Official Irish Republican Army
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This article is part of SpinWatch's Northern Ireland Portal. |
The Official IRA (OIRA) is the faction of the Irish Republican Army which remained loyal to Chief of Staff Cathal Goulding when the movement split over his plan to end parliamentary abstentionism in December 1969-January 1970. Its political counterpart was initially known as Official Sinn Féin.[1]
Relationship with RUC
Contacts between the Official IRA and the RUC developed in the late 1970s as the Officials moved towards acceptance of the northern state. When the brother of Ivan Barr was arrested his release was secured via contacts with RUC officers arranged by the Corrymeela peace group.[2]
Hanley and Millar suggest that the links between the Officials and the RUC may have played a role in the death of Emmanuel Wilson, a Workers' Party member shot dead by the Provisional IRA in May 1987 as an informer.[3]
Internal tensions over the RUC contacts came to ahead after the killing of two British corporals at a Provisional IRA funeral in Belfast in March 1988. In the immediate aftermath, according to Hanley and Millar, senior Official IRA members showed their activists aerial photos of the attack on the corporal's car, and asked them to help identify those responsible.[4]
Former BBC Spotlight journalist Paul Larkin has claimed that the Officials were an important source of RUC Special Branch intelligence on the provisionals:
- one of my key sources within the Official IRA told me that the Chief of Staff of the Official IRA had been a personal friend of Ian Phoenix and that intelligence sessions had been held in Official IRA establishments which loyalist UVF figures also attended. Here, videos of photomontages were displayed to the assembled paramilitants and Special Branch officers which showed the personal details of Provisional IRA personnel in Belfast.[5]
According to Larkin, details of loyalist Jim Craig's contacts with Official and Provisional IRA personnel were passed on to Phoenix by Official IRA sources.[6]
Loyalist links
Following the shooting of an Official IRA member by the UDA in June 1979, the two organisations met at the Royal Bar in Belfast. A number of Officials subsequently became close to the UDA's Jim Craig.[7]
Resources
Books
- Brian Hanley & Scott Millar, Lost Revolution: The Story of the Official IRA and the Workers' Party, Penguin Ireland, 2009.
Articles
- Paul Larkin, Gunsmoke: Henry McDonald's True Colours, Cic Saor, 31 March 2009.
- Red Wedge, Talking about a Lost Revolution: An interview with Brian Hanley and Scott Millar, Indymedia Ireland, 28 September 2009.
Notes
- ↑ W.D. Flackes, Sydney Elliott, Northern Ireland: A Political Directory 1968-88, Blackstaff Press, 1989, p.206.
- ↑ Brian Hanley and Scott Millar, The Lost Revolution: The Story of the Official IRA and the Workers' Party, Penguin Ireland, 2009, pp.417-418.
- ↑ Brian Hanley and Scott Millar, The Lost Revolution: The Story of the Official IRA and the Workers' Party, Penguin Ireland, 2009, p.539.
- ↑ Brian Hanley and Scott Millar, The Lost Revolution: The Story of the Official IRA and the Workers' Party, Penguin Ireland, 2009, p.539.
- ↑ Paul Larkin, A Very British Jihad, Beyond the Pale, 2004, p.24.
- ↑ Paul Larkin, A Very British Jihad, Beyond the Pale, 2004, p.24.
- ↑ Brian Hanley and Scott Millar, The Lost Revolution: The Story of the Official IRA and the Workers' Party, Penguin Ireland, 2009, pp.419-420.
