalist groups began killing Catholics again in large numbers .
As the IRA campaign continued through the 1970s and 1980s, the organisation increasingly targeted RUC and Ulster Defence Regiment servicemen—including when they were off duty. Because these men were almost exclusively Protestant and unionist, these killings were also widely portrayed (and perceived in unionist circles) as a campaign of sectarian assassination. A former IRA member of the East Tyrone Brigade, Vincent McKenna, has claimed that Jim Lynagh's military tactics of creating "sanitised zones"—expelling members of the UDR from their farms to gain territory "a field at a time"—was "sectarian". Former Unionist MP and a major in the UDR, Ken Maginnis, compiled a record of IRA attacks on the UDR and claimed from this that the IRA's campaign was sectarian and genocidal in that the eldest sons and breadwinners were especially targeted in order to ethnically cleanse Protestants from their farms and jobs west of the River Bann.
Despite the fact that most of the IRA's Security Force victims by the late 1980s were locally recruited RUC or UDR personnel, the Provisional leadership maintained that the British Army was their preferred target. Gerry Adams in an interview given in 1988, said it was, "vastly preferable" to target the British Army as it "removes the worst of the agony from Ireland" and "diffuses the sectarian aspects of the conflict because loyalists do not see it as an attack on their community" .
Another example of an IRA sectarian attack happened in 1987, when the IRA placed a bomb near a Remembrance Day service in Enniskillen, killing eleven, mostly Protestant, by-standers. (See Remembrance Day Massacre).
Towards the end of the troubles, the Provisionals widened their campaign even further, to include the killing of people who worked in a civilian capacity with the RUC and British Army. The bloodiest example of this came in 1992, when an IRA bomb killed eight Protestant building workers who were working on a British Army base at Teebane. Again, since Protestants and Unionists were more likely to work for the British Army and police, this was widely seen as part of a campaign against Protestants.
For the IRA, such attacks may have been counter-productive, as incidents such as these facilitated the British government's aims to "criminalise" the IRA and portray the conflict as one between sectarian gangs, and itself as a neutral arbiter.
Attacks outside Northern Ireland
The PIRA was chiefly active in Northern Ireland, but from the early 1970s, it also took its bombing campaign to Britain. At a meeting of the PIRA Army Council in June 1972, Sean MacStiofain proposed bombing targets in England to, "take the heat off Belfast and Derry". However, the Army Council did not consent to a bombing campaign in mainland Britain until early 1973, when talks they had held with the British government in the previous year had broken down . They believed that such bombing would create a demand among the British public for their government to withdraw from Northern Ireland.
The first IRA team sent to England included eleven members of the Belfast Brigade, who hijacked four cars in Belfast, fitted them with explosives and drove them to London via Dublin and Liverpool. The team were betrayed to the London Metropolitan Police by an informer and all but one of them were arrested. Nevertheless, two of the bombs exploded, killing one man and injuring 180 people .
Thereafter, control over IRA bombings in Britain was given to Brian Keenan, a Belfast man and member of the Army Council. Keenan, along with Peter McMullen, a former member of the British Parachute regiment, conducted a series of bombings in 1973 on military targets. In March, an IRA team from Belfast planted a bomb on a British Army coach, which exploded on the M26 motorway, killing nine soldiers along with a woman and two children. Another bomb, planted by McMullen, exploded at a barracks in Yorkshire, killing a woman canteen worker .
Some of the most indiscriminate bombing attacks of the IRA's bombing campaign were carried out by the so-called "Balcombe street gang", a unit of four IRA members from Dublin, who were sent to London in the summer of 1974. They avoided contact with the Irish community there in order to remain inconspicuous and aimed to carry out one attack a week. In addition to bombings, they carried out several assassinations. Ross McWhirter, a right wing politician, was shot dead at his home and the group made attempts on the lives of Margaret Thatcher, Airey Neave and Edward Heath. They were eventually arrested after they machine gunned an exclusive restaurant on Mayfair. Pursued by police, they took hostages and barricaded themselves for six days in a house on Balcombe street before they surrendered, an incident known as the Balcombe Street Siege. They were sentenced to thirty years each for a total of six murders . The Balcombe group later admitted responsibility also for the Guildford pub bombing of October 5 1974, which killed 5 people and injured 65 and the bombing of a pub in Woolwich, which killed another two people.
On November 21, 1974, an IRA unit recruited in Birmingham from among the Irish immigrant community carried out the Birmingham pub bombings, two separate bombings of pubs which killed 21 civilians and injured 162. An inadequate warning was given for one bomb and no warning for the other . There were no military targets associated with either of the pubs.
Two groups of people, the Guildford Four and the Birmingham Six, were imprisoned were for the Guildford and Birmingham bombings respectively, but each group protested their innocence. They were eventually released and pardoned after serving lengthy prison sentences.
Many British civilians were killed during the IRA bombing campaign in England, which was often directed against civilian targets such as pubs and public transport such as the London Underground (subway).
After the campaign of the mid 1970s, the IRA did not undertake a major bombing campaign again in Britain until the late 1980s and early 1990s. (See 1990s section for details).
However, throughout the intervening period, they did carry out a number of high profile bombing attacks in Britain.
In 1982, they exploded two bombs at a British Army parade at Hyde Park and Regents Park in London, killing 11 soldiers and wounding 50 soldiers and civilians (see Hyde Park and Regents Park bombings).
In 1984, in the Brighton hotel bombing, the IRA tried to assassinate British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. She survived, but five people including two Conservative Party Members of Parliament were killed. Several others including Margaret Tebbit, wife of Norman Tebbit was left permanently disabled.
On several occasions, the PIRA attacked British troops stationed in Britain, the most lethal of which was the 1989 Deal barracks bombing, where 11 Royal Marines Band Service bandsmen were killed.
Republicans argued that these bombings "concentrated minds" in the British government far more than the violence in Northern Ireland. The IRA had an official policy of bombing only targets in England (not the Celtic countries of Scotland and Wales), although they detonated a bomb at an oil terminal in the Shetland Isles in 1981 while Queen Elizabeth II was performing the official opening of the terminal.
The PIRA also carried out attacks in other countries such as West Germany, Belgium, Canada, the Netherlands and Australia, where British soldiers were based. Between 1979 and 1990, eight soldiers and six civilians died in these attacks, including the British Ambassador to the Netherlands. On one occasion, the IRA shot and killed two Australian tourists mistaken for off duty British soldiers.
The IRA also sent members on arms importation, logistical support and intelligence operations at different times to continental Europe, Canada, the United States, Australia, the Middle East and Latin America.
Libyan arms and the "Tet Offensive"
In the mid 1980s, the Provisional IRA received large quantities of modern weaponry, including heavy weaponry such as Heavy machine guns, over 1000 rifles, several hundred handguns, rocket propelled grenades, flamethrowers, surface to air missiles and the plastic explosive semtex from the Libyan regime of Muammar al-Qaddafi. reportedly, Qadaffi donated enough weapons to arm the equivalent of three infantry battalions. (See Provisional IRA arms importation).
The IRA therefore, came to be very well armed by the end of the Troubles, but this did not necessarily correlate with the intensity of its armed campaign. Most of the losses it inflicted on the British Army occurred in the early to mid 1970s, although they continued to inflict substantial casualties on the British military, the RUC and UDR throughout the Troubles. The IRA Army Council had plans for a dramatic escalation of the conflict in the late 1980s which they likened to the Tet Offensive of the Vietnam War with the aid of the arms obtained from Libya. However, a third of the arms donated were intercepted aboard the ship, the Eksund by the French and Irish authorities. This brought the PIRA's new capability to the attention of the authorities on either side of the Irish border.
The plan had been to take and hold several areas along the border, forcing the British Army to either withdraw from border areas or use maximum force to re-take them - thus escalating the conflict beyond the point which the PIRA thought that British public opinion would accept. The IRA's expectation was that the British Army would try to re-take these areas with their helicopters which could be shot down due to the SAM-7 Surface to Air missiles now in the IRAs hands. The British would then be forced to ground all of their helicopters across Northern Ireland and use heavy armoured transport which would now be very vulnerable to RPG-7s, Semtex and cannons that the IRA had received from Libya. The "Tet offensive" also included plans to bombard and sink a Royal Navy vessel that patrolled the Carlingford Lough with 106mm Cannons mounted on motorboats and plans to bomb British embassies and military bases on the continent. However this offensive failed to materialise. IRA sources quoted in The Secret History of the IRA by Ed Moloney say that the interception of the Eksund shipment eliminated the element of surprise which they had hoped to have for this offensive. The role of informers within the IRA seems to have also played a role in the failure of the "Tet Offensive" to get off the ground.
In the event, much of the IRA's new heavy weaponry, for instance the surface-to-air missiles and flamethrowers, were never, or very rarely, used. The only recorded use of flamethrowers took place in Derryard, County Fermanagh, where a permanent checkpoint manned by the King's Own Scottish Borderers was the target of a multiple weapons attack on December 13 1989. The SAMs turned out to be out of date models and were unable to shoot down British helicopters equipped with anti-missile technology. The semtex plastic explosive proved the most valuable asset to the IRA's armoury.
As it was, the numbers of members of the British and Northern Ireland military personnel killed by the IRA increased slightly in the years 1988-1990, from 12 in 1986 to 39 in 1988, but dropped to 27 in 1989 and decreased again to 18 in 1990. The death toll by 1991 was similar to that of the mid-80's, with 14 fatalities. Of these deaths, the numbers of the regular British Army killed by the IRA in the years 1988-1990, were as follows; 5 in 1986, 22 in 1988, 24 in 1989 10 in 1990 and five by 1991 . This was politically significant, as the deaths of locally recruited RUC and UDR members had little impact on public opinion in Britain.
The failure to intensify the conflict in the mid 1980s meant that while the PIRA, in the judgement of journalist and author Brendan O'Brien, "could not be beaten, it could be contained. Politically and militarily, that was the most significant factor. It was why the IRA had to decide whether to put away their guns for another day as they had done in previous decades, or continue with a long and 'sickening' war" . By the late 1980s and early 1990s, roughly 9 put of every 10 IRA attacks were aborted or failed to cause casualties Such republican sources as Mitchel McLaughlin and Danny Morrison argued by the early 1990s the PIRA could not attain their objectives by military means .
War with British special forces
Despite the relative failure of the "Tet offensive" the IRA campaign continued up to 1994. However the costs of this campaign for both the Provisional IRA and the community which supported the PIRA were increased by the actions of British special forces units and the loyalist paramilitaries.
The IRA suffered some heavy losses at the hands of British special forces like the SAS (Special Air Service), the most spectacular being the ambush and killing of eight armed IRA members at Loughgall in 1987 as the IRA gunmen attempted to destroy Loughgall police station and kill the policemen stationed there. The Provisional IRA East Tyrone Brigade was particularly hard hit by British killings of their volunteers in this period, losing 28 members killed by British forces in the period 1987-1992, out of 53 dead in the whole Troubles. . In many of these cases, PIRA members were lured into ambushes by British forces and then killed. Republicans alleged that this amounted to a campaign of targeted assassination on the part of state forces (see shoot-to-kill policy in Northern Ireland).
Another high profile incident took place in Gibraltar in March 1988, when three unarmed IRA volunteers were shot dead by an SAS unit while scouting out a bombing target (See also Operation Flavius). The subsequent funerals of these IRA members in Belfast were attacked by loyalist gunman Michael Stone. At a funeral of one of Stone's victims, two un-uniformed British Army corporals were lynched . See also Corporals killings. This kind of reactions, both in the increasing level of violence and in the propaganda front, exposed that the use of preventive killings of republicans were counterproductive to both the British and Unionist interests.
Loyalists and the IRA - killing and reprisals
The IRA and also its political wing, Sinn Féin also suffered from a campaign of assassination launched against their members by Loyalist paramilitaries from the late 1980s. These latter attacks killed about 12 IRA and 15 Sinn Féin members between 1987 and 1995 . In addition, the loyalists murdered family members of known republicans. However, the vast majority of loyalist victims were innocent Catholic civilians. According to recently released documents the British Government knew since 1973 that British Army units such as the Ulster Defence Regiment were partisan and actively helping loyalist paramilitaries with arms and membership. Despite knowing this the British Government stepped up the role of the UDR in "maintaining order" within Northern Ireland.
It has also been confirmed that the loyalists were aided in this campaign by elements of the security forces including the British Army and RUC Special Branch (see Stevens Report). Loyalist sources have since confirmed that they received intelligence files on republicans from Army and Police intelligence in this period and an Army agent within the Ulster Defence Association (UDA), Brian Nelson, was convicted in 1992 of the killings of Catholic civilians. It was later revealed that Nelson, while working as a British Army agent, was also involved in the importation of arms for loyalists from South Africa in 1988 . In 1993, for the first time, Loyalist paramilitaries killed more people than Republican paramilitaries. While the difference was only two, in the following year, Loyalists killed eleven more people than Republicans, and in 1995, they killed twelve more.
In response to these attacks, the IRA began a reactive assassination campaign against leading members of the UDA and Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF). In the mid-1970s, from 1974, the IRA had a policy of retaliating to loyalist attacks on Catholics with attacks on Protestants such as the Kingsmill massacre of 1976 (see section above). However, by the late 1980s, the IRA Army Council would not sanction attacks on Protestant civilians, but only at named, identified loyalist targets. The main reason for this was the negative impact of attacks on civilians on the Republican movement's electoral appeal. The IRA issued a statement in 1986 saying: "At no time will we involve ourselves in the execution of ordinary Protestants, but at all times we reserve the right to take armed action against those who attempt to terrorise or intimidate our people into accepting British/unionist rule" Gerry Adams reiterated the point in 1989; "Sinn Féin does not condone the deaths of people who are non combatants" .
To maximise the impact of such killings, the IRA targeted senior loyalist figures. Among such leading loyalists killed were John McMichael, Joe Bratty, Raymond Elder and Ray Smallwoods of the UDA and John Bingham, Robert Seymore, Leslie Dallas and Trevor King of the UVF . One infamous IRA attempt to kill the entire leadership of the UDA on October 23rd 1993 caused many civilian casualties, when a bomb planted at a Shankill Road fish shop killed 10 people. The bomb was intended to kill the entire senior leadership of the UDA, including Johnny Adair, who were meeting in a room above the shop. Instead, the bomb ended up killing only nine Protestant civilians and also the bomber (Thomas Begley) himself, whose device exploded prematurely. In addition, 58 more people were injured . This provoked a series of retaliatory murders of Catholic civilians, none of them with political or paramilitary connections, by the UVF and UDA, .
According to the Conflict Archive on the Internet (CAIN), University of Ulster statistics, the PIRA killed 35 loyalist militants in total. Lost Lives gives a figure of 28 out of a total number of loyalists killed in the Troubles of 126 . According to "The Irish War" by Tony Geraghty, the IRA killed 45 loyalists . Such killings intensified just before the IRA ceasefire of 1994 and it has been speculated that this assassination programme against Loyalist leaders helped convince the leadership of both the UDA and UVF, to call ceasefires at this point. However the Loyalists called their ceasefire six weeks after the IRA ceasefire of that year and indeed argued that it was their murder campaign against Catholic civilians in general that had forced the IRA ceasefire by placing intolerable pressure on the nationalist community. Republicans deny this - citing how few of the loyalist victims were republican paramilitaries. They argue that the republican political strategy was unaffected by loyalist actions.
While neither SAS operations nor loyalist killings "defeated" the PIRA, they heightened the costs to the IRA of carrying on an indefinite armed campaign (the "Long War" in their terminology) and contributed to the war-weariness of their host community.
Campaign up to and after the 1994 ceasefire
See also Northern Ireland peace process
Early 1990s
By the early to mid 1990s, the IRA found it more difficult to kill British military personnel in Northern Ireland, who were by now familiar with operating there and well protected by body armour. One of several methods the IRA used to counter this, was the use of high velocity Barrett Light 50 sniper rifles, several of which the Provisionals imported from the USA.
A grisly IRA technique used in the early 1990s was the "proxy bomb" -a sort of involuntary suicide bomb, where a victim was kidnapped and forced to drive a car bomb into its target. In one infamous operation in Derry in October 1990, the PIRA chained a Catholic civilian to a car laden with explosives, held his family hostage and forced him to drive to an Army checkpoint as a "human bomb" where the bomb exploded, killing himself and five soldiers. Another "human bomb" killed one soldier the same day, but the driver saved his own life by jumping from the moving car. This practice was stopped due to the revulsion its caused among the nationalist community.
However, the number of British soldiers killed had dropped significantly from the worst years of the 1970s.
Nevertheless, the IRA campaign, while not as lethal as previously, continued to severely disrupt normal life in Northern Ireland. In 1987, for instance, the IRA carried out 140 shooting attacks and 154 bombings, killing 31 RUC, UDR and British Army personnel and injuring over 100 more. It also killed 20 civilians and injured roughly 150 . In 1990, in 193 shootings and 187 bombings, IRA attacks killed 10 British Army soldiers, 8 UDR members, 12 RUC members and injured 190 soldiers and 150 police, along with more civilians .
By 1992, the figure for IRA gun attacks was 144 and the number of bombings had increased to 282 . The evidence strongly suggests, therefore, that the IRA was capable of carrying on a significant level of violence for the foreseeable future. Moreover, it can be argued that the real attrition for the UK was not in the number of soldiers or RUC members killed, but in the enormous budget needed to keep their huge security system in Northern Ireland working indefinitely.
The attacks and bombings in the early 1990s forced the UK government to dismantle several bases and security posts, whose maintenance or reconstruction was not affordable.
In South Armagh, in contrast to other IRA brigade areas, militant activity actually increased in the early 1990s. The IRA there shot down three helicopters (one of them really in 1988) and damaged at least another three in this period, using DShK heavy machine guns and improvised mortars. Another one was brought down in early 1990 in County Tyrone, wounding three of the crew.
In the first days of June 1993, the South Armagh IRA unit took control for two hours of the village of Cullaville, near the border with the Republic. The fact that the Republican militants executed the action despite the presence of a British Army watchtower nearby, caused outrage among the British security and the Unionist public opinion. The parliamentary debates of the time also reflect a mounting pressure on the UK government to find a negotiated solution to the 25 years old conflict.
During this period, the IRA also established a highly damaging economic bombing campaign against the British mainland, particularly London, and other major British cities, which caused a huge amount of physical and economic damage to property. Among their targets were the City of London, Bishopsgate and Baltic Exchange in London. There was also a propaganda boost for the Republicans when three mortar rounds flew over the British Prime minister's office on Downing street in London during a Cabinet's meeting in February 1991. A particularly notorious bombing was the Warrington bomb attacks of 1993, which killed two young children. In early March 1994 there were three mortar attacks on Heathrow airport in London, which forced the authorities to shut down the facility. It has been argued that this bombing campaign was decisive to convince the British government (who had hoped to contain the conflict to Northern Ireland with its Ulsterisation policy) to negotiate with Sinn Féin after the IRA ceasefires of August 1994 and July 1997.
The ceasefires
In August 1994, the PIRA announced a "complete cessation of military operations". This was the culmination of several years of negotiations between the Republican leadership, led by Gerry Adams and Martin McGuiness with various figures in the local political parties, the Irish government and British government. It was informed by the view that neither the UK forces, nor the IRA could win the war and that greater progress towards the Republican objectives might be achieved by negotiations. While many PIRA volunteers were (and are) reportedly unhappy with the end of armed struggle short of the achievement of a united Ireland, the peace strategy has since resulted in substantial electoral and political gains for Sinn Féin, the movement's political wing. It may now be argued that the Sinn Féin political party has eclipsed the Provisional IRA as the most important part of the republican movement. The ceasefire of 1994 therefore, while not a definitive end to PIRA operations, marks the effective end of its full scale armed campaign.
The Provisional IRA called off its 1994 ceasefire on February 9 1996 because of its dissatisfaction with the state of negotiations. They signalled the end of the ceasefire by detonating a truck bomb at Canary Wharf in London, which caused the deaths of two civilians and massive damage to property. In the summer of 1996, another truck bomb devastated Manchester city centre. However the PIRA campaign when the ceasefire was suspended during this period never reached the intensity of previous years. In total the IRA killed 2 British soldiers, 2 RUC men, 2 British civilians, and 1 Garda according to the CAIN project . They resumed their ceasefire on July 20 1997. These PIRA military activities of 1996-97 were widely believed to have been used to gain leverage in negotiations with the British government during the period. Whereas in 1994-95, the British Conservative Party government had refused to enter public talks with Sinn Féin until the IRA had given up its weapons, the Labour Party government in power by 1997 was prepared to include Sinn Féin in peace talks before IRA decommissioning. Another widespread interpretation of the temporary breakdown in the first IRA ceasefire is that the leadership of Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness tolerated a limited return to violence in order to avoid a split between hardliners and moderates in the IRA Army Council. Once they had won over or removed the militarists from the Council, they re-instated the ceasefire .
Casualties
According to the CAIN research project at the University of Ulster , the Provisional IRA was responsible for the deaths of 1,821 people during the Troubles up to 2001. This figure represents 48.4 percent of the total fatalities in the conflict. 621 of these casualties were civilians. A total of 1,013 were British forces; 465 from the British Army, 190 were from the Ulster Defence Regiment (a part time local British Army reserve unit), 272 were members of the Royal Ulster Constabulary, 14 were former Royal Ulster Constabulary members, six were British Police, 20 were Northern Ireland prison officers, two were former prison officers. A further 35 were loyalist paramilitaries (21 Ulster Defence Association (UDA), three former UDA, 11 Ulster Volunteer Force). Six were Gardai and one was Irish Army. About 180 were republican paramilitaries, including 12 Official IRA members, one Irish People's Liberation Organisation member, 63 alleged informers and 103 accidental deaths of PIRA members due to premature explosions.
One study calculates that of 1706 victims, 340 were Northern Irish Catholics, 794 were Northern Irish Protestants and 572 were not from Northern Ireland.
Another very detailed study, gives the following figures for people killed by the Provisional IRA up to 2004: 644 civilians, 456 British military (including British Army, RAF, Royal Navy, and Territorial Army), 273 Royal Ulster Constabulary (including RUC reserve), 182 Ulster Defence Regiment, 163 Republican paramilitary members (including from the IRA), 28 loyalist paramilitary members, 23 Northern Ireland prison officers, 7 Gardai or Irish Army, and five British police officers (Lost Lives, page 1536). Lost Lives therefore concludes that the Provisional IRA was responsible for a total of 1781 deaths to date. It has also been estimated that the IRA injured 6000 British Army, UDR and RUC and up to 14,000 civilians, during the Troubles .
The IRA lost 276 members during the Troubles according to the CAIN figures. Lost Lives states that 294 PIRA members died in the Troubles . In addition, many members of Sinn Féin were killed, some of whom were also IRA members, but this was not publicly acknowledged. An Phoblacht gives a figure of 341 IRA and Sinn Féin members killed in the Troubles, indicating between 50-60 Sinn Féin deaths if the IRA deaths are subtracted .
In roughly 123 of these cases, IRA members either caused their own deaths. Eight IRA members died on hunger strike. Another hundred or so were killed by their own explosives in premature bombing accidents - 103 deaths according to CAIN, 105 according to an RUC report of 1993 . Thirteen were killed on allegations of having worked for the security forces (CAIN). Lost Lives gives a figure of 163 killings of republican paramilitary members (but this includes bombing accidents and feuds with republicans from other organisations) . Most of the remaining 200 or so IRA deaths were at the hands of the British army, followed by the RUC and then the loyalist paramilitaries.
Far more common than the killing of IRA Volunteers however, was their imprisonment. Journalists Eamonn Mallie and Patrick Bishop estimate in The Provisional IRA (1988), that between 8-10,000 PIRA members were, up until that point, imprisoned during the course of the conflict, a number they also give as the total number of IRA members during the Troubles . The total number of PIRA members imprisoned must therefore be considerably higher, once the figures from 1988-1998 are included.
Other activities
Apart from its armed campaign, the Provisional IRA has also been involved in many other activities, including "policing", robberies and kidnapping for the purposes of raising funds.
The IRA looked on itself as the police force of nationalist areas of Northern Ireland during the Troubles instead of the RUC, during a time when the Catholic community had little confidence in the neutrality of the state forces. Some Catholic civilians have been killed by the IRA for collaboration with the British security forces (i.e., the British Army or the RUC). The IRA also summarily executed or otherwise punished suspected drug dealers and other suspected criminals in the past, sometimes after kangaroo trials. In addition the PIRA habitually carried out beatings, known as "punishment beatings" and "knee cappings" (shootings in the knees) of petty criminals until recently. IRA members suspected of being British or Irish government informers were also executed, often after interrogation and torture and a kangaroo trial. The IRA had a special unit for this purpose, known in republican circles as the "Nutting Squad".
The PIRA has also targeted other republican paramilitary groups. In 1972, 1975 and 1977, the Official IRA and Provisional IRA fought a feud with each other in Belfast, leaving several Volunteers dead on either side. In 1992, The PIRA eliminated the Irish People's Liberation Organisation (IPLO), which was widely involved in drug dealing and other criminality. One IPLO member was killed, several more shot and wounded (kneecapped) and still more beaten and told to disband and in some cases to leave the country. Most recently, there has been at least one case, in 2000, of the IRA shooting dead a Real Irish Republican Army member for his opposition to the Provisionals' political strategy .
Although the IRA's General Order No. 8 forbids military action "against 26 County forces under any circumstances whatsoever" , members of the Garda Síochána (the Republic of Ireland's police force) have also been killed; most notorious was the killing of Detective Garda Jerry McCabe, who was killed by sustained machine-gun fire while sitting in his car in Adare county Limerick while escorting a post office delivery in 1996. Sinn Féin has called for the release of his killers under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement. The Provisionals have killed six Gardaí and one Irish Army soldier, mostly during robberies. These killings as well as sectarian attacks against Protestant civilians lost the Provisional's much sympathy in the Republic.
The IRA has carried out many robberies of bank and post offices over the 30 or so years of its existence. In 1982-83, the RUC estimated that the IRA stole roughly £700,000 in such raids . It is strongly suspected to have carried out the Northern Bank Robbery of December 2004, although this is unproven.
In the 1980s, IRA members are suspected to have kidnapped the racehorse Shergar and attempted to ransom it. It has also been involved in the kidnapping and ransom of businessmen Gael Weston, Ben Dunne and Don Tidey in the early 1980s. Activities such as these were linked to the IRA's fund-raising. Gardai estimate that the PIRA got up to £1.5 million from these activities .
The PIRA was (and according to the Irish Minister of Justice, Michael McDowell, still is) involved in organised crime on both sides of the Irish border. These activities include smuggling, sale of contraband cigarettes, extortion and money laundering.
Recently, there have been many allegations of in-discipline and intimidation of the Catholic community against the IRA. The most high profile of these cases is the Robert McCartney killing in late 2004. In February 2005, the IRA was denounced by relatives of Robert McCartney, who was murdered in a brawl in a public house in Belfast by IRA members, who subsequently destroyed the evidence at the scene and intimidated the witnesses. The resulting controversy saw US Political backing for Sinn Féin was badly damaged. Gerry Adams advised republicans to give evidence against those IRA members who were involved, a first for the republican leader. Three IRA members were expelled from the organisation following the murder and an offer was made by the organisation to shoot those responsible for the killing. The family of Mr. McCartney allege that, notwithstanding public calls for information by Sinn Féin leaders, no one has come forward with information that would allow a prosecution to go further. They also allege that republican intimidation of witnesses has continued and that even the friend of Mr. McCartney who was stabbed with him is too afraid to make a police statement.
References
- (Taylor p72)
- (Taylor p88)
- (O'Brien p135)
- (O'Brien p19)
- (Moloney p116)
- (Mallie Bishop p215)
- (Mallie, Bishop p337)
- (Mallie, Bishop p420)
- (Taylor p139)
- (Taylor p156)
- English page 172
- English page 173
- (Mallie, Bishop, page 390)
- Liam Clarke, IRA accused of 'ethnic cleansing', The Sunday Times, 29 March 1998.
- Jonathan Bardon, A History of Ulster (Blackstaff, 2001), p. 807.
- (Taylor p337)
- Mallie, Bishop, page 250
- Mallie, Bishop, page 253
- Mallie, Bishop, page 255
- Mallie, Bishop, page 257
- Retrieved from CAIN 1974 chronology:
- 05 October 1974 Ann Hamilton (19) nfNIB
- 05 October 1974 Caroline Slater (18) nfNIB
- 05 October 1974 William Forsyth (18) nfNIB
- 05 October 1974 John Hunter (17) nfNIB
- 05 October 1974 Paul Craig (22) nfNIB
- Retrieved from CAIN 1974 chronology:
- 07 November 1974 Richard Dunne (42) nfNIB
- 07 November 1974 Alan Horsley (20) nfNIB
- English, page 169
- Here an excerpt from the Newsletter paper remembering the IRA assault:
- Tribute Paid To Soldiers Killed In IRA Attack
- The attack is seen as a partial failure by authors like Ed Moloney, who alleges that the quick reaction of the British troops led to suspicion about a mole infiltrating the top levels of the organisation. However, other sources claim that this and other assaults on border security posts forced the UK Government to close this checkpoint and other facilities:
- Sutton, Malcom: Bear in mind these dead...An Index of Deaths from the Conflict in Ireland. Belfast: Beyond the Pale Publications.(main page). See the following link for the fatalities between 1986 and 1990. Produce tabulation by introducing Status and Year:
- (Moloney p338)
- O'Brien, page 158. 'Sickening' is derived from a speech Martin McGuinness made in 1988, when he said, "I believe the...Irish Republican Army has got the capability, the ways and the means of bringing about the defeat of the British forces, both militarily and politically in the Six Counties. But in saying that I am not saying that the IRA have the ability to drive every last British soldier out of Belfast, Derry...or anywhere else. But they have the ability to sicken the British forces of occupation", cited in O'Brien, p152
- (O'Brien page 157)
- (Taylor p 314)
- (Moloney p319)
- (Moloney page330)
- (O'Brien p164)
- In 1995, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that there has been a violation of Article 2 of the Convention but rejected claims for compensation as the three had been engaged in terrorism under domestic UK laws:
- (Geraghty, p320)
- Recently released (3 May 2006) British Government documents show that overlapping membership between British Army units like the Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR) and loyalist paramilitary groups was a wider problem than a "few bad apples" as was often claimed. The documents include a report titled "Subversion in the UDR" which details the problem. In 1973; an estimated 5-15% of UDR soldiers were directly linked to loyalist paramilitary groups, it was believed that the "best single source of weapons, and the only significant source of modern weapons, for Protestant extremist groups was the UDR", it was feared UDR troops were loyal to "Ulster" alone rather than to "Her Majesty's Government", the British Government knew that UDR weapons were being used in the assassination and attempted assassination of Roman Catholic civilians by loyalist paramilitaries. May 2, 2006 edition of the Irish News available here.
- (O'Brien p231)
- In the latter case (1995 period), it should be note that the PIRA 1994's cease-fire was still in place:
- English page 246
- (Moloney p321)
- (Moloney p321, O'Brien p 314)
- (Coogan p437)
- (Moloney p415)
- (Lost Lives p1536)
- (Lost Lives p1531)
- (Geraghty p235)
- O'Brien page 157
- O'Brien, page 203 & Sutton index. Once again, see the following link for the 1990 fatalities and produce tabulation by introducing Status and Year: One of the bombings carried out that year shattered and flooded the engine room of an RFA ship, the Fort Victoria, recently built in Harland and Wolff's shipyards, and at anchor in Belfast harbour at the time. This action delayed her commissioning for almost three years. See this issue of An Phoblacht: For another reference about the bombing:
- O'Brien page 168
- The list included:
- Three permanent checkpoints at Boa Island, Derryard (see Northern news in this link) and Cloghogue (Harnden, p. 263-264).
- (Harnden, p.361,p.398)
- See this two-pages British Commons account about the NI violence for the period of 1989-90: For some details on the helicopter crash-landing, go to this archive page of the New York Times:
- See these transcripts of the Commons debate over the security situation in NI and the Cullaville incident (Column 196 in the first link and Column 184 in the second one):
- http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm199293/cmhansrd/1993-06-08/Debate-5.html
- http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm199293/cmhansrd/1993-06-08/Debate-4.html
- See CAIN chronology online:
- In the latter case, while the British Government remained adamant during the 1994-95 cease-fire period on its demand of the PIRA decommissioning of weapons before the beginning of any meetings, just three weeks after the London Docklands Bombing (February 1996), British First Minister John Major and his Irish counterpart, John Bruton, made the announcement of multi-party talks for June 10, with the only precondition of the PIRA restoring the cease-fire, therefore dropping the idea of a previous disarmament. The Army Council and Sinn Féin choose to await until the next year UK elections to accept the offer. (Taylor, pp. 406-407)
- (Moloney p459)
- (Moloney p472)
- Lost Lives (2004. Ed's David McKitrick, Seamus Kelters, Brian Feeney, Chris Thornton, David McVea)
- (O'Brien p135)
- (Lost Lives p1531)
- (cited in O'Brien, Long War p26)
- (O'Brien p160)
- (Lost Lives, p 1536)
- (Mallie, Bishop p12)
- (O'Brien p121)
- (O'Brien p121)
- (O'Brien p121)
Sources
- Martin Dillon, 25 Years of Terror - the IRA's War against the British
- Richard English, Armed Struggle - the History of the IRA
- Peter Taylor, Provos - the IRA and Sinn Féin
- Ed Moloney, The Secret History of the IRA
- Eamonn Mallie and Patrick Bishop, The Provisional IRA
- Toby Harnden, Bandit Country -The IRA and South Armagh
- Brendan O'Brien, The Long War - The IRA and Sinn Féin
- Tim Pat Coogan, The Troubles
- Tony Geraghty, The Irish War
- David McKitrick, Seamus Kelters, Brian Feeney, Chris Thornton, David McVea, Lost Lives.