Irish republicanism

Extreme wing of the Irish nationalist cause. Like Irish nationalism, its aims are complete separation from British rule and a united 32-county republic. Republicanism, however, has generally been associated with organizations prepared to use physical force to achieve these aims. The history of Irish republicanism covers a period of over 200 years, from the activities of the United Irishmen in the 1790s to those of Sinn Fein and the Irish Republican Army (IRA) in the 20th and 21st centuries.

First republican movements Early republican movements included the Society of United Irishmen (1791), led by Wolfe Tone, which took an active part in the Rebellion of 1798; the Young Ireland activists who organized rebellion in 1848; and the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB), an offshoot of the Fenian movement founded in 1858 by Irish-Americans in the USA. These all tried to achieve Irish independence through violent means.

Republicanism in the early 20th century In 1905 Sinn Fein, a political wing of the republican movement, was established by Arthur Griffith. In 1913 a new, armed, republican group, the Irish Volunteers, was formed to defend the principle of Irish home rule. This policy was being pressed on the British government by nationalist Parliamentary Party leader John Redmond. Although Redmond succeeded in getting a Home Rule bill passed in 1914, it was never implemented because of opposition from the Ulster Unionist Party and the outbreak of World War I.

On Easter Monday, April 1916 a small group of republicans, including members of the IRB led by Patrick Pearse, Irish Volunteers, and Patrick Pearse's Irish Citizen Army, staged the Easter Rising. Although it was a complete military failure, the subsequent execution of many of the participants by the British authorities led to a large increase in support for republicanism.

Irish independence and partition In the 1918 general election Sinn Fein, led by the 1916 veteran Éamon de Valera, replaced the nationalist Parliamentary Party as the most popular political party in Roman Catholic Ireland. In 1919 Sinn Fein members of Parliament for Ireland refused to take their seats in the House of Commons in London, and established the Dáil Éireann (Irish parliament) in Dublin. They declared the Irish Republic. At the same time the Irish Volunteers changed their name to the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and began the Anglo-Irish War, fighting a war of independence against the British between 1919 and 1921. Support for the republican cause was strong in the majority of Ireland.

The war achieved partial independence for Ireland but resulted in the partition of Ireland. The Anglo-Irish Treaty (1921) established the Irish Free State within the British Commonwealth and created a separate Northern Ireland. Many republicans, however, refused to accept a treaty that left the Irish as subjects of the British monarchy and allowed partition. Both Sinn Fein and the IRA were split into pro-Treaty and anti-Treaty forces.

The Irish Civil War that erupted between the pro-Treaty and anti-Treaty factions from 1922 to 1923 resulted in victory for the pro-Treaty forces. Initially the anti-Treaty republicans refused to take part in the Dáil (Irish parliament). However, the most important section of the anti-Treaty opposition, led by de Valera, split from Sinn Fein in 1926 to form Fianna Fáil. This party entered the Dáil in 1927. Sinn Fein dwindled into insignificance but the IRA remained a strong force.

De Valera's Fianna Fáil won the general election in 1932 and succeeded in bringing most Irish republicans into the democratic process. The influence of the IRA dwindled. De Valera spent the next 16 years dismantling the power of Britain in Ireland, coming closer to achieving the republican goal of total independence from Britain. For more extreme republicans, who continued to accuse de Valera of selling out, true republicanism came to mean a refusal to take part in parliament, a suspicion of politics, and a commitment to physical force.

‘The Troubles’ of Northern Ireland The IRA's bombing campaigns in England 1939–40 and border campaigns of the 1950s were failures. However, in 1969 the IRA was revived as an active terrorist organization in response to the growing crisis in Northern Ireland. Its aims were the same as those of the original IRA of 1919, the total independence of a united Ireland through British withdrawal.

The IRA split into the Official IRA, its left-wing faction, and the Provisional IRA, the militarists, in 1969. The Provisional IRA became the dominant force within Irish republicanism in the 1970s and waged a campaign of violence against unionist and British targets in pursuit of its aims. The political party of Provisional Sinn Fein emerged in the 1960s in support of the IRA. It later became known simply as Sinn Fein. This party acted as the public face of republicanism in Ireland from 1970. Gerry Adams became its president in 1978.

The IRA moves towards peace In the 1980s the Provisional IRA adopted a strategy called ‘the armalite and the ballot box’, a mixture of military and political activity. The 1990s, however, saw Sinn Fein become the more dominant voice of the republican movement as it became actively involved in the Northern Ireland peace process. The IRA agreed ceasefires in 1994 and 1997. Under the Good Friday Agreement (1998), Sinn Fein joined the Northern Ireland Assembly in December 1999. The republican movement also dropped its demand for an immediate and complete British withdrawal from Northern Ireland, and accepted that there would be an interim stage of power-sharing under British authority. This changed its longstanding policy of refusing to work with the British state. However, problems over the decommissioning of weapons held by the IRA continued to beset the peace process in 2000.