Léirmheas: The Origins & Rise of Modern Irish Republicanism

Since Martyn Frampton’s Legion of the Rearguard (see Saoirse 289), an armada of publications on modern-day militant Irish Republicanism has been published. Dieter Reinisch reviews John F. Morrison's book on republicanism. Dieter Reinisch is a historian and lecturer in Celtic Studies and Irish History at the University of Vienna, Austria. The review was published in Saoirse 325: May 2014.

In early 2014, Bloomsbury added another title in the ever-growing list of researches on “Dissident Irish Republicanism” with the publication of John F. Morrison’s The Origins and Rise of Dissident Irish Republicans: The role and impact of organizational splits. The book appeared in the series ‘New Directions in Terrorism Studies’. The series editors Max Taylor, PM Currie and John Horgan are well-known names in the field. In 2011, Currie and Taylor edited the volume Dissident Irish Republicanism (Continuum International Publishing Group); John Horgan published Divided We Stand: The Strategy and Psychology of Ireland’s Dissident Terrorists (Oxford University Press) in 2013.

John F. Morrison is himself is not a completely new name in the field. In 2011, he published Here to Stay? The Rising Threat of Violent Dissident Republicanism in Northern Ireland (Terrorism and Political Violence, Volume 23/4) with John Horgan, as well as recently he contributed a chapter on A time to think, a time to talk: Irish Republican prisoners in the Northern Irish peace process to Andrew Silke’s Volume Prisons, Terrorism and Extremism (Routledge). Morrison currently works as Senior Lecturer in Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of East London. The book at hand is based on his PhD-Thesis The Affirmation of Behan?.

Following an Introduction (1-12) and an outline of the methodological approach (13-38), the book deals with four distinct splits in various republican organisations: First the republican split in 1969/70 (39-84), second the split between the Official Republican Movement and the IRSP/INLA (85-104), third the republican split in 1986 (105-148) and finally the departure of the 32CSC and the R-IRA from the Provisionals in the mid-1990s (149-174). This is followed by a concluding chapter (175-202).

Morrison’s understanding of Irish Republicanism follows Hogan’s dictum, outlined in his Divided We Stand, when writing:

The history of the Irish Republican Movement is beset by splits, from the aftermaths of the Treaty of 1921 right up until the modern day. For many observers this prevalence of division may be regarded as the defining feature of Irish Republicanism.(13)

Unquestionable, there are strong egos involved in most republican organisations; this lead to an unhealthy fragmentation of the Republican Movement since the 1990s. Whereas reducing the history of Irish Republicanism to splits and retrospectively telling the history of Irish Republicanism as a history of splits and splinters, only proves the underlying agenda of Horgan and Morrison.

Furthermore, Morrison’s methodology is very static. He introduces the readers to three ‘process models of split in terrorist organizations’: Even split, Uneven split, and Split avoidance. (22f) All splits include five stage and all stages are reduced to internal matters. In my opinion, this is the main weakness of the analyses. External factors hardly play any role in Morrison’s analyses. Nevertheless, this chapter on the methodological approach proves to be the most interesting part of the book – for researcher and students.

Morrison suggests that the origins of each split develop in the later stages of the previous split. According to Morrison, the aftermath of the 1969/70 laid the foundation for both the Official IRA and the 1986-split; accordingly the later laid the foundation for the split in 1996/97. While this assumption is interesting, Morrison’s very static and stagiest approach avoids him getting rid of his idealistic chains. A better dialectic understanding would have been helpful for the results of the analyses.

Another lack of the analyses is that Morrison could not analyse the 1996/97 split in the Provisional Movement as a ‘stage-based micro-process’ – as the three previous splits – due to the lack of material available. (152) Henceforth, the departure of the 323CSC respectively the R-IRA from the Provisional Movement cannot be compared with the three previously examined splits.

John Horgan ends the Foreword to Morrison’s book with saying: ‘He [Morrison] has presented us with nothing less than the definitive account of the origins and evolution of dissident Irish Republicanism.’ (ix) Nothing can be further from the truth! While Morrison provides in the first two chapters of the book an interesting but non-dialectic methodological approach to stage-based splits in militant organisations, the rest of the book provides very little new insight for readers familiar with the field under examination. For students, as an introduction to the field of modern-day Irish Republicanism, it is useless because it paints a picture of a movement, only riddled by internal splits and strong egos since its formation a centenary ago.

To conclude, using the fragmentation of the Republican Movement over the past two decades as an excuse to tell the history of Irish Republicanism as a history of strong egos fighting for power in their small organisations merely proves the lack of understanding of Irish Republicanism by the researchers. Horgan and Morrison might not be friends of the Republican Movement. Indeed, as a researcher you don't need to be friendly with your research topic – you just have to stick to the facts and interpret them correctly. Therefore, apart from all splits, the fact remains that Irish Republicanism is/was the most powerful ideology to shape the path of modern Ireland.

John F. Morrison, 2013. The Origins and Rise of Dissident Irish Republicanism. The Role and Impact of Organizational Splits. Bloomsbury Academic: New York/London/New Delhi/Sydney. Price $107.99. ISBN: 978-1-62356-844-3