Official IRA: Encyclopedia II - Official IRA - The split in the Republican movement 1969 - 1970

Official IRA - The split in the Republican movement 1969 - 1970

The split in the Irish Republican Army, soon followed by a parallel split in Sinn Féin, was the result of the dissatisfaction of more traditional and militant republicans at the political direction taken by the leadership. Particular objects of their discontent were the IRA's unwillingness to engage in armed action against the British state or military defence of Catholic areas in Northern Ireland, and Sinn Féin's ending of its policy of abstentionism in Ireland. This issue is a key one in republican ideology, as traditional republicans regarded the Irish state as illegitimate and maintained that their loyalty was due only to the Irish Republic declared in 1916 and in their view, represented by the IRA Army Council.

During the 1960s, the republican movement under the leadership of Cathal Goulding had been heavily influenced by popular front ideology and drew close to Communist thinking. A key intermediary body was the Communist Party of Great Britain's organisation for Irish exiles, the Connolly Association. The Marxist analysis was that the conflict in Northern Ireland was a "bourgeois nationalist" one between the Protestant and Catholic working classes, fomented and continued by the ruling class. Its effect was to depress wages, since worker could be set against worker. They concluded that the military campaign was counter-productive, that it delayed the day when the workers would unite to declare a 32-county Socialist Republic. (25 years later, Provisional Sinn Féin came to much the same conclusion, although for very different reasons.)

The sense that the IRA seemed to be drifting away from its conventional republican and nationalist roots into Marxism angered the more traditional republicans. Many in the Official IRA later referred to the Provisional IRA as "the rosary brigade" because of what they saw as the Catholic and romantic nationalist ideology of the latter. Some radicals believed that the Irish government, MI5 and the CIA had conspired to cultivate the split because they were afraid of another Cuba in Europe's "back yard". The Arms Crisis provided evidence that some members of the Irish (Fianna Fáil) government had attempted to supply arms and funds to a variety of individuals in Northern Ireland. The radicals viewed Northern Protestants with unionist views as "fellow Irishmen deluded by bourgeois loyalties, who needed to be engaged in dialectical debate", although they had no short-term strategy for ending the attacks on Catholic areas by loyalist mobs. This increasing political divergence led to a formal split in the movement: the Marxists became the "Officials" and the traditionalists became the "Provisionals".

The critical moment came in August 1969 when there was a major outbreak of intercommunal violence in Belfast and Derry, with tens of fatalities and whole streets ablaze. Since the Civil Rights marches began in 1968, there had been many cases of street violence. The Royal Ulster Constabulary had been shown on television in undisciplined baton charges, and had already killed three noncombatant civilians, one a child. The Orange Order's "marching season" during the summer of 1969 had been characterised by violence on both sides. By August, the violence was out of control. In accordance with its Marxist analysis, the IRA leadership opposed armed defence of Catholic communities. In the Republic of Ireland, the Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Jack Lynch declared that he "would not stand idly by" and moved units of the Irish Defence Forces to the border, though without any intention of intervention in Northern Ireland. The Battle of the Bogside finally galvanised Harold Wilson's British government to send in the British army to "restore order".

The Officials were known as the "Stickies" because they sold stick-on lilies to commemorate the Easter Rising; the Provisionals were known as "Pinheads" because they produced pinned-on lilies. The term Stickies stuck, though Pinheads disappeared.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "The split in the Republican movement 1969 - 1970", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki