INTRODUCTION Recent news reports have spoken of a crack down" on the IRA. This followed a roundup, which at first looked as if it was the beginning of interment. The press has been talking ahour "documents" which can prove criminal charges against leaders of the Republican Movement.
Like most of the news coming out of the Sir Counties, this is less concered with truth than with the political straregy of the British Govemment. They are now corying out a campaige which will give the impression that they are taking effective measures against the IRA; the aim of this propaganda is to bolster ap their forces in freland, who are becoming more and more demoralised. This article exposes the reasons for both the demoralisation and the propaganda campaign, the remarkable military success of the IRA in recent months.
Never, for nearly fifty years, has imperialism in Ireland confronted an armed resistance so formidable as that which today defies the British Army on the streets of Belfast and Derry Despite the desperate attempts of the press to obscure the facts, the British Army is being pressed hard by the IRA. and is near the end of its tether. Since the build-up in preparation for the July 12th Parades, there are 19,000 British troops in the Nurth of Irelund, nearly double the previous level of 10,000; their upper limit is probably in the region of 25.000.
THE I.R.A. GETS INTO STRIDE And yet the IRA has barely begun to get into its stride-until recent events fighting was being carried on mainly by the Provisonal IRA. and was concentrated on Belfast. Now it seems that the Official IRA has stepped in; its previous policy had been to take military action on a defensive basis, but it has recently taken a number of offensive actions.
Both IRA's today are larger, better armed, and have a wider support amongst the nationalist population in the North than at any time in history, including the Black &e Tan wars. But the most striking feature today is the amuzing sophistication of their guerrilla ractics. The Provisionals have pulled off a succession of brilliant actions, like the bombing of the Springfield Road Police and Army barracks. Within one week they carried out three major feats. They walked into the Royal Victoria Hospital in Belfast, and snatched one of their wounded volunteers from under the noses of heavily arred guards (we understand that the rescued man is now safe and recovering in hospital elsewhere). They raided a military post in the centre of Belfast and got away with 30 Lee Enfield 303 rifles, two Bren guns and one Sterling sub-machine gun; despite claims by the Army that these were training weapons which cannot be fired, the fact is that they can be reconverted and used. Then they blew up the Daily Mirror plant on the outskirts of Belfast. This newspaper. which has been particularly scurrilous in its reportage of events in Ireland, had built one of the world's most advanced newspaper plants. The damage is estimated at over E2 million, and it will take many weeks before the newspaper plant is repaired.
The Officials have not recently scored such dramatic victories, but there can be no doubt that the force which held off 3,000 British troops with 150 men, in the battle of the Falls during July last year, is capable of giving a more than adoquate account of itself. Not only are they active throughout the Six Counties (in contrast to the Provos who are mainly concentrated in Belfast), They are committed to military action in the South as well. Cathal Goulding, Chiefof-Staff of the Official IRA, speaking at the funeral of Martin O Leary in Cork, pledged that when the forces of imperiulism and exploitation" imposed "... strike-breaking, evictions, coercion, the prison cell, intimidation or the gallows, then our duty is to reply ... in the language that brings those vultures to their senses most effectively, the language of the bomb and the buller."
CONTRAST All this is in striking contrast with the two previous IRA campaigns which followed the 1922 defeat of the anti-treaty forces, the 1938-45 and the 1956-62 offensives In both there were a number of highly successful actions. On December 23rd 1939 they liberated 1,084,000 rounds of ammunition from the Magazine Fort in Phoenix Park, Dublin: this constituted the bulk of the Free State Army's reservo supply. (Alas, almost all of it was recaptured shortly afterwards). One of the most famous was the raid on Armagh Barracks in June 1954; by dint of infiltrating a volunteer (by the simple expedient of joining the British Army), they pot intelligenos which enabled them to reliese Her Majesty's Forces of 250 rifles, 37 Stens, nine Brens and 40 training rifles. This time the "squipment" was not recaptured. On initiated the "56 campaign) paralysed Newry Canal by blowing up all the locks.
But these were exceptions; the classical TRA tactics consisted of the ambush, and the planted bomb. They had a standard technique for attacking barracks, police stations. prisons, ete., which would involve a volunteer making his way up to a door or wall, in darkness or under covering fire, to plant a mine in order to blow a hole big enough for the raiders to get through. To the incredible danger involved in such an operation was added the risk that the mine would not actually go off, a frustration which they suffered on many occasions. General Tom Barry, the greatest Irish guerrilla leader, found this tactic irksome during the Black & Tan Wars; it was still being used in the late 'SOs. The contrast belween this and the Springfield Road action need not be stressed.
SIGNIFICANCE Today they have learnt a great deal from the experience of guerrilla struggles elsewhere, in particular from the tactics of EOKA in Cyprus. But the main significance of this new stage in the IRA's struggle lies in the new relationship between the IRA and the people. Mao's dictum about the fish and the water is absolutely correct: the glaring failure of the two IRA campaigns was their isolation from the people; their actions were those of men from the outside, taking action against the forces of imperialism in the name of abstruct principles. This dietated columns dodging into the North, on short missions, a strict limitation on the depth to which forces of any size could penetrate over the Border, constant harassment, and grave difficulty in finding hi de-outs. At one stage of the "S6-62 campaign, volunteers were living in secret dug-outs in the most appalling conditions.
INTERNMENT The crushing of resistance was relatively easy for the Crown forces, and their mimics in the Free State. Thousands of men were rounded up by the RUC in the North, and hundreds interned on the flimsiest of evidenco. It was enough to be young and active, to be associaled with a specificuily Irish organisation like a Gaelic Sports Club, or even the Legion of Mary; if there was the flimsiest evidence to connect you with the IRA, you were automatically a suspect and into Crumin you went. often for years. The people accopted all of this passively: the struggle of the IRA was something external to them. They sympathised with it, they would not betray it to the RUC, they would turn out on fuserals; but they themselves were not part of the resistance. They would acoept the brutality of the RUC, admite the bravery of the IRA, and somchow get on with life.
MASS MOVEMENT Today the struggle has emerged from the oppressed minority, it is from them that the ranks of the IRA are being swelled.
They are not cowed, they are capable of forcing armoured cats to withdraw from their areas, they smashed the Falls curfew of July 1970, inflicting such a humiliation on the military that they have never again tried this tactic.
The new situation arises precisely from the fact that the present crisis arose with the mass peaceful movement for Civil Rights Having been mobilised, having seen their enemies being forood to make verbal concessions, having.
seen the hollowness of the "reforms", and experiencing Republicans in training the brutality of the British Army when they tried to express their frustration, they are no longer prepared to wait and hupe that time will redress their grievances.
In the new situation the IRA is the armed vanguard of the oppressed minority, they are a part of the people, profected by them and able to melt back into the ghettoes after taking action. It is this which enables them to be bold in their actions, They are no longer beating usclessly ut the cage which imprisons their compatriots, but are lorging a force which can break down the bars for ever.
POLITICAL SIGNIFICANCE While it is necessary to make clear the significance of the military success of this contemporary phase of the Republican struggle, we should be under no illusions that it can succeed in defeating imperialism on its own. The conditions for the maturing of this guerrilla struggle were laid by the period of intense political activity which gave the minonty confidence to dely the might of the British Army, This underlines the fact that the battle cannot, and will not, be fought in purcly military terms, by either side. British imporialism won a period of respite between August 69 and July "70, because the mass of the people were not pul tically prepared for the confrontation with the state power, which the barricades of Free Derry and Belfast posed. The Labour Government in Westminster was able to confuse the minority by promises of reforms, and by making it seem as if the troups had gone in to protect them from the Orange terror.
The British and Stormont governments desperately want to retum to internment. But the militancy of the minority poses ditticulties; British imperialisen is long enough in the tooth, and has had sufficient experience of anti-insurgency work, to know that a large-scale round-up would enrage the people and would add fuel to the fire. They need some political preparation to counteract this.
It is this which is behind the work of the "Black Propsganda" unit in the North. This is why they have been deliberately trying to exacerbate the friction between the Officials and the Provisionals. The latest propaganda about "documents" linking the "terror" in Belfast to "the Republic" smelis strongly of the Special Intelligence Service. Such a line could indicate a strategy which would approach intentment in the North throuet getting the Free State Government to start the hall rolling. Without a political offensive to supplement the military offensive, the minority will not be able to meet this challenge SEMI-DETACHED ASSEMBLY?
The decision of the Semi-Detached Labour Purty to become totally detached from Stormont poses more questions than it answers. This basically sound idea, which was put forward at the height of the struggles in 1969 only has meaning if it leads in the direction of the setting up of an altectative state structure, which can sound the deathknell of both Stormont and the Free State Dail. But the SDIP is incapable of moving six inches along this road. The fact that they have posed this step just as Stormont is about to go inte recess shows that they hope to give the Unionists and the British Goverument time to come across with concessions.
which would take the heat off our sweating heroes.
An alternative assembly only has meaning if the leadership of the struggle is prepared for a controntation with British imperialism, Stormont and the Free State government, and has laid the basis for this amongst the people. The Social and Democratic Labour Party will never do this. For the people of the Six Counties it must be Yes to an alterative Assembly, but No to the SDLP.
CLIMAX Whatever happens, the crisis in Ireland continues; there is no permanent solution to the problem for imperialism in the long run they can only react with greater and greater brutal brutality. Ours is the task in Britain to constantly expose the trath about Ireland, trying to mobilise the maximum forces in solidarity with the struggle, trying to get through to the working class in Hritain about the conspiracy against the Irish people which our ruling class has been involved in for centuries, and which is moving towards its final bloody climax.
-Bob Purdie
General Tom Barry.
Cathal Goulding, Chief of Staff, Official IRA Sean Mac Stiofain, Chief of Staff, Provisional IRA A biast lights up a Belfast Street, oddly resembling a map of As the situation in the North of Ireland becomes sharper, the work of the Irish Solidarity Campaign