Download or read book A Secret History of the IRA written by Ed Moloney and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2002 with total page 644 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A portrayal of the Irish Republican Army includes coverage of its associations with Qaddafi's regime, Margaret Thatcher's secret diplomacy with Gerry Adams, and the Catholic Church's negotiations with Republican leadership.

Download or read book The Provisional IRA written by Tommy McKearney and published by Pluto Press. This book was released on 2011-06-15 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book analyzes the underlying reasons behind the formation of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA), its development, where this current in Irish republicanism is at present and its prospects for the future. Tommy McKearney, a former IRA member who was part of the 1980 hunger strike, challenges the misconception that the Provisional IRA was only, or even wholly, about ending partition and uniting Ireland. He argues that while these objectives were always the core and headline demands of the organization, opposition to the old Northern Ireland state was a major dynamic for the IRA’s armed campaign. As he explores the makeup and strategy of the IRA he is not uncritical, examining alternative options available to the movement at different periods, arguing that its inability to develop a clear socialist program has limited its effectiveness and reach. This authoritative and engaging history provides a fascinating insight into the workings and dynamics of a modern resistance movement.

Download or read book Inside the IRA written by Andrew Sanders and published by Edinburgh University Press. This book was released on 2011-04-25 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Would the 'real' IRA please stand up? Why, and how, the IRA splintered. The Real IRA, the Continuity IRA, the Irish National Liberation Army, the Official IRA and the Provisional IRA have all assumed responsibility for the struggle for Irish freedom over the course of the late-20th century. Yet as recently as 1969 there was only one Irish Republican Army trying to unify Ireland using physical force., Andrew Sanders explains how and why the transition from one IRA to several IRAs occurred, analysing all the dissident factions that have emerged since the outbreak of the Northern Ireland troubles. He looks at why these groups emerged, what their respective purposes are, and why, in an era of relative peace and stability in Northern Ireland, they seek to prolong the violence that cost over 3500 lives.

Download or read book Defying the IRA written by Brian Hughes (Historian) and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the grass-roots relationship between the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and the civilian population during the Irish Revolution. It is primarily concerned with the attempts of the militant revolutionaries to discourage, stifle, and punish dissent among the local populations in which they operated, and the actions or inactions by which dissent was expressed or implied. Focusing on the period of guerilla war against British rule from c. 1917 to 1922, it uncovers the acts of 'everyday' violence, threat, and harm that characterized much of the revolutionary activity of this period. Moving away from the ambushes and assassinations that have dominated much of the discourse on the revolution, the book explores low-level violent and non-violent agitation in the Irish town or parish. The opening chapter treats the IRA's challenge to the British state through the campaign against servants of the Crown - policemen, magistrates, civil servants, and others - and IRA participation in local government and the republican counter-state. The book then explores the nature of civilian defiance and IRA punishment in communities across the island before turning its attention specifically to the year that followed the 'Truce' of July 1921. This study argues that civilians rarely operated at either extreme of a spectrum of support but, rather, in a large and fluid middle ground. Behaviour was rooted in local circumstances, and influenced by local fears, suspicions, and rivalries. IRA punishment was similarly dictated by community conditions and usually suited to the nature of the perceived defiance. Overall, violence and intimidation in Ireland was persistent, but, by some contemporary standards, relatively restrained.

Download or read book IRA The Bombs and the Bullets written by A. R. Oppenheimer and published by Irish Academic Press. This book was released on 2008-10-16 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this groundbreaking title, A. R. Oppenheimer tells how the Irish Republican Army became the most adept and experienced insurgency group the world has ever seen through their bombing expertise – and how, after generations of conflict, it all came to an end. The book is a comprehensive account of more than 150 years of Irish republican strategic, tactical, and operational details, and an analysis of the IRA’s mission, doctrine, targeting, and acquisition of weapons and explosives. As a leading expert on non-conventional weapons and explosives, Oppenheimer vividly presents the story behind the bombs – those who built and deployed them; those who had to deal with and dismantle them; and those who suffered or died from them. He analyses where, how, and why the IRA’s 19,000 bombs were built, targeted and deployed, and explores what the IRA was hoping to accomplish in its unrivaled campaign of violence and insurgency through covert acquisition, training, intelligence and counter-intelligence. Beginning with the Fenian ‘Dynamiters’ in the second half of the nineteenth century, Oppenheimer fully describes and assesses the impact of the pre-1970s bombing campaigns in Northern Ireland and England and the evolution of strategies and tactics during the Troubles. He concludes with the decommissioning of an arsenal big enough to arm several battalions – which included an entire home-crafted missile system, an unsurpassed range of improvised explosive devices (IEDs), and enough explosives to blow up several urban centres. The author scrutinises the level of deadly improvisation that became the hallmark of the Provisional IRA’s expertise and the ingenuity in its pioneering IED timing, delay and disguise technologies, and follows the arms race it carried on with the British Army and security services in a long war of mutual assured disruption. He also provides an insight into the bombing equipment and guns in the vast IRA inventory held at Irish Police HQ in Dublin.

Download or read book Armed Struggle written by Richard English and published by Pan Macmillan. This book was released on 2008-09-04 with total page 441 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A timely work of major historical importance, examining the whole spectrum of events from the 1916 Easter Rising to the current and ongoing peace process, fully updated with a new afterword for the paperback edition. ‘An essential book ... closely-reasoned, formidably intelligent and utterly compelling ... required reading across the political spectrum ... important and riveting’ Roy Foster, The Times ‘An outstanding new book on the IRA ... a calm, rational but in the end devastating deconstruction of the IRA’ Henry McDonald, Observer ‘Superb ... the first full history of the IRA and the best overall account of the organization. English writes to the highest scholarly standards ... Moreover, he writes with the common reader in mind: he has crafted a fine balance of detail and analysis and his prose is clear, fresh and jargon-free ... sets a new standard for debate on republicanism’ Peter Hart, Irish Times 'The one book I recommend for anyone trying to understand the craziness and complexity of the Northern Ireland tragedy.’ Frank McCourt, author of Angela’s Ashes

Download or read book The Intelligence War against the IRA written by Thomas Leahy and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2020-03-26 with total page 357 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thomas Leahy investigates whether informers, Special Forces and other British intelligence operations forced the IRA into peace in the 1990s.

Download or read book The Lost Revolution written by Brian Hanley and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2009-09-03 with total page 829 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The story of contemporary Ireland is inseparable from the story of the official republican movement, a story told here for the first time - from the clash between Catholic nationalist and socialist republicanism in the 1960s and '70s through the Workers' Party's eventual rejection of irredentism. A roll-call of influential personalities in the fields of politics, trade unionism and media - many still operating at the highest levels of Irish public life - passed though the ranks of this secretive movement, which never achieved its objectives but had a lasting influence on the landscape of Irish politics. 'A vibrant, balanced narrative' Diarmaid Ferriter, Irish Times Books of the Year 'An indispensable handbook' Maurice Hayes, Irish Times 'Hugely impressive' Irish Mail on Sunday 'Excellent' Sunday Business Post

Download or read book Rebel Hearts written by Kevin Toolis and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2015-07-07 with total page 424 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For ten years Kevin Toolis investigated the lives of the IRA soldiers who wage a secret battle against the British State. His journeys took him from the back kitchens of Belfast, where men joked while making two-thousand-pound bombs, to prisons for interviews with men serving life sentences, and to the graveyards where mourners weep. Each chapter explores a world where history, faith, and human savagery determine life and death. At once moving and harrowing,Rebel Hearts is the most authoritative and insightful book ever written on the IRA.

Download or read book The Secret Army written by J. Bowyer Bell and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-07-12 with total page 1102 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Secret Army is the definitive work on the Irish Republican Army. It is an absorbing account of a movement that has had a profound effect on the shaping of the modern Irish state. The secret army in the service of the invisible Republic has had a powerful effect on Irish events over the past twenty-five years. These hidden corridors of power interest Bell and inspired him to spend more time with the IRA than many volunteers spend in it. This book is the culmination of twenty-five years of work and tens of thousands of hours of interviews. Bell's unique access to the leadership of the republican movement and his contacts with all involved—British politicians, Irish politicians, policemen, arms smugglers, and others committed or opposed to the IRA—explain why The Secret Army is the book on the subject. This edition represents a complete revision and includes vast quantities of new information. Bell's book gives us vital insight into our times as well as Irish history. This edition of The Secret Army contains six new chapters that bring the history of this clandestine organization up to date. They are: The First Decade, The Nature of the Long War, 1979-1980"; "Unconventional Conflict, The Hunger Strikes, January 1980-October 3, 1981"; The Protracted Struggle, September 1981-January 1984"; "War, Politics, and the Split, January 1984-December 1986"; The Troubles as Institution, 1987-1990": and The Armed Struggle Transformed, 1991-1996, The End Game." In his new introduction, Bell reflects on his decades of research, the experiences he has had, and the people he has met during his extensive visits to Ireland.

Download or read book The I R A at War 1916 1923 written by Peter Hart and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2003-11-20 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Between 1916 and 1923, Ireland experienced rebellion and mass mobilization, guerrilla and civil war, partition and ethnic conflict, and the transfer of power from British to Irish governments. The essays in The I.R.A. at War propose a new history of this Irish revolution: one that encompasses the whole of the island as well as Britain, all of the violence and its consequences, and the entire period from the Easter Rising to the end of the Civil War. When did the revolution start and when did it end? Why was it so violent and why were some areas so much worse than others? Why did the I.R.A. mount a terror campaign in England and Scotland but refuse to assassinate British politicians? Where did it get its guns? Was it democratic? What kind of people became guerrillas? What kind of people did they kill? Were Protestants ethnically cleansed from southern Ireland? Did a pogrom take place against Belfast Catholics? These and other questions are addressed using extensive new data on those involved and their actions, including the first complete figures for victims of the revolution. These events have never been numbered among the world's great revolutions, but in fact Irish republicans were global pioneers. Long before Mao or Tito, Sinn Féin and the Irish Republican Army were the first to use a popular political front to build a parallel underground state coupled with sophisticated guerrilla and international propaganda and fund-raising campaigns. Ireland's is also perhaps the best documented revolution in modern history, so that almost any question can be answered, from who joined the I.R.A. to who ordered the assassination of Sir Henry Wilson. The intimacy and precision with which we are able to reconstruct and analyse what happened make this a key site for understanding not just Irish, but world, history.

Download or read book Say Nothing written by Patrick Radden Keefe and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2020-02-25 with total page 561 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • SOON TO BE AN FX LIMITED SERIES STREAMING ON HULU • NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER • From the author of Empire of Pain—a stunning, intricate narrative about a notorious killing in Northern Ireland and its devastating repercussions. One of The New York Times’s 20 Best Books of the 21st Century "Masked intruders dragged Jean McConville, a 38-year-old widow and mother of 10, from her Belfast home in 1972. In this meticulously reported book—as finely paced as a novel—Keefe uses McConville's murder as a prism to tell the history of the Troubles in Northern Ireland. Interviewing people on both sides of the conflict, he transforms the tragic damage and waste of the era into a searing, utterly gripping saga." —New York Times Book Review "Reads like a novel ... Keefe is ... a master of narrative nonfiction. . .An incredible story."—Rolling Stone A Best Book of the Year: The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, TIME, NPR, and more! Jean McConville's abduction was one of the most notorious episodes of the vicious conflict known as The Troubles. Everyone in the neighborhood knew the I.R.A. was responsible. But in a climate of fear and paranoia, no one would speak of it. In 2003, five years after an accord brought an uneasy peace to Northern Ireland, a set of human bones was discovered on a beach. McConville's children knew it was their mother when they were told a blue safety pin was attached to the dress--with so many kids, she had always kept it handy for diapers or ripped clothes. Patrick Radden Keefe's mesmerizing book on the bitter conflict in Northern Ireland and its aftermath uses the McConville case as a starting point for the tale of a society wracked by a violent guerrilla war, a war whose consequences have never been reckoned with. The brutal violence seared not only people like the McConville children, but also I.R.A. members embittered by a peace that fell far short of the goal of a united Ireland, and left them wondering whether the killings they committed were not justified acts of war, but simple murders. From radical and impetuous I.R.A. terrorists such as Dolours Price, who, when she was barely out of her teens, was already planting bombs in London and targeting informers for execution, to the ferocious I.R.A. mastermind known as The Dark, to the spy games and dirty schemes of the British Army, to Gerry Adams, who negotiated the peace but betrayed his hardcore comrades by denying his I.R.A. past--Say Nothing conjures a world of passion, betrayal, vengeance, and anguish.

Download or read book Voices from the Grave written by Ed Moloney and published by PublicAffairs. This book was released on 2010-06-01 with total page 538 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A candid and brutal account of murder, abduction, and violence during the Troubles in Northern Ireland-from two men on opposite sides of the conflict. After 'the long war' in Ireland came to an end, very few paramilitary leaders on either side spoke openly about their role in that bloody conflict, but in Voices from the Grave, two leading figures from opposing sides reveal their involvement in bombings, shootings and killings on one condition: that their stories were kept secret until after their deaths. In extensive interviews given to researchers from Boston College, Brendan Hughes and David Ervine spoke with astonishing openness about their turbulent, violent lives. Hughes was a legend in the Republican movement. An 'operator', a gun-runner and mastermind of some of the most savage IRA violence of the Troubles, he was a friend and close ally of Gerry Adams and was by his side during the most brutal years of the conflict. David Ervine was the most substantial political figure to emerge from the world of Loyalist paramilitaries. A former Ulster Volunteer Force bomber and confidante of its long-time leader Gusty Spence, Ervine helped steer Loyalism's gunmen towards peace, persuading the UVF's leaders to target IRA and Sinn Fein activists and push them down the road to a ceasefire. Now their stories have been woven into a vivid narrative which provides compelling insight into a secret world and events long hidden from history.

Download or read book Agents of Influence written by Aaron Edwards and published by Merrion Press. This book was released on 2021-04-09 with total page 371 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recruited by British Intelligence to infiltrate the IRA and Sinn Féin during the height of the Northern Ireland Troubles, they were ‘agents of influence’. With codenames like INFLICTION, STAKEKNIFE, 3007 and CAROL, these spies played a pivotal role in the fight against Irish republicanism. Now, for the first time, some of these agents have emerged from the shadows to tell their compelling stories. Agents of Influence takes you behind the scenes of the secret intelligence war which helped bring the IRA’s armed struggle to an end. Historian Aaron Edwards, the critically acclaimed author of UVF: Behind the Mask, explains how the IRA was penetrated by British agents, with explosive new revelations about the hidden agendas of prominent republicans like Martin McGuinness and Freddie Scappaticci and lesser-known ones like Joe Haughey and John Joe Magee. Bringing to light recently declassified TOP SECRET documents and the firsthand testimonies of agents and their handlers, Edwards reveals how British Intelligence gained extraordinary access to the IRA’s inner circle and manipulated them into engaging with the peace process. With new insights into the spy masters behind the scenes, their strategies and tactics, and Britain’s international intelligence network in Northern Ireland, Europe, and beyond, Agents of Influence offers a rare and shocking glimpse into the clandestine world of secret agents, British intelligence strategy and the betrayal at the heart of militant Irish republicanism during the vicious decades of the Troubles.

Download or read book Secret Victory written by William Matchett and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Secret Victory is captivating and disturbing in equal measure. It reveal's how the IRA was infiltrated, degraded and strategically defeated - at times with violent and deadly consequences. To read this book is to understand how intelligence drives irregular conflicts.

Download or read book Provisional Irish Republican Army and the Morality of Terrorism written by Timothy Shanahan and published by Edinburgh University Press. This book was released on 2008-12-18 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Is terrorism ever morally justified? How should historical and cultural factors be taken into account in judging the morality of terrorist acts? What are the ethical limits of state counter-terrorism?For three decades the Provisional Irish Republican Army waged an 'armed struggle' against what it considered to be the British occupation of Northern Ireland. To its supporters, the IRA was the legitimate army of Ireland, fighting to force a British withdrawal as a prelude to the re-unification of the Irish nation. To its enemies, the IRA was an illegal, fanatical, terrorist organization whose members were criminals willing to sacrifice innocent lives in pursuit of its ideological obsession. At the centre of the conflict were the then unconventional tactics employed by the IRA, including sectarian killings, political assassinations, and bombings that devastated urban centres - tactics that have become increasingly commonplace in the post-9/11 world.This book is the first detailed philosophical examination of the morality of the IRA's violent campaign, and of the British government's attempts to end it. Written in clear, accessible prose, it is essential reading for anyone wishing to acquire a deeper understanding of one of the paradigmatic conflicts of the late 20th century.

Download or read book The IRA and Armed Struggle written by Rogelio Alonso and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2007-03-12 with total page 237 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The IRA is one of the oldest terrorist organizations in the world and conducted a ferociously violent campaign for almost thirty years. Now deeply enmeshed in the Northern Ireland peace process, Rogelio Alonso asks why one of the bloodiest terrorist movements of our time decide to swap weapons for the ballot box? Based on over seventy interviews conducted with former and existing members of the IRA, Alonso also provides a rigorous evaluation of the personal and political consequences of the IRA’s campaign of violence. The analysis of these interviews radically challenges the dominant academic analysis of Irish terrorism. This book includes a strong criticism of the armed struggle constructed around the discourse of those who waged it and answers the question faced by many armed revolutionary movements: ‘Was the war worth it?’ Translated from the critically acclaimed Matar por Irlanda and available in English for the first time, this is a provocative and new approach to understanding the IRA. It is essential reading for readers and researchers with an interest in Irish politics and history, terrorism and political violence.