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Richard
English’s book Armed Struggle (MacMillan,
2003) “systematically addresses the question,
what has the IRA done, why, and with what consequences?”
The strength of that book is that it seeks to answer
those questions in terms of serious, detailed explanation
rather than stereotypes and simplistic analysis. The
picture he gives is everything but simple. In this
book, the history and politics of the IRA from 1916
to today are studied seriously and in all their complex
details and complications, more so than in other works
like those of Coogan, Bell or O Brien for example.
Richard English looks “closely and respectfully
- but not uncritically” at Irish Republicanism.
The author is certainly not persuaded that the case
for Republicanism is right, but he equally rejects
simple condemnation and criticisms. The seriousness
and fairness with which he studies the IRA are remarkable.
English’s evaluation of the IRA is far more balanced
and nuanced than most of the analysis that has come
from the Left, reducing the Republican argument to
“petit bourgeois politics” and the negligence
of the “mass movement”. Covering a wide
time frame (1916-2002), the author’s research
is based on wide range of many types of different
sources (interviews, archives, articles, films…),
a lot of which are original. English has made full
use of available resources. He has read everything,
the only thing he lacks is the sort of “inside
knowledge” that allowed Ed Moloney to give such
an authoritative analysis of the internal workings
of the IRA and of the Peace Process. But English is
more concerned in trying to understand the IRA than
explaining what happened.
The
book successfully balances factual details and theoretical
analysis. The book marks a significant shift in the
author’s perspective on Republicanism. English’s
previous work attacked the Republican Socialist argument
in particular, as being fundamentally incoherent,
contradictory, irrational, and solispsist. English
employed a whole plethora of terms to attack the malevolent
irrationality of Irish Republicanism. In contrast,
in his new book, he shows that the IRA “were
as rational as any other political players tend to
be” (376), that they do not inhabit a world beyond
rationality and political explanation. Republican
thinking has been “practical rather than mystical,
and determined by daily realities rather than by addiction
to an ahistorical philosophy” (215). He also
acknowledge that Republicanism is not static, but
can evolve and adapt to new realities. For English,
the term “guerilla war” describes the IRA
campaign best, rather than terrorism or insurrection.
Attempts to conceptually define the IRA campaign have
been rare, and this book is to be welcomed for venturing
into such polemical territory. Richard English’s
book is probably the best general book for a general
audience covering the history of the IRA 1923-2002.
But for the post 1969 period, Moloney's book is almost
certainly likely to become the definitive work on
the subject.
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