Official IRA

Encyclopedia : O : OF : OFF : Official IRA

The term Official Irish Republican Army or Official IRA refers to one of the two organisations - the other being the Provisional Irish Republican Army - that emerged from the split in the then Irish Republican Army in 1969-70. Both organisations continued to refer to themselves as the Irish Republican Army and rejected the political legitimacy of the other. The Official IRA had an essentially Marxist approach. Initially engaged in military action against the British Army, it declared an end to offensive action in 1972 but since then engaged in feuds with both the Provisional IRA and the Irish National Liberation Army, a radical splinter group formed in 1974. In later years it was accused of involvement in organised crime, and while it has not carried out any military actions for many years it appears that it remains in existence.

The Official IRA was associated with Official Sinn Féin, later renamed Sinn Féin the Workers Party and subsequently The Workers Party, and now known as The Workers Party of Ireland.

Contents

1 The split in the Republican movement, 1969 - 1970
2 Impact of the Split
3 The Official IRA since 1972
4 Persons killed by the Official IRA
5 Further Information/Sources
6 See also

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, by contrast, were known as "pinnies" (perjoratively "pinheads"} because they produced pinned-on lilies. The term Stickies stuck, though pinnies (and pinheads) disappeared, in favour of the nickname "provos".

Impact of the Split

When the Provisionals (often called the "Provos") split from the Official IRA, they took away a number of experienced volunteers, depriving the OIRA of some of its operational expertise, especially in Belfast. Initially there was much confusion among republicans on the ground, Martin McGuinness for example, joined the Official IRA in 1970, unaware that there had been a split and only later joined the Provisionals. The Provisionals launched an armed campaign against the British presence in Northern Ireland. Despite the reluctance of Cathal Goulding and the OIRA leadership, their volunteers on the ground were inevitably drawn into the violence. The Official IRA's first major confrontation with the British Army came in July 1970, when over 3000 British soldiers raided the Lower Falls area for arms, leading to three days of gun battles. The Official IRA members on the ground blamed the Provisionals for starting the firing and then leaving them alone to face the British. The bad feeling left by this and other incidents led to a feud between the two IRAs in 1971-72, with several killings carried out by either side.

Soviet defector Vasili Mitrokhin alleged in the 1990s that the Goulding leadership sought, in 1969, and received a small amount of arms (roughly 70 rifles, along with some hand guns and explosives) from the KGB, which arrived in Ireland in 1972. This has not been independently verified however. On the whole, however, the OIRA had a more restricted level of activity than the Provisionals. Unlike the Provisionals, it did not establish de facto control over large Catholic areas of Belfast and Derry and characterised its violence as "defensive". However it retained a strong presence in certain localities, notably the Lower Falls and Markets areas of Belfast.

In December 1971, the Official IRA killed Ulster Unionist Party Senator John Barnhill at his home in Strabane. This was the first murder of a politician in Ireland since the assassination of Free State Minister for Justice Kevin O'Higgins in 1927. On Bloody Sunday (1972), an OIRA man in Derry is believed to have fired several shots with a revolver at British troops, after they had shot dead 13 nationalist demonstrators - the only republican shots fired on the day. The anger caused by Bloody Sunday in the nationalist community was such that the Official IRA announced that it would now be launching an "offensive" against the British forces.

However the OIRA declared a ceasefire later in the same year. The Official IRA ceasefire followed a number of armed actions which had been politically damaging. The organisation bombed the Aldershot headquarters of the Parachute Regiment in revenge for Bloody Sunday, but killed only seven civilians. (See 1972 Aldershot Bombing). After the unpopular killing of William Best, an 18 year old Catholic man home in Derry on leave from the Royal Irish Regiment of the British army, the OIRA declared a ceasefire. In addition, the death of several militant OIRA figures such as Joe McCann, in confrontations with British soldiers, enabled the Goulding leadership to call off their armed campaign, which they had never supported wholeheartedly.

The Official IRA since 1972

Although formally on ceasefire (except for "defensive actions") since 1972 (see above), the Official IRA continued to be involved in a bloody feud with the Provisionals. This flared up into violence on several occasions, notably in 1975, when the Provisionals tried to wipe out the remaining Official IRA presence in Belfast - 11 republicans on either side were killed in the feud.

In 1974 radical elements within the organisation who objected to the ceasefire, led by Seamus Costello, established the Irish National Liberation Army. Another feud ensued, with prominent members of both organisations including Costello, losing their lives. However, from the mid-1970s onwards the Official Republican Movement became increasingly focussed on achieving its aims through left-wing constitutional politics. From 1981 on, Sinn Féin the Workers Party, renamed the Workers Party the following year, had some success in the Republic of Ireland, but little in the North.

Much as the Provisionals were to find twenty years later, a commitment to armed struggle severely limited prospects for political growth and it seems reasonable to say that from no later than 1980 or so, the Officials had no effective military capacity. In later years, some former Officials were to rise to high levels in the Republic – while a few others, formerly associated with the movement, even went on to act as advisers to David Trimble. However there has been no statement of any sort to the effect of winding up the Official IRA or even the traditional republican order to dump arms.

Throughout the 1980s, allegations that the Official IRA remained in existence and was engaged in criminal activity appeared in the Irish press. These eventually proved a considerable political embarrassment to the Workers Party, and in 1992 the leadership proposed amendments to the party constitution which would, inter alia, effectively allow it to purge members suspected of involvement in the Official IRA. This proposal failed to obtain the required two-thirds support at the party conference that year, and as a result the leadership, including six of the party's seven members of Dáil Éireann, left to establish a new party, later named Democratic Left. The Workers Party continues to exist, but it is small and not influential in Irish politics.

In the late 1990s, some former Northern based Official IRA members launched a "re-founded" Official Republican Movement, intended to pursue the socialist republican politics which the Officials espoused in the 1970s. They are not thought to advocate the use of violence however.

Most recently, there have been allegations of criminality against former senior Official IRA figure Sean Garland, who was accused in 2005 by the United States of helping to produce and circulate counterfeit US dollars out of North Korea.

Persons killed by the Official IRA

According to the Sutton database of deaths at the University of Ulster's CAIN project[link], the OIRA was responsible for 52 killings during the Troubles. 23 of its victims were civilians, 17 were members of the British security forces, 11 were republican paramilitaries (including three of its own members) and one was a loyalist paramilitary.

Further Information/Sources