Apart from Irish nationalism, what was the Provisional IRA politically?

There is so much conflicting shit online. One article calls them "a death squad for protestants," another "socialist fighter for a united working class."

Other urls found in this thread:

exiledonline.com/wn-38-ira-vs-al-qaeda-i-was-wrong/
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloody_Sunday_(1972)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birmingham_campaign
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_Summer
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selma_to_Montgomery_marches
economicsociology.org/2015/01/25/the-collapse-of-irelands-celtic-tiger-an-incredible-story-of-corporatism-neoliberalism-and-globalisation-run-amok/
twitter.com/SFWRedditImages

We need a third option, *sniff*, a synthesis, a socialist death squad representing a united working class.

i know nothing about them really other than being a separatist group, bumping for interest
i have lots of irish ancestry

The former, the "marxist" one was the Official IRA, PIRA was just nationalist and pretty damn reactionary too. A group of radical catholics aren't going to have the greatest of views on abortion and shit.

As for the OIRA, they fell apart soon so the entire the "IRA were a socialist comradely group" is kinda BS. I mean some working class movement bombing Manchester: one of the mainstays of british socialism.

t. Britbong, btw I have no sympathy for the UVA UDF & collusion of the british government, everyone was pretty shit. What we should do now is work past sectarianism and build a better future. People Before Profit seem to be for that.

And the INLA? Did they differ much from the OIRA except being more aggressive?

The IRA consisted mostly of nationalist sects who didn't give the slightest fuck about socialism.

They are what the OIRA became. I don't know of them that well (I am far better with contemp NI politics than the troubles), but they seem to be an Red Armee Faktion style group, having killed at-least 120 persons.

The Provosional IRA had everything from Maoists to conservative Catholics in its ranks, they just all agreed on the need for Britain's occupation of the 6 counties to end. Their political wing is Sinn Fein, which are socdems types. But that's not necessarily representative of all the members of PIRA. The Provos gathered support not for its ideology so much as its military success. The Official IRA (Marxist) would not help working class Catholics when they were being burned out their homes and treated like animals in Northern Ireland so then the Provos stepped in and filled the void.

The Provos were never sectarian death squads like the loyalist paramilitaries. The PIRA killed civilians at a rate lower than both the British Security Forces and Loyalist Paramilitaries (who almost exclusively killed random Catholic civilians). Their policy was officially against killing civilians (both Protestant and Catholic) and against sectarianism but due to their military structure (highly autonomous cells) their ethos was not always followed to the letter.

If you trot out the "both sides were as bad" shit please fuck off.

t. Irish

OIRA was growing irrelevant when INLA started making serious moves. INLA's leader Seamus Costello was later killed by an Official IRA gunman in an act of desperation for relevance on OIRA's part. INLA fell apart after that, as Costello was very much the glue that held INLA together.

The Irish National Liberation Army was more diverse than the Officials/Workers Party politically. Although a lot of the core group (like Seamus Costello) were Soviet-style MLs, they had quite a few members who were Trotskyists.

These days the IRSP is a weird group, but still basically Left-Nationalist MLs.


They're sort of both. The split with the Officials was over the Provisionals disliking Marxism (from a sort of Catholic Corporatist stance), as well as a fear that the Officials were moving towards recognising the Republic of Ireland as a legitimate state.

That said, plenty of the founding members of the Provos were Socialists, in that they basically viewed guerrilla war though the lens of a national-liberation movement in the later 70s/early 80s. The USSR didn't like them at all, so they aligned more with Middle Eastern regimes (Gaddafi most famously).

The Provisional movement & Sinn Fein are very politically amorphous. They'll shift between Socialist and Nationalist rhetoric at the drop of a hat, and indeed the 'Left turn' after Gerry Adams took overall control over the Provisional movement had more to do with internal power squabbles than any sort of conversion to Marxism or Leftism.

This is a bit of a myth. The problems came primarily around the Officials storing weapons in the Republic rather than in Belfast, hence being unable to defend every neighbourhood from protestant rioters. Nevertheless, in the early days the Officials were pretty damn active, and had running street battles with both the Police and Loyalist paramilitary groups.

In areas like Newry the Officials stayed active relatively late in the war (I'll have to look up when), but I know they were still having debates over armed action right up until the early 2000s.

As long as they get rid of the Anglo problem they are our comrades

OFFICIAL IMAGE DUMP

...

Oh please the IRA were bombing up the Midlands for no goddamn reason. I mean the PIRA were still committing attacks after the ceasefire of '92 (Manchester, Bishopsgate, Docklands and Warrington bombings).

I mean this all started as a civil rights movement for the oppressed catholics AND presbyterian communities against the anglicans, but the IRA took it to a direction where they managed to alienate the Presbyterians and make the struggle a separatist one rather than one based on civil rights.

Where on earth are you getting that from?

All of those bombings resulted in more negoatiating power for the IRA with the Brits. For example the British set disarmament as a precondition for negotiations at one stage but after the Dockland bombing they retracted this demand. There would've been no Good Friday Agreement without the bombing on Britain.

A lot of ulster scots pressies were hit by the gerrymandering of Stormont, and had been on par with catholics legally in the past with the history of Ireland. Sure they were better off than catholics, but many of them were sympathetic to the catholic cause.


Bullshit, there was no need for the bombings after the ceasefire, Major was willing to talk: they were acts that cause damage, injury and loss of life at the tail end of a conflict for no substantial reason.

exiledonline.com/wn-38-ira-vs-al-qaeda-i-was-wrong/

Why the fuck not both?

You're getting your history mixed up mate. You can make that argument in Wolfe Tone's time, but by the establishment of the Northern Irish State, Presbyterians were brought into line with other Unionists.
Gerrymandering the way you're talking about it was mostly to keep council districts from voting for the Northern Irish Labour Party, which both Catholics and Protestants did prior to the Troubles. It's a class question in that case, not a sectarian one.

fucking hell, why can't πŸ€πŸ€πŸ€theyπŸ€πŸ€πŸ€ do one thing right

...

Ira were socialistic and killed monarchist scum

No, they weren't. Unless we're considering one single faction who gradually phased out of relevance "the IRA".

More complex than that.

not possible. 'We must therefore first of all break the British connection'. The I.R.A.
promises a democratic and socialist state]:

but of equal importance to create support which will carry us not only through a war of
liberation which could last another decade but which will support us pas t the 'Brits Out'
stage to the ultimate aim of a Democratic Socialist Republic

Phraseology means nothing if it's not backed by relevant actions. What did the IRA do for socialism?

See, good guy "terrorists" do exist.

Try and kick the main imperialist power out of ireland?

Sorry, wrong post

Sorta related but I watched The Wind that Shakes the Barley recently. beautiful film.

They weren't anything really, the PIRA's only real stance on anything was that Brits need to get out of Northern Ireland. Otherwise two different ra men would tell you completely different things about what they were fighting for.

No. They were bombing the midlands because the British government and their loyalist reactionary stooges were treating us like we weren't even human. Freedom by any means necessary, bitch.

Oh fuck off. You don't know the first thing about Northern Ireland if you believe this shit. Presbyterians were historically the worst offenders for protestant supremacism.

Right so you help the people of northern ireland by blowing up some post offices and calling in bomb threats to schools? The IRA are idpol at their purest tbh.

No, you're right.

Instead they should have just held hands and sang Kumbaya with the RUC. Then after that everyone could eat ice-cream and ride unicorns with Ghandi and Hollywood-Mandela into Liberalland where imperialists have consciences.

If the British army sent down two battalions of moral men, the IRA problem would have been solved very quickly.

No no, you're right.

Naturally the best way to free the irish was planting car bombs in Coventry. I mean why would you want the support of the general populace in a civil rights struggle? I mean it's not like having the population of the UK on your side would have mattered. And naturally bombing up high streets in English cities is the ULTIMATE expression of self defence.

Coventrians are all bourgeois labour aristocrat pigdogs. Revolution in the anglo world is impossible.

I know right? Don't they know that they're damaging PRIVATE PROPERTY?!

That like, makes them the real fascists and stuff. It's basically the holocaust. Won't someone think of the small business owners?

Oh yeah, and the IRA was well known for the their socialistic programs for the working class of the six counties.


Coventry at the time was as prole as you would get: this was when the internationale was openly sung in a lot of pubs north of the Watford gap. They were better times.

Okay I kek'ed.

Killing cops and soldiers is a socialistic program.

...

Jockistani chiming in here. What exactly can be done to radicalise scotland? We're already staunchly social-democratic (even our tories are basically blue liberals) But the SNP has become super centrist and if the next referendum happens they're gonna try and win it by winning over the middle class

Thank you.

Gain independence, watch the SNP fall apar between it's leftwing and centrist/right factions, lobby for Labour to get STUC affiliation and push for great control of Scotland over its national resources [basically deThatcherisation]. Work from there.

As if the UK would have ever been on the Irish side when it came to riding their country of British occupation.

The people would have been, I mean one can look at the whites of America marching in solidarity with the blacks to see that winning over public hearts and minds can generate support for your cause. And besides, Wilson wanted to reach a solution to reform Stormont into what it basically is today, it says so in the Manifestos. Believe it or not, we britishers aren't unfeeling bastards that hate the irish.

That seems like a solid course of action. Only problem is, right now the SNP are decreasing in popularity while the Tories have completely embraced the unionist mantle and are now gaining popularity, putting independence itself in jeopardy. Even if we become independent, the SNP will almost certainly try to take us back into the EU (after all Brexit is the reason why they're even trying to have a referendum again), which just keeps us stuck in the neoliberal trap. Do you think that if Scotland became independent but then stayed out of the EU, opting to stay in the single market instead like Norway or Iceland, it would create a more conducive environment?

Yeah the whole peaceful civil rights angle was tried, and things like this happened

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloody_Sunday_(1972)

Do you expect a people who are continually subjected to violence when asking for basic human rights to swallow bourgeois moralism and continue being slaughtered and harassed without protecting themselves because it'll make their occupiers think of them more nicely? Spare me the Gandhi shit.

The natural state of the Anglo is that of a monarchy worshipping classcucked subhuman, we should thank the Irish for their pest control efforts.

This is pretty true tbh but I'll never praise the provos or whatever they call themselves these days.

T. Britbong

Actually I think that is the most prudent course of action to take so Scotland can have a bilateral trade deal with the UK: it is a decent idea (although tb if the EU gets its shit together, reforms the parliamentary procedure into a proper parliamentary democracy) I could see Scotland outright [re]entering the EU.


Of course the civil rights movement never faced any violent backlash.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birmingham_campaign
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_Summer
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selma_to_Montgomery_marches


The british people were not the occupiers, it was their hearts you needed to win. And do I believe it is possible for a protest movement to secure civil rights with violent resistance in a flawed democratic system? Yes, yes I do: because it has. I mean the NICRA was founded in a copycat manner to what the SCLC, CORE and SNCC did in America.

the Provos don't exist anymore. any dissident groups claiming to be IRA do anymore is police drug dealers and shit

James Connolly best Connolly

Jim Larkin best Jim.

Praise the Continuity IRA and Republican Sinn Fein! I like the general idea of Eire Nua, or a federal Ireland that gives the four provinces and 32 counties a say as opposed to a centralized parliament. This would satisfy Ulster protestants, who probably hate the liberal direction Britain is going, and catholics, who want to be part of Ireland. The protestants would have a majority in Ulster, but the other three provinces would prevent any abuses from happening.

I do think that Ulster should still celebrate it's own regional culture in addition to being Irish. I would even say that a lot of the protestant Ulster paramiltiaries should unite with the IRA to fight off both the British, the EU, and any immigrants who threaten the national sovereignty of a 32-county Irish republic.

I also think that they need to have a balance between the interests of Irish farmers and workers. They need to promote individual land ownership and smallholding for agriculture and unions and worker's self-management for industry. And, the Irish need to protect their borders, both with tariffs and deporting all immigrants, as well as withdraw from the EU. All capitalist companies are to be banished. Fucking Apple is cucking Ireland hard.

Protestant and Catholic Irish workers of Leinster, Munster, Connacht, and Ulster, unite!

Of course, this is from the perspective of a burger.

Wait wtf, this user obviously has no understanding of the current situation of Ireland, why on earth wou…


That fucking explains it.

I get it actually.

What I'm saying is that protestants and catholics need to stop fighting each other and start fighting foreigners and capitalists. Nothing unites a people like a common enemy.

CIRA and Republican Sinn Fein want to have a federal Ireland, and there are similarities between catholic workers and protestant workers. Hell, there is more common ground between the Unionists and Republicans, it's just that they're divided over sectarian bullshit.

And, some Ulster protestants did try to form organizations advocating for seceding Ulster from the UK.

The general idea is reconciliation. They're both nationalist, working-class movements. They both hate liberal faggotry. So, unite, under the cause of nationalism, against all foreign influences.

Ireland also has a significant agricultural sector. This actually was a dividing point in the Provisional. The Marxists ignored the interests of farmers and wanted centralization, while the non-Marxist Republicans didn't have a plan that'll help Irish proletarians in the cities. I'm just saying that a farmer-labor platform that gives autonomy and self-management to both would be best.

Also, Apple and other tech companies are huge in Ireland, and the EU has quite the influence. There are also some migrants entering the country, even if less than in most European countries.

Loyalism is irreconcilable with socialism. It's a reactionary, monarchist ideology. The beliefs of loyalists and republicans are generally pretty different, it's not just petty sectarianism. Racist attacks, for example, are far more likely to happen in loyalist areas of belfast than republican ones. This is no coincidence.

It's also retarded

Up the RA.

Then tell your porky friends to stop engineering sectarian divsions yours truly Connolly

.>>1658908

I know. However, there's a difference between Ulster loyalism and Ulster regionalism. I want to subvert the former with the latter. You can't deny that there is working class support for Ulster unionism due to sectarianism.


Both the IRA and Ulster loyalists are pretty damn conservative socially. Despite attempts at making the IRA look socially leftist, most of the rank-and-file IRA fighters generally don't want Ireland swamped with refugees.


You do realize that I advocated for the killing of porky? I guess my flag really does fool retards into believing that I'm a lolbert.

Pic related retard

You do realize that Eire Nua would have nine counties for Ulster instead of just six. The Protestant majority would be too slim.

Also, it's the sectarian conflict that allows for retards like him to rise to power.

The basis of the idea of the common enemy (porky, brits) predates that fucker by about 50 years or so. It was the fucking troubles that made sectarianism a problem, Paisley used regional culture to fuck up Ulster.
(We probably agree on 80% of this shit but what the fuck its an autistic maymayboard)

Also we need argentina macros

Important factor to note when you're talking about the Provisional IRA's actions is that it can basically be put into two major phases.

First was the insurgency phase, which lasted mainly from 1969 to around 1975. At this time, the IRA's military strategy was highly offensive and direct. They would seize control of areas, particularly in Belfast, Derry and South Armagh, barricade them off and police them as their own gated communities. Meanwhile, the IRA unites would operate under a battalion structure, having large numbers of men acting together to launch large-scale operations, usually under a strong command structure. That's why the early period of the IRA campaign is often considered to be more overtly revolutionary than later. It was far more intense and often more centralized, with many of the different units having direct contact with each-other. However due to the scale of the organization at this time, it was fairly inevitable that many members would use the opportunity as a means to kill innocent Protestant civilians as well, which unfortunately was the case in the mid-70s particularly, after Operation Motorman in 1972 which tore down the IRA 'no-go zones'.

In 1975, the IRA went on ceasefire for nearly a year and this caused a significant amount of infiltration within the group. As a result of mass arrests and other such events, the IRA restructured from battalions into cell-units, aside from South Armagh which tight-knit enough to avoid the need. The cell-structure of the IRA largely limited the IRA members to knowing maybe three or four people within their own unit and nobody else, largely as a means of limiting informants. The downside of this was that it became increasingly easy for units to go rogue and carry out sectarian attacks, as well as for the different units to become increasingly apolitical in general. With the fall of the no-go zones, a lot of the revolutionary zeal was being lost to time and by the 1980s, nationalism had largely taken over from what genuine Socialist sentiment may have at one point existed in the IRA.

IRA is NAZBOL

Shouldn't the UDA be considered more /ourguys/ than the PIRA?

They literally held a general strike at one point and the PIRA got all pissy because the government didn't break it up.

I admittedly admired this about the UDA.

We need a Irish Republican/Ulster Nationalist alliance.

They tried to make that very briefly at one point. There was an extremely short-lived left-wing offshoot of the UDA, but its two leaders were shot dead inside of a month as I recall. They had been co-operating with the Official IRA on community issues and the UDA saw it as a threat to their struggle against Irish republicanism.

why do brits even try to opine on the troubles online, as if they have some sort of insider knowledge?

fuck off with your propaganda

actually it was the British army that bombed Monaghan. Nowhere else in the Midlands was bombed during the troubles AFAIK

it's time to stop posting, and time to go back to writing your daily mail articles

they literally never had had a majority in Ulster, and they never will

The police serve porky.

Not the people.

You do know that along with Poland, Ireland is the biggest benefactor of EU membership right? Partly by being a leeching tax haven gateway for American megacorps like Apple.
I doubt there is much willingness to leave the Union.

liberal detected

yes, we should compete with Germany economically on Germany's own terms. That is definitely the best way to go about it

brits genuinely think the IRA was blowing stuff up because of transubstantiation and shit

I think the other poster was referring to international finance antics like the "Double Irish", not to the Irish economy itself. But speaking of EU-fueled privatization and austerity tearing away protections from local economies in exchange for foreign "investment" that vanishes during downturns like a swarm of roaches when daylight is let in, Ireland certainly got its fill:
economicsociology.org/2015/01/25/the-collapse-of-irelands-celtic-tiger-an-incredible-story-of-corporatism-neoliberalism-and-globalisation-run-amok/

Most of the Irish troubles were the result of the British Governement being completely retarded when it comes to addressing issues, unnecessarily escalating situations, creating sectarian tensions where they didn't need to exist, and just being clumsy and messy about shit..

It's like they were trying to lose for some reason, like they were trying to just piss people off and make things worse.

As for the IRA in Northern Ireland they might've had a point at one time, but largely turned into what amounted to a bunch of street-thugs with AR-180's.. At least that's my american Perspective.