What you need to know about the New IRA
Meet the New IRA. How is it different from the Old IRA? How serious a threat is it to the fragile peace in the Six Counties? (Photo - New Statesman)
Is Irish history repeating itself?
Google New IRA and, sure enough, Which IRA is right for you? will pop up in the browser. Scroll down a bit, however, and you’ll find what you’re looking for when it comes to the latest threat to law and order in the North of Ireland.
One of the first tasks for anyone following the sputtering-but-surviving struggle in the North of Ireland is figuring out which IRA is which. Official, Provisional, Real and New are just some of the names backers of physical force republicanism in Ireland have gathered under over the years.
The one we’re hearing about these days is the New IRA. Why is the current undersized effort called the New IRA when it’s been around for more than a decade? The name came from the media and has stuck since 2012 when those IRA members who opposed the Good Friday Agreement as a sell-out joined forces to cause trouble for the peace process and kill members of the new PSNI or Police Services of Northern Ireland. By the way, they call themselves simply the Irish Republican Army.
Wall posters on Falls Road in West Belfast, home to thousands of Catholic nationalists. The PSNI is the police force created after the Good Friday Agreement to replace the Royal Ulster Constabulary. MI5 is the British equivalent of the FBI, handling domestic law enforcement. MI6 is like the CIA.
So, what’s new?
There are two new developments.
ONE – Two days ago, “In a video posted last week on a far-Right social media platform, an unidentified man warned that the IRA would threaten migrants with violence if they did not leave Ireland. ‘They will take control, and they will give an ultimatum, not to politicians but to the illegal migrants who are in the country,’ he says.” The Daily Mail, a conservative UK tabloid.
This is an obvious bid to attract anti-immigrant types to their ranks. And there are a lot of anti-immigrant types in Ireland. The ones in the North are hardcore loyalists who despise all things Irish. For them to find common cause with hardcore United Ireland nationalists seems pretty far fetched.
TWO - “On 24 July a car containing what police described as an “extremely significant” bomb was stopped by Irish police in County Monaghan... en route to Derry... the Police Service of Northern Ireland’s (PSNI) main theory was that the bomb was intended for use in an attack on a police station north of the border... the Garda Síochána described the device as “military grade”, powered by Semtex and designed to be placed beneath a vehicle.” The New Statesman, a British magazine “of the left, for the left” according to an editor.
This seems serious, by all accounts. Even though the New IRA can only count on fewer than 400 soldiers, there was enough Semtex in the car – 400 grams – for two car bombs, which could have killed and maimed many people. The driver was Isobella Perrie Sullivan of Co. Kildare, a 25-year-old Trainee Solicitor (law student) whom the tabloids have christened THE BARRISTER BOMBER.
The car in which 400 grams of Semtex were being driven North was stopped in the Republic about 90 miles from Dublin and 60 miles from Belfast.
Back to the bad old days of The Troubles?
Not yet. Any threat assessment of the New IRA would have to include the facts that its numbers are still small; since it was founded in 2012, the number of active members has remained below 400 according to multiple sources. In other words, while thousands rushed to join the Provisional IRA after Bloody Sunday in 1971 and the hunger strikes of the early 1980s, that’s not the case for the New IRA. The New IRA is also not know to have much of a weapons stockpile; the Semtex was probably several years old, leftover from The Troubles.
Sinn Fein, once the political arm of the Provisional IRA, was quick to condemn the effort to smuggle Semtex into the North.
“Those dissident groups that use the name of the IRA do not command the support of the people and cannot sustain a campaign. Their actions lead only to jail and injury. Absent any coherent strategy, it is violence for the sake of violence.” Ciarán Quinn, the Sinn Féin Representative to North America
“The discovery of a sizeable bomb being transported by dissident republicans near Carrickmacross is deeply concerning. The seizure of the device by An Garda Siochana is to be welcomed as a bomb of this scale could have resulted in significant loss of life.” Sinn Fein TD Matt Carthy
The PSNI and Garda cooperated on the investigation and arrest of the young woman driving the lethal load through Co. Monagahan. Both agencies issued warnings about violent republican activity resuming.
“We certainly know that there are a small minority of dissident republicans, this is a threat that we’re going to continue to face for some time.” An Garda Síochána Commissioner Justin Kelly
The discovery was “very worrying” and said it showed the “dissident republican threat remained active.” Ireland’s Justice Minister Jim O’Callaghan.