The Irish Republican Army
If the Angry Brigade had a slightly farcical aura, then the Irish Republican Army, the iconic IRA, undertook its campaign of bombing in the 1970s and 1980s in deadly earnest. The IRA was, in fact, many organizations that came and went during the long Irish struggle for Home Rule.
For those interested, the background to the story was simply the persistent claim of the British political establishment to the control and government of Ireland. The British, to a greater or lesser extent, held sway over Ireland since the Norman Invasion of 1066. Various British Monarchs from then on infiltrated, and the English presence in Ireland was never entirely expunged.
The most bitter elements of the struggle, however, were religious. When England threw off Catholicism as a consequence of Henry VIII’s many peccadillos, the kingdom became Anglican or Protestant. In an effort to wean the Irish off Catholicism, Protestant ‘settlers’ were introduced in ‘plantations’ that were focused mainly in the north of Ireland, corresponding broadly with the county of Ulster.
Thereafter, these English Loyalists developed a deep antipathy to the Catholic Republicans of the south. Later, when southern Ireland was granted Home Rule, and later republican status the struggle became one to unite Ireland. The Protestant majority of Northern Ireland, however, would have none of it, preferring to remain part of the British Empire. The last iteration of the IRA was formed as the paramilitary branch of the Irish Sinn Fein party, and a program of positive action was rolled out that took domestic terrorism in the United Kingdom to unprecedented levels.
The IRA was in fact just one of a number of paramilitary organizations involved in the Irish ‘Troubles’, but it was certainly the most high profile. In Catholic areas of Northern Ireland it became a defacto community enforcement arm, severely punishing citizens for various crimes or misdemeanors, and in some respects, it was a benefit to an otherwise marginalized society. However, it was also extremely violent and responsible for numerous bombings both in Northern Ireland and on the British mainland. IRA bombs were intended to kill large numbers of people, and they almost always did. The British Army was deployed to Northern Ireland, and a virtual war was fought through the 1970s, 1989s and early 1990s.
The ‘Troubles’ came to an end largely because of the exhaustion of both sides, and in 1998, the God Friday Agreement effectively ended the role of the IRA and allied organizations in Northern Ireland. By then there was a stronger gangster element in the IRA, and it took some time for it to disappear, and some might say it never did and is still active on the streets of Northern Ireland.