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Power Play. Deaglán de Bréadún
Читать онлайн.Название Power Play
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isbn 9781785370434
Автор произведения Deaglán de Bréadún
Издательство Ingram
The statement from Maguire probably helped to prevent the anti-abstentionists from securing the vital two-thirds majority. The two competing wings of the republican movement came to be known as the Official IRA/Official Sinn Féin and the Provisional IRA/Provisional Sinn Féin. Republicans wear an Easter lily badge every year to commemorate the 1916 Rising. When the ‘Officials’ produced one which used adhesive instead of the traditional pin, their branch of the movement quickly became known at street level as the ‘Stickies’ while the Provisionals were called simply the ‘Provos’.
The Officials were led by Cathal Goulding and Tomás MacGiolla,the Provisional leaders included Ó Brádaigh, Dáithí O’Connell and Seán Mac Stiofáin. Although abstentionism was the formal reason for the split, there were other issues involved. The Goulding-MacGiolla leadership was seen as having let down the nationalist community in Belfast by failing to put preparations in place for the onslaught by loyalist mobs the previous August. Some nationalists in Belfast reportedly equated the letters IRA with ‘I Ran Away’.12
The Ó Brádaigh-O’Connell-Mac Stiofáin faction, on the other hand, was depicted as consisting of conservative Catholics and right-wingers. Years later, reflecting on the split, Gerry Adams wrote that ‘For many of the dissidents the issue was not abstentionism itself but what it had come to represent: a leadership which had led the IRA into ignominy in August [1969].’13
But apparently this was not the case south of the border.14 The Officials were variously portrayed as reformists or crypto-communists who had abandoned the ‘national struggle’. The Provos felt vindicated when, on 29 May 1972, the Official IRA called an indefinite ceasefire while reserving the ‘right to defend any area under aggressive attack by the British military or by sectarian forces from either side’. 15
The Provisional movement was at first dominated by southern-based individuals, but the balance of power began to shift after the extended ceasefire that took place from February to September 1975, although it continued to exist, in theory, until the following January. As part of the truce, seven ‘incident centres’ were set up in nationalist areas of Belfast, Derry and elsewhere. These were staffed by republicans, with a direct phone line to the Northern Ireland Office of the British Government to resolve any issue which jeopardised the ceasefire. Republican leader Máire Drumm said they were a ‘power-base for Sinn Féin’. Afterwards, Ó Brádaigh said that republicans were told by the British Government that it ‘wished to devise structures of disengagement from Ireland’. For his part, Secretary of State Merlyn Rees insisted this meant that, if paramilitary violence came to an end, then the British would reduce security to a ‘peacetime level’. 16
There was a fairly widespread feeling at the time, and not just in republican circles, that the British commitment to the North had become quite fragile.17 But instead of leading to British withdrawal,the ceasefire contributed greatly to the dislodgement of Ó Brádaigh and fellow-southerners of his generation from leadership of the movement. Richard English makes the point, in his 2003 book on the IRA, that the members of the organisation had been given to understand that the British were edging towards the exit-door and, when it turned out that this wasn’t the case, the southern-based leadership lost a good deal of credibility.18
On 30 January 1975, ten days before the truce began, there was a development which would have massive implications within a few years for the republican movement and the entire island. A committee headed by Britain’s Lord Gardiner issued a report which called for an end to ‘special category status’ whereby persons who were imprisoned for offences arising from the Troubles were effectively treated as political prisoners, and did not have to wear prison uniforms or carry out prison work. The Report said: ‘The introduction of special category status for convicted prisoners was a serious mistake... The earliest practicable opportunity should be taken to bring special category status to an end.’ The British Government accepted the recommendation, which came into effect from 1 March 1976. The first prisoner to arrive under the new dispensation, Kieran Nugent, refused to wear a prison uniform. Declaring that ‘they’ll have to nail it to my back’, he wrapped himself in a blanket instead. His example was followed by hundreds of other republicans, and ultimately led to the hunger strike of 1981 in which Bobby Sands and nine other prisoners died after refusing food as a protest against the ending of political status.19
There have been subtle differences between republicans on either side of the border. At the time of the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921 most IRA members in the North went with Michael Collins, whose personal attitude to partition was more militant than other pro-Treaty leaders and perhaps even some on the anti-Treaty side, who were focused on the issue of sovereignty and the oath of allegiance involving the British monarch, which was part of the Treaty.20
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