Provisional IRA

Radical faction of the Irish Republican Army (IRA), now the main republican terrorist faction. In 1969, against a background of mounting violence in Northern Ireland, the IRA split between its left-wing (the Official IRA) and militarists (the Provisional IRA). In the violent 1970s the latter became the dominant force within Irish republicanism. In the 1980s the Provisional IRA adopted the strategy known as ‘the armalite and the ballot box’, which combined militarism with political activism. Use of the term Provisonal IRA has become synonymous with the IRA.