The Official Irish Republican Army or Official IRA (informally "the Officials" or "the Stickies") is an Irish republican paramilitary group whose goal was to create a "32-county workers' republic" in Ireland. It emerged from a split in the Irish Republican Army in December 1969, shortly after the beginning of "The Troubles". The other group emerging from this split was the Provisional Irish Republican Army. Both groups continued to refer to themselves as the Irish Republican Army and rejected the political legitimacy of the other. It engaged in military action against the British Army until May 1972. Since then it has been involved in feuds with both the Provisional IRA and the Irish National Liberation Army, a radical splinter group formed in 1974. In later years, it was accused of involvement in organised crime.
The Official IRA was associated with Official Sinn Féin, later renamed Sinn Féin the Workers Party and then The Workers' Party, and now known as the Workers' Party of Ireland.
Read more about Official Irish Republican Army: Impact of The Split, The Official IRA Since 1972, Decommissioning, People Killed By The Official IRA
Famous quotes containing the words official, irish, republican and/or army:
“Our medieval historians who prefer to rely as much as possible on official documents because the chronicles are unreliable, fall thereby into an occasionally dangerous error. The documents tell us little about the difference in tone which separates us from those times; they let us forget the fervent pathos of medieval life.”
—Johan Huizinga (1872–1945)
“The difference of the English and Irish character is nowhere more plainly discerned than in their respective kitchens. With the former, this apartment is probably the cleanest, and certainly the most orderly, in the house.... An Irish kitchen ... is usually a temple dedicated to the goddess of disorder; and, too often, joined with her, is the potent deity of dirt.”
—Anthony Trollope (1815–1882)
“No one has ever seen a Republican mass meeting that was devoid of the perception of the ludicrous.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
“A Jew without Jews, without Judaism, without Zionism, without Jewishness, without a temple or an army or even a pistol, a Jew clearly without a home, just the object itself, like a glass or an apple.”
—Philip Roth (b. 1933)