Irish National Liberation Army

The Irish National Liberation Army (INLA, ) is an Irish republican socialist paramilitary group formed on 8 December 1974, during the 30-year period of conflict known as "the Troubles". The group seeks to remove Northern Ireland from the United Kingdom and create a socialist republic encompassing all of Ireland. With membership estimated at 80–100 at their peak, it is the paramilitary wing of the Irish Republican Socialist Party (IRSP).

The INLA was founded by former members of the Official Irish Republican Army who opposed that group's ceasefire. It was initially known as the People's Liberation Army. The INLA waged a paramilitary campaign against the British Army and Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) in Northern Ireland. It was also active to a lesser extent in the Republic of Ireland, Great Britain and mainland Europe. High-profile attacks carried out by the INLA include the Droppin Well bombing, the 1994 Shankill Road killings and the assassinations of Airey Neave in 1979 and Billy Wright in 1997. However, it was smaller and less active than the main republican paramilitary group, the Provisional IRA. It was also weakened by feuds and internal tensions. Members of the group used the cover names People's Liberation Army, People's Republican Army, and Catholic Reaction Force for attacks its volunteers carried out but the INLA did not want to claim responsibility for. The INLA became a proscribed group in the United Kingdom on 3 July 1979 under the 1974 Prevention of Terrorism Act.

After a 24-year armed campaign, the INLA declared a ceasefire on 22 August 1998. In August 1999, it stated that "There is no political or moral argument to justify a resumption of the campaign". In October 2009, the INLA formally vowed to pursue its aims through peaceful political means and began decommissioning its weapons. The IRSP supports a "No First Strike" policy, that is allowing people to see the perceived failure of the peace process for themselves without military actions. The INLA is a proscribed organisation in the United Kingdom under the Terrorism Act 2000 and an illegal organisation in the Republic of Ireland.

History

Origins

During the 1960s, the Irish Republican Army (led by chief-of-staff Cathal Goulding) and Sinn Féin radically re-assessed their ideology and tactics after the dismal failure of the IRA's Border Campaign in the years 1956–62. They were heavily influenced by popular-front ideology and drew close to communist thinking. A key intermediary body was the Communist Party of Great Britain's organisation for Irish exiles, the Connolly Association. Marxist analysis saw the conflict in Northern Ireland as a "bourgeois nationalist" one between the Ulster Protestant and Irish Catholic working classes, fomented and continued by the ruling class. The effect of this conflict was to depress wages, since worker could be set against worker. They concluded that the first step on the road to a 32-county socialist republic in Ireland was the "democratisation" of Northern Ireland (i.e., the removal of discrimination against Catholics) and radicalisation of the southern working-class. This would allow "class politics" to develop, eventually resulting in a challenge to the hegemony both of what they termed "British imperialism" and of the respective unionist and Irish nationalist establishments north and south of the Irish border.

In August 1969 a major outbreak of intercommunal violence occurred in Northern Ireland, with eight deaths, six of them Catholics. On 14–15 August loyalists burned out several Catholic streets in Belfast in the Northern Ireland riots of August 1969. IRA units offered resistance, however very few weapons were available for the defence of Catholic areas. These events and the dissatisfaction of more traditional and militant republicans with the political direction taken by the IRA leaders, particularly their moves to end Abstentionism, led to a split and the formation of the Provisional IRA.

The "Official" IRA units who remained loyal to Goulding occasionally fought the British Army and the RUC throughout 1970 (as well as the Provisional IRA during a 1970 feud). In August 1971, after the introduction of internment without trial, Official IRA (OIRA) units fought numerous gun-battles with British troops who were deployed to arrest suspected republicans. However, the OIRA declared a ceasefire in 1972. The ceasefire, announced on 30 May, After the killing of William Best, a Catholic British soldier home on leave in Derry, the OIRA declared a ceasefire. In addition, the death of several militant OIRA figures such as Joe McCann in confrontations with British soldiers, enabled the Goulding faction to call off their armed campaign, which it had never supported wholeheartedly.

As time passed, discontent with the ceasefire in the movement grew. Seamus Costello, IRA veteran, operations officer for "general headquarters staff" (GHQ) and an elected representative on both Bray Urban District Council and Wicklow County Council, became the figurehead of those within the Official movement opposed to it. In 1972 an Official IRA army convention voted to endorse Costello's position of continued support for armed struggle in Northern Ireland. However, supporters of Costello did not have the numbers on the Army Council to enable what was voted for at the convention. At Official Sinn Féin Ardfheis in 1972 and 1973 Costello's policy was accepted by the rank and file but blocked by the party executive. A smear campaign was initiated against Costello and he was marginalised within the movement; some of his prominent associates were expelled. Costello himself was dismissed from Sinn Féin after ignoring an order not to stand in local elections or to attend meetings of the two local authorities of which he was a member. In spring 1974 Costello was also court-martialled by the Official IRA. Meanwhile, Costello's emerging anti-ceasefire faction, amongst them several Belfast men (including Ronnie Bunting, a Protestant nationalist), carried out a series of robberies in the Republic to pay for arms. At the Sinn Féin Ardfheis in Dublin on 1 December 1974, a Costello sympathiser proposed a motion overturning his dismissal. However, many of Costello's supporters had been blocked from entering, including the most articulate who would have been able to sway the members gathered. The motion was defeated by 197 votes to 15 and a split now appeared inevitable. Local branches of Official Sinn Féin throughout the island of Ireland announced they were resigning from the party, and on 8 December the dissidents met in the Spa Hotel in Lucan, Dublin.

Foundation

The Irish Republican Socialist Party was founded on 8 December 1974 in the Spa Hotel in Lucan, Dublin and the movement's military wing, the Irish National Liberation Army, was founded later the same day. The IRSP's foundation was made public but the INLA's was kept a secret until the group could operate effectively. One delegate suggested the armed wing be named the Irish Citizen Army after the paramilitary group founded by James Connolly that participated in the 1916 Easter Rising but this was rejected by Costello because of sectarian attacks carried out in Northern Ireland by another group using the same name. Costello advocated the name "National Liberation Army" and this appeared in some subsequent claims of responsibility for attacks, although delegates settled on "Irish National Liberation Army". Unlike the Provisional IRA, and the Official IRA who also saw themselves as inheritors of the tradition, by no longer claiming to be the "Irish Republican Army" the INLA abandoned a series of perceived political inheritances which constructed a legal continuity from the 2nd Dáil.

At a press conference five days later Costello read a statement outlining how the IRSP would seek to build a "broad front" on the basis of demanding a British declaration of intent to withdraw from Northern Ireland, the release of all internees and sentenced "political prisoners", abolish all repressive legislation, outlaw discrimination of all kinds, and "agree to compensate the Irish People for the exploitation which has already occurred." In the statement, Costello summarised the "broad front" strategy:

<blockquote>It shall be the policy of the Irish Republican Socialist Party to seek an active working alliance of all radical forces within the context of the Broad Front in order to ensure the ultimate success of the Irish Working Class in their struggle for Socialism.</blockquote>

The IRSP also called for an end to sectarian murders "on the basis of united action by Catholic and Protestant working class against British Imperialism in Ireland", opposition to Ireland joining the European Economic Community, nationalisation of natural resources, and the "formation of people's organisations to combat rising prices an unemployment". Costello explained that the IRSP did not practice abstentionism and would consider contesting an election depending on a "thorough analysis of the conditions prevailing at the time". Prominent republican activist Bernadette Devlin McAliskey attended the press conference as County Tyrone's representative on the party's executive, giving the new organisation republican credibility.

thumb|The [[Starry Plough (flag)|Starry Plough is often used to represent the IRSP and INLA]]

Shortly after it was founded, the INLA/IRSP came under attack from their former comrades in the Official IRA, who wanted to destroy the new grouping before it could get off the ground. On 20 February 1975, Hugh Ferguson, an INLA member and an Irish Republican Socialist Party (IRSP) branch chairperson, was the first person to be killed in the feud. One of the first military operations of the INLA was the shooting of OIRA leader Sean Garland in Dublin on 1 March. Although shot six times, he survived. After several more shootings (according to the RUC the feud had claimed two lives and wounded nineteen others up to this point) a truce was arranged, but fighting started again. The most prominent victim of the restarted feud was Billy McMillen, the commander of the OIRA in Belfast, shot by INLA member Gerard Steenson. His murder was unauthorised and was condemned by Costello. This was followed by several more assassinations on both sides, the most prominent victim being Seamus Costello, who was shot dead on the North Strand Road in Dublin on 5 October 1977. Costello's death was a severe blow to the INLA, as he was their most able political and military leader. The Official and Provisional IRAs both denied responsibility and Sinn Féin/The Workers' Party issued a statement condemning the killing. Members of an opposing INLA faction in Belfast also denied the killing. However, the INLA eventually deemed Official IRA member Jim Flynn the person responsible, and he was shot dead in June 1982 in the North Strand, Dublin, very close to the spot where Costello died.

It has been claimed by some in the Republican Socialist Movement that one of their members killed in 1975, Brendan McNamee (who was involved in the killing of Billy McMillen), was actually killed by Provisional IRA members. The Officials had denied involvement at the time of the killing and had instead blamed it on the Provisionals, who also denied involvement.

The inter-republican violence had a negative effect on the growth of the fledgling IRSP; its first Ardfheis, scheduled for the end of March, had to be cancelled. Bernadette McAliskey and others left the IRSP in late 1975 after a dispute over a number of issues, most urgent being the question of whether the armed wing should be subordinate to the IRSP's political leadership. It was later reported McAliskey had attempted to initiate a discussion to clarify the status of the People's Liberation Army (PLA), what would later become the INLA, but the motion was defeated by majority vote and Costello insisted the PLA was a separate organisation from the IRSP and discussing its affairs was improper. After her resignation McAliskey accused the IRSP of "being objectively indistinguishable from either wing of the republican movement and possibly combining the worst elements of both". At the end of its first year in existence the IRSP had not progressed as Costello had hoped; ten members of the Ard-Chomhairle had resigned, the organisation in Derry had lost many members, Belfast was at odds with the leadership, and recruitment overall had been hurt by the bloody feud with the Official IRA.

Armed campaign

right|thumb|An INLA [[active service unit posing with weapons in South Armagh, 11 November 1986]]

The National Liberation Army (NLA) announced its existence and claimed responsibility for several attacks on British security forces in a press release published in November 1975, sent to newspapers and diplomatic missions in London,

In February 1976 a statement was issued declaring that the "National Liberation Army" and "People's Liberation Army" (the nom de guerre employed by the INLA during its feud with the Official IRA) had merged to form a single organisation. Reportedly the People's Liberation Army name was chosen without the oversight of the group's Dublin-based leadership, although apparently throughout 1976 the INLA in Derry was still known to its own members and outsiders as the PLA. In July 1976 the PLA in Derry issued a lengthy statement concurring with a recent IRSP statement on recovering from the November split, and stressed the necessity of the PLA as a socialist alternative to the Provisional IRA in the fight against British imperialism. Journalists had already deduced the Irish National Liberation Army was the military wing of the IRSP following their November 1975 release, although the IRSP would only admit that they had accepted "protection" from "armed groups" in their feud with the Official IRA.

The INLA from its inception adopted a republican-paramilitary structure similar to the IRA. Under a chief of staff was an eight-man army council, the ultimate decision-making body of the organisation. All major operations were supposed to be sanctioned by the army council. Under the army council was "general headquarters staff" (GHQ). They acted as couriers, supplying INLA units with what they dubbed "gear" or "logistics" - weapons and explosives. In return, GHQ received information on potential targets and proceeds from robberies. Next came the "brigades", which were generally much smaller than those of the Provisional IRA. The INLA did not re-organise its brigades into smaller cells as the Provisional IRA did in the late-Seventies, which proved extremely damaging during the supergrass trials of the mid-Eighties. The INLA leadership later admitted that their failure to do this was a serious weakness, but argued to maintain recruitment and pursue its political ambitions it had to stay in touch with the "civilian" population. In January 1983 the INLA leadership said they hoped to implement a more cellular system throughout the year but it's unlikely this plan to come to fruition in the wake of damaging police penetration. They also had a large presence in Derry and the surrounding area, and all three of the INLA prisoners who died in the 1981 Irish hunger strike were from County Londonderry. Northern County Armagh reportedly had a significant INLA/IRSP presence also. From 1982 onwards the INLA also established units in Newry, Downpatrick and several rural border areas. The first member of the security forces to be killed by the INLA was an RUC officer, Noel Davis, killed on 24 May 1975 by a booby trap bomb left in a car in Ballinahone, near Maghera, County Londonderry. During this period, the INLA competed with the Provisional IRA for members, with both groups in conflict with the British Army and the Royal Ulster Constabulary. The INLA leader in Belfast, Ronnie Bunting, called in claims of responsibility to the media by the code name "Captain Green".

The first action to bring the INLA to international notice was its assassination on 30 March 1979 of Airey Neave, the British Conservative Party's spokesman on Northern Ireland and one of Margaret Thatcher's closest political supporters. Through the 1970s Neave, an influential Tory Member of the House of Commons, had been advocating within British political circles for an abandonment of the British Government's strategy of a containment of Irish paramilitary violence in Northern Ireland against the British State, and for the adoption of a strategy of waging a military offensive against it seeking its martial defeat. This brought him to the attention of both the Provisional IRA and the INLA as a potential threat to their organisations and activities. The INLA issued a statement regarding the attack in the August 1979 edition of its publication The Starry Plough:

The attention the INLA received following the death of Airey Neave led to it being declared an illegal organisation in Britain and Northern Ireland. However, despite the "success" of the 30 March action, the INLA was facing internal turmoil. IRSP chairperson Miriam Daly threatened to resign over policy disagreements and perceived failings of the IRSP to raise funds, run in elections, and enact policy. Senior IRSP member Michael Plunkett was arrested after gardaí found bomb-making equipment in his flat in Dublin and later jumped bail and fled to Paris. A series of botched Middle East arms importation attempts precipitated tensions between Belfast and Dublin representatives to the INLA GHQ and Dessie Grew considered assassinating the leader of the Belfast faction opposed to the INLA chief of staff. Before the conflict broke out there were attempts to recruit veteran Provisional IRA leader Seán Mac Stíofáin as INLA chief of staff in the hope he would help stabilise the organisation. He was interested and met with INLA Army Council representatives on several occasions between 1978 and 1979 but nothing materialised. The unauthorised kidnapping of a Dublin bank manager from his home in January 1980 led to further internal anger and an operation in England was planned to demonstrate that the INLA was still capable of carrying on its war. An INLA Active service unit planted two 10 lb bombs at Netheravon British Army camp in the Salisbury Plain Training Area. Although only one bomb detonated & caused damage starting a fire, and injuring two soldiers, this action helped bind the organisation together.

The INLA lost another of its founding leadership in 1980, when Ronnie Bunting was assassinated at his home. Noel Lyttle, another Protestant member of the IRSP, was killed in the same incident. The Ulster Defence Association, an Ulster loyalist paramilitary, claimed responsibility for both killings. Miriam Daly, who had resigned from the IRSP four months earlier, was killed by loyalist assassins in the same year. Although no group claimed responsibility, the INLA claimed that the Special Air Service (SAS) was involved in the killings of Bunting and Little. All three were strongly identified with the campaign against criminalisation of republican paramilitary prisoners.

Hunger strike

IRA and INLA prisoners convicted after March 1976 did not have Special Category Status applied in prison. Defending paramilitary prisoners' right to special category status, i.e. political status was an issue the IRSP and INLA advocated for from the outset, both within the prisons and on outside, when others, including the Provisional IRA and Sinn Féin, seemed reluctant to do so. This could be partly attributed to IRSP/INLA prisoners being immediately forced into confrontation with prison staff as soon as the movement was formed. Because IRSP prisoners were not members of the Official IRA or Provisional IRA they were denied political status while it was still granted and in summer 1975 twenty IRSP prisoners went on hunger strike for the right to wear their own clothes, to associate freely, refuse to do prison work, and to elect their own spokesmen. These would later become the core of the five demands of the H-Block protest and the 1981 hunger strike was fought. As the 1 March 1976 deadline for the removal of special category status approached the Northern Ireland Office met with a council of representing all paramilitary organisations, loyalist and republican, inside Long Kesh prison. The British offered concessions in return for the removal of special category status. Only the IRSP would go on to flatly refuse the offer.

thumb|[[HM Prison Maze|Maze prison near Belfast, site of the prisoners' protests and hunger strike]]

On 14 November the first IRSP/INLA prisoner, James Connolly Brady of Derry, joined the blanket protest. Both the INLA and IRA attacked prison staff outside the prison. However, unlike Sinn Féin, the IRSP engaged in popular agitation on the streets in Dublin, Belfast, Cork, and elsewhere. Behind the public rhetoric, there was deep concern within the IRSP about the commitment of the IRA/Sinn Féin to the H-Block protest; Sinn Féin had voted at its Ard Chomhairle to prohibit cooperation with the IRSP in protest activities in the South and in June 1978 Sinn Féin protests stopped as it emerged the IRA were in secret negotiations with mediators. According to Holland and McDonald, "as conditions inside the H-Blocks deteriorated, so did relations between the IRSP and the Provisionals." The Sinn Féin Ard-Chomhairle put out a directive in September 1978 banning any IRSP speaker from sharing a Provisional speaker, and at a meeting held in Liberty Hall to discuss the prison crisis all the Provisionals walked out when Mick Plunkett stood up to speak. The IRA regarded the prisons campaign as a distraction from the armed struggle and were reluctant to get too involved in any protest movement they could not control. However, hunger strike publicity events in continental Europe received an enthusiastic reception.

On 27 October 1980, republican prisoners in HM Prison Maze began a hunger strike. One hundred and forty-eight prisoners volunteered to be part of the strike, but a total of seven were selected to match the number of men who signed the Easter 1916 Proclamation of the Republic. The group consisted of IRA members Brendan Hughes, Tommy McKearney, Raymond McCartney, Tom McFeeley, Sean McKenna, Leo Green, and INLA member John Nixon. This hunger strike ended a week before Christmas. In January 1981, it became clear that the prisoners' demands had not been conceded. Prison authorities began to supply the prisoners with officially issued civilian clothing, whereas the prisoners demanded the right to wear their own clothing. In addition, the militancy of INLA blanket men, who were refusing to withdraw from the protest, was causing problems. On 27 January INLA prisoners rioted because the INLA Officer Commanding Patsy O'Hara was not permitted by the authorities to see his own men. The stage was set for another confrontation and in March the 1981 Irish hunger strike began. Three INLA members died during the latter hunger strike – Patsy O'Hara, Kevin Lynch, and Michael Devine, along with seven Provisional IRA members. The hunger strike leader Bobby Sands and Anti H-Block activist Owen Carron were elected to the British Parliament, and two other protesting prisoners were elected to the Dáil. In addition, there were work stoppages and large demonstrations all over Ireland in sympathy with the hunger strikers. It was reported the turnout for Patsy O'Hara's funeral was equal to that of Bloody Sunday.

thumb|A commemoration on the 25th anniversary of the hunger strike

There was a bitter clash over the IRSP's share of money raised in an American fund-raising tour undertaken by three of the hunger-strikers' relatives, Liz O'Hara, Malachy McCreesh, and Seán Sands. The tour had been organised by Noraid, the Provisional IRA's support group in the United States. Noraid had objected to O'Hara being on the tour because her brother Patsy was a "communist" and would sully the image republicans had in the United States. However, the other relatives refused to go unless she accompanied them. There were disputes over the exact amount of money raised but the only certainty is INLA prisoners received none of it. IRSP member Seán Flynn travelled to New York where he met Martin Galvin, a leading Noraid spokesman. The meeting devolved into a shouting match with Galvin denouncing Flynn as a communist and having him thrown out of the house. Flynn toured the United States as a representative of the H-Block committee but Noraid was told to stay away from any meeting he was speaking at. A wealthy Noraid supporter who did attend a meeting was so disgusted by Flynn's sympathy for Native Americans and African Americans that he tore up a previously promised cheque for $10,000. He allegedly told Flynn "I don't like niggers".

Dominic McGlinchey

thumb|The radar station at Mount Gabriel was bombed by the INLA in September 1982, who claimed it was providing assistance to NATO

In summer 1982 in a "rare moment of tactical expediency" what was left of the INLA's Belfast leadership, a group with close contacts with the Lower Falls gang, patched up their differences with the old INLA leadership and agreed on the composition of a new army council, chief of staff and Belfast commander. His release coincided with the theft of of Frangex commercial explosives from the Tara mines in County Tipperary, enabling the organisation to carry out an "intensive" bombing campaign. Throughout 1982 the INLA stepped up its attacks on Unionist leaders with a swathe of bomb attacks on their homes and offices. Attacks against British security forces continued also, but a number of operations killed Catholic children, with three dying in Belfast as a result of INLA explosions in a five-month period. These were propaganda disasters for the INLA, and, say authors Holland and McDonald, "gave the INLA a reputation for recklessness". Their deadliest attack came on 6 December 1982 – the Ballykelly disco bombing of the Droppin' Well Bar in Ballykelly, County Londonderry, which catered to British military personnel, in which 11 soldiers on leave and 6 civilians were killed. Shortly afterwards, the INLA issued a statement of responsibility:

<blockquote>

We believe that it is only attacks of such a nature that bring it home to people in Britain and the British establishment. The shooting of an individual soldier, for the people of Britain, has very little effect in terms of the media or in terms of the British administration.</blockquote>

thumb|Flag several regional brigades of the INLA began using during the 1980s

On 20 November 1983, three members of the congregation in the Mountain Lodge Pentecostal Church, Darkley, (near Keady, County Armagh) were shot dead during a Sunday service. The attack was claimed by the Catholic Reaction Force, a cover name for a small group of people, including one member of the INLA. The weapon used came from an INLA arms dump, but Tim Pat Coogan claims in his book The IRA that the weapon had been given to the INLA member to assassinate a known loyalist and the attack on the church was not sanctioned. The INLA's then-chief of staff, Dominic McGlinchey, came out of hiding to condemn the attack.

On 17 March 1984, Dominic McGlinchey and three other INLA members were surrounded by armed Garda detectives at a safe house in Newmarket-on-Fergus, County Clare. Over one hundred bullets were exchanged in a shootout before Gardai of the Special Branch task force made their way into the farmhouse, subsequently causing McGlinchey to call for a priest in surrender. On going into jail McGlinchey handed over his position as Chief of Staff to a Newry ally; the INLA Army Council was not consulted on this decision.

The INLA kidnapped Kirkpatrick's wife Elizabeth, and later kidnapped his sister and his stepfather too. All were released physically unharmed. INLA Chief of Staff Dominic McGlinchey is alleged to have killed Kirkpatrick's lifelong friend Gerard 'Sparky' Barkley because he may have revealed the whereabouts of the Kirkpatrick family members to the police.

In May 1983, 10 men were charged with various offences on the basis of evidence from Kirkpatrick. Those charged included IRSP vice-chairman Kevin McQuillan and former councillor Sean Flynn. IRSP chairman and INLA member James Brown was charged with the murder of a police officer. Others escaped; Jim Barr, an IRSP member named by Kirkpatrick as part of the INLA, fled to the US where, having spent 17 months in jail, he won political asylum in 1993.)

In December 1985, 27 people were convicted on the basis of Kirkpatrick's statements. By December 1986, 24 of those convictions had been overturned. Gerard Steenson was given five life sentences for the deaths of the same five people that Kirkpatrick himself had been convicted of, these included Ulster Defence Regiment soldier Colin Quinn, shot in Belfast in December 1980.

Holland and McDonald summarise the impact the supergrass trials had on the INLA: