The IRA

think i had a mild disagreement w/jim abt this on the brexit thread a month or two back, which i was going to return to

my memory (and what i posted) was that the Official IRA = OIRA (the stickies) were marxist (as were and the INLA) but the provos weren't -- jim found a quote which definitely had the PIRA aligning themselves, round the end of the 70s, with marxism (i was planning to push back a bit on this, and argue it was more rhetorical and geopolitically tactical than an expression of the practical philsophical core of the PIRA or of Sinn Fein, but it was so hair-splitting that in the end i never formulated it sensibly)

OIRA and PIRA were the two sides of the 1969 split in the IRA, over armed struggle (OIRA were agin it)

i'm not sure if "trots" is really the right word -- tho i did just find an essay on-line which described the Workers Party (which is what Official Sinn Fein became in the late 70s) as "leninist", but again, the result of any discussion on such definitions and distinctions is likely to end in a quagmire of split hairs

OIRA def not Trots...this passage about the estimable Eoghan Harris has stayed with me:

Harris, 'in a black leather coat and looking terribly fierce', is recalled lecturing one Galway meeting on 'our Trotskyite deviations and Social Democratic instincts which had to be purged out of us if we were to become true revolutionaries'. O'Hagan, no fan of Trotskyism himself, recalls meeting Harris and Donohue in Des Geraghty's house, where Harris started 'to rant about the Trots. I looked at him in stark raving fucking amazement...I said to Geraghty, "Is he mad?" Geraghty replied, "He just goes on like that."'

Official Sinn Féin I should have said

they identified as Stalinist through the 70s at least

haha my friend who used to be in the swp -- who the world calls trots but who call themselves leninists (occasionally neoleninists) -- used to say to me "TROTS ARE MONSTERS!"

(i think he had the gerry healy lot in mind, who his mum had had a run in with in the 50s or 60s)

The odd thing about this is, in the 1980s Bono said he was attracted to the Workers' Party.

That was when he was still looking for etc

I Will Follow... the teachings of Comrade V.I. Lenin.

"Shadows & Trotskies"

of the 210 people we arrested, only three were not (Intelligence) agents

classic

Reading "The Lost Revolution". LOLz @ the Official IRA in Belfast dismissing the Provos as 'armed Celtic supporters'.

... also Gene Kelly giving money to the IRA, who knew?

... but only on condition that they bought arms with the money, as opposed to, I don't know, tap shoes or something.

Reading "The Lost Revolution". LOLz @ the Official IRA in Belfast dismissing the Provos as 'armed Celtic supporters'.

― Punnet of the Grapes (Tom D.), Tuesday, May 2, 2017 9:15 AM (two hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

haha yas

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/scientist-provides-evidence-exonerating-robert-nairac-of-troubles-killings-1.3069263?mode=amp

pretty weak sauce attempt to get whereabouts, not sure that the main thrust of allegations against nairac were that he was there pulling triggers or wev so this shit of running into a packed court waving a sheaf of yellowing papers and breathily declaring that he was on a course that day washes away precisely zero stench

still at least no terrorist sympathisers made it into government eh?

― There's got to be a Corbyn after (Noodle Vague), Friday, 9 June 2017 09:40 (ten minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

So otm it had completely not occurred to anyone until he said it

Nail on the head from the lad, NV.

Gives me not much pleasure tbh

If you can tolerate the poor typing here's a decent snippet on some of the intricacies, contemporary report by v browne in the 80s

http://politico.ie/archive/inside-inla

The INLA issued a statement regarding the killing in the August 1979 edition of The Starry Plough:[27]

In March, retired terrorist and supporter of capital punishment, Airey Neave, got a taste of his own medicine when an INLA unit pulled off the operation of the decade and blew him to bits inside the 'impregnable' Palace of Westminster. The nauseous Margaret Thatcher snivelled on television that he was an 'incalculable loss'—and so he was—to the British ruling class.

Jesus lads

https://www.scribd.com/document/356942234/Young-2015

article about the workers' party's relationship with north korea

Our friends indeed

a highlight:

After returning from North Korea, Garland told Paddy Woodworth, who was a freelance journalist and a WPI member from 1974-1984, that he admired the health care and education system in the DPRK but that the personality cult was too excessive and wasteful. Woodworth was going to write an article for the
Workers’ Life on the odd personality cult surrounding Kim Il Sung’s regime but Garland reprimanded him. Garland said to him, “Ah come on now Paddy, I’m looking for support from these people.” Garland told Brian Hamley and Scott Millar in an interview that they “weren’t under illusions” about the reality of life in the DPRK. However, they sympathized with the situation of a small, isolated country that was also divided and “were trying to do what they could themselves.” However, Garland grew frustrated with the North Korean government’s costly campaign to popularize Kim Il Sung abroad as a great communist theorist. For example, he told the North Koreans “that putting full-page ads into the Irish Times of Kim Il Sung’s thoughts was a waste of money because nobody f------n’ read them.”

I gave up on that book about the Official IRA when Official Sinn Fein turned into the Workers Party, by then it was just tedious 70s left wing factional politics ... in Ireland, which made it even more boring tbh.

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/politics/families-demand-prosecutions-as-film-names-suspects-in-loughinisland-massacre-1.3280468

New Gibney

what a nightmare

The film suggests that:
RUC Special Branch were aware of UVF plans to kill before the massacre happened;
police destroyed evidence, including the getaway car;
suspects were warned they were about to be interviewed in advance of their arrest;
there were informers in the gang responsible for the deaths

we drove all the way through the north for the first time ever last time through. I grew up in an IRA-friendly American house - an official stayed with us when I was a kid - to see the north at last was heavy.

What gets me about the north is how small a place it is. A place you can drive fully around in a car in one shift. The density of trauma is astonishing, there's barely a townland name, a wood or a crossroads that doesn't trigger a dim or sharp memory of atrocity.

It's also an astonishingly beautiful piece of country. Fucking humans man.

maybe along the coast

You take everything so littoraly

i sea what you did there

I'm not shore I understood.

I landed it right in front of you

darragh otm but then also giant lol on the ensuing exchange

Gerry Adams announces intention to step down next year.

Now there is a complex legacy

Just take a look at who his enemies were and achieving complexity looks more like grace.

His enemies number more than just oppressor brits and obstinate unionists, not to understate what Catholics faced.

will be weird to have a post-conflict sinn fein leadership. though i feel like adams sticking around as president so long was a bit of a triumph of ego over political nous from him.

Maybe so

That said I dunno is what SF are for now. Lairy Moo ain't the calibre.

aye i suppose that is true.

there's a new bio of gerry

https://www.lrb.co.uk/v39/n22/owen-bennett-jones/i-only-want-to-keep-my-hand-in

Eamonn Mallie is the Irish times northern correspondent and always worth catching his articles on the personalities. Be surprising if he didn't have a few collections or biographies worth checking out

He has memoirs due, just checked his site.

His biography on said site is a little smalltime and luvvie, I wouldn't let it out me off

Oglaigh na hEireann announces ceasefire

Presumably all ten of them will be concentrating full time on the drug trade now so.

so is that the lot then?

Oh god no there's another two or three yet

yes based on wikipedia real and continuity are still holding out

is that the "real" IRA or is that the "continuity" IRA? or are they the same thing?

which that? oglaigh na hEireann, continuity IRA and real IRA are difft orgs w/difft histories/politics etc -- over time there has been personnel overlap and a sense that, if a place in the ideological array is vacated by one of them (or by someone else) another will move to occupy that place

but they remain distinct

if you are a nerd with a magnifying glass