Explaining Pathways To Armed Activism in The Provisional Irish Republican Army, 1969-1972

Social Science History 36:3 (Fall 2012)
DOI 10.1215/01455532-1595390
2012 by Social Science History Association
Special Section: Cultures of Radicalization:
Discourse and Practices of Political Violence and Terrorism
Lorenzo Bosi
Explaining Pathways to Armed
Activism in the Provisional Irish
Republican Army, 19691972
In this article three pathways into armed activism are identifed among those who
joined the Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA) in Northern Ireland between
1969 and 1972. The accounts of former volunteers generally suggest that for those who
were already involved in the Republican movement before 1969, a trajectory of mobili-
zation emerged because of the long- standing counterhegemonic consciousness present in
their homes, which in turn strongly infuenced them as committed Republican militants.
For those who joined after 1969 and had previously been involved in other political
activities, mobilization was a result of a particular transformative event that triggered
the belief that armed struggle was the only approach capable of bringing change in the
new sociopolitical situation of the time. For the majority, that is, those who joined after
1969 at a very young age without any previous involvement in organized networks of
activism, it began as a more abruptly acquired sense of obligation to defend their own
community and retaliate against the Northern Ireland establishment, the Loyalists,
and the British army. Overall, the accounts of former volunteers generally suggest that
Republican volunteers were fghting frst and foremost to reclaim dignity, build honor,
348Social Science History
and instill a sense of pride in themselves and their community through armed activism.
In these terms, the choice of joining the PIRA was justifed not as a mere reproduction
of an ideological alignment to the traditional Republican aim of achieving Irish reuni-
fcation but as part of a recognition struggle. At an analytic level, this article illus-
trates the utility of a multimechanisms interpretative framework. And it contributes to
broadening the empirical basis by presenting and analyzing a series of 25 semistruc-
tured interviews with former PIRA volunteers.
It is only twenty- fve years later [1995] that I looked at a school photograph, I
think I was ten or eleven years of age, and there were twenty- eight kids there
in the photograph, and I looked and only seven of them joined up. If we all
come from the same community, we had all the same experiences, why then
didnt the rest make the same decision I did? Why do certain people say, I
need to do something? And why do other people say, No, I need to raise
my children and I want to go about my life? I dont know why. There is
nobody that can answer this question. Why did you join, whereas your peers
didnt join? I guess they didnt have the same sense of patriotism. By acci-
dent maybe they didnt join, by accident I did. . . . There is no science to it,
why so and so joined and the other didnt? I think it is an individual choice,
that you say, I need to do something, I am interested, where other people
didnt. (Interview no. 15)
In seeking to explain the pathways of those who joined the Provisional Irish
Republican Army (PIRA) in Northern Ireland between 1969 and 1972, this
article illustrates the utility, at an analytic level, of a multimechanisms inter-
pretative framework. The literature on political violence and terrorism has,
for the most part, erroneously treated individuals who engage in politically
violent organizations as overwhelmingly identical (one- dimensional per-
spective). However, in reality the picture is much more composite. There
is no static and clear- cut profle that permits the identifcation of potential
individuals who might opt for the use of actions associated with an armed
struggle (Crenshaw 2000; della Porta 1992b, 1995).1 As distinct causal fac-
tors, identical social backgrounds or a single motivation alone cannot ade-
quately explain why individuals engage in political violence in an armed
group (Viterna 2006). Despite the recognition that armed activism is a com-
plex, multifaceted, and conjunctural phenomenon, scholars have made broad
assertions regarding why individuals join violent political groups and organi-
zations. In fact, there are many explanations for why an individual becomes
Pathways to Armed Activism349
involved with political violence, as he or she is infuenced by multiple and
diverse motivational factors with no single root cause. Reducing this com-
plexity tends to portray armed activists as homogeneous groups, yet they
vary signifcantly according to the circumstances, backgrounds, and disposi-
tions of the individual actors as well as in relation to the local context and the
time of an individuals mobilization (Horgan 2008a). To gain a more accurate
picture of this complex phenomenon than monocausal explanations usually
ofer, given that one factor on its own cannot adequately explain variations in
individuals decisions to participate, I propose adopting a multimechanisms
perspective to look for diferent pathways toward armed struggle (della Porta
1992b, 1995; Horgan 2008a; Viterna 2006). In this work I will look for path-
ways in the individuals processes of becoming armed militants. Explaining
pathways to armed activism will help us better understand the microfounda-
tions of political violence, which are fundamental if we want to develop a
dynamic and interactive approach to the study of the radicalization of politi-
cal conficts at both macro- and mesolevels.
At the end of the 1960s political contention emerged in Northern Ireland
over the civil rights movements claim to make the regional political system
more open and fair, a claim that the Unionist establishment and the Loyal-
ist countermovement resisted with harsh state repression and open violent
confrontation, respectively (Bosi 2006, 2008). This sociopolitical crisis in the
region opened the space, frst, for extreme communal violence during the
summer of 1969 and, then, for the emergence of the PIRA at the end of 1969
as a result of a split from the Ofcial Irish Republican Army (see appendix 1
for a glossary of case- specifc terminology).2
It is difcult to explain armed activism mobilization in the PIRA at its
early stage, 196972, in terms of single pathways, since every former vol-
unteer I met had a unique story to tell about his or her own path toward
participation in the armed struggle. For those who joined the Republican
movement before 1969, a trajectory of mobilization began out of a long-
standing counterhegemonic consciousness in their homes. Family ties were
key vehicles for armed activism recruitment. These volunteers entered the
PIRA in the immediate period after the split with the Ofcial IRA, as they
perceived it to be more able to continue the traditional struggle of fghting
to free Ireland from British imperialism. For those who joined after 1969
and had previously been involved in other political activities, it began with
the belief that the armed struggle of the PIRA was the only form of action
capable of bringing sociopolitical transformation in the new regional situa-
tion of the time. The decision to join the PIRA, and thus the conversion from
more conventional forms of participation to political violence, was gener-
ally triggered by one particular, transformative event. For those who joined
after 1969 at a very young age without any previous involvement in an orga-
nized network of activism, it began with experiencing state repression or vio-
lent sectarian attacks by loyalists rather than the holy grail of the Republic
of 1916. Along with their peers in the neighborhood, they felt compelled
to join the PIRA as a means of defending and avenging their community
rather than for more general political reasons. They say that they acquired
that only at a later stage as a result of their socialization into the organization
as well as from time spent in jail. Compared with those who followed the two
other pathways, the young girls and women from my sample seem particu-
larly present among those who mobilized because of what was happening on
the ground. Identifying three general pathways to armed activism does not
mean that all my respondents mirrored only those factors peculiar to a cer-
tain pathway or that those factors were equally relevant for each volunteer.
Four of the interviewees (one female among them) were already involved in
the IRA before 1969 and later moved to the PIRA at the time of the split with
the Ofcial IRA (Interviews no. 1, 6, 11, 17). Another 6 (2 females among
them) joined the PIRA between 1970 and 1972, but they had previously been
involved in other sociopolitical activities (Interviews no. 2, 5, 1821). The
remaining 17 interviewees (7 females among them) joined the Provisionals
after 1969 as a frst experience of militancy (Interviews no. 34, 710, 1216,
2225) (see appendix 3).3
While some basic mechanisms are common to all three paths, the domi-
nant individual motivations are diferent, as are the recruitment processes,
the types of networks mobilized, the speed and dynamics of the mobiliza-
tion, the external enemy identifed during the mobilization process, and the
efects of repression on individuals. In calling attention to these aspects, I
set this work inside an approach that speaks the language of social move-
ments and contentious politics and might generate new insights. Further-
more, I will argue that in becoming involved in the PIRAs armed struggle,
a widespread need to take action was coupled among my respondents, in
varying degrees, with family tradition in the Republican movement, strong
ideological motives, transformative events, instrumentality, local community
networks, and a sense of defense and revenge. Through the armed struggle,
volunteers were looking to reclaim a sense of dignity, honor, and pride for
themselves and for their community. They thought themselves capable of
creating conditions for social transformation or at least of giving a testimony
of their oppositional behavior toward what they perceived as irresolvable
injustices committed against the nationalist community in Northern Ire-
land. At the outbreak of the confict young nationalists were joining armed
activism not just to achieve a united Ireland free from British rule but pri-
marily to fnd some form of expression to manifest their own views in the
changed political context. In its early years, much PIRA recruitment rested
on the armed groups course of action rather than on a coherent persuasive
argument. The armed struggle became the only meaningful environment in
which to fully foster an overwhelming sense of empowerment for many indi-
viduals. In these terms the majority choice of joining the PIRA was justi-
fed not as a mere reproduction of an ideological alignment to the traditional
Republican aim of achieving Irish reunifcation but as part of a recognition
struggle at the individual and community levels.4
Among the literature on the Northern Ireland confict that engages in
interviews involving active and/or former Republican volunteers (Alonso
2007; Bean and Hayes 2002; Shirlow et al. 2010; White 1993), this article is
original in carefully specifying the mobilization diferences among those who
became PIRA volunteers between 1969 and 1972 and in disclosing the recog-
nition struggle behind most of those who initially mobilized.
The article begins by presenting a concise discussion of the data sources
used to analyze the case study and a critique of the methodological approaches
prevalent in the feld. As my analysis relies principally on semistructured
interviews, I have focused extensively on this research method. The period
between 1921 and 1972 is briefy introduced as a means of providing the
reader with an understanding of the broader historical and political contex-
tual conditions in which the PIRA emerged. The remainder of this article is
devoted to explaining the three pathways of those who joined the PIRA in
Northern Ireland by 1972. A special section is dedicated to how armed activ-
ism was seen by many volunteers as a possible way to stand up (fguratively
speaking), take control of their own lives, battle misrecognized identities,
obtain a political voice, and perhaps change the course of historyin other
words, what the literature names a recognition struggle. In the last section I
set out some tentative conclusions.
Methodology
In this study, using a combination of data- collection techniques, I have drawn
on a variety of sources, the frst three dating from the period in question
and the remainder compiled later: (1) newspaper and magazine accounts;5
(2) archival sources (posters, leafets, formal communiqus of the organiza-
tion, pamphlets, etc.);6 (3) government documents (parliamentary debates
and ofcial government reports, public police and court records);7 (4) 25
semistructured interviews with PIRA volunteers from Northern Ireland
who entered the organization between 1969 and 1972; (5) autobiographical
and biographical narratives and published interviews of IRA volunteers;8 and
(6) systematic consultation of secondary sources. In bringing together these
sources, the triangulation technique I have used not only provides a rich
picture of the pathways to armed activism in this empirical case but also
complements and remedies the individual sources weaknesses by corrobo-
rating one another.
Most literature on political violence and terrorism has features of ques-
tionable scientifc merit. By and large it relies on poor research methods,
shows a dependence on secondary and even tertiary accounts, and exhibits a
general failure to undertake primary research (Ranstorp 2006; Silke 2004).
This has left most of the literature deeply removed from its research sub-
ject, since not talking to terrorists seems to have become established as a
source of scholarly credibility (Brannan et al. 2001: 7). We need instead to
interact and engage in our feldwork research with those who are afliated
with violent political organizations if we hope to understand and explain this
social phenomenon in its specifc context (della Porta 1992a: 4). This obvi-
ously poses important ethical and methodological challenges for researchers
and their work, which we need to be aware of to defend the scientifc credi-
bility of our research (Punch 1994).9
In this study I seek to rectify the lack in empirical foundations of pri-
mary data based on interviews and life histories of those engaged in politi-
cally violent organizations (Crenshaw 2000: 410). Conducting semistruc-
tured interviews is particularly useful for understanding the critical learning
process that leads individuals to participate in armed action as well as for
helping to bring human agency to the center of movement analysis. Quali-
tative interviews are a window into the everyday world of activists, and they
generate representations that embody the subjects voices, minimising, at
least as possible, the voice of the researcher (Blee and Taylor 2002: 96).
These interviews were not conducted to denounce, absolve, condemn, legit-
imize, and accumulate facts or to reconstruct a possible objective truth
about some particular event (Passerini 1996). Instead, they were specifcally
designed to facilitate an understanding of the interviewees processes of radi-
calization at that time and their social constructions of reality, their expecta-
tions, their micronetworking, the (critical) events surrounding their decision
to adopt violent tactics, and the experiences in which they were involved or
they took part, together with the process of ideological and symbolic justi-
fcation that lay behind their decisions (Blee and Taylor 2002; della Porta
1992a). An initial image of the legitimation of violence and its use in the
memory of former armed activists is also provided.
Given that the respondents were recalling why, almost 40 years earlier,
they had joined the IRA, it is reasonable to wonder whether these inter-
view accounts refect present interests, selective memories, and self- serving
reinterpretations (Bottger and Strobl 2003; Horgan 2008b).10 Such problems
of validity, reliability, and time bias have been minimized in this study, as
the analysis relies on a combination of data- collection techniques, as men-
tioned above, that permitted multiple checks (contemporary and present-
day sources, unobtrusive and face- to- face techniques, state and nonstate
sources, nationalist and unionist sources, and sources originating from dif-
ferent geographic locations). Furthermore, Robert White (2007) determined,
by means of an interesting empirical verifcationthat is, by interviewing
his respondents twice, the second time a decade after the frstthat retro-
spective reports of behavior are relatively consistent over time and that they
do not seem to be infuenced by present- day social contexts. Finally, the
present situation in Northern Ireland seems to have favored a fruitful dia-
logue among the diferent strands of the broader Republican community,
which has helped create a more pragmatic self- critical reading of the past
than pure ideological self- justifcation.
The 25 semistructured interviews with former rank- and- fle members of
the PIRA were conducted during four feld trips to the region between 2007
and 2008. They lasted between one and two hours; were digitally recorded,
by prior agreement from the respondents; and were transcribed for analy-
sis. The interviewees were not chosen randomly but were arranged by the
staf of the Coiste na n- Iarchimi,11 who identifed possible respondents from
backgrounds as diverse as possible (10 out of 25 were women who in the late
1960s and early 1970s joined the long- standing womens Republican organi-
zation Cumann na mBan). I had emphasized that I was interested in inter-
viewing Northern Ireland Republican volunteers who entered the movement
between the mid- 1960s and the end of 1972. I have not taken into consider-
ation potential activists, such as friends or relatives of those I have met, who
did not participate; those who between 1969 and 1972 decided to join the
Ofcial IRA; or those who decided to move or stayed in the Northern Ireland
civil rights movement. I have sampled my data on the dependent variable,
because my interest here is to explain diferent paths of mobilization among
those who embarked on armed activism in the Provisionals and not which
kind of individuals did. Unlike previous research on the PIRA that has used
semistructured interviews, my project focuses specifcally on rank- and- fle
militants. By not reproducing any scripted leadership thought, the former
armed activists I have met provided a wide array of voices, which helped
make diferent experiences, criticisms, and viewpoints emerge. While I have
tried to analyze motives for peoples participation separately, they often com-
bine in complicated ways. In fact, where some quotations are rightly posi-
tioned, others might have been repeated in these paragraphs several times
because of the multiplicity of participants reasons for involvement.
I met each interviewee at a location of his or her choice, and prior to
conducting the interview, I informed him or her of my academic afliation.
I also informed him or her of the interviews purpose and its four sections:
(1) his or her life before joining the PIRA; (2) his or her pathway to activism
in the PIRA armed campaign; (3) his or her experiences and commitment as
a member of the PIRA during the struggle, with particular reference to time
spent in jail; and (4) his or her assessment of the struggles efcacy and of its
legacy.12 Every interview followed this scheme. The respondents were also
informed that they could decline to answer any questions that made them
uncomfortable and that they could discuss and add further suggestions to
what they thought important in relation to the initial purpose of the inter-
view (Smith 1995). This article is based on information taken primarily from
sections 1 and 2 of the interviews (see appendix 2). The quotes in this work
are taken from 20 of the 25 interviews I conducted. To ensure their ano-
nymity, I identify the respondents only by interview number. Summary char-
acteristics of the respondents are presented in appendix 3. By the time of the
interviews, most of them had served prison sentences. Some were released
only after the Good Friday Agreement in 1998. Fourteen individual inter-
views were conducted as well as six with two respondents each time. Inter-
views with more than one interviewee did not negatively afect the results of
the interview; in some cases, the opposite can be said.
My attempt to better understand the individual pathways into armed
activism in Northern Ireland during the early 1970s by engaging in construc-
tive dialogue with the research subjects should not be mistaken for a form of
connivance with the activities of the PIRA (Esseveled and Eyerman 1992).
The fact that in recent years the regional cycle of political violence has ended
provides a more congenial atmosphere for feldwork. The classical problems
related to this topicpersonal safety, good faith, practical issues, and politi-
cal sensitivity (Feenan 2002; Sluka 1995)seem to have lessened.
The Context: Northern Ireland in
the Late 1960s and Early 1970s
The Northern Ireland regime, formally dependent on London, was granted
home rule, with its own parliament and government at Stormont in Belfast,
in December 1920. The question of whether to remain part of the United
Kingdom, the Unionist position, or to be included in an all- Ireland state, the
position of the minority nationalist community, loomed over Northern Ire-
land from the outset. The Ulster Unionist Partys position as uninterrupted
regional power from the regimes inception until its suspension by London
in 1972 was facilitated by its sociopolitical domination of the disregarded dis-
loyal nationalist community, which in turn refused from the outset to accept
the legitimacy of the Stormont regime (OLeary and McGarry 1993). It was
only during the 1960s, in response to a series of societal and political changes
in the aftermath of the new political settlement that followed World War II
(Bosi 2008), that diferent strands of political actors started to challenge the
institutional practices that favored the unionist hegemony while deliber-
ately avoiding the issue of partition. Most of them were civil rights activists,
primarily from the nationalist community, who started peacefully enough
before initiating a campaign of street marches and demonstrations (Bosi
2006, 2011). The street confrontation between civil rights activists, on the
one hand, and the Northern Ireland police and the Loyalist countermove-
ment, on the other, resulted in an increase in communal violence by 1969.
Events culminated on August 12 that year, when the traditional Loyalist
Apprentice Boys March in Derry triggered three days of rioting among the
Northern Ireland police and nationalist residents in what became known as
the Battle of the Bogside, after the Bogside housing neighborhood where
the trouble centered (ODochartaigh 2005 [1977]: 10414). In an evening
broadcast on August 13, Jack Lynch, the Irish prime minister, stated that
the Irish Republic can no longer stand by and see innocent people injured
and perhaps worse (quoted in White 1984: 55). Other demonstrations were
organized across Northern Ireland to divert police resources from Derry.
The violence soon spread to Belfast, where, unlike Derry, nationalists were a
distinct minority and lived in enclaves surrounded by unionists. The efects
of Lynchs broadcast in Northern Ireland and what seemed to be a premedi-
tated northern nationalist community uprising were profoundly destabiliz-
ing, as unionists genuinely feared that a plan had been organized to end parti-
tion and that they were facing an IRA- led rebellion (Galliher and Degregory
1985). Fearing a nationalist insurrection, the Northern Ireland police and
Loyalist mobs attacked nationalist neighborhoods in Belfast to reassert order
in the region and to fght the perception that it was a community under
siege (Patterson and Kaufman 2007). The ensuing street battles in Belfast
resulted in 7 deaths (5 nationalists and 2 unionists), 154 gunshot wounds, and
745 other injuries. Moreover, 1,505 nationalist families were forced out of
their homes by fre damage or intimidation, in contrast to 315 unionist fami-
lies, between July and September (Scarman 1972: 911). On August 14, given
the breakdown in relations between the regional authorities and the national-
ist community, the British government reversed its decades- long policy and
agreed to the deployment of the British army in the streets to restore law
and order. The Troubles, the euphemistic term for the years between 1969
and 1998, when 3,700 individuals lost their lives and more than 40,000 were
injured, had just begun.
Traditionalist Republicans who had left the IRA after the movements
involvement in a program of social agitation and left- wing politics during
the 1960s13 returned to the fold in the wake of the August violence. They
started working to remove the Dublin leadership, which they deemed at fault
for leaving nationalist neighborhoods in Northern Ireland defenseless when
communal violence exploded (An Phoblacht 1970b). During the IRA con-
vention in December 1969, they seceded and created the Provisional Army
Council, having refused to accept a vote in favor of ending the policy of
abstentionism in the Dil (the parliament of the Republic of Ireland) and of
entering a national liberation front, an anti- imperialist alliance of all radi-
cal left groups. The frst statement produced by the PIRA on January 17,
1970, detailed the reasons for the split with what became known as the Of-
cial IRA: the attempt to end abstentionism, the deliberate marginalization
of the military approach, the failure to abolish Stormont, the determination
to set up a national liberation front, and illegal internal disciplinary meth-
ods (Irish Republican Publishing Bureau 1973: 10). What initially bound
the Republican traditionalist leadership and young northern nationalists
together was their antagonism toward conventional politics and their belief
in the necessity of the armed struggle both to drive the British out of North-
ern Ireland and to defend nationalist areas (An Phoblacht 1970c). In March
1970 the Provisionals aims were to end foreign rule in Ireland, to establish
a 32- county Democratic Socialist Republic, based on the Proclamation of
1916, to restore the Irish language and culture to a position of strength, and
to promote a social order based on justice and Christian principles which will
give everyone a just share of the nations wealth (An Phoblacht 1970a).
During the frst few months of 1970, Provisional leaders waited with
prudence, convinced that they did not have sufcient support among the
nationalist community to sustain them in an armed campaign. The leader-
ships frst objectives were then to rearm the organization and to train the
new young recruits (Mac Stofin 1975: 143).14 Winning back support from
the nationalist community was also a key way to build a much stronger base
from which to launch the planned ofensive for the abolition of the Stormont
regime, to drive the British out of Northern Ireland, and to bring about the
unifcation of Ireland (English 2003: 125). Although for the most part the
PIRA leadership actually tried to restrain young nationalists from rioting
with the Loyalists and the British army, from the middle of 1970 it also pro-
voked street disturbances with the deliberate intent of weakening the hitherto
relatively cordial relationship between the British army and the broad nation-
alist community, knowing full well the benefts it would reap in terms of sup-
port and recruits. However, it also provoked the security services with the
aim of marginalizing the political competition (the Ofcial IRA and the civil
rights movement) within the nationalist working- class enclaves. In doing so,
they started to secure a strong political foothold, or at least what the British
cabinet referred to as benevolent neutrality (National Archives 1972), in
those nationalist areas from which they would steadily gain new recruits and
support in the years to come, making them progressively the dominant force,
at least militarily (Burton 1978). Now strengthened, the PIRA was ready to
start a full ofensive by October 1970, beginning with a bombing campaign
directed primarily at unionist businesses (153 bombs by the end of the year).
This had the double intent of making the presence of a government impos-
sible in Northern Ireland by breaking the will of Stormont and Westminster
and of bombing commercial targets. On October 30, 1971, in a statement
from the PIRA Army Council (1971) that appeared in the Republican News,
the movement formally announced that it was entering its third phase, all-
out resistance to British forces.
The two groups that emerged out of the December 1969 split initiated a
battle to win support from among the broad Republican constituency, which
further augmented the process of radicalization. Against its formal nonsec-
tarian, nonmilitarist, and gradualist- reformist policies, the Ofcial IRA was
drawn into a military campaign from late 1970 until it declared a cease- fre on
May 29, 1972, to keep up with the PIRA, especially in Northern Ireland. Part
of this campaign involved violence directed at the PIRA, which responded in
kind. What had started as a campaign of violence developed into a full- scale
feud (Bishop and Mallie 1987: 12126, 16163; Patterson 1989: 12560).15
A further factor in radicalization, producing an outward spiral of vio-
lence, was the action and counteraction between the PIRA (the Ofcial IRA
only to a lesser extent) and the British army. Wide and indiscriminate repres-
sive measures alienated the whole nationalist community from the British
army and included the Falls Road curfew, where soldiers sealed of a Repub-
lican area of Belfast in July 1970 for two days, refusing to let people leave
their homes during a house- to- house search (Warner 2006); the intern-
ment one morning in August 1971 of over 350 people, who were locked up
without trial (English 2003: 13942); and Bloody Sunday in Derry in June
1972, when British soldiers killed 14 and wounded many civil rights pro-
testers (ODochartaigh 2005 [1997]: chap. 8). These measures resulted in
the recruitment of many new members and strengthened rather than under-
mined the PIRA and its capacity for political violence. In the aftermath of
Bloody Sunday, the Stormont regime collapsed in April 1972, and direct rule
was introduced from Westminster.
Armed Activism Mobilization
in the PIRA, 19691972
Many teenagers and young adults from the nationalist community decided
to join the PIRA in the late 1960s and early 1970s, despite warnings that they
would risk their lives, prison sentences, or the disruption of their private lives
and those of their families and loved ones. The recollections of one former
volunteer, who joined the IRA in 1966 and then in 1969, after the split, moved
to the PIRA, indicate what new recruits faced:
Well, when the commemoration of the Easter Rising of 1916 was happen-
ing, there was an awareness of Republicanism within nationalist areas. I
was approached to join the Irish Republican Army. I went to a number
of meetings for a number of months, and then me and another fellow
were asked to join the Irish Republican Army. I was very honoured to be
asked. I went through recruiting classes, which lasted ten weeks. There
were twenty/thirty of us at the recruitment class for ten weeks. And
every week three or four dropped out. At the end of the ten weeks there
were three leftbecause you were told that everything was bad, you
were told you were ending in jail, you were being killed, you would be
on the run, you would have no friends. That is a big decision to make.
If you are not prepared to live with that, then dont go ahead with it. So
I took the declaration in front of the tricolour as a member of the Irish
Republican Army. And I remember always that night coming out from
the declaration and feeling ten foot tall because I joined the Irish Repub-
lican Army. Joining the Republican Army was for me the ultimate; it was
a proud moment. . . . It was a combination of family background and
[the] 1966 commemoration. It is akin to tradition. I just felt part of it.
(Interview no. 6)
Although ofcial numbers regarding the PIRAs volunteers have not
been made public, reliable studies estimate that between 1969 and 1996 a
total of 10,000 people came through its ranks (OLeary 2005: 23334). In
Belfast alone the PIRA increased its membership from around 50 in 1970
to 1,200 at the end of 1971. So why did so many men and women join the
PIRA in spite of the risks? Certainly, the pride of becoming part of a per-
ceived glorious tradition and a respected organization had a role in moti-
vating many, as the quotation above shows. This theme runs consistently
through my interviews with Provisional volunteers who joined the IRA
before the 1969 split, and it relates to the family history of these recruits. All
of these volunteers were raised in families steeped in Republican tradition.
The same cannot be said for all of those who joined later with the outbreak
of the Troubles. A strong family connection with the IRAs struggle, dating
back even to the early twentieth century, had in fact a special importance
in fostering a certain outlook on history and politics. This outlook revolved
around such ideas and values as Irish nationhood; the unreformable artif-
ciality of Northern Ireland, an entity that could not function as a democracy
and in which nationalists would never be treated as equals of the unionists;
the ultimate importance of self- sacrifce for the aim of a united Irish repub-
lic; and the necessity of the armed tradition as the only language that the
British have ever understood. Obviously, such an ideological background was
attached to structural and experiential contexts. One of my respondents, who
was originally from West Belfast, commented in this way on the relevance of
his family background in his decision to join the IRA in 1964 at the age of 16:
Mine was a very much interested Republican family. My father and my
uncle were in prison in the early 1940s. Family networks were getting
me involved in the Republican movement. . . . As a young man I was
brought up with Republican ideals. You were never brought up to hate
the British or anybody. We were never brought up to be violent. We were
never brought up to use violence on anyone else, but it became appar-
ent that violence was the only thing that the British understood. . . . It
[joining the IRA] wasnt really the thing to do. The thing to do, instead,
was going out to dance and going out with girls. Joining the Republi-
can movement was not the thing to do at that time, you were too busy
enjoying your life when you are young. Probably a lot of friends couldnt
understand me, what I was doing. But they seemed to have realised this
when the Troubles started. They didnt have the background I had, the
knowledge I had. They didnt see really what was going on in the country
and how bad it was. (Interview no. 1)
Family ties were key vehicles for mobilization, as the same armed group
was itself recruiting among preexisting social and afective ties to avoid infl-
trations. Involvement in Republican familial networks particularly facilitated
the recruitment processes as new volunteers were introduced to the organi-
zation personally by their fathers, older brothers, or uncles. A former volun-
teer from West Belfast states, I got recruited through relatives (Interview
no. 11). Entering the youth wing of the movement and subsequently the IRA
was seen as a natural process. For example, one former volunteer recounts:
My family was a Republican family. At the age of fourteen, it was a sort of
routine, you know, you follow the footsteps of your brothers and your sis-
ters into the Fianna, which I did in 1968. There was nothing radical at that
stage. It was about learning your history, learning Irish songs, traditional
music, ballades, and things like that. It was more cultural (Interview no.
17). Family background in the Republican movement was likely to make the
armed activists decision to join the IRA relatively straightforward. In their
retrospective accounts they do not speak of any jump or abrupt move into the
organization. Progress toward the armed struggle was gradual for these vol-
unteers. When the split came in 1969, many Republican families chose either
the Ofcials or the Provisionals. In my interviews with those volunteers who
were already involved in the IRA, participation in the Provisionals marked a
continuation of an earlier involvement with the Republican armed- struggle
strategy to drive the British out of Ireland. This former volunteers account
is typical in this sense:
I joined the Provisionals because the Provisionals have emphasised that
they would consolidate the defence of the areas, and never would happen
again what happened in August 1969. But also because their objective
were [sic] that when they had consolidated the defence of their areas that
they would go on the ofensive against British Crown forces. So to me,
it was music to my ears. I was quite happy to hear this. (Interview no. 6)
These volunteers were attracted to the PIRA armed struggle by strong
ideological motives rooted in a long- standing counterhegemonic conscious-
ness in their homes, where political violence was seen as a legitimate course of
action to obtain political redress. Ultimately, it was a way of getting involved
in what they perceived as the glorious Republican historical struggle to
free their country from British imperialism. As Peter Shirlow et al. (2010:
14) write regarding those for whom a Republican family history was central
to their decision to join the armed struggle, such volunteers were keen to
establish a sense of ideological lineage that was brought to the fore by the
collapse of social relationships in the 1960s and 1970s. However, joining the
PIRA was critical also for these individuals, and cannot be seen in absolute
linear terms, in the development and crystallization of their previously vague
and fragmented beliefs. Alongside their family backgrounds in the Republi-
can struggle, these militants also mentioned the perception of a revolutionary
situation. The changed political context in 1969 in Northern Ireland was, in
their view, a positive opening for a nationalist insurrection led by an armed
vanguard.
The pathway to armed activism was diferent for those who joined the
PIRA after having been involved in other forms of sociopolitical activity.
A Republican family background was either not present or not mentioned
in respondents accounts of their trajectories toward mobilization. Instead,
transformative events seemed fundamental for these individuals in setting
in motion the important processes of deep collective understanding and
acknowledgment that triggered their decision to join armed activism. Where
the triggering event was surely relevant for these militants, it is also true
that it took them some time to move inside the organization. Radicalization
was for them a gradual process, and within it they were moved forward by a
host of environmental factors. Among all the practical alternatives, the PIRA
seemed to present them with the most efcacious organization through
which to obtain change in what they have perceived as the new sociopolitical
situation of the time. Indicative is what a young participant of the civil rights
marches recalls:
In August 1971 it was a big departure for many people. I think that
the intentions of the British state were very frmly declared when they
interned people. It was back to a policy hostile towards Republicans and
nationalists. Many of the people who you went to school with, people
of my age, then, at that stage, thought that it was an inappropriate time
to take passive resistance. For me the big departure was the action of
the British state on Bloody Sunday. Basically what you had was a civil
rights demonstration out in opposition of internment. The British state
reacted by basically coming in and acting as an actor of mass murder on
the marchers. I was at the march that day. And whatever notion people
have that the civil rights movement can bring about reforms or change
in British policy, Bloody Sunday ended that. The British state would not
yield to the demands of civil rights [protesters] by purely passive resis-
tance. Many people then felt that that was the end of passive resistance
and that the only argument that the British had ever listened to in the
past was the argument of force, and then many people decided, thats
what we are going to employ. I was one of those people, and one month
after Bloody Sunday I then took the decision to join the Provisional IRA.
(Interview no. 5)
They felt dissatisfed with their current activity, because it did not produce
results. Political violence for them became absolutely a necessary measure
against the changes in the social- political context. A former volunteer who
was involved in the youth wing of the Nationalist Party in the late 1960s and
through this took part in civil rights marches recalls his moving into the
PIRA in this way:
I decided to join the IRA, as I was disillusioned with ordinary politics
and how inefective our politicians were in any sort of change. Then I
believed that an armed confict could lead to a change in our society.
Gradually from 1970 on, for one year, I got more and more radical.
Internment had a huge efect on me, and I thought then [more] of join-
ing the Irish Republican Army. I discussed [it] with my friends, and I
was very aware of what an involvement in the Irish struggle meant, but
I decided that there was no other option. And I joined late 1971. (Inter-
view no. 19)
Similarly, another former volunteer, who moved from a position where she
was involved in protest activities to the realization that the new regional situa-
tion after 1969 needed a diferent strategic answer, describes her involvement
in the PIRA with the following words:
Fifty years of talking have not achieved anything for the nationalists.
The way the gerrymandering of the electoral system in the six counties,
at that time, all was gear[ed] to a Unionist state for unionist people. . . .
The main thing that we had to deal [with] at that time was survival and
the defence of the nationalist areas. Because you had the pogroms where
you would have families burnt out down in the Falls, down the Golvener,
over Ardoyne, it was a daily experience for families to be homed out. To
tell people to hold on and go for a vote and wait for three years was not
making sense; we wanted an instant solution, and the only solution was
the defence, to defend our own areas was by physical means. Democracy
was not anymore an option; unfortunately democracy was not an option
at that stage. (Interview no. 18)
Those respondents who were previously involved in the civil rights move-
ment or in nationalist groups felt by 1969 that change would come not
through voting or marching in the streets but only through physical force.
Their radicalization involved a rejection of the Northern Ireland political
order. Loyalist violence and the repression of the state apparatus increased
among them the perception that nonviolent forms of protest were useless. In
their view, the major practical alternative to armed militancy, namely, pro-
testing and marching in the streets with the civil rights movement, was no
longer possible. It was felt that a diferent stance needed to be taken in the
struggle and that the PIRA was the organization to make this happen. The
process of radicalization from contentious politics to violent political activ-
ism is emblematically recollected in these words from two former volunteers:
I was meeting people through the CRM [civil rights movement]. There
were meetings in the streets, especially after 1969 when barricades and
all that went up. Early on I started to meet with people that in the CRM
were involved in the Republican movement. I wasnt really updated on
it, I just knew who was involved and who not. And during the marches
you were battered, I was just a young lad at that time, and you want
to fght but you cant fght, you try to defend yourself and you are left
undefended. So it wasnt hard to turn around and say, Wait I wouldnt
mind equalising things. So it was like that [that] I proceeded towards
the Irish Republican Army. (Interview no. 2)
I remember very very clearly a protest. It was a protest regarding young
Irish women going to [a] dance, organized by the British army, and I
remember going to protest shouting that no Irish women should go at
that dance. I also remember that some local women, when the British
army came in, that they were actually giving the tea, and I was protest-
ing at that as well as they should not give tea to the British army, because
these people were not here as our friends, they were not here to pro-
tect us, these people were here to control us. So a friend of mine had
heard that I was involved in all this shouting and said to me, Would you
be interested in joining the Republican movement, and I said, Yes,
most defnitively. And he said Why?, and I said, Fifty years of talk-
ing hadnt been able to remove the inequalities in our society, so maybe
some direct physical action would be the way to go. And rather naively
I believed that we could do it in a very short period of time. (Inter-
view no. 18)
What the former volunteers overwhelmingly recall is the perception of the
justice of the armed struggle and the belief that change was possible only as
the result of ones own actions and that nonviolent forms of protests and con-
ventional politics became useless. The overall international situation of the
late 1960s and early 1970s was, in their view, moving toward a radicalization
of diferent conficts in the West as in the Third World, which ultimately
justifed the use of violence as a strategic means against Northern Ireland
and the British states. One former volunteer remembers: In South America
they were taking up arms, and quite successfully with Che Guevara in Cuba.
And then we started to question the Vietnams war, What are the Ameri-
cans doing in Vietnam? What was the rule of the Vietcongs? All this started
to come out, all at the same time. So this struck an awareness among us
(Interview no. 20). Instead of being recruited through family networks, this
second strand consisted of activists who themselves approached Republican
volunteers they knew particularly from their previous involvement in politi-
cal activism as well as from their networks of friends and colleagues. When
I decided to get involved in the armed struggle, said one volunteer, I went
to a friend of school who I knew was in the Republican movement (Inter-
view no. 20).
The majority of those who joined the PIRA in Northern Ireland after
1969 were very young and usually without any previous involvement in socio-
political activities. Mobilization toward armed struggle was very quick, in
contrast with the two other pathways. Political reasons, which these volun-
teers say they acquired only at a later stage, as a result of their socialization
into the organization during the time they spent time in jail (Shirlow et al.
2010), were not, as many respondents have said, part of the equation. A
former volunteer remembers:
I was arrested in 1973 for an armed robbery and jailed in Long Kesh. I
was then staying there with a group of people that was heavily politicised.
So I became politically aware very very quickly. We would have been very
revolutionary socialists, international solidarity. We would have identifed
very rapidly with what was happening in Vietnam, with what was hap-
pening with the Palestinians. In the early 70s there were many struggles
going on all across the world, there were struggles in Africa, apart from
the South African situation you had the military struggles in the former
Portuguese colonies of Angola and Mozambique. We read [Kwame]
Nkrumah in Ghana, and we read Samora Moises Machel and the stuf
they did, we read Guevara extensively and other Latin American revolu-
tionaries, we read Carlos Marighella, who was an urban guerrilla leader
in Brazil, we studied the Topamoros and Moteneros, we studied the Chi-
nese Revolution. We also studied Irish history, particularly [ James] Con-
nolly and [Liam] Mellows, but also the educational ideas around Patrick
Pearse. We read Paulo Freire, the pedagogue of the oppressed, which was
a major reference book for us in the cages [behind bars]. That politicisa-
tion process took place only in prison. (Interview no. 7)
For those who entered only after 1969 and without previous political experi-
ence, involvement in familial networks of activism was not the main reason
behind their decision to opt for the use of political violence. Rather, events
on the ground played a key part, more than anything else. Experiences of
state repression or of violent attacks by Loyalists against peaceful marchers,
unarmed civilians, and sometimes uninvolved families were the most wide-
spread shared features motivating post- 1969 PIRA recruits to join the armed
struggle.16 A former volunteer recounts the plight of most individuals who
decided to become involved in the PIRA in the aftermath of those events,
which raised moral outrage among the nationalist community:
I got involved here through the burning of Bombay Street, and through
that I became involved with the people who were burnt out. I had no
Republican ideas whatsoever at that time. I chose then the Provisional
IRA out of threat and because to me they were capable of doing some-
thing. Whereas you were told to support Jim Sullivan, OC [ofcer com-
manding] of the Ofcial IRA, someone that was sitting aside watching
people burn out and doing absolutely nothing. . . . I became involved in
the Republican movement because of the sufering of my people. I saw
the sufering of my people like everybody else, and I questioned myself:
Why should my people go through that? And then I started to become
interested in the Republican movement, in the Provisional IRA. I gave
an oath for a 32-county republic, to fght for it and to die for it. I have
never, ever broken that oath. (Interview no. 10)
Those respondents who joined the PIRA without prior involvement in the
Republican movement highlight police and British army attacks and Loyal-
ist violence witnessed at frst hand, rather than traditional Republicanism, as
the most important elements in their decision to join the PIRAs armed cam-
paign. It was not so much ideology that forced them to join. I was not a con-
victed Republican, recalls one former volunteer. It was more, like most of
the other people, I was reacting to a situation (Interview no. 25). The armed
struggle was an instrument or, as many have stated, a vehicle to express
their anger and to fght against the British army, the Northern Ireland police,
and the Loyalists, whom many of the new volunteers saw as the main enemies
against which to address political violence. In the words of one former vol-
unteer: At that age I never saw any other way. The IRA was the only vehicle
to defend your area from Loyalist and RUC [Royal Ulster Constabulary]
attacks on a daily basis (Interview no. 16). Repression reinforced in young
nationalists the framing of their situation as profoundly unjust and led them
to blame the authorities. As one respondent remembers:
Whenever the British came in, they were seen as an occupying army. All
young people in nationalist areas in their concern were potentially ter-
rorists, and they treated us as such. When you have an occupying army in
your streets, patrolling your streets with rifes, helicopters, armed cars
you know, stopping, checking people, putting them against the wall,
arresting them for no reason . . . all this creates and makes antagonism
toward the occupying force. All the young nationalists wanted to join the
IRA. We were too young to join, but we could not wait until we were old
enough. In fact I told lies, I told the people in the IRA that I was 17, that
I was older than actually I was. So they let me in. (Interview no. 7)
Specifcally, personal experiences of repression were important in initially
motivating people to fght. For the latter strand of armed activists, the impe-
tus was very much an emotional response to what was happening immedi-
ately around them. The situation on the ground regionally was more impor-
tant than historical beliefs and family tradition. Their joining the armed
struggle was explained in terms of a reaction to what was seen as a society in
turmoil (Shirlow et al. 2010: 53). One former volunteer recalls:
My husband was very, very badly beaten by the British army, and he was
a gentle kind of a man who was never involved in any activity and fght-
ing in anything, and that shocked us badly. If this almost broke my hus-
bands spirit, it did the opposite to mine, because I had young children
at that time, and I thought that why shouldnt we fght back against
what is happening to us and to our community. I dont want my chil-
dren growing up in a community like this, where we were beaten of the
ground, so I became a bit more involved. And I actually stored weapons
in my home. . . . To me it was more a defence than an attack. I wanted to
defend my own [family], my kids frst of all; my husband was a broken
man at that stage. (Interview no. 9)
For nationalists, the feeling was that the Royal Ulster Constabulary, the Loy-
alists, and the British army were up to destroying them totally, not just in
political terms but also as a people. The transition to the armed struggle
appeared to respond to the need to defend their primary solidarity net-
works. As a respondent states, referring particularly to the community she
was from, Ballymurphy: People in the community were not supporting the
armed struggle, but they were supporting their own survival. Because that
was what it was (Interview no. 18). In nationalist working- class areas and
in rural areas there was a feeling that they needed to defend themselves and
to respond to this violence, because they felt that they were going to dis-
appear during the attacks to which they were subjected in the late 1960s and
the early 1970s. This is also clear from this testimony of a former volunteer:
My father was prisoner of war of the Germans during the Second World
War. One of the things that sticks in my memory to these days is when-
ever the British army sent for reinforcements, hundreds of them came
up marching the Whiterock road [in West Belfast] with spotlights, with
shells, in ranks and formations, and I remember my dad saying, This is
like Nazi Germany. And that phrase stuck in my mind. All the indica-
tions from the British army at that time were that they were prepared for
a military war, that they were going to kill people, that they were going to
imprison people, that they were going to search houses, they were going
to harass people. And to me there was no constitutional politics, no con-
stitutional party and no nonviolent approach that was to counter that,
but the only way to counter that was with a military response. (Inter-
view no. 3)
This latter strand of armed activists seems to have possessed a strong local-
ized sense of injustice as a decisive motivational factor, which became more
clearly demarcated through confict. Their decision to join the PIRA was
often justifed, reducing in part the perception of individual responsibility,
as part of belonging to a determinate neighborhood and street (ODochar-
taigh forthcoming). Former volunteers insist that they personally knew their
recruiters prior to recruitment:
I joined the Provisionals because probably in my part of the road it was
more popular to join the Provos. If I had been living in the other part of
the road, I would have joined the Ofcials probably. We didnt sit down
and talk about which group to join, I didnt join the Provisionals because
they were for abstentionism. I didnt know until two years later. (Inter-
view no. 15)
I think in retrospect that a lot of people made decisions because of
who they knew. They didnt make a decision because of the ideologies
involved. I think that they made decisions because of who they knew, or
which street they lived on, or who was the leader in that localised area.
(Interview no. 3)
Dense interpersonal network structures at the neighborhood level were
important in deciding not only whether or not to join but also whether to
join the PIRA or the Ofcial IRA. Many of these volunteers joined in groups
rather than as individuals. Often they succumbed to peer pressure. Par-
ticularly remarkable is the testimony of a former volunteer on how she frst
became involved in the Ofcials at the age of 12 and then moved into the Pro-
visionals when she was 14:
When I frst joined the Republican movement, I frst joined the Of-
cials with a group of friends from the same street where I was living. A
lot of that time was going with history language, political lectures, and
it was only then that I was politically minded and realised what all the
politics was around me. It was not until I was fourteen that I was say-
ing that the Ofcials were not doing enough, and then I joined the Pro-
visionals. . . . So much was happening. My brother was interned at the
time. The beatings that were going on, the loss of friends, everybody was
really afected physically and mentally. It was then that in my own mind
I was saying to myself that it is not enough what I am doing in the Of-
cials, I needed to do something more, and the armed struggle, I felt, was
the only way to push this forward and trying to succeed and get a better
life for our people. And thats why I went to the Provisional movement.
(Interview no. 13)
Nationalist working- class areas functioned as recruitment hotbeds, ofering
potential nationalist participants moral support and encouragement in the
process of mobilization. In retrospective accounts the symbolical neighbor-
hood was perceived as uniformly supportive of their struggle. This was seen
as fundamental not only for them but for their families as well:
At the time I joined I felt that it was very much a community endeav-
our. Everybody in the community was involved. Because we used houses
for meetings, we used houses for weapons training, we used houses for
dumps, we used houses for bomb making, and we didnt sleep in our
own houses. So we used to go up and ask people if we could sleep there
tonight, and whenever I was leaving the house next morning the people
would have fed you, they might have put a pound in your pocket, they
would bless you. It was very much an all community endeavour. We felt
we were very much part of the community. (Interview no. 7)
Defending your own community was not only a reason to get involved but
also an important moral refuge, used to justify the decision to resort to vio-
lence. So if the main stated reason for joining was a necessary response to
state violence, there was also a strong emotional need to take revenge on
the enemy, whether the Loyalists, the British army, or the Northern Ire-
land establishment. Self- defense and retaliation were strongly interlinked
motivations:
The British army was here to oppress us. When I was going to school
I was stopped by the army. Actually it was then that I thought, this is
wrong. I was then joining riots in the streets. I made a choice at that time,
there was actually a slogan on the wall, Join the Na Fianna ireann, so
I went there, and I asked, Can I join?, and they asked, Why do you
want to join?, and I said that I want to fght for Ireland. What moti-
vated me was a sense of revolution to what the British were doing to our
community. There was a mobilisation within the community against the
British and what they were doing, and I just became a part of that. There
was a sense of patriotism, to defend your people, a reactionary feeling,
because you wanted to retaliate to what the British were doing against
your community. (Interview no. 15)
As Kevin Bean (2007: 52) writes in an important work on Sinn Fin, The
social movement organization that emerged from this crisis was much wider
than the narrow base of pre- 1969 Republicanism. The PIRA benefted enor-
mously from the massive infux of young recruits who collectively became
known as the sixty- niners in the Republican movement. A generation of
young nationalists, this time also including many women,17 became involved
in politics during the daily street battles and the violent face- to- face inter-
actions with the repressive state apparatus and the Loyalists. They portrayed
their situation as immoral and unjust and rapidly expanded their ideo-
logical framework, revitalizing their antipartitionist and pannationalist atti-
tudes and interpreting politics as a form of violence. The leadership of the
PIRA was then able to persuade young nationalist rioters without previous
involvement in any sociopolitical activity that active ofence against the
British state was the only or at least the best way to address the unreformable
polity of Northern Ireland (OLeary 2005: 226). There was no time or place
for any kind of reform, as in their view contemporary conditions validated a
lengthy Republican tradition and orthodoxy (English 2003: 133). According
to a former volunteer:
In 1969 the Troubles broke out. I witnessed the burnings and some of the
shootings. I also witnessed the death of a school friend. Shortly after that
I was arrested for rioting behaviour, and I was sentenced to two months
in prison. While I was in prison I met some people who were both mem-
bers of the Provisional IRA and of the Ofcial IRA. While their infuence
was really strong, . . . they probably just stoked an awareness then for the
frst time. It was the frst recollection of anything political. Before, dur-
ing the very early stages of the Troubles, I wouldnt have known what
was going on, the political issues and colonisation and all that, never
gave [it] a thought before. And it [wa]s then, when I come out of prison,
late 1971, that I made my own choice to join the Provisional IRA. . . . I
wanted revenge, for my people to live in a better world. It wasnt through
any political motivation that I decided to join the IRA; I decided to join
the IRA to be able to fght back at the British. I still did not understand
the politics of Ireland. . . . Inevitability wasnt a factor. At that particular
time I was 17, I was looking at what was happening around me, I prob-
ably made my own conclusions very, very quickly, and I just made a deci-
sion to join the IRA. With a sense of being able to strike back with any
sense of meaning at the British, at unionism. Not that I fully understood
then, but I just felt that what was done towards us was wrong and that
someone had to do something, and that is what it was that motivated me;
a very, very simple choice. And the only wagon at that particular time
was looking at other people that lived here who were IRA men, and sort
of say[ing], yeah, I wanted to be one of them. (Interview no. 4)
The responsibility to defend and protect their own community, as per-
ceived by many of my interviewees, not only justifed their own decision to
join the armed struggle but also countered the argument that this decision
was forced upon them: They [the British] were the aggressors, they have
started everything, we have just answered (Interview no. 7). Former vol-
unteers have stated that individual choice played an important role in their
decision to join the PIRA. In their accounts of those early days they take full
responsibility for their part in the struggle. Two respondents recall their per-
sonal choices, comparing them with the fact that not everyone from the same
community engaged with the PIRA:
I dont think it was an inevitable choice. To say that it was inevitable
would have meant that everybody of my age would have made the same
choice. But not everybody did. You had choices. You had some people
saying no, it is not for me, others saying yes, it is for me but only at some
[other] stage, other people saying we have to do what we have to do. I had
to say that people like my parents, the older [generation], were giving
you choices, they were saying to you, Listen, you have a sister living in
England, would you not go over and live in England, your cousins live
down in the South would you not go and live there, so whether it was
fear from your parents or from other people, you were always able to
make your choices. It was not inevitable, you had choices. I like to think
that it was up to me and I made a conscious choice, a decision, and I will
stand by [it]. I am not just a hopeless victim of this war. (Interview no. 3)
I didnt see it as inevitable but as free will. I was never going down any
other road. Whenever the British came out on the streets, there was that
element of goodwill, but in a very short period of time they were seen
to be here to prop up the state, to reinforce partition, to reinforce this
notion that Catholics, nationalists, were second- class citizens. Somehow
that they are strangers in their land, that somehow they are lesser human
beings than the good Protestant people. For me there was absolutely no
doubt that there had to be some showdown with the British and it was
simply a matter of time. I remember before I was actually involved, I was
in England at that stage, actually, before Bloody Sunday actually hap-
pened, there were a number of British soldiers who had been killed, and
guys who I was playing with, who were from Irish families in England,
these guys were saying, This is terrible that these soldiers have been
killed. I was saying: No, they should not have been there. British sol-
diers being on the streets of Belfast should expect to be killed. Because
they should not be there. This has nothing to do with them. And these
guys got very annoyed, they said to me, How can you say that? For me
it was really clear, British soldiers do not belong in Belfast or any part of
the North in any sort of role, as far as I was concerned. (Interview no. 7)
Armed Activism as a Recognition Struggle
What was common among young nationalists who decided to become PIRA
volunteerseither as an outgrowth of previous militancy in the Republican
movement, because of a shift toward political activism motivated by an iden-
tifable triggering event, or as a more abruptly formed sense of obligation to
defend their own community and retaliate by taking the war to the enemy
was an appeal for action. They desired to address a feeling of impatience
toward what was going on around them. Embracing the armed struggle was
perceived as a means of transforming the world for the better; they believed
it the most efective approach for bringing about social transformation and
an end to social humiliation and repression (alleged or actual). It was, in their
view, a personal journey of self- improvement, a way of reclaiming dignity for
themselves and of rejecting what they felt to be the long- subordinate position
of their own community. Young nationalists turned to political violence as a
means of regaining the respect denied them by the Northern Ireland regime
and the British army presence in the streets of the region from 1969. They
equated then armed activism with honor and dignity:
When we were growing up we were educated with a British education.
Around ffteen and sixteen you were then discovering that there was not
only British history. So that awareness at that age made us feel that we
had our own identity and that we were not subjects to the British gov-
ernment. That realisation and a huge resentment as well motivated us to
ask, Why were we denied to learn our history? Why were we denied to
learn our own language? So there was all that in the background, and
when you found out that you were denied all that, this created a resent-
ment. That in itself is a form of revolution. (Interview no. 18)
Many saw it as a generational obligation. Very representative of many of
my interviewees feelings are the words of one of them: As a young man
I thought I had a part to play [in the confict] (Interview no. 1). Through
political violence, individuals saw a way to fnd some form of expression to
make their own views manifest to a society in confict. They were not in
search of an identity. Instead, they got involved in the armed struggle as an
expression of the identity they already had. The PIRA was just ofering what
many of these young nationalists thought they needed at this stage. What this
respondent recalls typifes the mood expressed by other former volunteers I
have interviewed:
There are many factors coming to the mind of a fourteen- , ffteen- ,
sixteen- year- old guy. There is no doubt about that. For some it is, I
want to be there, I want people seeing me being there. There is no
doubt that that played a part. But for me the choice at the start was I
could either go to school and learn about history, whether it was Irish
history, ancient history, Second World War, or actually participate and
make history. That wasnt so clear at the time, but it is clear now. That
is why I didnt go to school. I was out watching, witnessing, and making
history on the daily basis. (Interview no. 3)
One suggestion implicit in this statement, as in many others, is that in join-
ing the armed struggle, former volunteers saw the opportunity to change the
course of history, something they felt they had been excluded from for a long
time. Through violent forms of action, they felt a sense of pride and fnally
had the feeling of being in control of their own future and of being able to
transform their circumstances. They saw themselves as able to change the
course of history by removing British rule from Northern Ireland. Inter-
linked with this pride in the narratives of those who joined the PIRA before
1972 is a frequent reference to the need to do something and to frustra-
tion with ordinary politics, with talks and endless meetings. During their
accounts the interviewees took full responsibility for their part in more than
30 years of violence in the region, seeing their actions as a refusal to yield to
the authorities and as a way to respond proudly to humiliation. They repeat-
edly stressed the importance of motives such as not being treated as second-
class citizens. Underpinning their decision to join the armed struggle was a
refusal to condescend as well as deference in the face of perceived socioeco-
nomic injustice and repression. A former volunteer recalls:
The response I found from many people, I actually didnt understand. I
couldnt understand why they were beaten and doing nothing. Basically,
a lot of the attitude I found at that time from the older people was keep
your head down and stay quiet, because most of the few Catholics with
jobs were employed by unionists and needed to keep their jobs, so there-
fore the community had to stay quiet. So they said nothing, because they
could not aford to lose the few jobs they had. But I was angry, looking
at them and saying: No you cant do that, no you cant stay quiet about
this. This is wrong. And our family had a mixed reaction; some felt we
should go out screaming about, and others felt [we should] stay quiet, to
keep things quiet and maintain the status quo, where instead, I was per-
sonally not prepared to maintain the status quo. (Interview no. 18)
Many of my respondents describe the hope of those days as being mixed
with anger. In their impatience for action, the young nationalists played a
large role in what seemed, at that stage, a historic opportunity to drive the
British out of Ireland relatively quickly. A sense of self- afrmation was fos-
tered by a sense of possibility that Irish reunifcation was close at hand. Par-
ticularly among those who joined after 1969 without previous involvement in
any political activities, everything seemed to be moving in this direction at
that time. And they wanted to be part of it:
I think that in the early years, from 1971 right through 1977, we were of
the opinion that we were able to bomb and shoot the British out of Ire-
land. That we could hit them to such an extent that they would not [be
able to] sustain their presence, and they [would] leave. In 1972 there were
over 100 British killed in the North. If we can do that on a continued
basis they are hammered. But we were never able to repeat those large
casualties after 1972. (Interview no. 7)
At the time of their involvement with the PIRA, none of my respondents in
fact thought that the coming Troubles would last longer than a few years.
Conclusion
This article has pursued three main goals. First, on the empirical level, it
has systematically examined the pathways of those who joined the PIRA
in Northern Ireland between 1969 and 1972 and challenged the dominant
readings of the prevailing Irish literature on why individuals joined the Pro-
visionals armed struggle. Second, analytically, it has illustrated the utility
of a multimechanisms interpretative framework. Third, it has expanded the
source base for the study of armed activism by presenting and analyzing a
series of new interviews with former Provisional volunteers.
What empirically emerges from this study is that family tradition in the
Republican movement, strong ideological motives, transformative events,
instrumentality, local community networks, state repression, Loyalist vio-
lence, a sense of defense and revenge, and an appeal for action against per-
ceived oppression and discrimination compose an extensive range of mecha-
nisms that explain why individuals in Northern Ireland joined the PIRA
between 1969 and 1972. So three distinct mobilization trajectories pre- 1969
IRA involvement, post- 1969 mobilization with sociopolitical experience,
post- 1969 mobilization without any sociopolitical experiencewere identi-
fed as combining these diferent mechanisms. However, no special path was
connected with a particular rule in the organization. Surely those who were
already involved in the IRA had better resources in terms of networks but
also in terms of political education to move to important positions in the
organization, particularly at an early stage (White 1993). Yet this was not
always true. A remarkable example is Martin McGuinness (Danny Morri-
son can also be mentioned here), who entered the PIRA after 1969 without
prior involvement in any social or political activity and by the early 1970s
had already risen to the top of the organization in Derry (Clarke and John-
ston 2003).
Contrary to claims made in the prevailing Irish literature, the decision
to join the PIRA was not rooted in individual personality disorders, social
exclusion, or psychological distress. Ultimately, I would argue, it was not
even about the desire to achieve Irish reunifcation. Rather, the decision to
join the PIRA was frst and foremost about the struggle for recognition of a
community that stemmed from a perceived sense of second- class citizen-
ship shared by the majority of volunteers and the larger constituency. Armed
activism was therefore the enactment of an identity. New volunteers after
1969 fused the need to reclaim a sense of dignity, honor, and pride for the
nationalist community to a wider political objective, that of Irish reunifca-
tion. Furthermore, they saw in the PIRA armed- struggle strategy a chance
to change the course of their own history, something they felt had long
been impossible. With the outbreak of the Troubles, young nationalists in
Northern Ireland did not turn immediately toward traditional Republican-
ism, which has been always weak in the region, either as a political force
or ideologically. They mobilized instead in the organization that was better
aligned with their need for action to fght against perceived oppression and
discrimination. This new reading of Republican microradicalization not
only challenges much of the existing literature on the micromobilization into
the PIRA, which has mostly looked to explain its emergence by drawing a
long- view approach, but also explains how the majority of the Republican
movement could accept the peace process starting in the 1990s even though
the dream of a unifed Ireland remained unfulflled (Bean 2007; Bosi and
della Porta forthcoming).
At an analytic level, this article suggests that a multimechanisms per-
spective, which looks for diferent pathways toward armed activism, can
make further progress toward understanding the variations that occur among
individual micromobilization into armed groups. Such an approach has three
advantages. First, it is fexible enough to allow diferent mechanisms to infu-
ence individual behavior. Second, it helps us more frmly grasp the trajec-
tories toward armed struggle. Third, it has a greater explanatory value than
one- dimensional perspectives, given that one motive on its own cannot ade-
quately explain variations in the circumstances, backgrounds, and disposi-
tions of the individual actors in relation to the time of their mobilization, the
recruitment process, the external enemy identifed during the mobilization
process, and the local context with the efects of repression on individuals.
Finally, this article advances a rigorous empirical approach to the study of
political violence by combining several data- collection techniques to gather
primary sources: interviews, autobiographies, pamphlets, posters, leaf-
lets, newspapers, court and police records, parliamentary debates, and of-
cial government documents. The 25 semistructured interviews with former
PIRA volunteers broaden the empirical basis, transforming the research into
a clear contribution to the literature with new empirical evidence.
Appendix 1Glossary of specifc terminology
Bogsidepredominantly nationalist neighborhood outside the city walls of Derry
Civil rights movementheterogeneous network of groups and organizations that
from the mid- 1960s proactively claimed civil rights for the nationalist minority by
demanding rights for everyone in the region; has deliberately avoided the traditional
Nationalist and Republican aspiration to reunite Ireland and bring an end to the
Northern Ireland state
Easter Risingan insurrection mounted during Easter week in 1916 by the Irish Republi-
can Brotherhood with the intent of ending British rule in Ireland and establishing
an Irish republic
Loyalistsgenerally prepared to use political violence to protect their community, to
defend Protestantism, and to keep Northern Ireland a part of the United Kingdom
Nationalistsmainly Catholic minority community that wishes to unify Northern Ire-
land with the Republic of Ireland
Northern Ireland6 of the 32 counties of the island of Ireland that are linked politically
with Great Britain as part of the United Kingdom (the other 26 counties have been
known since 1949 as the Republic of Ireland)
Republicanstraditionally stand for a united Ireland; prepared to use political violence
to seek a British withdrawal from Northern Ireland and unifcation with the Irish
Republic
StormontNorthern Ireland regional parliament
Unionistsmainly Protestant majority that wishes to maintain the regions union with
Great Britain
Volunteera member of the Irish Republican Army
Appendix 2Questions related to the interviewees life
before joining the PIRA and the reasons for this choice
1. Life before joining the PIRA
What year were you born?
Where was your principal place of residence during the 1960s and early 1970s?
What was your occupation or main activity at that time?
Please tell me a little about yourself in the late 1960s.
How old were you at the time you got involved in the Republican movement struggle?
How interested were your family in politics? Which sort of politics were they inter-
ested in?
Were you involved in any sociopolitical activities before you got involved with the
Republican movement struggle? Which ones?
At the time of your involvement, how would you defne yourself politically? Right-
wing? Left- wing? Other sort of politics?
When you were growing up, were you aware of the IRA? And how did you regard it?
Did you march in the streets with the civil rights movement [CRM]? If yes: At what
stage? Were you afliated with any organization? What was the motivation of
your involvement in the CRM? What is your opinion on the state response to
CRM activity?
How did you see the CRMs form of action in comparison to the Republican
movement?
2. Pathways to activism in the PIRA armed campaign
How did you frst get involved in the Republican movement armed struggle? How
were you recruited?
What was it that other volunteers were doing to introduce you to the armed struggle?
What was your motivation for joining the Republican movement armed struggle?
Why did you come to the conclusion that the civil rights movement was not an efec-
tive way of achieving your demands?
Were there some particular events that radicalized you and led you to believe that the
Republican armed struggle was the way forward?
Is there a history of Republican struggle within your family or in your neighbour-
hood that would have infuenced you?
When you became involved, what did you see as the goal of the Republican struggle?
At that time, did you perceive your choice to enter in the Republican movement as
something inevitable? Was it the only thing to do or the best thing to do?
At the time you chose to join the Republican movement, did you ever think about
joining diferent organizations or about using a diferent sort of strategy to
achieve your political aims?
Why have you preferred to join an organization that legitimized the use of politi-
cal violence instead of those that utilized constitutional methods or peaceful
protest?
Did you feel that the nationalist community was behind you or saw your action as a
way to move the community toward your own political aims?
Did all your friends join the movement with you?
How were your relations with those who did not join the movement? Did you stop
meeting and socialising with those friends who didnt commit themselves to the
Republican armed struggle?
Why, in your opinion at that time, did those friends choose not to join the Republi-
can struggle?
Did they join other forms of political commitment?
Why did you choose the Provisionals instead of the Ofcials?
Did any of your friends choose the other part of the movement? What were rela-
tions with those friends like after the split? How did you perceive their choice
at the time?
Did your political convictions lead you to join the movement, or did you join the
movement and then acquire a set of political convictions within it that justifed
and rationalized this decision?
A
p
p
e
n
d
i
x

3
R
e
s
p
o
n
d
e
n
t

s
a
m
p
l
e

i
n
f
o
r
m
a
t
i
o
n
N
o
.
S
o
u
r
c
e
Y
e
a
r

a
n
d

p
l
a
c
e

b
o
r
n
G
e
n
d
e
r
S
o
c
i
a
l

c
l
a
s
s

b
a
c
k
g
r
o
u
n
d
F
a
m
i
l
y

p
o
l
i
t
i
c
s
E
d
u
c
a
t
i
o
n
O
c
c
u
p
a
t
i
o
n
P
r
e
v
i
o
u
s

s
o
c
i
a
l
-
p
o
l
i
t
i
c
a
l

a
c
t
i
v
i
t
i
e
s
R
e
c
r
u
i
t
m
e
n
t
Y
e
a
r

j
o
i
n
e
d

P
I
R
A
1
6
/
2
8
/
0
7

B
e
l
f
a
s
t
1
9
4
8

B
e
l
f
a
s
t

(
F
a
l
l
s

R
o
a
d
)
M
a
l
e
W
o
r
k
i
n
g

c
l
a
s
s
S
t
r
o
n
g

R
e
p
u
b
l
i
c
a
n
H
i
g
h

s
c
h
o
o
l
T
e
x
t
i
l
e

p
r
i
n
t
e
r
N
o
F
a
m
i
l
y

n
e
t
w
o
r
k
s
1
9
6
4

(
I
R
A
)

1
9
6
9
2
6
/
2
8
/
0
7

B
e
l
f
a
s
t
1
9
5
0

B
e
l
f
a
s
t

(
B
a
l
l
y
m
u
r
p
h
y
)
M
a
l
e
M
i
d
d
l
e

c
l
a
s
s
N
o

i
n
t
e
r
e
s
t

i
n

p
o
l
i
t
i
c
s
M
i
d
d
l
e

s
c
h
o
o
l
D
i
f
e
r
e
n
t

j
o
b
s
C
R
M
A
p
p
r
o
a
c
h
e
d

R
e
p
u
b
l
i
c
a
n
s

h
e

k
n
e
w
1
9
7
0
3
7
/
1
/
0
7

B
e
l
f
a
s
t
1
9
5
6

B
e
l
f
a
s
t

(
B
a
l
l
y
m
u
r
p
h
y
)
M
a
l
e
W
o
r
k
i
n
g

c
l
a
s
s
N
o

i
n
t
e
r
e
s
t

i
n

p
o
l
i
t
i
c
s
M
i
d
d
l
e

s
c
h
o
o
l
S
t
u
d
e
n
t
N
o
R
e
c
r
u
i
t
e
d
1
9
7
0
4
7
/
1
/
0
7

B
e
l
f
a
s
t
1
9
5
3

B
e
l
f
a
s
t

(
S
h
o
r
t

S
t
r
a
n
d
)
M
a
l
e
W
o
r
k
i
n
g

c
l
a
s
s
N
o

i
n
t
e
r
e
s
t

i
n

p
o
l
i
t
i
c
s
M
i
d
d
l
e

s
c
h
o
o
l
S
t
u
d
e
n
t
N
o
R
e
c
r
u
i
t
e
d
1
9
7
1
5
7
/
2
/
0
7

S
t
o
r
m
o
n
t
1
9
5
4

D
e
r
r
y
M
a
l
e
W
o
r
k
i
n
g

c
l
a
s
s
W
e
a
k

i
n
t
e
r
e
s
t

i
n

p
o
l
i
t
i
c
s
,

n
o

a
f
l
i
a
t
i
o
n
s
M
i
d
d
l
e

s
c
h
o
o
l
S
t
u
d
e
n
t
C
R
M
A
p
p
r
o
a
c
h
e
d

R
e
p
u
b
l
i
c
a
n
s
h
e

k
n
e
w
1
9
7
2
6
7
/
4
/
0
7

B
e
l
f
a
s
t
1
9
4
6

B
e
l
f
a
s
t

(
A
r
d
o
y
n
e
)
M
a
l
e
W
o
r
k
i
n
g

c
l
a
s
s
S
t
r
o
n
g

R
e
p
u
b
l
i
c
a
n
M
i
d
d
l
e

s
c
h
o
o
l
S
a
i
l
o
r
N
o
F
a
m
i
l
y

n
e
t
w
o
r
k
1
9
6
6

(
I
R
A
)

1
9
6
9
7
7
/
4
/
0
7

B
e
l
f
a
s
t
1
9
5
6

B
e
l
f
a
s
t

(
S
h
o
r
t

S
t
r
a
n
d
)
M
a
l
e
W
o
r
k
i
n
g

c
l
a
s
s
M
i
l
d

i
n
t
e
r
e
s
t

i
n

p
o
l
i
t
i
c
s
M
i
d
d
l
e

s
c
h
o
o
l
S
t
u
d
e
n
t
N
o
R
e
c
r
u
i
t
e
d
1
9
7
2
8
7
/
4
/
0
7

B
e
l
f
a
s
t
1
9
5
5

B
e
l
f
a
s
t

(
B
a
l
l
y
m
u
r
p
h
y
)
F
e
m
a
l
e
W
o
r
k
i
n
g

c
l
a
s
s
N
o
M
i
d
d
l
e

s
c
h
o
o
l
S
h
o
p

a
s
s
i
s
t
a
n
t
N
o
R
e
c
r
u
i
t
e
d
1
9
7
1
9
7
/
4
/
0
7

B
e
l
f
a
s
t
1
9
4
4

B
e
l
f
a
s
t

(
A
r
d
o
y
n
e
)
F
e
m
a
l
e
W
o
r
k
i
n
g

c
l
a
s
s
S
t
r
o
n
g

R
e
p
u
b
l
i
c
a
n
H
i
g
h

s
c
h
o
o
l
H
o
u
s
e
w
i
f
e
N
o
V
o
l
u
n
t
e
e
r
s

s
h
e

k
n
e
w
1
9
7
0
1
0
7
/
5
/
0
7

B
e
l
f
a
s
t
1
9
5
0

B
e
l
f
a
s
t

(
B
a
l
l
y
m
u
r
p
h
y
)
M
a
l
e
W
o
r
k
i
n
g

c
l
a
s
s
N
o

i
n
t
e
r
e
s
t

i
n

p
o
l
i
t
i
c
s
M
i
d
d
l
e

s
c
h
o
o
l
N
/
A
N
o
R
e
c
r
u
i
t
e
d
1
9
7
0
1
1
7
/
5
/
0
7

B
e
l
f
a
s
t
1
9
4
6

B
e
l
f
a
s
t
M
a
l
e
W
o
r
k
i
n
g

c
l
a
s
s
S
t
r
o
n
g

R
e
p
u
b
l
i
c
a
n
M
i
d
d
l
e

s
c
h
o
o
l
D
i
f
e
r
e
n
t

j
o
b
s
N
o
F
a
m
i
l
y

n
e
t
w
o
r
k
s
1
9
6
4

(
I
R
A
)

1
9
6
9
1
2
1
1
/
4
/
0
7

B
e
l
f
a
s
t
1
9
5
9

B
e
l
f
a
s
t

(
A
n
d
e
r
s
o
n
s
t
o
w
n
)
F
e
m
a
l
e
W
o
r
k
i
n
g

c
l
a
s
s
M
i
l
d

R
e
p
u
b
l
i
c
a
n
M
i
d
d
l
e

s
c
h
o
o
l
S
t
u
d
e
n
t
N
o
R
e
c
r
u
i
t
e
d
1
9
7
1
1
3
1
1
/
4
/
0
7

B
e
l
f
a
s
t
1
9
6
0

B
e
l
f
a
s
t

(
A
n
d
e
r
s
o
n
s
t
o
w
n
)
F
e
m
a
l
e
W
o
r
k
i
n
g

c
l
a
s
s
M
i
l
d

R
e
p
u
b
l
i
c
a
n
M
i
d
d
l
e

s
c
h
o
o
l
S
t
u
d
e
n
t
N
o
R
e
c
r
u
i
t
e
d
1
9
7
2
1
4
1
1
/
4
/
0
7

B
e
l
f
a
s
t
1
9
5
6

B
e
l
f
a
s
t

(
B
a
l
l
y
m
u
r
p
h
y
)
F
e
m
a
l
e
W
o
r
k
i
n
g

c
l
a
s
s
W
e
a
k
N
/
A
N
/
A
N
o
R
e
c
r
u
i
t
e
d
1
9
7
1
1
5
1
1
/
5
/
0
7

B
e
l
f
a
s
t
1
9
5
5

B
e
l
f
a
s
t

(
N
e
w

L
o
d
g
e

R
o
a
d
)
M
a
l
e
W
o
r
k
i
n
g

c
l
a
s
s
T
r
a
d
e

u
n
i
o
n
i
s
m
M
i
d
d
l
e

s
c
h
o
o
l
A
p
p
r
e
n
t
i
c
e

p
l
u
m
b
e
r
N
o
R
e
c
r
u
i
t
e
d
1
9
7
0
1
6
1
1
/
5
/
0
7

B
e
l
f
a
s
t
1
9
5
1

B
e
l
f
a
s
t
M
a
l
e
W
o
r
k
i
n
g

c
l
a
s
s
M
i
l
d

i
n
t
e
r
e
s
t

i
n

p
o
l
i
t
i
c
s
M
i
d
d
l
e

s
c
h
o
o
l
S
h
o
p

d
e
l
i
v
e
r
i
e
s
N
o
R
e
c
r
u
i
t
e
d
1
9
7
0
1
7
1
1
/
7
/
0
7

B
e
l
f
a
s
t
1
9
5
5

B
e
l
f
a
s
t

(
B
a
l
l
y
m
u
r
p
h
y
)
F
e
m
a
l
e
W
o
r
k
i
n
g

c
l
a
s
s
S
t
r
o
n
g

R
e
p
u
b
l
i
c
a
n
M
i
d
d
l
e

s
c
h
o
o
l
S
t
u
d
e
n
t
N
o
F
a
m
i
l
y

n
e
t
w
o
r
k
s
1
9
6
8

(
I
R
A
)

1
9
6
9
1
8
1
1
/
7
/
0
7

B
e
l
f
a
s
t
1
9
5
4

B
e
l
f
a
s
t

(
B
a
l
l
y
m
u
r
p
h
y
)
F
e
m
a
l
e
W
o
r
k
i
n
g

c
l
a
s
s
N
o

i
n
t
e
r
e
s
t

i
n

p
o
l
i
t
i
c
s
M
i
d
d
l
e

s
c
h
o
o
l
S
h
o
p

a
s
s
i
s
t
a
n
t
C
R
M
V
o
l
u
n
t
e
e
r
s

s
h
e

k
n
e
w
1
9
7
0
1
9
4
/
2
/
0
8

D
e
r
r
y
1
9
5
1

D
e
r
r
y

(
R
i
v
e
r

F
r
o
n
t
)
M
a
l
e
W
o
r
k
i
n
g

c
l
a
s
s
N
o
M
i
d
d
l
e

s
c
h
o
o
l
A
p
p
r
e
n
t
i
c
e
N
a
t
i
o
n
a
l
i
s
t

P
a
r
t
y

a
n
d

C
R
M
V
o
l
u
n
t
e
e
r
s

h
e

k
n
e
w
1
9
7
1
2
0
4
/
2
/
0
8

D
e
r
r
y
1
9
5
4

D
e
r
r
y
M
a
l
e
W
o
r
k
i
n
g

c
l
a
s
s
N
o
M
i
d
d
l
e

s
c
h
o
o
l
S
t
u
d
e
n
t
C
R
M
V
o
l
u
n
t
e
e
r
s

h
e

k
n
e
w
1
9
7
1
A
p
p
e
n
d
i
x

3
(
c
o
n
t
i
n
u
e
d
)
N
o
.
S
o
u
r
c
e
Y
e
a
r

a
n
d

p
l
a
c
e

b
o
r
n
G
e
n
d
e
r
S
o
c
i
a
l

c
l
a
s
s

b
a
c
k
g
r
o
u
n
d
F
a
m
i
l
y

p
o
l
i
t
i
c
s
E
d
u
c
a
t
i
o
n
O
c
c
u
p
a
t
i
o
n
P
r
e
v
i
o
u
s

s
o
c
i
a
l
-
p
o
l
i
t
i
c
a
l

a
c
t
i
v
i
t
i
e
s
R
e
c
r
u
i
t
m
e
n
t
Y
e
a
r

j
o
i
n
e
d

P
I
R
A
2
1
4
/
2
/
0
8

D
e
r
r
y
1
9
4
9

D
e
r
r
y

(
C
r
e
g
g
a
n
)
F
e
m
a
l
e
W
o
r
k
i
n
g

c
l
a
s
s
N
o
M
i
d
d
l
e

s
c
h
o
o
l
N
u
r
s
e
r
y
N
o
D
o
e
s

n
o
t

r
e
m
e
m
b
e
r
1
9
7
2
2
2
4
/
4
/
0
8

B
e
l
f
a
s
t
1
9
5
5

B
e
l
f
a
s
t

(
F
a
l
l
s
)
F
e
m
a
l
e
W
o
r
k
i
n
g

c
l
a
s
s
N
o
N
/
A
S
t
u
d
e
n
t
N
o
R
e
c
r
u
i
t
e
d
1
9
7
0
2
3
4
/
4
/
0
8

B
e
l
f
a
s
t
1
9
5
3

B
e
l
f
a
s
t

(
F
a
l
l
s
)
F
e
m
a
l
e
W
o
r
k
i
n
g

c
l
a
s
s
M
i
l
d

R
e
p
u
b
l
i
c
a
n
M
i
d
d
l
e

s
c
h
o
o
l
D
i
f
e
r
e
n
t

j
o
b
s
N
o
R
e
c
r
u
i
t
e
d
1
9
7
0
2
4
7
/
1
/
0
8

C
o
u
n
t
y

D
e
r
r
y
1
9
5
5

C
o
u
n
t
y

D
e
r
r
y
M
a
l
e
P
e
a
s
a
n
t
S
t
r
o
n
g

R
e
p
u
b
l
i
c
a
n
N
/
A
N
/
A
Y
e
s
F
a
m
i
l
y

n
e
t
w
o
r
k
s
1
9
7
1
2
5
7
/
1
/
0
8

C
o
u
n
t
y

D
e
r
r
y
1
9
5
4

C
o
u
n
t
y

D
e
r
r
y
M
a
l
e
P
e
a
s
a
n
t
W
e
a
k
N
/
A
N
/
A
N
o
R
e
c
r
u
i
t
e
d
1
9
7
0
Notes
I would like to thank the interviewees for their willingness to participate in this research.
Also I would like to thank the anonymous reviewers and the editors of this special section
for their helpful comments. Donatella della Porta, Chares Demetriou, Mark McNally,
Eduardo Romanos, and Gilda Zwerman provided useful commentaries on this research
at various stages. None of the above is in any way of course responsible for the opinions
I have expressed.
1 In this article the terms armed struggle and political violence are used interchange-
ably. Whether threatened or actual, political violence is a particularly confrontational
form of action oriented at inficting material damage to individuals and/or property
for political goals, be these ethnonational, religious, or ideological.
2 In this article I refer to nationalist and unionist, rather than Catholic and Protestant,
communities to emphasize the political character of communal division in Northern
Ireland and the fact that this is not a confict about religious beliefs or practices. I
use capitals to refer to organized political Unionism and Nationalism as well as for
Loyalism and Republicanism.
3 The sample of my respondents is clearly skewed toward the latter path. I have tried
to balance this disproportion by relying on other sources as well, including auto-
biographies and published interviews (see the Methodology section). It should also
be remembered that a massive infux of new volunteers happened only with the out-
break of the Troubles, and the large majority of these were young teenagers who
simply had no time for previous social- political activities before moving to armed
activism. Yet another path might have emerged with more interviews with former
volunteers from the countryside and border areas. So far my feldwork has allowed
me to interview only two respondents from the countryside (Interviews no. 2425),
Belfast and Derry. Although I have placed them in the third path, they recollected
during the interviews the presence of a strong Republicanism in their community
when they were growing up. That factor is more typical of the frst path. Interviews
planned with volunteers from South Armagh, a strong Republican area in Northern
Ireland, were ultimately not conducted for safety reasons.
4 This interpretation of mobilization into armed activism is similar to other analyses of
collective- action motivations that underline the fght against identity misrecognition
and for achieving a political voice (Fraser 2003; Hobson 2003; Honneth 1996; Philips
2003; Roy 2004; Seidman 1993; Wood 2003).
5 The following newspapers and magazines were examined at the Newspaper Library
and at the Linen Hall Library of Belfast with the intent of reconstructing the various
contemporary perspectives on the Northern Ireland political system: An Phoblacht
(Dublin); Belfast Telegraph, Derry Journal, Dungannon Observer, Fortnight Maga-
zine (Belfast); Gown (Queens University Belfast Left review); Guardian (London);
Humanist (Dublin); Irish News (Belfast); Irish Democrat (London); Magill Monthly
Magazine (London); Belfast Newsletter, Nusight, Republican News (Belfast); Sunday
Times (London); Irish Times, Tuarisic, United Irishman, Wolfe Tone Societies Journal
(Dublin).
6 The archives searched include the Special Political Collection of the Linen Hall
Library in Belfast, the Hibernica Collection at Queens University Belfast (Main
Library), and the Confict Archive on the Internet website (cain.ulst.ac.uk). These
archives contain a vast amount of superb material, including ofcial documents and
secondary source extracts.
7 Public Records Ofce of Northern Ireland.
8 For autobiographical and biographical narratives and published interviews of IRA
volunteers, see Adams 1996; Anderson 2002; Bean and Hayes 2002; Clarke and
Johnston 2003; Collins 1997; Mac Stofin 1975; McGartland 1997; McKeown 2001;
Morrison 1999; OCallaghan 1999; ODoherty 1993; White 2006.
9 Francesca Polletta (2006) is the section editor of a relevant forum in the journal Mobi-
lization titled Mobilization Forum: Awkward Movements (see also Blee and Vining
2010). Concerning ethical difculties in studying political violence, see also Sluka
1995; Wood 2006. In regard to more methodological challenges related to this research
subject, see Bottger and Strobl 2003; Smyth and Robinson 2001; White 2000.
10 For extensive discussions of reliability and validity in oral sources, see della Porta
1992a; White 1993: 18388.
11 Coiste na n- Iarchimi is an umbrella organization working for the social, eco-
nomic, and emotional well- being of current and former Republican prisoners and
their families (www.coiste.ie). It is fair to say that it is politically close to the PIRA,
although not all the interviewees agreed on Sinn Fins strategy in the postagree-
ment period. Despite this, at the time of the interviews none of the respondents
saw any immediate reason for a return to the armed- struggle strategy. My sample of
interviewees contains an overrepresentation in favor of those who remained in Sinn
Fin. Coiste na n- Iarchimi might have adopted its own selection process favoring
former volunteers who were likely to tell particular kinds of stories. I have tried to
fll this gap through archival sources, particularly autobiographical and biographi-
cal narratives and published interviews of IRA volunteers who then joined dissident
Republican groups or who did not align themselves with Sinn Fin. For the latter,
see Alonso 2007; Bean and Hayes 2002; Shirlow et al. 2010; White 2006. However,
we should keep in mind that the conceptualization of validity in phenomenologi-
cal research difers signifcantly from the conceptualization of validity in quantita-
tive methods. Rather than focusing on sample size and participant selection, deep
qualitative methods focus on the internal coherence of the narrative. In addition, the
presentation of material should be grounded in examples in a manner that gives suf-
fcient evidence to allow the reader to evaluate the authors interpretations (Burgess
et al. 2007: 74).
12 A fnal semistructured interview schedule was developed for this study after it was
refned through discussions with colleagues and three pilot interviews. The fnal
interview schedule, on a volunteers life before joining the PIRA and on his or her
pathway to activism in the PIRA armed campaign, is reproduced in appendix 2.
13 After the fasco of the Border Campaign (195662), the leadership of the Republican
movement called of political violence on February 26, 1962 and, under the infuence
of the Wolfe Tone Societies in 1963, attempted to hold it in reserve, preferring and
promoting a new gradualist- reformist grassroots agitation strategy focused on civil
rights demands (see the interview with Cathal Goulding, chief of staf of the IRA, in
This Week 1970). The new turn prompted ferce resistance from within the Republi-
can movement. The new leadership, infuenced by the growing popularity of social-
ism in the 1960s, decided to move the organization toward the left, picking up on
the socialist republican analysis of the 1930s (Peadar ODonnell, George Gilmore)
and adhering to the relatively moderate three- stage theory. Their assumption was
that Northern Ireland was an irreformable entity that could not survive without
systematic discrimination and artifcial division of unionist and nationalist workers
(Costello 1966). Therefore asking for civil rights for the region was seen as an impor-
tant way to strike the Achilless heel of unionism (Coughlan 1966), which, on the
one hand, would gradually dismantle the Northern Ireland regime by reforms and,
on the other, would function as a vehicle to unite the two communities. Only then
would a true Republican revolution by a united people be possible (Greaves 1963).
So the Republican movement, particularly its Dublin leadership, was at this stage
committing itself to social transformation through legal political means, with a view
to having a military role afterward (Irish Republican Army [Ofcial] 1972). The left-
Republican core in the Republican movement became, at the time of the split, the
Ofcial wing of the IRA, then later the Workers Party (Hanley and Millar 2009).
14 There are allegations that the early PIRA started its activities with arms and fund-
ing, roughly 100,000, from a part of the Republic of Ireland establishment at a
time when such backing was of some value. The intent was to move the Republican
movement away from any association with the extreme Left and ultimately to get
the IRA as a whole to drop its political activities in the South, and concentrate on
military activities in the North (OBrien 1972: 197). A series of articles in Magill
Monthly Magazine between May and August 1980 brought the allegations to the
forefront again. See OBrien 2000.
15 For a thoughtful treatment of Ofcial IRA history, see Hanley and Millar 2009.
16 My interviewees accounts seem highly consistent here with those of former volun-
teers who in the recent past have criticized the leadership of Sinn Fin in the post-
agreement period. See Bean and Hayes 2002.
17 Compared with those who followed the two other pathways, the young girls and
women from my sample seem particularly present among those latter armed activ-
ists who mobilized because of what was happening on the ground. Female former
armed activists have stressed, among their motivations toward political violence, the
need to defend their families. They mean not only their relatives but also their larger
community. From the interviews I have conducted, however, no single path emerges
that is typical for female armed militants. Gender seems not to have mattered par-
ticularly for establishing diferent types of mobilization. Republican women showed
no desire for female emancipation in the early 1970s; the situation in the 1980s was
a little diferent (Alison 2009). Those I met did not regard their struggle as part
of a sexual emancipation. What one former female volunteer recounts is typical:
Women were in the struggle because our society was in the struggle. We were not
only part of the struggle because we were women; I was part of the struggle because
our community was under threat, so for this reason we made a collective response
as men and women. The strength of women came out with the development of the
Troubles. The women came to the fore especially in the early 70s, because if you
look at that on a daily basis, the men have been arrested, the women as well, I was
for example, but less than men. So, women started to gain a deep role within the
armed struggle and a more pro- active role within it. But this was not done because
of our gender but because of our collective community. That was the main reason
for many women to get involved (Interview no. 18). So the internment of their hus-
bands, sons, and brothers aforded women a role in the struggle. This does not mean
that they experienced no sexism in a predominantly male organization. This was
particularly true early in their careers in the PIRA. Men seemed not to be keen to
work with them. Female armed militants remembered the presence of chauvinism
in the movement early in the 1970s (Interviews no. 1213). For more on Republican
female militants, see Alison 2009. On participation by women in armed groups, see
Viterna 2006; Zwerman 1992.
References
Adams, G. (1996) Before the Dawn: An Autobiography. London: Heinemann.
Alison, M. (2009) Women and Political Violence: Female Combatants in Ethno- national
Conficts. London: Routledge.
Alonso, R. (2007) The IRA and Armed Struggle. London: Routledge.
Anderson, B. (2002) Joe Cahill: A Life in the IRA. Dublin: OBrien.
An Phoblacht (1970a) On this we stand: The rock of the Republic, February.
An Phoblacht (1970b) Publicity Bureau clarifes the position of the IRA, February.
An Phoblacht (1970c) Tabhacht na Gaeilge, April.
Bean, K. (2007) The New Politics of Sinn Fin. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press.
Bean, K., and M. Hayes (2002) Republican Voices. Belfast: Seesyu.
Bishop, P., and E. Mallie (1987) The Provisional IRA. London: Heinemann.
Blee, K. M., and V. Taylor (2002) Semi- structured interviewing in social movement
research, in B. Klandermans and S. Staggenborg (eds.) Methods of Social Move-
ment Research. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press: 92117.
Blee, K. M., and T. Vining (2010) Risks and ethics of social movement research in a
changing political climate. Research in Social Movements, Conficts, and Change
30: 4371.
Bosi, L. (2006) The dynamic of social movement development: Northern Irelands civil
rights movement in the 1960s. Mobilization 11 (1): 81100.
(2008) Explaining the emergence process of the civil rights protest in Northern
Ireland (19451968): Insights from a relational social movement approach. Journal
of Historical Sociology 21 (23): 24271.
(2011) From British rights to British out: The Northern Irelands civil rights
movement between the 1960s and early 1970s, in H. Kouki and E. Romanos (eds.)
Protest beyond Borders: Contentious Politics in Europe since 1945. Oxford: Berg-
hahn: 12538.
Bosi, L., and D. della Porta (forthcoming) Patterns of disengagement from political
armed activism: A comparative historical sociology analysis of Italy and Northern
Ireland, in J. Gunning (ed.) Terror No More? State, Societal, and Internal Dynam-
ics in Transforming Violent Conficts. London: Routledge.
Bottger, A., and R. Strobl (2003) Potentials and limits of qualitative methods for research
on violence, in W. Heitmeyer and J. Hagan (eds.) International Handbook of Vio-
lence Research. Dordrecht: Kluwer: 120318.
Brannan, D., P. Esler, and A. Strindberg (2001) Talking to terrorists: Towards an inde-
pendent analytical framework for the study of violent substate activism. Studies in
Confict and Terrorism 24 (1): 324.
Burgess, M., N. Ferguson, and I. Hollywood (2007) Rebels perspectives of the legacy
of past violence and of the current peace in post- agreement Northern Ireland: An
interpretative phenomenological analysis. Political Psychology 28 (1): 6988.
Burton, F. (1978) The Politics of Legitimacy: Struggles in a Belfast Community. Lon-
don: Routledge.
Clarke, L., and K. Johnston (2003) Martin McGuinness: From Guns to Government.
Edinburgh: Mainstream.
Collins, E. (1997) Killing Rage. London: Granta.
Costello, S. (1966) United Irishman, July.
Coughlan, A. (1966) Tuarisic, August.
(2000) The psychology of terrorism: An agenda for the twenty- frst century.
Political Psychology 21 (2): 40520.
della Porta, D. (1992a) Biographies of social movement activists: State of the art and
methodological problems, in M. Diani and R. Eyerman (eds.) Studying Collective
Action. Newbury Park, CA: Sage: 16893.
(1995) Political Violence and the State. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
della Porta, D., ed. (1992b) Social Movements and Violence: Participation in Under-
ground Organizations. London: JAI.
English, R. (2003) Armed Struggle. Oxford: Macmillan.
Esseveled, J., and R. Eyerman (1992) Which side are you on? Refection of methodologi-
cal issues in the study of distasteful social movements, in M. Diani and R. Eyer-
man (eds.) Studying Collective Action. Newbury Park, CA: Sage: 21737.
Feenan, D. (2002) Researching paramilitary violence in Northern Ireland. International
Journal of Social Research Methodology 5 (2): 14763.
Fraser, N. (2003) Social justice in the age of identity politics: Redistribution, recogni-
tion, and participation, in N. Fraser and A. Honneth (eds.) Redistribution or Recog-
nition? A Philosophical Exchange. London: Verso: 7109.
Galliher, J., and J. Degregory (1985) Violence in Northern Ireland: Understanding Prot-
estant Perspectives. Dublin: Gill and Macmillan.
Greaves, D. (1963) The Irish Question and the British People. London: Connolly.
Hanley, B., and S. Millar (2009) The Lost Revolution: The Story of the Ofcial IRA and
the Workers Party. Dublin: Penguin Ireland.
Hobson, B. (2003) Recognition Struggles and Social Movements. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Honneth, A. (1996) The Struggle for Recognition. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Horgan, J. (2008a) From profles to pathways and roots to routes: Perspectives from
psychology on radicalization into terrorism. Annals of the American Academy of
Political and Social Science (618): 8094.
(2008b) Interviewing terrorists: A case for primary research, in C. Hsinchun,
E. Reid, J. Sinai, A. Silke, and B. Ganor (eds.) Terrorism Informatics. New York:
Springer: 7399.
Irish Republican Army (Ofcial) (1972) The IRA Speaks in the 1970s. Dublin: Respol.
Irish Republican Publishing Bureau (1973) Freedom Struggle by the Provisional IRA.
Dublin: Irish Republican Publishing Bureau.
Mac Stofin, S. (1975) Memoirs of a Revolutionary. London: Gordon Cremonesi.
McGartland, M. (1997) Fifty Dead Men Walking. London: Blake.
McKeown, L. (2001) Out of Time: Irish Republican Prisoners, Long Kesh, 19722000.
Belfast: Beyond the Pale.
Morrison, D. (1999) Then the Walls Came Down: A Prison Journal. Cork: Mercier.
National Archives, Public Record Ofce (1972) CAB 128/48/3, CM (72) 13th Conclu-
sions, March 7, CA, 3.
OBrien, C. (1972) States of Ireland. New York: Pantheon.
OBrien, J. (2000) The Arms Trial. Dublin: Gill and Macmillan.
OCallaghan, S. (1999). The Informer. London: Corgi.
ODochartaigh, N. (2005 [1997]) From Civil Rights to Armalites: Derry and the Birth of
the Irish Troubles. New York: Palgrave.
(forthcoming) Nation and neighbourhood: Nationalist mobilisation and local
solidarities in the North of Ireland, in A. Guelke (ed.) The Challenges of Ethno-
nationalism. Basingstoke: Palgrave.
ODoherty, S. P. (1993) The Volunteer: A Former IRA Mans True Story. London:
HarperCollins.
OLeary, B. (2005) Mission accomplished? Looking back at the IRA. Field Day Review
1 (1): 21746.
OLeary, B., and J. McGarry (1993) The Politics of Antagonism: Understanding North-
ern Ireland. London: Athlone.
Passerini, L. (1996) Autobiography of a Generation, Italy 68. Hanover, NH: Wesleyan
University Press.
Patterson, H. (1989) The Politics of Illusion: A Political History of the IRA. London:
Serif.
Patterson, H., and E. Kaufman (2007) Unionism and Orangeism in Northern Ireland
since 1945: The Decline of the Loyal Family. Manchester: Manchester University
Press.
Phillips, A. (2003) Recognition and the struggle for political voice, in B. Hobson (ed.)
Recognition Struggles and Social Movements: Contested Identities, Agency, and
Power. London: Routledge: 26374.
PIRA Army Council (1971) Statement from Army Council, by Sean McStiophan,
Republican News, October 30.
Polletta, F. (2006) Mobilization forum: Awkward movements. Mobilization 11 (4):
47578.
Punch, M. (1994) Politics and ethics in qualitative research, in N. K. Denzin and Y. S.
Lincoln (eds.) Handbook of Qualitative Research. London: Sage: 83104.
Ranstorp, M., ed. (2006) Mapping Terrorism Research: State of the Art, Gaps, and
Future Directions. London: Routledge.
Roy, O. (2004) Globalised Islam: The Search for a New Ummah. London: Hurst.
Scarman, L. S. (1972) Violence and Civil Disturbances in Northern Ireland in 1969:
Report of Tribunal of Inquiry. Belfast: Her Majestys Stationery Ofce.
Seidman, G. W. (1993) Manufacturing Militance: Workers Movements in Brazil and
South Africa, 19701985. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Shirlow, P., J. Tonge, J. McAuley, and C. McGlynn (2010) Abandoning Historical Con-
fict? Former Political Prisoners and Reconciliation in Northern Ireland. Man-
chester: Manchester University Press.
Silke, A., ed. (2004) Research on Terrorism: Trends, Achievements, and Failures. Lon-
don: Cass.
Sluka, J. (1995) Refections on managing danger in feldwork: Dangerous anthropology
in Belfast, in C. Nordstrom and A. Robben (eds.) Fieldwork under Fire: Contem-
porary Studies of Violence and Survival. Berkeley: University of California Press:
28396.
Smith, J. (1995) Semi- structured interviewing and qualitative analysis, in J. Smith,
R. Harre, and L. V. Langenhove (eds.) Rethinking Methods in Psychology. London:
Sage: 926.
Smyth, M., and G. Robinson (2001) Researching Violently Divided Societies: Ethical and
Methodological Issues. London: Pluto.
This Week (1970) Republicanism: Why it has failed. July 31.
Viterna, J. (2006) Pulled, pushed, and persuaded: Explaining womens mobilization into
the Salvadoran guerrilla army. American Journal of Sociology 112 (1): 145.
Warner, G. (2006) The Falls Road curfew revisited. Irish Studies Review 14 (3): 32542.
White, B. (1984) John Hume: Statesman of the Troubles. Belfast: Blackstaf.
White, R. (1993) Provisional Irish Republicans: An Oral and Interpretative History. West-
port, CT: Greenwood.
(2000) Issues in the study of political violence: Understanding the motives of
participants in small group political violence. Terrorism and Political Violence 12
(1): 95108.
(2006) Ruair Brdaigh: The Life and Politics of an Irish Revolutionary. Bloom-
ington: Indiana University Press.
(2007) Im not too sure what I told you the last time: Methodological notes on
accounts from high- risk activists in the Irish Republican movement. Mobilization
12 (3): 287305.
Wood, E. (2003) Insurgent Collective Action and Civil War in El Salvador. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
(2006) The ethical challenges of feld research in confict zones. Qualitative
Sociology 29 (3): 37386.
Zwerman, G. (1992) Conservative and feminist images of women associated with armed,
clandestine organizations in the United States. International Social Movement
Research 4: 13359.

Explaining Pathways To Armed Activism in The Provisional Irish Republican Army, 1969-1972

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Explaining Pathways To Armed Activism in The Provisional Irish Republican Army, 1969-1972

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Social Science History 36:3 (Fall 2012)

You might also like