File spoon-archives/marxism-international.archive/marxism-international_1997/97-03-01.214, message 16


Date: Fri, 28 Feb 1997 15:25:35 +1000 (EST)
From: Gary MacLennan <g.maclennan-AT-qut.edu.au>
Subject: Re: M-I: Question on IRA(s).


At 03:34 PM 2/27/97 -0500, you wrote:
>Could someone please give me a brief rundown on:
>
>What is the Official IRA?
>What is the Provisional IRA?
>What is the IRA Army Council?
>What is the INLA?
>What is the IRSP?
>What is Sinn Fein?  Or are there Sinn Feins?
>
>How are these different from one another and how do they relate to one another?
>
>Much obliged,
>
>-- Matt O'D.
>
>-- Finger afn02065-AT-afn.org for PGP Public Key --
>

I'll have a go Matt, but you must bear in mind that this  is all the subject
of often murderous controversy.

The Official IRA - this is what remained of a split in the IRA in the late
60s.  After the Orange State violently attacked the Catholic enclaves in
Belfast and Derry there was a lot of questioning on the ground as to why the
IRA had been able to protect the catholic ghettos.

The IRA of  that time led by Cathal Goulding had moved towards Marxist
politics as defined by the Irish Communist Party which was under the control
of the CPGB and did not have a direct line to Moscow.  The line of the
Official Sinn Fein and the Official IRA was that there was a bourgeois
revolution needed in the North of Ireland.  By this they meant the extension
of formal democratic rights including the legalization of Sinn Fein.

What became the Provisional felt that the State should be confronted
militarily as of days of yore.  Some time after the split the Official IRA
declared a truce and has not taken up the gun since except to assassinate
primarily Trotskyists critics and other members of the Irish Left.  Not a
shot has been fired in anger at the occupying British Army for over a
quarter of a century by the Official IRA.  The Official's line is peace to
the Right and murder to the Left.  Sound familiar?

The Provisional IRA sprung out of the Catholic areas of N. Ireland.  They
have become even more and more of a Northern phenomenon in terms of their
leadership.  Their original impetus was military and they had little time
for any kind of politics other than 'drive the British out'.  This extreme
simplicity has been both a strength and a weakness.  But on balance the
weakness pole of the dialectic has ultimately proved the most crucial.

Now I should say here in passing that there were many slanders about the
Provisional that came out of the world Wide Communist Party movement.  Only
the most recent was the comparison by Hobsbawm between the Provisionals and
the Red Brigades.  The latter were largely a petty bourgeois phenomenon.
The provisional IRA have always been primarily proletarian.

One has also to figure in the nature of Official marxist theorising at this
period.  This was the time of the Historic Compromise and the so called
golden promises of Eurocommunism.

The IRA for all their faults were too honest and too simple in the best
sense of that word to participate in the long decay of Communism into Social
Democracy.

The Army Council - well the name explains itself.  It runs the IRA.  Though
one has to factor in that since the IRA moved to a cell structure there is a
strong amount of  local autonomy.  But the Council rules.  Who they are not
even the British know for all their much boasted Intelligence.

INLA & The IRSP - these were splinter organizations.  a good friend of mine,
Jack Holland from Brooklyn out of Belfast,  has written a book on them but
really I know little.  I believe that originally they were an attempt to
find a compromise between the apolitical nature of  the Provisionals and the
military quiescence of the Officials.  I also think that their inspiration
was largely Trotskyist and very much 70s. The Official IRA was I believe
particularly vicious in its attempts to wipe them out.  At pr4eesnet I do
not think either exist.  Certainly the INLA degenerated into gangsterism of
a particularly vile kind.

There used to be two Sinn Feins- Official and Provisional.  The former has
metamorphosed over the years into The Workers' Party and now something else.
Provisional Sinn Fein is still in existence.  Its relationship =with the IRA
is a matter of great debate.  There is some autonomy but I suspect that in
the last instance the Army Council will call the shots (pardon the pun).
This is a matter of great moment at present especially over the question of
whether to re declare the Truce.

Hope this is of some help

regards

Gary



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