from Part III - The Struggle to Contain the IRA: January 1976 to April 1998
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 March 2020
Chapter 9 begins by evaluating the intelligence war's effectiveness against rural IRA units, particularly in the republican heartlands of south Armagh, east Tyrone and Fermanagh. The East Tyrone and Newry IRA did face setbacks. Nonetheless, in many rural areas the IRA’s elusive nature made the organisation difficult to infiltrate and restrain. I explore why rural IRA units were often hard to infiltrate. The resilience of rural units, particularly in south Armagh, provided momentum for the IRA’s campaign in terms of arms, explosives and expertise, which had even been transferred to high-profile IRA operations in England by the 1990s. I also detail how, in England, IRA activity had increased in intensity by the 1990s. IRA attacks in England alongside the ability of the IRA to import various consignments of heavy weapons from Libya suggests that the IRA leadership had not been infiltrated at its highest levels. I provide reasons to explain the lack of infiltration of IRA units in England and the IRA leadership. Examples discussed in the chapter include the effectiveness of the British Army watchtowers in south Armagh, and intelligence operations carried out against the IRA in England during the 1980s.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.