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

by Tim Pat Coogan

As soon as the meeting which voted through the National Liberation Front proposal was finished he drove straight to Belfast, where he knew another meeting, of Republican traditionalists, was in progress. This gathering decided to set up a new Provisional IRA Army Council, with MacStiofain as chief of staff. Also on the council were Ruairi O’Bradaigh, Daithi O’Conaill, Patrick Mulcahy, Joe Cahill and Leo Martin. This army council was dominated by southerners. Only Cahill and Martin were from the north. By the end of a year the new IRA had consolidated itself and dropped the word Provisional. (The term had been chosen to make a connection with the 1916 rising leaders, who had declared a provisional government.) However, it stuck, as did the term ‘Sticky’, or ‘Stickies’, to denote a member of Goulding’s organisation, which regarded itself as the ‘Official’ IRA. Both wings wore Easter lily emblems at Easter, to commemorate the 1916 rising. The Provisionals, also known as ‘Provos’, ‘Provies’, and, sometimes, ‘Pinheads’, used to affix their labels to their lapels with pins. The Officials used gum, hence the term ‘Stickies’.