Armed Struggle

One of the world’s most sophisticated guerrilla movements, the Provisional IRA conducted a variety of operations within Northern Ireland for decades. Unlike many other “national liberation movements”, the PIRA operated in an industrially-developed, “First World” nation. What was the nature of this organization, how did it gain supporters, what were it’s grievances and how legitimate were they? Richard English attempts to answer some of these questions in this excellent book on the PIRA. He dedicates some of the book to previous incarnations of the Irish armed movement (the first-generation IRA struggle against the British after WW1; the falling out between the IRA and the newly-founded Irish state which ultimately led to the Irish Civil War; the IRA activity during WW2; and the IRA “border campaign” of the 1950’s) but most of the book is devoted to describing the PIRA and some subsequent split offs like the Irish National Liberation Army, and the Official IRA, which the PIRA was actually a split-off of but eventually overshadowed in significance. Coverage is dedicated to all the significant periods of PIRA history: the Civil Rights movement & the Troubles which they were born out of, the “prison war”, and the protracted and difficult peace process. Trace elements of the PIRA still remain (like the Continuity IRA and the Real IRA) still remain in Northern Ireland, and sectarian tension and strife remain high, with Irish and Protestant neighborhoods just as divided and bitter as they were in years past, but at least the violent tit-for-tat between the PIRA and loyalist/UK military forces came to an end, after the loss of almost 4,000 lives and many more bombings, violence and terror enforced by both sides. English’s book does an excellent job describing the situation and how it got to that point, why the PIRA believed the things they did and acted the way they did, etc