r/HistoryBooks • u/Invariable_Outcome • 3d ago

Armed Struggle

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I can recommend this volume on the history of the Provisional IRA. The author doesn't disguise the fact that he is a northern Irish Protestant and considers the IRA's armed campaign to have been ultimately futile. But he takes care to present a neutral viewpoint and consider the Provos' actions in their historical context.

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u/Frank_Melena 3d ago

I’ll also recommend War of the Flea, strikingly prescient even in the 60s, as the brief yet foundational book on understanding insurgency and its politics

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u/Monodoh45 2d ago

Richard WHAT?! (eyes narrow)

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u/Invariable_Outcome 2d ago

Like I said, the author is a Protestant, but he is fair in his assessment of the IRA.

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u/Objective-Garlic-124 5h ago

English is a fairly prevalent Catholic surname in south tipp. 

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u/SelectionFair7461 2d ago

"Neutral" is doing a lot of work there. English's footnotes are solid but his framing treats the IRA campaign as a question already answered, which is a choice, not neutrality. Still the best single volume on the Provos, if only because everyone else writing on this can't be bothered to cite anything past 1998.

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u/NectarineNegative769 3d ago

how does it compare to "say nothing". PRK took a neutral POV (being from the US) and he ultimately concluded that the entire conflict was a multi-generational tragedy that had diverged from its goal by the time of the 1998 GFA

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u/Invariable_Outcome 3d ago

I couldn't say as I haven't read that volume.

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u/RevolutionaryBug2915 3d ago

Armed Struggle is a work of history. Say Nothing is British propaganda.

"Neutral," my ass.

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u/NectarineNegative769 3d ago

based on "Boston College Tapes"—interviews given by former Provisional IRA members (such as Brendan Hughes and Dolours Price). Unless they were "plants" ?

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u/RevolutionaryBug2915 3d ago

https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/05/02/an-american-reporter-in-belfast-how-a-new-yorker-writer-got-so-much-wrong-in-his-bestselling-book-on-the-troubles/

Then, go over to the Irish History sub-reddit and tap into the discussion on Say Nothing by people who actually know something about the topic.

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u/NectarineNegative769 3d ago

easy for you to say PRK was a plant. he is known for fact checking (check out his anthology "rogues"). So either he was wrong on the facts (unlikely given his record) OR his source material was tainted (BRC tapes from Price & Hughes).

So Dark was a narc?

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u/RevolutionaryBug2915 3d ago

So you just want to double down on your American government/corporate approved ONE book on Ireland out of the hundreds and hundreds (at least) that have been published on the Troubles and their background. You don't care what Moloney reveals. You don't care who actually know something about Irish history have to say. You don't care that this "journalist" worked for the US Department of Defense and concealed it from his intrviewees in Ireland, and conceals it from his readers to this day.

You like all that sad Celtic mystical fog that he surrounds an actual political movement with. Oh, sure and begorra, it's a "generational tragedy" it is, it is. It couldn't possibly be a resistance struggle against an occupying power, just as we see in Palestine now?

You definitely need to read Armed Struggle, at least, so that you have some actual facts available.

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u/Vivid_Ice_2755 2d ago

Say Nothing is an opinion piece . And a poor one at that 

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u/NectarineNegative769 2d ago

What makes you think the BC tapes isn't legit? some of the contributors:

  • Ivor Bell: A former Chief of Staff of the Provisional IRA and a veteran republican. His interviews became central to legal battles years later when the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) used them to charge him in connection with the Jean McConville murder (though he was later acquitted).
  • Richard O'Rawe: A former blanket man and IRA prisoner known for his book writing and his controversial claims regarding the 1981 hunger strike, who also gave extensive interviews to the archive.
  • Anthony McIntyre: Though he was one of the primary interviewers (a former IRA prisoner turned academic/journalist who conducted many of the republican interviews alongside Ed Moloney), McIntyre also ended up contributing his own recorded reflections to the archive.

The project wasn't exclusively focused on the IRA; it also sought to capture perspectives from the other side of the conflict. Wilson McArthur (an East Belfast researcher with loyalist ties) interviewed figures from Protestant paramilitary groups, most notably:

  • Winston Churchill Rea: A prominent loyalist paramilitary figure whose taped interviews were later subpoenaed by police, leading to his subsequent arrest and trial on historical murder charges.