Abstract
This article explores the developments within the Provisional Republican Movement (IRA and Sinn Fein), its politicization in the 1980s, and the Sinn Fein strategy of recent years. It discusses the Provisionals’ ending of the use of political violence and the movement’s drift or determined policy towards entering the political mainstream, the acceptance of democratic norms. The sustained focus of my article is consideration of the revision of core Provisional principles. It analyses the reasons for this revisionism and it considers the reaction to and consequences of this revisionism.
Highlights
The origins of Irish republicanism reside in the United Irishman Rising of 1798 which aimed to create a democratic society which would unite Irishmen of all creeds
When the Provisionals were formed, all effort was put behind the military struggle, with Sinn Fein being relegated to the poor relation within the republican family
After four years of stalling powersharing government resumed in Northern Ireland on May 8, 2007 after an historic agreement between Gerry Adams and Ian Paisley
Summary
The origins of Irish republicanism reside in the United Irishman Rising of 1798 which aimed to create a democratic society which would unite Irishmen of all creeds. These changes did not represent a replacement of militarism by political action There were those who opposed what they considered to be an alien Marxist ideology which was absorbing Irish republicanism. Abstentionism (Note 4) had failed to get the necessary two thirds vote, at the conference, and was not passed, the issue had brought Thomas Maguire, the sole surviving member of the Second Dail Eireann of 1921, to condemn the dropping of the abstentionist policy by the 1969 IRA Convention and declare it ‘illegal’ He declared the Provisional Army Council as the ‘lawful executive’ and the ‘legitimate successors’ to the Second Dail, the First Dail, the men of 1916. For they were to be members of a movement which would once again exorcise politics from its midst
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