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  66. McCann, War and an Irish Town, pp. 129–30.

  67. Prince and Warner, Belfast and Derry in Revolt, p. 185; Ó Dochartaigh, From Civil Rights to Armalites, pp. 152–4.

  68. McCann, War and an Irish Town, p. 135.

  69. Sunday Times Insight Team, Ulster, pp. 227–9.

  70. Prince and Warner, Belfast and Derry in Revolt, pp. 156–7.

  71. Tommy McKearney, The Provisional IRA from Insurrection to Parliament, London 2011, pp. 98–9.

  72. Lorenzo Bosi, ‘Explaining Pathways to Armed Activism in the Provisional Irish Republican Army, 1969–1972’, Social Science History, vol. 36, no. 3, Fall 2012.

  73. David Sharrock and Mark Devenport, Man of War, Man of Peace: The Unauthorized Biography of Gerry Adams, London 1997, p. 38.

  74. Adams, Before the Dawn, pp. 43–4.

  75. Fionnuala O’Connor, In Search of a State: Catholics in Northern Ireland, Belfast 1993, pp. 294–5.

  76. Conway, Southside Provisional, pp. 67–71.

  77. Taylor, Brits, p. 316.

  78. Irish Times, 19 April 1972.

  79. Irish Times, 12 May 1971; An Phoblacht, March 1970.

  80. Irish Times, 11 February 1971.

  81. Éire Nua: The Social and Economic Programme of Sinn Féin, Dublin 1972, pp. 55–6, 3–4.

  82. Conway, Southside Provisional, p. 52.

  83. Conway, whose Southern, middle-class background and grounding in student politics were entirely untypical of his fellow Volunteers, joined the Provos after being rejected by the Official IRA and rose to become their director of intelligence. He developed his own Marxist rationale for seeing the Provos as the more radical of the two factions: Southside Provisional, p. 21.

  84. Irish Times, 19 April 1972.

  85. Taylor, Brits, p. 58.

  86. Patterson and Kaufman, Unionism and Orangeism, p. 116.

  87. Ibid.

  88. Sunday Times Insight Team, Ulster, p. 260.

  89. United Irishman, May 1971.

  90. Bishop and Mallie, The Provisional IRA, pp. 141–3.

  91. Ó Dochartaigh, From Civil Rights to Armalites, pp. 209–10.

  92. PRONI HA/32/2/51.

  93. Michael Farrell, ‘Long March to Freedom’, in Farrell, ed., Twenty Years On, p. 63.

  94. John Gray, interview, 29 January 2011; ‘Farrell, ‘Long March to Freedom’, p. 63.

  95. Free Citizen, 23 July 1971.

  5. The Year of Civil Resistance

  1. The United Irishman editor Seamus Ó Tuathail smuggled out some of the first reports from Crumlin Road prison, to be published in the Irish Times. Another detainee, the People’s Democracy activist John McGuffin, later wrote a full-length book on the use of torture by the Army: The Guinea Pigs, London 1974.

  2. Cobain, Cruel Britannia, pp. 138–47.

  3. Ian Cobain, ‘Ballymurphy shootings: 36 hours in Belfast that left 10 dead’, Guardian, 26 June 2014.

  4. Hanley and Millar, The Lost Revolution, p. 166.

  5. Margaret Urwin, A State in Denial: British Collaboration with Loyalist Paramilitaries, Cork 2016, p. 28.

  6. Ibid., p. 94.

  7. Patterson and Kaufman, Unionism and Orangeism, p. 137.

  8. Taylor, Brits, pp. 67–8; Roy Foster, Luck and the Irish: A Brief History of Change, 1970–2000, London 2008, pp. 114–15.

  9. Devlin, Straight Left, p. 157.

  10. NAI DFA/2003/17/304.

  11. Eamonn McCann, Bloody Sunday in Derry: What Really Happened, Dingle 1992, pp. 51–2.

  12. Hanley and Millar, The Lost Revolution, pp. 170–1.

  13. Sunday Times Insight Team, Ulster, p. 264. Brian Faulkner later claimed that Farrell and the other PD members arrested were also IRA Volunteers, without saying which faction he had in mind: ‘Many members of the IRA have belonged, or indeed still belong, to the Sinn Féin movement or the Republican organizations or to bodies like the People’s Democracy or the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association. If a person is interned, however, it is solely because he is directly associated with the IRA.’ PRONI D/2890/5C/1.

  14. Rosa Gilbert, ‘No Rent, No Rates: Civil Disobedience Against Internment in Northern Ireland, 1971–1974’, Studi irlandesi: A Journal of Irish Studies, no. 7, 2017, p. 27.

  15. Gilbert, ‘No Rent, No Rates’, pp. 27–9.

  16. Terry Robson, ‘Workerism and Republicanism: The Seduction of Armed Struggle’, in Pauline McClenaghan, ed., The Spirit of ’68: Beyond the Barricades, Derry 2009, pp. 116–17.

  17. McCann, War and an Irish Town, p. 151.

  18. Gilbert, ‘No Rent, No Rates’, p. 28.

  19. Unfree Citizen, 14 January 1972.

  20. Patterson, Ireland Since 1939, p. 222.

  21. United Irishman, December 1971.

  22. Gilbert, ‘No Rent, No Rates’, p. 32.

  23. NAI DFA/2003/13/6.

  24. NAI DFA/2003/13/7.

  25. NAI D/T/2002/8/483.

  26. PRONI HA/32/2/54.

  27. In January 1972, Roy Johnston announced his resignation from Goulding’s movement after the assassination of Unionist politician John Barnhill by the Official IRA. He joined the Communist Party soon afterwards: Irish Times, 18 January 1972.

  28. Irish Times, 25 October 1971.

  29. United Irishman, October 1971.

  30. Starry Plough, 30 April 1973.

  31. United Irishman, January 1972.

  32. Taylor, Provos, p. 134.

  33. United Irishman, January 1972.

  34. Ibid., September 1971.

  35. Irish Times, 19 July 1971.

  36. Sweetman, ‘On Our Knees’, p. 157

  37. Free Citizen, 28 May 1971; Unfree Citizen, 14 January 1972.

  38. Baxter et al., ‘Discussion on the Strategy of People’s Democracy’, pp. 11–12. Eamonn McCann objected strenuously to the term ‘Catholic power’; Farrell explained that he meant it to be humorous.

  39. Unfree Citizen, 15 October 1971.

  40. Ibid.

  41. People’s Democracy, People’s Democracy: What It Stands For, Its Attitudes, Dublin 1972, p. 10.

  42. Adams, Before the Dawn, p. 215.

  43. United Irishman, January 1972.

  44. Irish Times, 3 January 1972.

  45. Ibid., 19 January 1972.

  46. McCann, Bloody Sunday in Derry, pp. 62–63.

  47. Irish Times, 24 January 1972.

  48. Ibid., 26 January, 31 January 1972.

  49. Ibid., 29 January 1972.

  50. Ó Dochartaigh, From Civil Rights to Armalites, pp. 279–84.

  51. Irish Times, 31 January 1972.

  52. Murray Sayle, ‘Bloody Sunday Report’, London Review of Books, 11 July 2002. Sayle composed his report with Derek Humphry for the Sunday Times within days of the massacre, but legal concerns blocked its publication for another thirty years.

  53. Irish Times, 2 February 1972.

  54. White, Out of the Ashes, pp. 88–91.

  55. Irish Times, 7 February 1972.

  56. NAI DFA/2003/17/284.

  57. NAI DFA/2003/13/22.

  58. Bloody Sunday, 1972: Lord Widgery’s Report of Events in Londonderry, Northern Ireland, on 30 January 1972, London 2001, pp. 97–100.

  59. United Irishman, February 1972.

  60. Eamonn McCann, ‘Twisting the Truth about Bloody Sunday’, Socialist Worker, 16 June 2011.

  61. Sayle, ‘Bloody Sunday Report’; Eamonn McCann, What Happened in Derry, London 1972, pp. 11–12.

  62. Unfree Citizen, 3 March 1972. The Sunday Times Insight Team confirmed the plausibility of this account: ‘The magistrates’ courts were so clogged with cases hinging upon military testimony that the court-building in Chichester Street looked daily more like a barracks than a hall of justice.’ Ulster, p. 288.

  63. Unfree Citizen, 3 March 1972.

  64. Ibid., 8 October 1971.

  65. United Irishman, May 1972.

  66. Ibid., June 1972.

  67. Starry Plough, no. 4, May–June 1972. The Officials also had to fe
nd off some Red-baiting from their republican rivals, who described an abortive plan to establish street committees in ‘Free Derry’ as a plot to impose ‘Moscow-style communism’. The Plough’s reply gave a sense of the terse humour that characterized the paper: ‘When we advocated street committees we did not mean that neighbour should spy on neighbour. If any of our supporters have taken steps to plant sophisticated electronic bugging devices in the kitchen next door, please stop it. That is not what we meant. All those experimenting with micro-dots can knock it off, and anyone who has a high-powered telescope poking out of his bathroom window can get rid of it. That was not the idea.’

  68. McCann, War and an Irish Town, pp. 162–6.

  69. NAUK CJ 4/195.

  70. United Irishman, June 1974.

  71. Irish Times, 3 April 1972.

  72. Taylor, Provos, pp. 138–9.

  73. Ibid., pp. 137–8.

  74. Kelley, The Longest War, pp. 180–1.

  75. Andrew Mumford, ‘Covert Peacemaking: Clandestine Negotiations and Backchannels with the Provisional IRA during the Early “Troubles”, 1972–76’, The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, vol. 39, no. 4, 2011, pp. 637–8.

  76. Taylor, Provos, p. 142.

  77. Ibid., p. 135; Adams, Before the Dawn, p. 205.

  78. Mike Davis, Buda’s Wagon: A Brief History of the Car Bomb, London 2007, pp. 53–60.

  79. Taylor, Provos, p. 134.

  80. Davis, Buda’s Wagon, p. 10.

  81. Malachi O’Doherty, The Telling Year: Belfast 1972, Dublin 2007, p. 204.

  82. Starry Plough, no. 5, July–August 1972.

  6. Roads Not Taken

  1. Operation Banner, paras 106, 226–7.

  2. English, Armed Struggle, pp. 162–4.

  3. Bishop and Mallie, The Provisional IRA, pp. 265–6.

  4. Irish Times, 24 September 1973.

  5. Republican Clubs, Where We Stand: The Republican Position, Dublin 1972, p. 14.

  6. Ibid., p. 7.

  7. United Irishman, February 1973.

  8. NAUK CJ/4/193.

  9. Patterson, The Politics of Illusion, p. 159.

  10. United Irishman, July 1973.

  11. Gerry Foley, Problems of the Irish Revolution: Can the IRA Meet the Challenge? New York 1972. In the US, Foley belonged to the same party as George Breitman, whose pamphlet on the African-American struggle had been a touchstone for Michael Farrell at the time of the Burntollet march.

  12. Hanley and Millar, The Lost Revolution, pp. 257–8.

  13. United Irishman, January 1973.

  14. Ibid., April 1973.

  15. Official Sinn Féin, Document on Irish Liberation Submitted to World Congress of Peace Forces, Dublin 1973.

  16. Intercontinental Press, 23 October 1978.

  17. Unfree Citizen, 28 January 1974.

  18. Michael Farrell and Phil McCullough, Behind the Wire, Belfast 1973, p. 13.

  19. Republican News, 27 June, 25 August 1973.

  20. Adams, Before the Dawn, pp. 215–16.

  21. Unfree Citizen, 15 April 1974.

  22. Kelley, The Longest War, p. 205.

  23. Republican News, 8 March 1975.

  24. Conway, Southside Provisional, p. 183.

  25. Brian Feeney, Sinn Féin: A Hundred Turbulent Years, Dublin 2002, pp. 273–4.

  26. PRONI CAB/9/J/90/10.

  27. Patterson and Kaufman, Unionism and Orangeism, pp. 148–9.

  28. Patterson, Ireland Since 1939, p. 226.

  29. Dean Godson, Himself Alone: David Trimble and the Ordeal of Unionism, London 2004, p. 32.

  30. Patterson and Kaufman, Unionism and Orangeism, p. 139.

  31. Figures from the CAIN database of conflict-related deaths.

  32. Martin Dillon and Denis Lehane, Political Murder in Northern Ireland, London 1973, p. 286.

  33. Margaret Urwin, A State in Denial: British Collaboration with Loyalist Paramilitaries, Cork 2016, pp. 56–9.

  34. Ibid., pp. 90–3.

  35. Godson, Himself Alone, pp. 55–60.

  36. Conway, Southside Provisional, pp. 178–9. The British police tortured six men into signing false confessions admitting responsibility for the bombings: the ‘Birmingham Six’ later became the focus of intense political controversy, along with other Irish victims of judicial malpractice, and were finally released in 1991.

  37. Taylor, Brits, pp. 177–9.

  38. Niall Ó Dochartaigh, ‘“Everyone Trying”, the IRA Ceasefire, 1975: A Missed Opportunity for Peace?’ Field Day Review, vol. 7, 2011.

  39. David McKittrick and David McVea, Making Sense of the Troubles, London 2012, p. 131.

  40. Irish Times, 21 December 1974.

  41. Ibid., 11 February 1975.

  42. Bishop and Mallie, The Provisional IRA, pp. 282–4.

  43. Anne Cadwallader, Lethal Allies: British Collusion in Ireland, Cork 2013, pp. 142–3.

  44. Ibid., p. 117.

  45. Ibid., pp. 306–7.

  46. Taylor, Brits, pp. 184–6.

  47. Irish Times, 20 October 1975.

  48. Ibid., 2 December 1974.

  49. Seamus Costello Memorial Committee, Seamus Costello 1939–77: Irish Republican Socialist, Dublin 1982, p. 58.

  50. Starry Plough, April 1975.

  51. Hanley and Millar, The Lost Revolution, p. 284.

  52. Between December 1974 and May 1975, the United Irishman published an extended political travelogue taking readers through the highlights of East European state socialism. It denounced the Hungarian revolt of 1956 as a ‘last-ditch stand’ by ‘fascist and right-wing elements who tried to turn back the clock of history’, and claimed that there was ‘very little opposition’ to the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia twelve years later: ‘In fact many Czechs supported it.’

  53. Irish Times, 14 December 1974.

  54. Starry Plough, April 1975.

  55. Irish Times, 15 March 1975.

  56. Hibernia, 31 October 1975.

  57. Irish Times, 14 December 1974, 7 April 1975.

  58. Jack Holland and Henry McDonald, INLA: Deadly Divisions, Dublin 2010, pp. 109–11.

  59. Irish Times, 15 March 1975.

  60. NAUK CJ/4/2774.

  61. Patterson, The Politics of Illusion, p. 164.

  62. Irish Times, 25 February 1975.

  63. Ibid., 28 February 1975.

  64. Holland and McDonald, Deadly Divisions, pp. 57–9.

  65. Irish Times, 7 March 1975.

  66. Ibid., 9 April 1975.

  67. Ibid., 7 April 1975.

  68. Ibid., 29 April, 1 May 1975.

  69. Hanley and Millar, The Lost Revolution, pp. 402–3.

  70. Hibernia, 31 October 1975.

  71. Starry Plough, December 1975.

  72. Ibid., January 1976.

  73. Ed Moloney, A Secret History of the IRA, London 2007, pp. 146–7; Hanley and Millar, The Lost Revolution, pp. 315–17.

  74. Irish Times, 14 November 1975.

  75. Ibid., 6 November, 14 November 1975.

  76. Ibid., 5 November 1975.

  77. English, Armed Struggle, pp. 171–2.

  78. Irish Times, 12 August 1972.

  79. United Irishman, November 1975.

  80. Seán Swan, Official Irish Republicanism 1962–1972, Dublin 2008, p. 401.

  81. McGarry and O’Leary, Explaining Northern Ireland, pp. 161–6. While Clifford was BICO’s main authority on Ireland, another member of the group, Bill Warren, became well-known on the intellectual left for his writings on the development of global capitalism.

  82. Godson, Himself Alone, pp. 29–30, 53.

  83. Paul Bew, Henry Patterson and Peter Gibbon, The State in Northern Ireland: Political Forces and Social Classes, Manchester 1979, pp. 18–19, 221.

  84. Sinn Féin the Workers’ Party, Statement on Northern Ireland, Dublin 1979.

  85. Workers’ Party, The Current Political Situation in Northern Ireland, Belfast 1983, p. 5.

  86. Hanley and Millar, The Lost Revolution, pp. 401
–21.

  87. McAliskey, Johnnie White and their associates set up a short-lived group called the Independent Socialist Party after leaving the IRSP. The new organization identified a basic problem for any movement that tried to mobilize support on an all-Ireland basis: ‘Most Irish workers were born and bred in a partitioned country. Their problems they see as directly related to the state in which they live. Cork workers will be hard put to tie up their housing problems with the sectarian murders in Belfast.’ Independent Socialist Party, The Independent Socialist Party: An Introduction, Dublin 1977, p. 5.

  88. Holland and McDonald, Deadly Divisions, pp. 126–7.

  89. Irish Times, 11 October 1977.

  90. Derek Dunne and Gene Kerrigan, Round Up the Usual Suspects: The Cosgrave Coalition and the Kelly Trial, Dublin 1984, p. 190.

  91. Moloney, Voices from the Grave, p. 193.

  92. Irish Times, 17 October, 20 October 1980.

  7. The Broad Front

  1. Republican News, 18 June 1977.

  2. Unfree Citizen, September 1976.

  3. Republican News, 11 September 1976.

  4. Gerry Adams, Peace in Ireland: A Broad Analysis of the Present Situation, Belfast 1976, p. 13.

  5. Peter Taylor, Beating the Terrorists? Interrogation in Omagh, Gough and Castlereagh, London 1980.

  6. PRONI CENT/1/5/5.

  7. Unfree Citizen, March 1976.

  8. Ibid., July–August 1977.

  9. ‘Appendix 4: Staff Report, 1977’, in Liam Clarke, Broadening the Battlefield: The H-Blocks and the Rise of Sinn Féin, Dublin 1987, p. 253.

  10. Republican News, 17 June 1978.

  11. NAUK CJ/4/2376. One of the foreign guests at the conference was the Greek Trotskyist Michalis Raptis, better known in far-left circles as Michel Pablo – although as Brian Trench noted, ‘few of the delegates can have had an idea of the historical resonance of his name’: Trench, ‘Provisional Pot-Pourri’, Magill, 1 November 1978. Pablo’s record as an arms-smuggler and sometime adviser for Algeria’s FLN guerrillas would have interested the Provos more than his role in the controversies of the Fourth International.

  12. John Horgan, Irish Media: A Critical History since 1922, London 2001, pp. 148–9.

  13. An Phoblacht/Republican News, 23 June 1979.

  14. Moloney, A Secret History of the IRA, pp. 185–6.

  15. An Phoblacht/Republican News, 10 February 1979.

  16. Jim Gibney, interview, 31 August 2015.

  17. An Phoblacht/Republican News, 9 August 1980.