The Troubles: Ireland's Ordeal 1966–1995 and the Search for Peace

by Tim Pat Coogan

That was how things were in those revolutionary days. The tide of civil rights was running so strongly that it swept up all sorts of people in one wave, only to drop them off in the next breaker. The original IRA/communist motivators were amongst its earliest casualties. The IRA’s only contribution to the movement was in the stewarding services provided by some of its members. Throughout its short life it remained non-violent, non-sectarian, a genuinely cross-party (and creed) mass movement, aimed not at a united Ireland, but at reform within the system. Its song was ‘We Shall Overcome’, not ‘A Nation Once Again’. In fact, this absence of a Nationalist goal disgusted many old-guard Republicans and was a major contributory factor in the emergence of the Provisional IRA just over a year later.