THE NEW PROVO STRATEGY

Oxford Street will be in chaos at least once each day between now and Christmas", said a leading member of the Provisional IRA in reference to the resumed English bombing campaign. This was stated in the course of an interview with Magill at the beginning of November.

"The volunteers involved in the campaign are the most resourceful and experienced in the organisation. We have learned a lot from previous bombing expeditions in England and we are confident that the chances of anything serious going wrong at this Th111e are very slight", said the IRA leaader.

"We have at all times stated that we intend to hit the British establishment :my where we can. We have done this in rile Hague with the assassination of the J3'rifuh ambassador there. We have hit their troops in Belgium and West Germany and we have been hitting British military targets in London recently. want to continue to remind the British people that their army continues to occupy part of Ireland and that the war will go on so long as they remain.

The Provisionals reject the arguument that there is a counterproductive element involved in the London bom bbings in that it hardens reactionary Briitish opinion on Ireland. "This is only a superficial analysis. The relentless purrsuit of the campaign undermines the will to remain in Ireland. A bombing campaign in the North has relatively little political effect. A single bomb in London has comparatively enormous effect. But most of all we wish to reemind the British military establishhment that it is safe nowhere from the IRA".

Suggestions that the resumed cammpaign in England was timed to coinncide with the ending of the hunger strike are dismissed by the Provisional leadership, who point out that the major factor involved in such an operaation is logistical. There are enormous problems in conducting a bombing campaign in England, given the sophisstical level of surveillance by the British police and intelligence forces. Commmunication between the IRA leaderrship and the English based unit is extremely hazardous. Volunteers find it very difficult to remain anonymous in getting supplies and equipment and then the members of the active service units involved find it very difficult to remain discreet, preserve a sense of perspective, remain patient and miniimise risks.

For several years the Provisionals have been attempting to organise anoother English campaign. Brendan Keenan, one time chief of staff of the IRA, was the person most involved in this operation but he was arrested and sentenced when his fingerprints were found on explosives in Southampton docks. Then two other very senior Provisionals, Dickie Glenholmes and Bobby Campbell, were captured and charged with conspiracy to rescue Keenan from prison.

Now, after at least three years of meticulous preparation the IRA is again in a position to conduct a cammpaign on the British mainland and the leadership is aggressively confident that this time the chances of the cammpaign being disrupted are remote. This could mean that there are a number of "sleeper" units in Britain at present, so that if one is captured another can go into operation. Or it could mean that the degree of planning and organisaation that has gone into this is such that the chances of the operational unit being caught are very slight.

The recommencement of the Engglish bombing campaign is only one of many significant developments within the Provisionals of late and perhaps the least important.

The republican movement has beecome much tougher ideologically over the last three years than it had ever been before. This has coincided with a more sophisticated military campaign and, of course, the enorrmous success of the hunger-strike. Allthough dismissed in the British media as a failure, the hunger strike transforrmed the political environment in which the IRA operates to such an extent as virtually to ensure that the IRA will be able to continue its campaign almost indefinitely.

There was a growing alienation among the catholic community, anyyway, from the institutions of state and the conventional political parties (i.e. the SDLP) over the last several years. This was largely because of the con tinued repression and discriminaation, accompanied by the British faillure to make any political progress towards a solution. The hunger strike both intensified and crystalised this alienation.

There is now a greater acceptance of the need for a military campaign than at any time since the present troubles began over a decade ago. This was evident at the enthusiashc recepptions accorded to the firing parties at the hunger striker funerals throughout the North - the tens of thousands of people at these funerals all applauded when the firing parties appeared.

There has been an enormous influx of new recruits in to the IRA, although this has been a dubious advantage. The IRA doesn't need thousands of volunnteers to conduct the campaign. More important to it, given a minimum level of recruits, is the political environment in which they operate and this has been transformed to its advantage over the last four years.

But the IRA is also a more deterrmined and cohesive organisation for purely internal reasons. There was deep confusion and demoralisation within the movement in 1975, followwing the ceasefire. Then in 1976 there was an effective take-over of the moveement by a young radical element based in Belfast. From that time the Repubblican movement has been virtually transformed. This transformation reeflects the fact that the majority of acctivists do not come from traditional republican backgrounds but from deeprived social environments. This means that many of the old republican shibboleths have little meaning for them and they are instinctively more radical in an ideological sense. 

The transformation has also a lot to do with the fact that the campaign has now gone on for eleven years. A great many of the volunteers have been in and out of jail. This has meant there is a greater camaraderie and a greater coohesiveness, all of which has led to the growth of a political culture which has now absorbed the organisation as a whole.

The old characterisation of the Proovisionals, as right wing national miliitarists, could hardly be more inapproopriate. For reasons of diplomacy they would abjure the characterisation "marxist" but this is what in fact they have become. They analyse the Northhern situation in terms of economic and national exploitation; their rhetoric is laced with reference to class conflicts and a strong identification has grown up between them and other liberation movements throughout the world, perrhaps most notably the Palestinians, although they get almost no military assistance from that quarter.

It is in the context of this political maturity that the changes voted for at the recent Sinn Fein Ard Fheis must be viewed. The Northern radicals have been unhappy with the pallid social democratic nature of the Eire Nua policy, first ennunciated in 1972 by the old republican leadership of Ruairi o Bradaigh and Daithi O'Conaill. This got chopped down very severely in 1977 and now the key element within it - the Federalist concept - has been overturned.

The basic reason for this has been the realisation that the existence of the state of Northern Ireland is the generating force for sectarianism, reepression and discrimination there. So long as the loyalists are kept in a posiition of dominance then there will conntinue to be sectarianism, etc. The Federalist concept sought to perpeetuate the existence of a Northern state, albeit in a united Ireland conncept. This was not acceptable to the Northern radicals and they managed to have it resoundingly defeated, allthough they failed to get the two thirds majority to have it deleted from the party's. constitution.

The change of policy on elections is of even greater significance. Just a year ago the Sinn Fein Ard Fheis voted reesoundingly against participation in the Northern Ireland local government elections. The If-Block movement changed all that. In the first place the Provos learned for the first time the need to engage in mass movements with other organisations and of the necessity for a political campaign to accompany the military struggle. Secondly, they learned the value of elections in terms of winning political SUPP0ft for a particular policy line. But most of all, they realised that it might be possible for them to defeat their major political adversary, the SDLP, which has been the single most serious threat to the IRA's. campaign (the SDLP, unlike the British Governnment or any of the loyalist parties, can whittle away at the core support for the IRA in the nationalist community).

They also began to realise that winnning the war might well result in them losing the peace, because of the abbsence of a political party which could carry them on from the end of the war period. It has therefore been decided by the leadership to transform Sinn Fein, from essentially a support group for the IRA, to a vibrant political party in its own right, fighting elecctions at all levels and, more significanttly, generally engaging in "the politicissation of the masses" - to use a phrase characteristic of the new IRA leaderrship.

It was no slip of the tongue for Danny Morrison, editor of An Phobblacht, to remark during the course of the debate on the elections: "Is there anyone here who objects to taking power in Ireland with a ballot paper in one hand and an arm elite in the other"? For the first time the Provisional leadership clearly perceive that the military struggle cannot succeed withhout an accompanying political cammpaign - that perception was one of the legacies of the martyrs of the hunger strike.