User:Mal McKee/Irish Republican Army

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Actually a broad term encompassing both historical and factional organizations, the Irish Republican Army (IRA) includes various insurgent groups beginning when the whole of Ireland was a part of the United Kingdom, and latterly in the Republic of Ireland and in Northern Ireland. At various times and currently, different groups have claimed the title, resulting in various qualifiers such as Official IRA, Provisional IRA, Real IRA, Continuity IRA, etc.

Almost without exception, each of these groups has referred to themselves as 'Óglaigh na hÉireann' - literally "Volunteers of Ireland" - which is also the name in Irish Gaelic of the Republic of Ireland's national army, the Irish Defence Forces.

IRA groups variously have considered themselves subordinate to overt political organizations, or been autonomous movements of their own.

Origins

The original IRA in Ireland was born out of the Fenian movement of the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) and the Fenian Brotherhood, and attracted membership from both those organisations as well as others, including the Irish Volunteers, the Gaelic League, the Ancient Order of Hibernians and Sinn Féin. It came into being in 1919 and Eamon de Valera, President of Sinn Féin, assumed leadership of it. Although Sinn Féin didn't organise the Easter Rising, many of its members took part in it. When the first Dáil was convened on the 21st of January 1919, attended solely by members of Sinn Féin, the Irish Volunteers pledged its support, viewed itself as the national army of the Dáil and named itself the Irish Republican Army.

The fist Dáil espoused socialism and many members were influenced by Marxism.

First split

While the Home Rule movement had proposed devolved government, and had not initially supported the idea of secession from the United Kingdom, a minority of Volunteers felt that Ireland should become an independent sovereign state. Independence was not initially widely supported and there is evidence to suggest that many Irish people objected strongly to the notion. Thus, while a visit by George V to Dublin in 1911 was largely welcomed there, a hostile Dublin crowd spat on and jeered the arrested insurgents of the Easter Rising just five years later in 1916.

The resultant executions of the leaders of the Easter Rising for treason however, gave the separatist Republican movement impetus. Sinn Féin gained support at the expense of the Irish Parliamentary Party, though Sinn Féin's success in the 1918 elections was also partly due to the First Past the Post electoral system and the fact that the Irish Labour Party entered an electoral alliance with Sinn Féin.

When the Anglo-Irish Treaty was ratified, this polarised the IRA and the associated Republican Movement into two camps: pro-Treaty and anti-Treaty. The pro-Treaty force essentially became the legitimate army for the fledgling Irish Free State, eventually to be named in English as the Irish Defence Forces while still keeping the name Óglaigh na h-Eireann in Gaelic.

Subsequent splits

Real IRA

The Real IRA (RIRA) group formed in Northern Ireland, from PIRA members who had rejected the 1998 peace process and continued fighting the British. Both the British and Irish governments consider it separate from the Provisional IRA. According to the RAND Corporation, it was created by PIRA’s ex-quartermaster general, Michael McKevitt and his common-law wife Bernadette Sands-McKevitt. The two were public members of a political organization called the Sovereignty Committee. She was the sister of Bobby Sands, who was the first PIRA member to die as a result of a hunger strike, in 1981. They recruited a number of PIRA bomb-makers, and their operations have emphasized bombing rather than small unit combat. The RIRA claimed responsibility for the Omagh bombing of August 1998, which Sands-McKevitt condemned; she said she approved of the halt to violence of the RIRA and PIRA.

The RIRA has been designated a "foreign terrorist organization" by the U.S. government, beginning in 2001. "RIRA opposes compromise with the British government or with the Protestant unionist majority in Northern Ireland, which favors keeping Northern Ireland in the United Kingdom. Many of the attacks have coincided with the implementation of the new steps of the Good Friday Accord."