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Showing posts with label New IRA. Show all posts
Showing posts with label New IRA. Show all posts
Anthony McIntyre ☠ The attempt on the life of a senior PSNI figure in Omagh has prompted a spurt in public discourse.

It was of a type we are familiar with from the era when there were endless crises in the peace process, most of them manufactured for political advantage. The process was too big a gravy train to be allowed to come off the rails. Crises just led to more gravy for more snouts to slurp around in. There was no serious existential threat to the process. Nor is there today.

In the aftermath of the Omagh shooting politicians and the media have fed into a moral panic not seen in the wake of a range of killings in the North, including a number that were investigated by the seriously injured cop: Natalie McNally, Mark Lovell, Shane Whitla and Ryan McNab. Abhorrence amplification notwithstanding, the fallout from the shooting of John Caldwell will be no more destabilising than the killings he had investigated. Northern society nor its peace is going to fall apart.

Every which way, this makes the attack on John Caldwell all the more purposeless. It has not advanced the ostensible republican goals of the people responsible one inch. All it has achieved is a reaffirmation from society that physical force republicanism is deeply unpopular; that whatever the wrongs of Northern society, killing is not the way to make things right.  

Whatever the demerits of the Provisional IRA guerrilla war against the British state - too numerous to mention - it could at least lay claim to some measure of popular support and legitimacy. There is no guerilla war being fought by republicans today. Just a reminder every so often that they haven’t gone away, and that every now and then they will attempt to kill someone for an end not discernible to anyone, perhaps not even themselves. 

The shooting of John Caldwell is as unpopular as the killing in Drogheda of the teenager Keane Mulready Woods. It brought similar sentiment onto the streets in protest. Claiming political motivation does not justify an attack or make it any more acceptable than an attack carried out for other reasons. It merely explains or worse excuses why it was done. A failure to understand why the bulk of others do not understand the logic of killing people is a sure indication of having lost the plot while retreating into a self referential tenebrous vault. The ideology of the cave cult and not that of the Cave Hill where traditional republicans sometimes trace their lineage to.  

Everybody who wants to shoot somebody else whether in a gangland way or out of fidelity to a homicidal ideology will rummage around for some sort of justification. It was said somewhere online today that as long as Britain remains in Ireland there will be armed resistance. That makes as much sense as claiming that while there are shops in Ireland there will be shoplifters. 

It requires a particular hatred to gun down somebody in front of their own child and the children of others. Everybody at the scene was targeted in some way. Ideological hatred, like its theological soulmate, is to be abjured.

A republicanism that does not have as a priority the preservation of life contributes nothing more to society than gangland. John Caldwell was gunned down while doing something useful by people doing something harmful. It is not hard to figure out where the sympathy vote will go.

⏩ Follow on Twitter @AnthonyMcIntyre.

Gunned Down In Omagh

Anthony McIntyre discusses the suggestion that the New IRA is a pseudo-gang.

Earlier this week, some dude stepped out at the front of a pro-Trump rally in the US urging it to “kill the Democrats.” My wife immediately said: ”that’s the FBI agent “ The sentiment resonated with me firstly because it seemed so obvious, and secondly because of how the possibility of a similar situation is being played out in the North.

On a number of occasions in conversation with republicans and their critics, academics and journalists the suggestion has been floated that the latest manifestation of the IRA tradition might be a Kitsonian type pseudo-gang, effectively managed and kept in place by the British security services. Its function: to operate as a fly trap for anybody considering using arms as a means to express their opposition to the involvement of the British state in Ireland.

The suspicion is undoubtedly fuelled by the organisation’s inability to conduct its business as most people imagine a serious guerrilla organisation would. Had the Provisional IRA campaign produced so little in terms of quality operations, the British would have never entertained the peace process as a means to bring the Provisional IRA to heel. In fact, the British would have considered it “job done.”

Not given to conspiracy theories the only answer that I can proffer to the pseudo-gang suggestion is that while I genuinely do not know, I do not believe it to be the case. It seems that almost 70 years after the Mau Mau rebellion in Kenya where the tactic was employed, the modern British state is hardly in need of pseudo-gangs or the opprobrium certain to come once they are caught running them. Effective control of an organisation can be attained without managing it. The use of control gates effectively precludes a movement going in the direction it might wish to proceed.

Having watched these things develop over the course of decades, the obvious elephant in the room is not those against whom the surveillance trap was sprang on this occasion, but those against whom it was not. Without any hard evidence – just a steadfast belief that the current IRA is as penetrated as the former IRA – it appears that the British security agencies are doing one of two things. They are clearing out the top tier in order to create space for their own people to move in. Or they are clearing out the top tier and using control gates to ensure that the people most suitable for their objectives get into position. The first type would be agents, but not the second. Either way the control panel is at the fingertips of the British, not the current IRA. The aim is not to decapitate the organisation per se but to allow it to grow a new head, one that from its own perspective is docile, not on the road to a united Ireland, just on the road to nowhere, a road littered with botched operations and PR disasters. 

In terms of effect, although not intent, the main purpose that the group calling itself the IRA serves is not to prosecute a guerrilla war: it simply does not do that. In the final year of the former IRA’s armed campaign against the British state, its level of activity was so poor that a senior RUC figure described it as a pathetic grubby little war. Yet even at such a poor operational level it was much more effective than anything the current IRA can muster. What the current IRA does do is provide the British security services with a training ground where they can practice their surveillance techniques for use elsewhere in real wars, to the point where they will be both effective and cross examination resilient.

With legislation being introduced by the British to enable them to jail teens "guilty of terrorism" for their entire lives, some serious thinking needs to be done. In the current IRA young people stand less chance of being sent out on successful operations than they do to prison. Setting aside the ethics and wisdom of it all, even the horrific effect on the victims of IRA activity, the leaders of the current IRA have an obligation to their members and anybody who might think of joining to ensure that they are not something for the British security services to practice on before they end up doing seriously long stretches in prison.  

If this interpretation is correct, and the current IRA is controlled rather than handled, the value of controlling an organisation that proclaims its adherence to armed actions is that people who think of such means are likely to gravitate to the organisation shouting loudest. That brings us back round to the guy in the Trump crowd. 

⏩Follow on Twitter @AnthonyMcIntyre

Same Outcome Whether Managed Or Controlled

TOMMY MCKEARNEY writing in Socialist Voice advises physical force republicanism to leave the stage. 

The death of Lyra McKee was a needless tragedy inflicted on a young woman by thoughtless stooges. It was an act that devastated her life partner, her family, and her friends and colleagues in the world of journalism.

There is no room for equivocation when commenting on this event. Yet this killing was not wrong only because a young, talented and engaging 29-year-old lost her life—though it was certainly all of that. It was not wrong only because of the undisciplined firing of live ammunition in a built-up area, reckless as that undoubtedly was. It was also wrong because it involved the aimless, ill-conceived and counter-productive use of physical force.

And before some wiseacre challenges this writer by saying that the same may have been said about the Provisional IRA, let me make two basic points. In the first instance, there is no comparison between the situation today and the scale and circumstances that gave rise to the Provisionals. More important, though, is the fact that events must be considered strictly on their merits, albeit in context. It is in the light of contemporary situations and circumstances that events in Derry must be considered.

Claiming that those who opened fire were defending the Creggan is simply being disingenuous. To credibly protect a community, it goes without saying that there must exist a genuine and serious threat to the people of the area. In contrast to events during 1969, when the RUC used lethal force to kill and injure people in the Bogside, Belfast and elsewhere in the Six Counties, no such threat was evident on that April evening in 2019. Responding to house searches is not defending, and firing wildly with a pistol in the direction of an armoured vehicle was at best bravado and in this case inexcusable.

It must be pointed out, however, that the PSNI also have questions to answer. What on earth did they think they were doing by aggressively carrying out house searches at 9 p.m. on the Thursday before Easter? While no-one could have predicted the actual outcome, surely they must have known that there was the real risk of a violent confrontation when so many people were out and about on a mild spring evening, and in a republican area.

Let’s be clear: this is not to imply that the PSNI were responsible for Lyra McKee’s death. Nevertheless their decision to carry out searches at that time and place must be carefully scrutinised and weighed in the light of the subsequent tragedy.

However, when analysing existing material conditions, one overriding consideration is crystal-clear. To paraphrase an expert in the subject, the Derry shooters have no water in which to swim. Whatever wider assessments may be made of the Provisionals, it is undeniable that they received very considerable support from within the North’s nationalist community. By no stretch of the imagination can any similar claim be made today for the tiny, isolated groups promoting armed conflict in the Six Counties. That fact alone condemns them to certain and total failure. In the process, however, they serve only to damage the efforts of those working to build a workers’ republic in Ireland.

By any reckoning, the political entity that is Northern Ireland is in disarray. Political institutions have not functioned for more than two years. The leading pro-union party, the DUP, has not only lost the confidence of powerful elements within unionism but has also overplayed its hand with the Conservatives in London. All the while, the very existence of the six-county state is in doubt.

Meanwhile the southern 26-county state is disguising its failure to address the needs of its working-class majority by promoting its relationship with the neo-liberal EU while loudly lamenting the Brexit process. This is the state with 10,000 homeless people and a two-tier health service, where money buys access to life-saving treatment. Yet at the same time its government sees fit to award private companies a lucrative contract worth €373 million over fifteen years to operate toll systems on the country’s busiest motorway.*

Overcoming the two failed Irish states requires the building of a broadly based progressive mass movement of working people. Signs that such a development is possible have been evident in several well-supported campaigns over recent years in the 26 Counties. Encouragingly, many disparate republican groups and individuals have overcome their reluctance to change old and redundant tactics and have engaged in this process.

Unfortunately, all too often these initiatives to unite on a working-class agenda have been ridiculed and obstructed by those responsible for the death of Lyra McKee. Ironically, while they have sought to cause division and dissension within the ranks of left republicanism, they have now succeeded in uniting the forces of the establishment on a sterile security programme. Hardly a surprise, therefore, that so many suspect the presence of a sinister hand monitoring and manipulating these organisations.

But irrespective of the presence of provocateurs, these groups are objectively counter-revolutionary. Their presence and their actions are more than a mere distraction: they cause confusion by peddling a false promise that they can deliver on a republican objective. Their actions give comfort to the enemies of a workers’ republic as they distort and mangle the socialist message. Their reckless incompetence allows for the demonising of genuine revolutionaries. Common sense, not to mention common decency, dictates that they should vacate the stage.

Regrettably, it is doubtful if any of these arguments will have any positive effect on the organisations involved. If logic or political understanding were their strong point they wouldn’t be in the cul de sac they now occupy.

It is important, however, that the counter-productive actions of these groups are not allowed to facilitate a reactionary agenda. The demand for an all-Ireland workers’ republic is as valid as it ever was. The building of a mass movement among the working class to do this remains not only legitimate but also essential. Only through a mass movement of the Irish working class will we definitively sideline what Connolly derisively described as the “physical force party.” Only through such a movement can we transform society in the two failed states into a republic that serves the needs of working people.

We must continue, therefore, to speak the facts objectively, overlook the hyperbole, and continue to build for the future.

*Barry O’Halloran, “Abtran and Vinci win €373m contract to operate M50 tolls,” Irish Times, 18 April 2019.


Tommy McKearney is a former IRA hunger striker. He edits Fourthwrite magazine and is a union organiser

Reckless Isolated Groups Should Vacate The Stage

Dieter Reinisch with an opinion piece for RTE: despite widespread condemnation of the killing of Lyra McKee, the New IRA will continue to use violence on the streets of Northern Ireland.

Since the killing of Lyra McKee by a New IRA gunman during riots in Derry, commentators, former Provisionals, and politicians called for an end of the armed campaign by republican paramilitaries. The morning after the shooting the political party Saoradh stated on their website that the journalist was shot "accidentally" by a "republican volunteer". The statement sought to blame the "heavily armed British Crown Forces" for the clashes between residents and the PSNI.

Saoradh is understood to be the political wing of the New IRA, a claim rejected by its spokespersons. Over Easter, republicans such as their national executive member Dee Fennell at the Saoradh commemoration in Dublin, and the party’s chairperson Brian Kenna at the commemoration in Belfast called on the New IRA to "take responsibility and apologise if they are responsible for the death of Lyra McKee".

The following Monday, the New IRA claimed responsibility for the death in a statement to the Irish News. This stated that "we have instructed our volunteers to take the utmost care in future when engaging the enemy, and put in place measures to help ensure this."

Both statements delivered the same message: while they regret the death of McKee, the shots fired at the PSNI during the riots were a legitimate act of resistance. While the death of McKee is appalling, the messages Saoradh and the New IRA send are constituent.

For radical republicans, their fight today is not different from the fighting in 1916, 1919, 1939, 1956, or 1969. Rather than dissenting from republicanism, today’s "dissident republicans" are those who brought the Provisionals' message into the 21st century. As Philipp McGarry explains, "these individuals are doing what the IRA have always done, which is using physical force to pursue a political agenda." As long as there is a partition in Ireland, John F Morrison adds that "there will be those who see it as a cause to take up arms."

If paramilitaries produce guns and deploy car bombs on the streets, civilian casualties are unavoidable. Yet, as former Republican Sinn Féin vice president, Cáit Trainor outlined on Good Friday in Duleek, Co Meath only hours after the death of McKee:


one influence on Pearse taking such a decision was witnessing an ordinary Dublin family get gunned down near a British barricade on Moore Street. He too would also have been aware a Volunteer had just accidentally shot dead a teenage girl.



While Trainor is not linked to Saoradh, her speech resonated widely within republican circles. The message is clear; civilians died during the fight for the Irish Republic in 1916, an event the state commemorates. For republicans, McKee died 103 years later during the fight for the same cause.

Hence, the support base of Saoradh and the New IRA will remain largely unaffected by the death of McKee. In the deprived working-class areas of Northern Ireland such as Creggan, where people feel left out from the "peace dividend", Saoradh "offers a sense of meaning to some young people who are alienated from the 1998 vision of power-sharing, peace and prosperity", writes Peter Doak.

However, while Saoradh and the New IRA recently attracted urban youth into their ranks, their support among seasoned republicans in rural areas of Tyrone and Armagh must not be underestimated, as I have outlined elsewhere. The attendance of hundreds of supporters at the Saoradh national Easter commemoration in Dublin, as well as large numbers at similar events in Derry and Belfast only days after the killing of McKee, shows that their supporters are unwavering.

Talking last week, a senior Northern Irish republican close to the group told me that:

when the media attention settles down, Derry will still be the most impoverished city under British rule. It will still be one of the most impoverished and underdeveloped and economically starved cities in the EU. That is the poverty which Lyra wrote about, which has a young person like Lyra jumping from Craigavon bridge every week, isn't going to go away and isn't going to be solved without the Irish people having their sovereignty.

However, more republicans are distancing themselves from the New IRA. The Easter statement from the 32 County Sovereignty Movement, believed to be the political wing of the Real IRA, is a lengthy attack on Saoradh and the New IRA. Following the formation of the New IRA in 2012, both groups engaged in a bitter feud that left at least three republicans dead in the Republic of Ireland.

Republican Sinn Féin, believed to be the political wing of the Continuity IRA, likewise used Easter to criticise the New IRA. Their president Joseph Malone condemned the tragic events in Derry at an Easter commemoration in Fore, Co Westmeath and their former president and ex-member Des Dalton did likewise at a commemoration in Lurgan, Co Armagh.

The CIRA is the most orthodox republican paramilitary organisation. However, this year’s Easter statement failed to mention "armed resistance" for the first time. Although planting a hoax bomb in Lurgan before Easter, the organisation is highly infiltrated and splintered, as I explain in the recent edition of Village Magazine. While not officially declaring a ceasefire, as Óglaigh na hÉireann did in January 2018, the CIRA will drift further away from the armed struggle. Without a political alternative provided by the remnants of RSF, their movement will end in obscurity.

The New IRA pose the biggest security threat to Ireland since the Real IRA in the late 1990s and their long-term strategy and support base will not be affected by the death of McKee. While support for the New IRA is growing, as I outlined in a previous piece and stressed by John F Morrison, there will be no return to the scale of violence of the pre-1994 period. Nonetheless, Brexit and the deadlock at Stormont provide a vacuum that will be exploited by the New IRA. Thus, further sporadic attacks are likely and, unfortunately, Lyra McKee won’t be the last victim of Northern Ireland’s endless Troubles.

 
⏩ Dieter Reinisch is an Adjunct Faculty member at the Webster Vienna Private University and a Lecturer at the Universities of Vienna and Salzburg.

➤ He holds a PhD in History from the European University Institute and is an Editorial Board member of “Studi irlandesi” (Florence University Press).
➤ He is also an IFPH member, tweets on @ReinischDieter and blogs on www.ofrecklessnessandwater.com.


Why There's Still Support For Dissident Republican Groups

Denis Russell writes that the ‘Troubles’ may be over but Northern Ireland’s sectarian divides are deepening.

The recent tragic death of Lyra McKee in the Creggan area of Derry City has raised fears that the peace in Northern Ireland is now under threat. Dissident republicans, calling themselves the ‘New IRA’ have admitted to causing her death while attacking the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI).

McKee came to prominence in 2015 when her blog went viral. It was a letter to her 14-year-old self who was suffering with the fact of being gay in Northern Ireland. It was later made into a short film. Her much-anticipated book, The Lost Boys, is an exploration of eight young men and boys who disappeared during the ‘Troubles’.

The sprawling Creggan Estate on the outskirts of Derry is one of the poorest working-class estates in the UK. Crime, vandalism, carjacking, joyriding, drugs, punishment shootings and heavily armed police raids against dissidents are commonplace. Because of this, the estate has become something of an attraction for journalists and filmmakers. Former BBC presenter Reggie Yates was in the area on the day McKee was shot, making a documentary for MTV about extreme and unusual places. Sinead O’Shea’s 2018 documentary A Mother Brings Her Son to Be Shot is set in the Creggan. It follows the life of the O’Donnell family after the mother voluntarily brings her son for a punishment shooting because he was dealing drugs.

Continue reading @ Spiked Online.

A Peace Process With No Peace

Fintan O'Toole  writes that Sinn Fein no longer accepts the legitimacy of crypto-fascist 'republicanism', but it won't disavow it either.



Dissident republicans are neither. The idea of dissidence is to oppose and contest received ideas, to challenge calcified cliches. The gangsters who call themselves the New IRA and their groupies in Saoradh are nothing but calcified clichés. They endlessly recycle dead platitudes and poses. They are military re-enactors with real bullets, museum dummies with live bombs. And republicanism is a philosophical tradition about which they have no clue, a way of thinking about a democracy in which, as Philip Pettit has put it, we can look one another in the eye without reason for fear or deference. Fear and deference are what these bullies seek to create, first in their own enclaves and then for the rest of us.

In fact, these people are not even, properly speaking, Irish nationalists. The core demand of Irish nationalism has always been self-determination for the Irish people as a whole. The Irish people as a whole, North and South, had that act of self-determination on May 22nd, 1998, when we voted simultaneously on whether (in effect) to accept the Belfast (Good Friday) Agreement. It was supported by 71 per cent north of the Border and 94 per cent in the South. On an island-wide basis, 86 per cent of voters supported the agreement. That is and remains the emphatic will of the people who share this island. The so-called dissidents are in revolt, not against "the forces of crown", but against the self-determination of the Irish people.

This is not dissidence or republicanism or Irish nationalism. It's fascism. The only question is why this is not as obvious as it should be. 

Sinn Fein has taken huge strides away from the mentality of this crypto-fascist 'republicanism.'

Continue Reading @ the Irish Times.

Gangsters Who Call Themselves The New IRA Are Calcified Cliché Only

DIETER REINISCH writing in the Irish Examiner thinks the physical force republicanism is not about to pack up any time soon. 

On 28 January 2007, an extraordinary ard fheis of Sinn Féin supported policing in the North. Less than a year and a half after the decommissioning by the Provisional IRA in September 2005, throwing its support behind the PSNI was another crucial step towards constitutional nationalism of the Provisionals.

The support for policing was overwhelming among party members in attendance in Dublin – just 5% of the delegates opposed it. Despite this historic decision, Sinn Féin experienced no significant split; apart from the formation of the tiny campaign group éirígí (Arise).

Following the formation of the Continuity IRA in the late 1980s and the Real IRA campaign of the late 1990s, many observers saw the dissident campaign finally halted.

Yet, what only became known years later was that former leaders had already broken away from the Provisional IRA and embarked on reorganising their movement. Although hidden within the remoteness of rural villages in counties Tyrone and Armagh, the period 2006 to 2008 was a watershed moment for modern republicanism.

Those alienated by Sinn Féin were not merely small pockets of die-hard republicans but a group of seasoned republicans, their families and supporters. Shortly afterwards, a series of independent Easter commemorations were organised in Co Tyrone. Thousands marched under the banner of the independent Tyrone National Graves Association, rather than at Sinn-Féin-affiliated commemorations.

When in September 2013 the Tyrone NGA organised a commemoration for the three Provisional IRA members killed in an ambush at Drumnakilly outside Omagh, up to 2,000 locals attended the event supported by the families of those killed. The Sinn Féin commemoration on the following day attracted significantly smaller crowds.

Opposition to Sinn Féin manifested itself in the rapid rise of organisations like éirígí, the 1916 Societies, and the Republican Network for Unity in republican areas throughout Ireland.

However, a parallel development emerged unnoticed by the public. Experienced former Provisional IRA reorganised the IRA.

On April 2, 2011, Ronan Kerr was killed by a booby-trap bomb planted outside his home in Killyclogher near Omagh. Like the death of the PSNI officer, it is suggested that the attack on a British army base in Masserene, Co Antrim, can be attributed to those who later formed the New IRA, although the Real IRA then claimed the latter attack.

Other former Provisionals emerged under the name of “Republican Action Against Drugs” in North Derry and West Tyrone, tackling criminality and drug-dealing in nationalist areas. In this way, they filled a policing vacuum left by the distrust for the PSNI that existed since the Troubles.

In July 2012, these alienated former Provisionals joined forces with some sections of the Real IRA, then the largest of the dissident republican paramilitaries. In November 2012, the new group killed Maghaberry prison officer David Black. Another victim was prison officer Adrian Ismay in 2016.

While the group pursued a low-level campaign of violence against the PSNI in the North, the amalgamation faced fierce opposition from Real IRA members in the Republic. Following the killing of Dublin Real IRA leader Alan Ryan in September 2012, militant republicanism was riddled by a deadly feud in the Republic. Among those believed to be victims of the feud were Alan Ryan’s brother Vincent, Deccy Smith, Peter Butterly, and Aidan O’Driscoll.

It was only in 2016 that the decision was taken to form a new political organisation. Saoradh (Liberation) held its inaugural conference in November 2016 in Newry. The new organisation managed to unite former members of the Provisionals with experienced dissidents from organisations such as éirígí, the 1916 Societies, or Republican Sinn Féin.

The formation of Saoradh saw a wave of new, young recruits from socially deprived areas in the North joining anti-Good-Friday-Agreement republicans. Many were born only after the signing of the agreement.

While Saoradh experiences significant support in impoverished areas such as Creggan where people feel left out by the “peace dividend”, the organisations’ support in rural areas is often underestimated. In rural areas of the Tyrone, Armagh, and Fermanagh, republicanism evolves around family linkages, stretching back for generations. Here, the militant republican ideology of groups like Saoradh or the New IRA falls on fertile ground.

Saoradh has establish a small presence south of the border, particularly in Dublin and parts of Munster. The election of Dublin men Brian Kenna as chairperson and Ger Devereux as secretary, as well as holding their main commemoration in Dublin, are significant developments for the party.

While Saoradh faces a harsh public backlash, the participation of up to 1,000 supporters at their Dublin commemoration, as well as hundreds in Belfast and Derry only days after the killing of Lyra McKee underlines that their support base will not be affected by the tragic events in Derry. For them, armed struggle for a united Ireland is justified. The death of innocent civilians is unavoidable if guns are produced on the streets, this has happened in 1916, and for radical republicans, 2019 is no different.

There are no indications that the support of Saoradh will affected by the death of Lyra McKee in the long-term, nor that the New IRA will reconsider its attacks in the North. On the contrary, Monday night’s New IRA statement indicates the likelihood of further attacks. The threat from militant republicans is here to stay.

Dr Dieter Reinisch is an Adjunct Professor in International Relations at Webster University and a Lecturer in History at the Universities of Vienna and Salzburg.

 

⏩ Dieter Reinisch is an Adjunct Faculty member at the Webster Vienna Private University and a Lecturer at the Universities of Vienna and Salzburg.
➤ He holds a PhD in History from the European University Institute and is an Editorial Board member of “Studi irlandesi” (Florence University Press).
➤ He is also an IFPH member, tweets on @ReinischDieter and blogs on www.ofrecklessnessandwater.com.

Unfortunately, The Threat From Militant Republicans Is Here To Stay

KATHY SHERIDAN writes that Dissidents failed to anticipate furious backlash from new generation.

Should any visitor decide to test the nation’s tolerance, they might begin a conversation about the fake soldiers parading down O’Connell Street a couple of weeks ago. Even without the murder of Lyra McKee, it would have been an assault on the senses. The two combined made it almost impossible to process at any rational level.

One thing we know: Simon Harris’s declaration that “only one organisation has any right to march in military uniform in our country” is only morally correct. There is no law against a ragbag militia taking over a swathe of the capital’s main thoroughfare and calling it a march.

They run an armed gang. Nothing will dissuade them from using armed violence to achieve their aim. And they have zero support. We know all this because they said so in a Sunday Times interview. They failed to mention that to achieve their aim would entail the overthrow of democracy and the State’s entire system of government. This approach is also known as fascism.

Continue reading @ the Irish Times.

‘No-One Likes Us, We Don’t Care’ Will Only Take The Fake Soldiers So Far

SAORADH claims it is being subjected to unprecedented censorship on the internet.

Following the tragic killing of Lyra McKee in Derry a fortnight ago, Saoradh offered its analysis of the events that led to the journalists death; we did so as a political party on behalf of our membership who share our analysis of the terrible events. 

We did not and do not speak on behalf of any other organisation and contrary to a hostile media and state narrative we do not speak on behalf of the Irish Republican Army.

Saoradh was roundly attacked in the media and by the political aristocracy for doing so. Quickly a public discourse was built up accusing Saoradh and its activists for Lyra’s death. Saoradh played no role in the events that led to the death of Lyra McKee.

Saoradh is an open and publicly accessible political party, though we offer an analysis on armed actions in the pursuit of Irish national liberation, Saoradh does not engage in armed struggle. Saoradh is not a proscribed organisation, we have as our means political agitation, mobilisation and grassroots activism. Since our formation in 2016 we have grown and we continue to grow, we have three public offices with more planned, each one open and accessible to the public.

Everyone has a fundamental right under international law and European human rights legislation to organise, hold and impart their political opinion and freedom of expression. However since the events in Derry at Easter a campaign to remove those rights from Saoradh has been launched.

We have had our access to the internet and various online platforms curtailed in an effort to deny us those basic fundamental rights of freedom of speech and expression. Saoradh place the blame for this orchestrated attack on everyone's rights at the door of the British and Dublin Governments who ironically are using the death of a journalist to impose unprecedented levels of censorship. Presently no political party in western Europe is subjected to the level of censorship now imposed on Saoradh.

Saoradh is currently pursuing a number of avenues to address these attacks on the freedom of speech. What the state does today on Irish Republicans it will not hesitate to use tomorrow on the rest of society. You may not share our opinion, you may be diametrically opposed to it, as is your right, but you must understand that the denial of our rights today is the denial of your rights tomorrow.

Saoradh Facing Unprecedented Internet Censorship

PAULINE HADDAWAY raises awkward questions about the North's peace process, observing that many of the politicians at Lyra McKee’s funeral have presided over a broken system. 

The fatal shooting of journalist Lyra McKee in Derry was a reminder that beneath the fiction of ‘post-conflict’ normalisation and the sentimental narrative of peacebuilding, Northern Ireland remains a violent, divided and fundamentally unstable society ...

... In the words of Eamonn McCann, veteran activist and People Before Profit Alliance candidate in the coming Derry City and Strabane local elections: ‘Everybody knew there was going to be bother.’ 

... Amid widespread public revulsion, politicians in Ireland, Britain and internationally responded to the shooting with the usual chorus of condemnation.

… Some blamed the collapse of power-sharing in the Northern Ireland assembly – there has been no functioning government for two years – for bringing regional politics to a standstill and creating a dangerous power vacuum. Others blamed austerity, which is preventing young people from realising their futures. However, PSNI detective superintendent Jason Murphy proffered another explanation, warning that the attack was the work of a ‘new breed of terrorist coming through the ranks’. This poses the question: does the new IRA represent a new form of political threat or is it simply a continuation of historical patterns?  

Continue reading @ Spiked Online.

So Now They Care About Violence In Northern Ireland

DIETER REINISCH, a historian, is interviewed by  Cormac O'Keeffe in the Irish Examiner.

The shooting dead of Lyra McKee by the New IRA will not affect their actions “in any way”, a leading historian and republican researcher has said.

Dieter Reinisch said the death of the 29-year-old journalist in the Creggan area of Derry last Thursday week was most unlikely to be the last.

Dr Reinisch, attached to the University of Vienna, has studied republicanism for the last 15 years.

He has written one book on republicans in prison in the North and a second book is due on women and republicanism.

He has recently been in the North and met and interviewed senior members of Saoradh, the political wing of the New IRA. In an interview with the Irish Examiner, he says:

➽The New IRA is the “biggest, most experienced and best organised of all the dissident groups”
➽Assesses the threat they pose as “quite high”, but not comparable to the threat posed by the Real IRA in the 1990s
➽The group has not had much success in staging attacks saying this was because it has been “infiltrated” by intelligence services and hit hard by arms seizures and convictions
➽Estimates that the group has a “few dozen” activists involved in organising, preparing and conducting attacks, a second group, amounting to hundreds of people, who provide logistical support, and a wider group, in the region of 1,000 to 1,500 strong, who provide political support

The academic said that he did not think that the New IRA had planned to fire shots on Thursday night last, but rather had wanted to build up tension over the weekend and take armed action on Monday night after their Easter commemoration.

“They had plans to stage an attack on the PSNI,” he said.

I expected on Monday a militant display with a riot, petrol bombs and to fire shots, but on Thursday they chose to do it as there was a relatively big riot, there was a lot of people out, there was media there and people were broadcasting live, including on Facebook and Twitter, and they thought ‘let’s do it tonight’.

Dr Reinisch said it was his understanding that the order was to shoot towards the police and “not into the crowd”: “I think their aim was to have a publicity stunt, to fire shots into the air. The media was there and the headline the following day would be ‘New IRA fire shots in Derry’.” 

Asked were the gunmen young and reckless, he said:

There were definitely very young, you can see in the video, but they knew what they were doing. The second masked man remained calm as he collected the bullets, so they were not completely inexperienced. There were firing into the crowd and not into the air. I’m pretty sure that was a mistake, that the organisation didn’t want that and that wasn’t the order.

"Their statement (issued subsequently) seems to reflect that.”

However, he added: 

There’s always a risk when you give anyone a gun and personally I was very surprised they took that risk. They killed an innocent civilian. And many of the people standing very close to Lyra McKee were republicans, known members of other organisations, they could easily have been shot.

Mr Reinisch said the New IRA has a “significant presence” in Derry, “particularly in the Creggan area” and said it was “one of three strongholds” of the group.

“They are recruiting young members, teens, young men. They have a significant presence and authority there.” He said high unemployment and deprivation in the area were factors and said many of the young men “come from republican families”.

He added:

That’s very important to understand. They may have not lived through the conflict but grew up as republicans. You add in no jobs and that many of them don’t see a future in Derry, and are radicalised by an organisation offering an alternative.

He said the New IRA was:

the biggest, most experienced and best organised of all the dissident groups, no doubt. The pose a threat. It’s very likely we will see future attacks, in the near future. The death of Lyra McKee will not affect their strategy in any way.


Expanding on the threat, he said: “The threat they pose is quite high. It’s still weaker than the Real IRA in the 1990s. It’s not comparable to that.” He said they didn’t have the success rate in staging attacks that the Real IRA had.


I would consider them very much infiltrated by the intelligence services in the last two to three years. Most of their operations have failed due to the intelligence services and that is most likely coming from within the organisation.

He said the conviction of Kevin Braney, from Tallaght, Dublin, for the 2013 murder of Real IRA man Peter Butterly, last February was an example of the hit the organisation had taken.

Braney, a former chairman of Saoradh, was considered the most senior New IRA figure south of the border.


“Those convictions are a huge blow for the organisation as were the recent arms finds in Co Louth,” he said.

There are currently 40 subversives in Irish prisons, the bulk in Portlaoise, Co Laois. Mr Reinisch said the car bomb outside Derry courthouse last January illustrated the organisation was “capable of building bombs”.

He said the organisation has “experienced members” from the Provisional IRA, which provided that generational link to the new generation of young republicans. However, he said the organisation was facing problems in accessing explosive material.

“Most of the arsenal currently being used dates back to the Provisional IRA, arsenals that weren’t decommissioned. That won’t last forever. They need to look for alternatives,” he said.

He said the eastern European market was the obvious source and said links with Lithuania “still exist and were exploited”.

The issue was bringing it back into the country. He said criminal gangs have better networks to do that.

He said he believed the New IRA was looking for new technology to “remote control bombs and car bombs”.

On the numbers attached to the New IRA, he broke it down into three groups:

➽A “few dozen” people actively involved in attacks — from organising, to preparing and planning and conducting them
➽A wider group that supports them, including infrastructure, safe houses, fundraising, intelligence, training camps, which he estimates to be in the hundreds
➽A third and the biggest group, political support and more fundraising, sympathisers and family members, numbering around 1,000 to 1,500, adding that there would be overlap between the groups “One should not underestimate the support for radical republicans in some areas in the North,” he said.

He said the death of Lyra McKee “will not affect Saoradh in the long run”.
Hardcore republicans know this can happen, they know it’s a mistake and regret it, but know there can be casualties when you put guns on the street. In their view it’s inevitable and part of the republican struggle. For radical republicans, those who support the New IRA, they will still support it after the death of Lyra McKee. It will make no difference to them.
In relation to the other dissident groups, he said the Real IRA (the bulk of which was subsumed into the New IRA) was no longer present in the North, but that “pockets” remain in the south, “particularly” in Cork and lesser so in Dublin.

He said the Continuity IRA was no longer capable of staging attacks and was splintered and had no arsenal of weapons. He said the Republican Sinn Féin march (the political group associated with CIRA) in Dublin was small.

One of the most dangerous groups in recent years was Óglaigh na hÉireann, comprising some Real IRA and former Provisional IRA figures. The conviction of Seamus McGrane, a senior figure, for directing terrorism, and other convictions in the North, effectively decapitated it, Garda sources have said.

“Óglaigh na hÉireann is on ceasefire,” said Mr Reinisch. "It still exists and has a structure, but I can’t see them ending their ceasefire."

He said they have a presence in Belfast north and west and south Armagh. Its political grouping, the Republican Network for Unity, held a march over the weekend in Ardoyne, north Belfast.

On Brexit and the ongoing absence of a power-sharing government in Stormont, he considered these as not having a direct role in the thinking and strategy of the New IRA. However, he added: 
Stormont and Brexit definitely provide oxygen for radical groups and have an indirect impact. They will milk it. If border posts go up, I’ve no doubt it will be one of the first targets of the New IRA. It will be a symbolic act and the talk of direct rule plays into the hands of radical republicans.

⏩ Dieter Reinisch is an Adjunct Faculty member at the Webster Vienna Private University and a Lecturer at the Universities of Vienna and Salzburg.
➤ He holds a PhD in History from the European University Institute and is an Editorial Board member of “Studi irlandesi” (Florence University Press).
➤ He is also an IFPH member, tweets on @ReinischDieter and blogs on www.ofrecklessnessandwater.com.

New IRA ‘Will Be Unaffected’ By Murder On Derry Street


ANTHONY MCINTYRE discusses the pressure Saoradh and the New IRA are facing

NIRA and its political appendage, Saoradh, despite their trenchant resistance to reason, might just be feeling the cumbersome burden of a sentiment expressed by the Roman jurist, Aemilius Papinianus: “it is easier to commit murder than to justify it." Heat is not a cerebral thing and need only be felt, not deliberated. NIRA and Saoradh must be feeling the heat although that does not mean they are ready to vacate the kitchen, as the NIRA interview in last weekend's Sunday Times illustrates.

In the immediate aftermath of Lyra McKee's killing there was a hope, a wispy one doubtless, that the more capable people in Saoradh - those with analytical minds who are quick to discern and who sometimes assume the role of public thinkers, who have frequently exhibited empathy, who have not stumbled through their political lives with eyes wide shut - might step up to the plate.

While it would have been a most welcome development had they gone as far as to echo the words of Brendan Harkin and announced that the New IRA were desisting, decommissioning and disbanding, it would still have been positive had they even promised much less. They could have said of Lyra McKee's death that while she was not the intended target, it was wholly unjustified, would not be repeated, that an inquiry was under way to establish the facts, and that their armed activity would at least be put on hold to give them time to consider all their options. It would not have deflected the Katyusha of flak that rained down on them, but it would have given rise to a view that there was some sort of strategic intelligence at play, the possibility of meaningful engagement with them, a more conscious effort to understand their concerns. But no, nothing like that: any hope of reason prevailing simply dissipated with the group’s apologia for those who killed Lyra McKee. The statement was formulaic rhetoric which Eddie Holt might have excoriated:

the language of war, like the language of advertising, political ideology and corporations, is a jumble of jargon, euphemisms and downright lies … a sanitising operation, designed to disguise the reality of butchery.

The somewhat more sophisticated interview given to the Sunday Times by the New IRA may have arrested the credibility freefall but just marginally and only temporarily. The contempt in the interview for the Irish people or any semblance of democracy from those who describe themselves as anti-imperialist and socialist is on a par with fascism and is being described as such. Not that NIRA is politically fascist but it is attitudinally so. In the view of one commentator:

Nothing will dissuade them from using armed violence to achieve their aim. And they have zero support. We know all this because they said so in a Sunday Times interview. They failed to mention that to achieve their aim would entail the overthrow of democracy and the State’s entire system of government. This approach is also known as fascism.

The former republican prisoner and writer Richard O'Rawe has often noted in conversation with me that this is not something new to armed republicanism. It was as prevalent in our own day as it is currently. The fascistic attitude was a serious challenge to our republican credentials, much at ease with obligatory nationalism but wholly at odds with the republican ethos of rule by the people. We got away with it only because of a widespread culture of resistance that no longer exists. There was a well grounded view that we represented something primarily liberatory rather than repressive. Also because we resembled a social protest movement rather than a gang. That image has since been inverted by the posturing of NIRA, which causes it to be viewed more as a Nearly IRA than a New one.

When Saoradh members come out of court in Derry exuding the demeanour of Tommy Robinson more than that of Pat McGeown, the public will reach its own verdict: guilty of something other than republicanism.

Something Other Than Republicanism

Author of Unfinished Business, historian Marisa McGlinchey writing in the Irish Times on the death of Lyra McKee.

Father Martin McGill’s words to the politicians gathered in front of him, including Sinn Féin’s Mary Lou McDonald and the Democratic Unionist Party’s Arlene Foster, in St Anne’s Cathedral in Belfast have gone around the world.

They were a clarion call in the wake of the brutal killing of 29-year-old journalist, Lyra McKee, provoking spontaneous applause and a standing ovation from the congregation including, awkwardly, the politicians.

The absence of a functioning Stormont government in Northern Ireland has contributed to polarisation and diminished community relations, but the actions of the New IRA are not a consequence of the political vacuum.

Nor is the escalation of activity by the New IRA a consequence of Brexit, as it made clear after a bombing attack in Derry in January, which could have killed and maimed.

Continue Reading @ Irish Times

‘The New IRA’s Actions Are Not A Consequence Of The North’s Political Vacuum’

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