Republican Army Research Articles

“I thank God that I have been in the very big push for the motherland”: The Role of Violence and Society in the Correspondence of IRA Commander Liam Lynch

This article is a thematic examination of the Irish Republican Army’s (IRA) relationship with both violence and social issues in the War of Independence (1919-1921) and Civil War (1922-1923) through an interrogation of the writings of Irish republican leader Liam Lynch (1893-1923), specifically, looking at Lynch’s understanding of the role of violence, social issues, and his crucial role in Civil War. Lynch went from a position of local leadership in the Cork and then Munster IRA in the War of Independence to one of national leadership by going on to become Chief of Staff of the whole IRA in the Civil War, before dying in combat in April 1923. Lynch was a highly religious and shy man but who also displayed a much remarked devotion to the republican cause, together with a natural gift for organisation. In contrast to his quiet and sensitive persona though, throughout his revolutionary career Lynch consistently called for an escalation of violent measures and often envisaged both military and social solutions which were never fully thought out and if implemented could well have done more harm than good. Issues around the dynamics of violence have recently been explored by Gemma Clark and Brian Hughes, while Gavin Foster has added further layers to our understanding of class conflict in the civil war but this article is the first systematic analysis of these issues from the perspective of the leading IRA figure during the latter stages of Ireland’s revolution. The article argues that while Lynch’s organisational talents and devotion are unquestionable, he lacked the leadership skills necessary in the civil war and often envisaged impractical solutions based on what was often his still local or regional rather than national viewpoint, or inability to consider the ramifi cations of his ideas. The article contends that an exploration of Lynch’s perspectives reveals much about revolutionary activism and of the ar of Independence and Civil war era IRA. The article hopes to further the understanding of the motivations of activists during the revolutionary period, the ramifi cations of the implementation of political violence together with the interplay and tensions within the republican movement between social issues and the national question.

Irish Republicanism, the Threat of Political Violence and the National/Border Security Nexus in Australia

As the conflict in Northern Ireland heightened in the early 1970s, the Australian authorities became worried that political violence might spread amongst the Irish communities in Australia. Coming at a time when there was a concern about political extremism and violence linked to overseas conflicts, such as the Palestinian struggle in the Middle East and the anti-communist opposition to Yugoslavia, the Australian government and security services were also anxious about militant Irish Republicanism transgressing borders, particularly representatives of the Irish Republican Army entering the country. Unlike nearly all migrants and visitors from Europe and the Middle East, people coming from Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland could enter Australia without visa, and few criminal or security checks were conducted upon them. This article examines the ways in which the Australian authorities attempted to prevent militant Irish Republicans coming during the 1970s and how the favoured status of British (including Northern Irish) and Irish citizens was seen as an impediment to Australia's national security in the era of international terrorism.

A Bridge too Far?


 
 
 
 The aim of my article is to present validity of psychological approaches for studies on Roman Republican military. Application of military psychology to ancient warfare seems simply impossible without embedding psychological data in cultural context, that emphasize soldiers’ needs and motivations. The Roman collectivist way of perceiving social relations in addition to methods of gaining political support resulted in the awareness that effective command depends not only on training and proper organization, but also on strengthening soldiers’ morale through emotional interaction. The first Polish historian who drew attention to such a way of building internal unit cohesion in the Roman Republican army was Adam Ziółkowski.
 
 
 

Decapitation and paramilitary feuds in Northern Ireland, 1969-1992

ABSTRACT This article seeks to draw together two major themes in studies of political violence, namely, decapitation and factionalism, using examples from the Irish republican paramilitary groups that emerged during the period of conflict in Northern Ireland commonly known as the Troubles. I seek to complement the extensive literature across these areas by offering analysis of the behaviour of Irish republican paramilitary groups during internecine feuds that took place between the 1969 split in the Irish Republican Army and the 1992 Provisional Irish Republican Army action against the Irish People’s Liberation Organisation. By comparing three inter-group feuds, this study will demonstrate the prevalence of decapitation attacks in the aftermath of factional splits and the serious consequences that they have for groups which suffer a decapitation attack.

Newspaper discourse: Constructing representations of terrorist groups (IRA and ISIS)

Terrorism is a phenomenon which is constantly transforming and evolving, resulting in a plethora of research aiming to better understand it. More recently, as media has become globalised, there has been a surge of research into the relationship between terrorism and the media. However, there is a lack of studies comparing media representations of terrorist groups from two separate eras and ‘waves of terrorism’ (Rapoport, 2013). This research aims to fill this gap by examining the discourse used in newspapers to construct representations of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). This research used a qualitative methodology, discourse analysis to look at words and their meaning. Data was collected, for the analysis from both The Guardian and the Daily Mail newspapers. The articles were analysed using NVIVO. Differences were identified in the discourse used to represent terrorist groups in 2017 from those used in 1975. In 2017, newspapers were more likely to label the perpetrators as ‘sick’ and the attack as a ‘terrorist’ attack, discussing the victim’s injuries using more violent terminology. While 1975 newspapers were more likely to comment on political reasoning and ideology. An increased presence of sensationalisation, in the 2017 newspapers, seems to suggest a possible shift towards sensationalising terrorist events. More research is now needed on a larger scale, to consider if these changes in discourse occur more widely, and to examine what impact they have on public perception. 

The American Catholic Bishops and the Northern Ireland “Troubles”

Complex and interworking factors prevented American Catholic bishops from playing a greater role in mediating the Northern Ireland “Troubles.” American Catholic bishops held soft power influence in USA, British, and Irish politics, challenging previous historiographical claims that religion and religious institutions played little role in the conflict. Whereas the American Catholic bishops had actively engaged with fundraising during the early days of the conflict, after increased Irish Republican Army (IRA) violence sparked by the event known as Bloody Sunday, their public efforts stopped abruptly in 1972. This stoppage occurred for a number of factors, including disassociating Irish American and American Catholicism from the trope of the violent “bad Paddy” and, most importantly, the bishops' desire to be directed by the Irish bishops on where their influence could be most useful. English and Welsh Catholic bishops regularly commented on the conflict, damaging the public and private influence of the Irish Catholic bishops. By stepping away from public pronouncements, the American Catholic bishops allowed their Irish counterparts to take the lead in conflict mediation. Therefore, despite numerous attempts at mediation from religious actors in Britain and Ireland, American Catholic bishops' lack of action meant USA efforts during the peace process were almost entirely secular.

„Špansko pismo“ iz 1984. u dnevničkim beleškama Koče Popovića

From October 20 to 27, 1984, an assembly of the Association of Yugoslav Volunteers of the Spanish Republican Army was held in Sarajevo from which an open letter was sent to the Central Committee of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia. This paper (re)constructs a chronology of events, following the thoughts and activities of Konstantin Koča Popović, which he wrote in his diary (from August 1984 to February 1985) during the preparations for the Sarajevo meeting, as well as his reactions to the talks held by representatives of the CC LCY and members of the Board of the Association. Today, the diary notes of Koča Popović are kept in the Family Fund – Legacy of Koča Popović and Lepa Perović in the Historical Archive of Belgrade.

Bloody Sunday at Fifty

Bloody Sunday at Fifty Sarah Jaffe (bio) Click for larger view View full resolution On January 30, 2022, marchers pass a mural of the victims of Bloody Sunday. (Charles McQuillan/Getty Images) [End Page 136] The first thing you notice about Derry, a city of 110,000 or so in the north of Ireland close to the much-contested border of partition, is that it’s beautiful. It’s hilly and green and the River Foyle winds through it and the ancient walls that enclose the old city are gorgeous—if you forget for a moment that they were built to keep the Irish out of the colonial settlement. Like so many other places that have become household names because of the violence inflicted on their people, the loveliness of this particular part of Ireland often gets forgotten. Derry was beautiful on Sunday, January 30, as a cold drizzle fell on the thousands of marchers winding their way from the neighborhood of Creggan down the hill to the Bogside to commemorate the 1972 killings of fourteen unarmed people by British soldiers. The families of the dead and their neighbors, friends, and allies march every year; this, the fiftieth anniversary, was even more painfully significant, more of an aching reminder that, as the famous Free Derry wall was repainted this winter to say, “There is no British justice.” What is known as Bloody Sunday was an inflection point in the conflict euphemistically known as the Troubles, itself a point on the centuries-long curve of the Irish freedom struggle. Between the building of the stone walls and the peace walls, between colonization and partition and the Good Friday agreement, the Irish fought by various means to reclaim their land. In the 1960s, a civil rights movement inspired by the Black freedom movement in the United States grew in the North to demand representation and rights for the Catholic Irish, who were still closed out of politics and decent jobs by various means legal and extralegal. The British military’s crackdown only made the various factions of the Irish rebellion more determined, and the violence left them with so much grief—grief aggravated by the continued attempts to blame them for their own brutalization. That Sunday in 1972, nearly 15,000 people defied a ban on marches to call for the release of hundreds of activists and militants who were being held without trial. Anger over their internment in military camps (complete [End Page 137] with violent interrogations and what we’d now very clearly call torture) had swelled the ranks of the protesters as well as the armed militants of the Irish Republican Army—the two organizations with that name, which had recently split into the Provisional IRA and the Official IRA. It also kicked off a massive civil resistance campaign that included rent and bill strikes, allowing people who might not come out to the streets and certainly would not pick up guns to withdraw their consent from the partitioned government. In response, the Parachute Regiment of the British Army was sent in with an armored vehicle and opened fire. And so this year too marchers made their way down the hill, accompanied by Republican marching bands and bearing flags from local and national organizations, including dissident nationalist groups, the socialists of People Before Profit, pro-choice marchers (abortion is still not readily available in the North), and the Palestine solidarity campaign. When they reached the Free Derry corner, the marching bands halted, and “We Shall Overcome,” borrowed, like other tactics, from Black American activists, poured through the loudspeaker. The conversations and even laughter occasionally heard on the march quieted, and Bernadette McAliskey, known at the time of Bloody Sunday as Bernadette Devlin MP (elected to the British Parliament aged just twenty-one), took the microphone. McAliskey spoke softly, intimately even, to the thousands huddled in the rain. She remembered calling the hospital to find out what had happened to the people who’d been shot, and recalled her realization that as a member of parliament she could make demands that would otherwise be ignored and the chilling feeling that set in as the list of the dead grew. The...

Hitler Looks West: An Irish Diplomat's Unwitting Role in the Plan to Alter Irish Neutrality

Hitler Looks West:An Irish Diplomat's Unwitting Role in the Plan to Alter Irish Neutrality Barry Whelan (bio) Keywords Leopold Kerney, Éamon de Valera, Elizabeth 'Budge' Mulcahy, Hanna Sheehy-Skeffington, Helmut Clissman, Frank Ryan, Second World War, nazism, Germany, Spanish Civil War, Irish Republican Army, IRA, Abwehr, Wilhelm Canaris, Joseph Walshe, Edmund Weesenmayer On 24 August 1942 Ireland's diplomatic representative to Spain, Leopold Kerney, met a senior figure in the SS (Schutzstaffel), Dr Edmund Veesenmayer, in a Madrid café. The German had travelled under false papers on a special mission approved by the Reich Foreign Minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop, to sound Kerney out on Ireland's willingness to alter its neutral policy in the war. Veesenmayer knew that Kerney was a close friend and long-time ally of the Taoiseach and Minister for External Affairs, Éamon de Valera, and that the Irish political leader was godfather to Kerney's youngest son. The Nazi leadership hoped that this close and direct connection to the Taoiseach could be decisive in convincing de Valera to alter Irish neutrality by aligning with Germany in return for a united Ireland. The role of the IRA in this plan as well as Irish assistance to Germany in its invasion of mainland Britain – scheduled for 1943 following victory on the eastern front – were all discussed at this meeting. The story of how this extraordinary encounter came about and the role played by a Sligo woman in shaping Hitler's wartime strategy in the West begins in Paris in 1934. Budge and Helmut Elizabeth 'Budge' Mulcahy was born on 5 August 1913 and grew up in her family home in Oakfield County Sligo. She attended University College Galway (UCG) studying languages before travelling to France to study in the Sorbonne and work as an au pair in Paris. It was there in 1934 that she met Leopold Kerney, then Commercial Secretary in the Irish legation. She worked as an au pair for the Kerney family. During her times minding the young children she taught them Irish, with mixed results: 'Budge Mulcahy has become a great friend of ours,' Kerney wrote to Hanna Sheehy Skeffington, 'and she has just come to live with us; she will, I hope, be as happy "au pair" with [End Page 62] us as anywhere else, and we are delighted to have her company. Raymonde, Micheline and myself are really the only students in her Irish "class". Budge is a tip-top teacher, and if we don't make progress the fault will not be hers.'1 The friendship continued over the years when the Kerney family travelled every summer to Sligo whilst on vacation to see Budge. Politically the Kerney and Mulcahy families were of a similar outlook. Both were republicans who had sided against the Treaty. As one of a number of republican diplomats reinstated into the service by de Valera, Kerney was happy to see the dismantling of the Treaty by constitutional means. He and Budge shared a similar outlook on this issue. It was also in the Mulcahy household that Kerney first met Frank Ryan, a former IRA fighter and leading left-wing political activist. Budge's friendship with Ryan would be another important factor in wartime efforts made by German Military Intelligence (Abwehr) to approach Kerney. The last point of interest in relation to Budge before the war was her acquaintance with Helmut Clissmann. He came to Ireland in 1934 to work in Trinity College Dublin (TCD) as part of a German student exchange programme (Deutsche Akademische Austauschdienst).2 In 1937 Kerney first met Helmut whilst visiting Budge in Sligo. Within a year Helmut and Budge were married. Now, on holiday trips to see Budge, Kerney was meeting both individuals, but what he did not know was Helmut's ties to militant republicans. Irish Army Intelligence (G2), Garda Crime and Security Branch (C3) and the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) all had pre-war files recording Helmut's meetings with active members of the IRA. Using the cover of his academic work, Helmut met men like Tom Barry at republican seminars, clubs, and commemorative events like the annual Wolfe Tone parade to Bodenstown Graveyard.3 British Security Service...

Fish swimming in denial: non-state armed groups, “propaganda wars”, and “performing” peace processes

ABSTRACT Using the case study of statements of denial issued by the Irish Republican Army (IRA) over an extended 35-year period, this article critically examines how non-state armed groups (NSAGs) use statements of denial when engaging with various audiences across time and space. It posits that these statements are an integral part of how NSAGs communicate with different audiences during their armed campaigns, and subsequently during the process of transitioning out of political violence. At the same time that these statements feed into the macro-level “propaganda war” between the NSAG and the state, this article maintains that they also reflect the complex intimate relationship between NSAGs and the communities from which they emerge. Arguing that statements of denial help NSAGs to favourably frame how the conduct of its campaign, the character of its members and its internal cohesion are understood by proximate and distant audiences, the article tracks the qualitative changes to IRA statements that would eventually become a key component in the performance of the peace process by the late 1990s.

“Alpine Vendée”. Transformation of the Popular Protest in Savoy, 1793

The author examines the course, forms and causes of the defeat of the anti-republican uprisings in the lands of the former Duchy of Savoy, annexed to France during the Revolution of the eighteenth century. The aim of the study is to analyse the transformation of popular protest in Savoy over the course of 1793. The events of January–October 1793 are considered in this article in the light of the concept of the “popular counter-revolution”. The annexation of the Savoy to France was strongly supported by its population, but immediately after the introduction of the civil system of the clergy and the circulation of banknotes, the social situation in the region came to a head. The decree of the French National Convention on mass conscription into the republican army also contributed to the social upheaval. The protest had its own characteristics and evolved from a traditional form of rebellion to a local civil war, in which a simple political programme of the rebels also emerged. However, the peasants were unprepared to participate in hostilities, had no military experience, and the forces and resources of the Sardinian army were limited. Realising that the plan to return Savoy under the rule of the king by the end of September 1793 was unworkable, the troops had to return to Piedmont. The restoration of the Republican rule over the rebellious department marked the beginning of a policy of revolutionary terror in Savoy.

The Moral Parameters of Violence: The Case of the Provisional IRA

AbstractOver three decades, the Provisional Irish Republican Army waged a campaign of violence that claimed the lives of some two thousand people. This article explores the moral framework by which the IRA sought to legitimate its campaign—how it was derived and how it functioned. On the one hand, the IRA relied on a legalist set of political principles, grounded in a particular reading of Irish history. An interlinked, yet discrete strand of legitimation stressed the iniquities of the Northern Irish state as experienced by Catholic nationalists, especially in the period 1968–1972. These parallel threads were interwoven to build a powerful argument that justified a resort to what the IRA termed its “armed struggle.” Yet the IRA recognized that the parameters for war were set not simply by reference to ideology but also by a reading of what might be acceptable to those identified as “the people” or “the community.” Violence was subject to an undeclared process of negotiation with multiple audiences, which served to constitute the boundaries of the permissible. Often, these red lines were revealed only at the point of transgression, but they were no less important for being intangible. An examination of the moral parameters for IRA violence provides a new perspective on the group, helping to explain IRA resilience but also its ultimate weakness and decline.

Countersurveillance, Photography and Revolution in the Irish War of Independence

This article examines a photographic album compiled by an Irish Republican Army unit during the Irish War of Independence, a guerrilla struggle fought in Ireland from 1919 to 1921 between the Irish Republican Army and the British Army, along with the quasi-military Royal Irish Constabulary. The employment of techniques and surveillance methods similar to those of the British state and police forces in Ireland enabled the group’s intelligence squad to track the movements of their enemies. Those depicted were monitored and sometimes targeted for elimination, thus turning this photographic evidence against the state and its representatives. The article is based on witness statements, memoirs and parliamentary proceedings, thus revealing the importance of photography in the intelligence war against the British Empire. Studio portraits originally taken for familial or occupational uses, newspaper cuttings reflecting society events and covertly taken snapshots were triangulated with handwritten notes detailing the daily routines of those pictured. The album’s multiplicity of formats constitutes a type of conflict photography that differs from the usual depictions of ruins and raids that dominated imagery of the Irish revolutionary period.

Los polacos en la Guerra Civil española (1936-1939): durante el conflicto y después

Polish citizens and people of Polish descent played a considerably significant role in the Spanish Civil War. They fought on both sides of the conflict, however, most of them in the Republican Army (4,500-5,000 among ca. 35,000 soldiers of the International Brigades). Approximately 75% of them comprised of immigrants, mainly from France, who were predominantly either activists or supporters of the French Communist Party. Only 600-800, or according to some sources 1200 individuals, the majority of whom were communists (80% or more), were believed to come directly from Poland. The highest number of volunteers fought within the ranks of 13th Brigade “Jarosław Dąbrowski”, which took part in the major key operations and suffered huge losses amounting to 30-40%. A few dozens of Poles fought in the Gen. F. Franco’s National Army. Most of them were professional soldiers of the Spanish Foreign Legion, who had joined it before the war broke out, so their participation in the war was not dictated by ideological reasons. The author adopts synthesizing approach to portray the Polish soldiers fighting for each side of the conflict, including their background and involvement in the most important military operations. The article pays an attention to the fates of Polish veterans of the International Brigades referred to as “Dąbrowszczacy” during the World War II and, following this, an attempt to demonstrate the specific role and changes “Dąbrowszczacy” were undergoing within the political system of the Polish People’s Republic (PRL).

The Challenges of Identifying Juvenile Soldiers in the Spanish Civil War

AbstractEvery conflict referred to as a war results in the horror of loss and death. This is true of any war, and the Spanish Civil War is a good example. Many people disappeared and were never found again, mainly because nobody ever looked for them. There were several counteroffensives on the eastern war front in Spain's Levante region during 1938, which, although ending in Pyrrhic victories for the Republican Army, were forgotten for years, as were the bodies of the soldiers abandoned to the elements on the battlefields. In 2014, this research project was developed to locate, exhume, and identify four graves containing the bodies of Republican soldiers found at the site of Peña Salada, Spain. The graves were found to contain five individuals, including some considered to be juvenile soldiers, aged between 14 and 20. They displayed many signs of violence, and it was possible to infer differences in injuries from bladed weapons and firearms. There was also evidence of the pillaging and desecration of the burial site. The genetic profiles of the five individuals were obtained in order to create a DNA database, which would make it possible to compare their profiles with those of potential family members who still live with the uncertainty of not knowing the whereabouts of their loved ones. This study offers the first scientific evidence of the participation of juvenile soldiers on the Levante Front, within the context of the Spanish Civil War.

Passionate Belief: Ideology, Emotion and Terrorist Action

Abstract Ideologies sit at the intersection of thought and emotion, capable of inspiring some people to greatness and driving others to commit horrendous acts of violence. Providing more than just systematic arguments, ideologies encourage shared political identities, help explain social circumstance, and frame what actions need to be taken in response. Ideologies often carry a negative connotation, particularly in relation to acts labelled as terrorism. Yet ideologies encourage people to imagine a future that is better than the present. In this sense, they are narratives of hope that can help to ameliorate the pain of everyday life. This essay draws on interviews and ethnographic fieldwork conducted with former members of the Provisional Irish Republican Army to examine the interplay between hope, ideology and acts of political violence. In doing so, it contributes to a growing body of scholarship that seeks to integrate emotions into the analyses of how individuals come to embrace violence as a political tactic.

Political violence and re-victimization inThe Ferryman

AbstractJez Butterworth’s The Ferryman (2017) is a play about the Carney family living in 1980s Ireland during the period of insurgency of the Irish Republican Army (IRA – also known as the Provisional IRA) and its efforts to end British rule in Northern Ireland, a period known as “the Troubles”. This paper focuses on Jez Butterworth, one of the most distinctive voices of the contemporary British theatre scene and a typical representative of the 1990s cultural trend, and his tragedyThe Ferryman, which portrays the struggle and conflicts between Catholic nationalists and Protestant loyalists in Northern Ireland in the last decades of the 20th century. The second major point of the study is that the power of the Irish Republican Party has a heavy impact on the play. The paper also discovers how Sean Carney and other members of his family both embody and apply the story of Eugene Simons and other members of “the Disappeared”. Like other young men, Seamus Carney became a victim during the Troubles and the campaign of political violence. The discovery of his body symbolizes how political violence created the Disappeared and shows that re-victimization and retraumatisation continue in the aftermath of the Troubles.

THE IRISH REPUBLICAN ARMYʼS «GREEN BOOK»: POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC GOALS OF THE ORGANIZATION

THE IRISH REPUBLICAN ARMYʼS «GREEN BOOK»: POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC GOALS OF THE ORGANIZATION

The Dead of the Irish Revolution by O'Halpin (review)

16 Mary O’Rourke, ‘Remembering An Bráthair Ó Súilleabháin’, pp.189–193. Mary O’Rourke is a former TD for Longford-Westmeath and has served as Minister for Education, Minister for Health and Minister for Public Enterprise. She lives in Athlone and is a frequent media contributor. 17 Mary (Burke) McQuinn, ‘Entering first science, 1968’, pp.194–197. Mary (Burke) McQuinn, a retired teacher, lives in Tullow, Co. Carlow, with her husband, Christopher, also a Maynooth science graduate. 18 Mary Cullen talks to Vincent Comerford, ‘The 1960s see the first female lecturers’, pp. 198202 . Vincent Comerford is a Maynooth graduate and former Professor of Modern History. Dr Kevin McNamara later became Bishop of Kerry (1976–1984) and Archbishop of Dublin (1984–1987). Fr Tom Fee later used the Irish form of his name, Tomás Ó Fiaich. 19 Tom Collins, ‘The old order passeth away: Remembering Maynooth 1972–79’, p.305. 20 Evelyn Conlon, ‘Remembering what I’ve forgotten (1976)’, pp.271–274. Evelyn Conlon, a member of Aosdána, is a novelist, short story writer and essayist. 21 Lawrence Taylor, ‘An anthropologist’s memory of Maynooth’, pp.401–404. Lawrence Taylor continues to write, in a variety of genres, and divides his time between Tubac, Arizona (near the Mexican border) and Maynooth. 22 Denis Bergin, ‘Remembering Maynooth, an exercise in indulgence, acknowledgement, balance and preservation’, pp.23–31. Denis Bergin is a writer and editor. He lives in West Offaly and the eastern Algarve. 23 Thomas O’Connor, ‘From guff to chub, a seventies rite of passage’, pp.318–321. Thomas O’Connor is a Professor of History at Maynooth. 24 Tom Collins, ‘The old order passeth away: Remembering Maynooth 1972–79’, pp.301–306. Tom Collins is the former Head of Education at Ma ynooth University (2006–11), where he served as interim President from 2010–11. In recent years he has been involved in establishing the Technological Higher Education Association. Eunan O’Halpin and Daithí Ó Corráin, The Dead of the Irish Revolution (London: Yale University Press, 2020), xvii+705 pages. This book does for the revolution that culminated in the creation of the Irish Free State some hundred years ago what an earlier book by David McKittrick did for the more recent ‘troubles’ in Northern Ireland, detailing those killed in the conflict and the best information on how the deaths occurred. It draws on published work, including memoirs, contemporary newspaper reports and accounts of participants lodged in the Bureau of Military History or found in applications to government for pensions or compensation. The entries detail payments made from public funds to the families of those killed. This is interesting but, perhaps, not all that meaningful without a full account of the basis upon which such payments were made by the British and Irish governments. The wilderness of single instances is analysed in a masterly introduction by Trinity’sProfessorEunanO’Halpinwho,despitehisstrongfamilyconnections with the ‘freedom fighters’of the Irish Volunteers and Irish Republican Army (IRA) of that era, has maintained an objective professionalism that has long Studies • volume 110 • number 437 110 Spring 2021: Book Reviews set his work apart from the polemical writings of some historians. This informs the treatment of individual deaths as well as his overall view. Typically, the account of the ‘Bloody Sunday’ shooting at Croke Park in November 1920 identifies it as ‘a bungled search and arrest operation by Crown forces rather than a calculated reprisal for the earlier killings of officers as is often asserted’. Professor O’Halpin does not shrink from admitting flaws in accounts given by members of his own family of events in which they were involved, nor from doubting the merits of some of their actions. ‘In seeking the truth’, he remarks somewhat sorrowfully, ‘be careful what you wish for’. Overall, the number of deaths in the Irish Revolution was not enormous – one tenth of the Irish who died in the Great War. The rebel fatalities of the 1916 rebellion – eighty-four (including those executed afterwards) – were much fewer than the soldiers and police opposing it or civilians caught in cross-fire and suchlike. What was most significant for the future were not the deaths themselves but...

Sectarianism and the Provisional Irish Republican Army

ABSTRACT This article addresses the scholarly debate over sectarianism and the Provisional Irish Republican Army’s (PIRA) campaign during the Northern Ireland Troubles. It argues that although there is much merit in the contributions made in this discourse, unfortunately, for, the most part, there is a lack of engagement with the deeper meaning of sectarianism. Consequently, it seeks to enhance the understanding of sectarianism within this arena before considering the nature of the PIRA campaign. By conducting a thorough analysis of the killings conducted by this organisation in the early years of the conflict it is ultimately concluded that, at the very least, PIRA tolerated, and likely sanctioned, sectarian violence from within its ranks.