Product Description

Everybody knows about the Provisional IRA, which perpetrated the lionÂ’s share of republican violence during the Troubles. But there was another IRA, the Official IRA: a republican-socialist paramilitary organization that played an underestimated part in the Troubles and was linked to a series of political parties which eventually achieved a striking influence in the south of Ireland while attempting to bring about an Irish socialist republic. In The Lost Revolution, Brian Hanley and Scott Millar tell the full story of this movement for the first time. Hanley and Millar trace the development of republican socialism through the civil rights movement, the outbreak of the Troubles and the IRA split. They show that the Official IRA continued to operate long after its 1972 cease-fire, and document the use of armed robbery and other forms of crime to fund the movement. And they chronicle the growth – in sophistication and popularity – of the WorkersÂ’ Party, which was a force to be reckoned with in the Dáil during the 1980s and (as Democratic Left) early 1990s. Although ultimately unsuccessful, the Official republican movement played a decisive role in the shaping of modern Ireland. A roll-call of influential personalities in the fields of politics, trade unionism and the media – including Eamon Gilmore, Eoghan Harris, Liz McManus and Des Geraghty – passed through its ranks. The story of contemporary Ireland is inseparable from the story of the Official republican movement, a story never before told.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #39917 in Books
• Published on: 2009-09-03
• Binding: Paperback
• 688 pages

About the Author
Brian Hanley is a lecturer in Irish history at the Queen's University, Belfast, and the author of A Guide to Irish Military Heritage and The IRA 1926–1936. Scott Millar is a journalist with the Irish Examiner.

Customer Reviews

Clear, Concise, Authoritative
Based on information taken from 119 credited interviews, numerous anonymous interviews, 324 books and articles, 120 newspapers and journals, twenty-seven visual sources, three unpublished memoirs, five theses, and three official reports, as well as full access to the Workers' Party's archive, the book is five years in the making. The writing is clear, direct, and authoritative.

The Lost Revolution begins with the 1950s border campaign, and the aftermath of its failure. According to Sean Garland, the problem of The North was `a much deeper problem than we envisaged' and the necessary re-think in the 1960s saw elements within Sinn Féin and the IRA look towards contemporaneous left-wing national liberation movements across the globe, from Cuba to Vietnam. Cathal Goulding started to convince IRA members of the `importance of social agitation' and in 1965 `an IRA Department of Political Education' was set up and began organizing classes for volunteers.

Resistance to Goulding's plans soon developed around the figure of Seán Mac Stíofáin, O/C of the Cork/South Kerry area, who had been elected to the IRA Army Council in 1964. The move towards a socialist analysis opened up fissures in the movement. Whereas the splits in the IRA and Sinn Féin in December 1969 and January 1970 most certainly came from within the republican movement itself, the tactical support given to the Provisionals by the Irish government was to try to ensure that the Marxists were marginalised, and that the instability of the North stayed in the North.

The events of 1969 to 1973 are covered in great detail by Lost Revolution, as is the radicalisation of the Officials in the South with regard to the substantial economic and social issues faced by the the country's working class.

Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, `Group B' as the Official IRA became known within the Officials, organised robberies and continued to kill, especially when provoked by the Provisionals and by the INLA. In the 1980s the movement required all military operatives to deny they were members of the Officials, and this policy saw `Group B' operatives sentenced as ordinary criminals when caught and convicted. Over the years, Group B's primary focus shifted from defence of its areas in the North, to becoming more important as the `fundraising' wing of the Officials. It never lost this role.

The ambitions of the party's parliamentarians, however, proved to be the enemy within. The split in 1992 is seen as driven by the lack of theoretical coherence caused by the collapse of the Berlin Wall, and the careerist outlook of the party's T.D.s (members of parliament).

From the start, the goal of the Officials was to build a non-sectarian class-based political movement in order to protect the interests of the island's working class. The goal was a 32-county socialist republic, never a 32-county Catholic republic. Theirs was a class-based analysis, and for the most part it stuck to it.

It may be seen by some that the Officials are done no favours by Lost Revolution - given the exposure of criminal activity and the critical analysis of its `intellectual wing'. I would disagree. This is an honest and thoughtful account of the Officials, arguably the most successful and dynamic working class political organisation in Irish history. The Officials got things wrong, but they got things right as well. Lost Revolution shows that the Officials and their history still have things to offer us today.