The IRA’s self-image, expressed in the manual for members known as the Green Book produced in 1979 was that it was the army of a legitimate, democratically elected parliament: ‘the direct representative of the 1918 Dáil Éireann parliament and that as such they are the legal and lawful representative of the Irish Republic… The Irish Republican Army, as the legal representatives of the Irish people, are morally justified in carrying out a campaign of resistance against foreign occupation forces and domestic collaborators.’12
