Spoiling the peace?

The threat of dissident Republicans to peace in Northern Ireland

Sophie Whiting

• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9780719098680
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Political History & Theory
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book assesses the security threat and political challenges offered by dissident Irish republicanism to the Northern Irish peace process. Dissident republicanism ranges from those who consider armed struggle to be an essential element of any republican campaign to political reformers and campaign groups. The book charts the divisions in republicanism following the evolution of Sinn Féin into constitutional politics, leaving a rump of 'militants'. Using in-depth interviews and access to a range of organisations it has been possible to explore the origins, strategy and goals of the various strands of republicanism evident in Northern Ireland today. This book considers the impact of various dissident groupings and their tactics within a post-Good Friday Agreement context and places armed republicanism in Northern Ireland within the broader debate on counter-terrorism after 9/11.

1

Evaluating historic splits in Irish republicanism: is there space for the emergence of ‘dissidents’?

From abstentionists to institutional participants, from the margins to the mainstream, Sinn Féin has undergone numerous reincarnations since its founding in 1905.¹ The republican movement has always been a mixture of intellectuals, constitutional politicians, political activists, militants and revolutionaries, although these categories have never been mutually exclusive. It is the versatile and complex nature of the republican movement, allied to the difficulty of realising its core ambition of a united, independent Ireland that has made it so prone to ideological divisions and political or military splits. Major splits have occurred on several occasions: 1921, 1926, 1969–70, 1986, 1997 and post 1998. Despite the many ups and downs, splits and schisms that Sinn Féin has gone through, the party has maintained its adherence to the principle of self-determination. Yet, the means of achieving this goal, whether by armed struggle or electoral politics, has often differed and caused the movement to splinter. Moreover, the modus operandi of self-determination – and what it constitutes – has been altered by Sinn Féin in recent times. The republican movement has been repeatedly pulled in conflicting directions since its creation, a feature which continues to characterise the movement to the present day.

The literature on both Sinn Féin and the IRA is vast and wide ranging, with the various accounts often highlighting the republican movement’s propensity to split. Since the Good Friday Agreement (GFA), a significant amount of literature has been produced in order to form an understanding of where Irish republicanism now stands.² This chapter will trace the evolution of Irish republicanism through the academic literature and provide details of where the movement currently stands. The trajectory of Sinn Féin from abstentionism into Dáil Éireann in 1986 and then a Northern Ireland Assembly at the end of the twentieth century, followed by the Provisional IRA’s decommissioning of weapons in 2005, revived tensions within republicanism. Significant variation within the literature emerges between those who view the phenomenon as a reoccurring cyclical trend inherent within the Irish republican movement and those who emphasise the importance of contextual realities and stress the unique characteristics of each split.

Divisions within Irish republicanism: is it still about ‘the split’?

The multifaceted and diverse nature of the Irish republican movement was evident from the time of partition as the movement fragmented between constitutional moderates and those unwilling to accept anything short of an independent all-Ireland republic. The cyclical pattern within republicanism has been to replace those willing to moderate their agenda with new militants. The divisive issue in 1921, the oath of allegiance to the British Crown, split the movement into moderates and hardliners, pro- and anti-treaty factions.³ It is the nature of this split that is often viewed as prototypical and therefore essential in the understanding of subsequent divisions, which have been played out over the roles of abstentionism, armed struggle and the tacit acceptance of the need for unionist consent for change.

The works of Brian Feeney, Agnes Maillot and Joost Augusteijn examine the history of the IRA and Sinn Féin, highlighting the consistent republican tendency to split, in order to identify the common themes and as a result produce a transferable model that makes sense of each division.⁴ Feeney develops comparisons between the various incarnations of Sinn Féin from the early twentieth century through to the 1990s peace process, arguing that ‘all the major splits have taken the same form’.⁵ He stresses that comprehending the 1921–22 split is vitally important in understanding the ‘theology’ of the movement for the rest of its existence.⁶ The emergence of the IRA in 1921 as the ‘pre-eminent component in the republican movement and its resistance to any political or pro-democratic authority’⁷ had a profound effect on the future of the republican movement. Feeney sees the impact of the 1921 republican split and the emergence of the IRA as the prominent partner in the relationship with Sinn Féin as key to understanding the republican movement’s tendency to fracture throughout the twentieth century.

Maillot also explores the evolution of Sinn Féin and the IRA. She suggests the emergence of a new Sinn Féin with a distinctly changed outlook as the organisation moved into the twenty-first century. Despite acknowledging that tactics in the last decade of the twentieth century represented a watershed for republicanism, Maillot also makes the valid point that to truly understand the tensions and divisions within republicanism it is important to go back to the origin of the party and its principles.⁸ Whilst both Feeney and Maillot emphasise the importance of understanding the history and origins of the movement as establishing a propensity to split, they both comment on the past through the prism of the peace process. Neither offers a discussion of the military breakaway groups caused by Sinn Féin’s involvement in the peace process. There is no consideration for the tension caused by the compromises made in the peace process; instead there is a tendency to view the peace process as an end point. This leads to a premature and optimistic interpretation of the unity in which the agreement was made.

Although those who broke away from Sinn Féin in 1986, 1997 and beyond were small minorities, their justifications are still essential in understanding republican heterogeneity. The form of dissent is also largely neglected because the term tends to be associated with those committed to violent methods. However, dissent can assume various forms and rarely constitutes a single entity. Despite their acknowledgement of the republican tendency to splinter Maillot and Feeney surprisingly do not appear to countenance the possible ‘replacement’ of the PIRA by an alternative IRA as a likely result of the compromises in which mainstream republicans engaged during the peace process.

The republican tendency to split has long been recognised by political historians, yet each split has been treated separately and little recognition has been given to the similarities between them. In analysing the tension within Irish republicanism, Joost Augusteijn attempts to address this by highlighting the similarities and consistencies within republican responses to political change over ninety years.⁹ Augusteijn presents splits as a cyclical phenomenon where the tension between political struggle and military conflict provide the recurring catalyst in dividing the movement. Whilst this ‘vicious cycle’ provides a helpful visual demonstration of the splits, the comparison element, which Augusteijn himself claims to be so necessary, is somewhat limited. Due to the circular and repetitive description of divisions, they are portrayed as almost identical, providing very little scope for comparison between the contextual realities behind each break.

Feeney, Maillot and Augusteijn all look for generalised models and theories to explain the republican tendency to split. Yet the cyclical description appears one-dimensional because it pays little consideration to the contemporary circumstances which, when looked at individually, highlight distinctive republican approaches adopted at each juncture.¹⁰ Patterson warns that too much emphasis on a supposedly unchanging movement ‘can blind us to the need to examine the very specific historical circumstances in which republicans operated’.¹¹ He instead calls for ‘a more discontinuous “conjunctural” analysis that breaks with the fatalism of traditional approaches’.¹² Therefore, in order to consider the various transformations the republican tradition has undergone, it is vital to look beyond an all-serving explanation and consider the evolution of republicanism within each specific context.

The 1969 Sinn Féin/IRA split epitomises the importance of taking context into account. In the early 1960s, IRA Chief of Staff, Cathal Goulding, espoused a neo-Marxist analysis of the troubles and pushed for change in the movement. He argued that the British state deliberately divided the Irish working class on sectarian grounds in order to exploit them and keep them from uniting and overthrowing their bourgeois oppressors. Within five years of Goulding’s leadership, the movement had turned from one with an often right-wing nationalist and reactionary conservative outlook (albeit with some left-wing tendencies) to ‘one which professed to be socialist’.¹³ However, whilst the 1969 split and the emergence of the Provisionals was to some extent the result of antagonism towards socialism, it cannot be oversimplified as a left–right division but was instead one based on local circumstances.

The Provisional movement was not primarily motivated by reform in the North; instead the objective was one of defence and Catholic self-protection. After the Catholic demonstrations against discrimination in pursuit of equal citizenry failed, armed activity grew and it was the Provisionals who were at the epicentre of such ‘resistance’.¹⁴ It was claimed the PIRA was ‘born out of the desire for self-preservation rather than from any overtly patriotic inspiration, still less any abstract ideological commitment to socialism’.¹⁵ It is therefore possible to view the emergence of the Provisionals as situational rather than ideational. As Conor Cruise O’Brien aptly noted, ‘The formidable thing about the new IRA – the Provisionals – was its simple relevance to the situation.’¹⁶ Yet, whilst the Provisionals pursued objectives far more relevant to the working-class Catholic population than those of the Official movement they also managed to retain a commitment to the politics and militarism of the 1916 rebellion. Whilst violence rather than politics defined the Provisional self-image – ‘legitimised’ by its protective role – it is important not to interpret this attachment to resistance and military thinking as a severance from republican tradition and history.

Walsh’s analysis of the relationship between socialism and republicanism goes further in highlighting the latter’s socialist tendencies and the resulting tensions. The Marxist leanings of the movement under Goulding distracted from the need for self-protection during the Civil Rights era.¹⁷ With the aim of political change, resources had been redirected towards the Civil Rights movement at the expense of military training.¹⁸ Yet, a significant number of republicans remained unconvinced that the Civil Rights strategy bore any validity to their overarching aims, which concerned sovereignty and territory, not equality within the northern unionist state. For many, democratic reform was not a republican objective and the movement’s drift leftwards proved too much for a significant number of republicans. The Provisionals developed as a result of an apparent need for self-protection and the resulting philosophy was one which fused localised reactive defence and defiance to broader aspirations of national sovereignty and anti-imperialism. Nonetheless, the Provisionals emerged as a response to the reality of life in the North for nationalists: subordination, discrimination and secondary ec...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of figures and tables
• Acknowledgements
• Glossary and abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1 Evaluating historic splits in Irish republicanism: is there space for the emergence of ‘dissidents’?
• 2 Irish republicanism as an ideology: are there agreed components?
• 3 Creating political space for ‘dissidents’? The extent of ideological compromise by Sinn Féin and ‘Provisional’ republicanism
• 4 Continuity or dissidence? The origins of dissident republicans and their mandate
• 5 Continuity or dissidence? Dissident republican strategies and campaigns
• 6 Militarism as a component of dissident republicanism
• 7 Spoiling the peace?
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index