The Rise of the Provisional IRA: Conspiracy vs Reality

About this episode

In the late 1960s, the Provisional IRA and what became modern Sinn Féin emerged from a bitter split in the Irish republican movement. This split would shape not only the Troubles but also Irish politics down to the present day. However, for the last five decades, the story of how and why that split occurred has been clouded by enduring conspiracy theories. The most prominent of these claims that the Irish government in Dublin orchestrated the split to create a more conservative force in the Provisional IRA and neutralise left-wing republicanism. Many opponents of the Provisionals in the rival Left Wing Official IRA understood these events through this lens. Meanwhile, unionists believed the Provisionals had been created by politicians in Dublin in the hope of destabilising the Northern state. The theory also found adherents among the political enemies of Charles Haughey and Neil Blaney, two politicians whose actions lie at the heart of these claims. Yet the history of those fateful years tells a different story: one of uncertainty and desperation. Conspiratorial interpretations also overlook how politicians in later decades were happy to court such understandings to suit t