PB February/March 2024 February/March 2024 17
W
hen Mary Lou McDonald of Sinn
Féin is asked if the Provisional
IRA still exists, her unwavering
response is to say that it has
gone away. When asked about
the existence of the Army Council, the ruling
body of the Republican movement, she has said
that: “Nobody directs Sinn Féin other than Sinn
Féin members and the Sinn Féin leadership. I’m
the leader of Sinn Féin, I know who runs Sinn
Féin”.
If, in saying the IRA has ‘gone away’, McDonald
means it has ceased to exist, she is sorely
mistaken. The members of the present-day Army
Council, which meets approximately twice a
year, would demur. The IRA and the Army Council
still exist, albeit not on a war footing.
In the extremely unlikely event of a clash
between Sinn Féin and the Army Council, the
former will jump to the latter’s tune.
1. Republican dogmatists
believe the Army Council is
the legitimate government of
Ireland
The pre-eminent position of the Army Council
over Sinn Féin is rooted in Republican dogma
and history.
The IRA emerged as a ‘single issue’
organisation dedicated to the obstruction of
every element of British power in Ireland, neither
endorsing nor opposing any other cause,
national or international.
Those who opposed the Anglo-Irish Treaty
over a century ago, did so because they viewed
it as the betrayal of their campaign to end British
rule in Ireland and create an independent
32-county republic. They perceived those who
supported the Treaty as disloyal to the ideal of
the Republic. The anti-Treaty Republicans
recognised the First Dáil and, to a lesser extent,
the Second Dáil. After that, they decided to
boycott the Dáil. This became known as the
policy of abstentionism. In the 1930s, an IRA
convention gathered a number of those elected
to the second Dáil and resolved that the Army
Council of the IRA had become the seat of
sovereignty, i.e., the legitimate ruling authority
on the island, pending the attainment of full
independence. While some Republicans later
came to believe it was acceptable to enter Dáil
Eireann on purely strategic grounds, they never
rejected the authority of the Army Council.
The Army Council did not cease to exist after
the Good Friday Agreement.
If the IRA has disbanded completely, as some
in Sinn Féin say, that would mean the Army
Council is no longer the flame-carrier of the
‘true’ Republic and Sinn Féin had turned its back
on its core principle. More pointedly, it would
mean that the ‘true’ republic did not exist. That
has not happened. On the contrary, the Army
Council still calls the shots. If there is a clash
between the leaders of Sinn Féin and the Army
Council, the latter will prevail.
The Army Council has no interest whatever in
The role of the Army
Council of the IRA in
‘peacetime’
By David Burke
exerting its authority over Sinn Féin policy in
general. There is no known friction between the
two bodies. It would be laughable to suggest
that the Army Council meddles with Sinn Féin’s
positions on issues such as fishing, agriculture,
climate change or housing.
It is concerned with a small number of very
narrow issues such as the strategy for the
holding of a poll on reunification. Also, if Sinn
Féin considers entering into a coalition
arrangement with another political party after
the next general election, the Army Council will
control what Sinn Féin chooses to do. It would
not, for example, let Sinn Féin enter into a
programme for government that ruled out a
reunification poll.
The notion that Sinn Féin is led by a team of
vibrant young politicians is, in large part, an
illusion. The key strings are pulled by a group of
nameless men in their seventies. Some of them
have held elected positions within Sinn Féin,
reinforcing the cohesion between the two
bodies.
NEWS