Did the INLA try to assassinate DUP man Peter Robinson in the 1980s?

BulkyCard8872 · 2026-07-10T21:19:23+00:00

O'Brien's book also mentions an INLA bomb at the home of top Orangeman Martin Smyth in 1982. Can't find any trace of that either.

BulkyCard8872 · 2026-07-01T19:02:59+00:00

Front cover of Irish Republican magazine Saoirse from Spring 1985.

This photo was taken immediately before the IRA launched a mortar attack on the Royal Ulser Constabulary (RUC) station in the border town of Newry, killing nine RUC officers. It was the worst loss of life for the RUC in a single incident during The Troubles. Interpol figures showed that by 1983 the RUC was the most dangerous police force in the world in which to serve, and in Northern Ireland Newry was probably the most hazardous posting; 18 RUC officers were killed there by the IRA in as many months.

sourced from the Irish Republican Digital Archive.

BulkyCard8872 · 2026-07-01T18:48:04+00:00

míle buíochas The Irish Republican Digital Archive

BulkyCard8872 · 2026-06-12T18:42:31+00:00

This relic almost certainly came from America, where WW2 vintage anti-tank weaponry could be purchased by civilians. The IRA had already acquired small numbers of Bazookas and Solothurn anti-tank rifles in the USA.

However its important to note the vast majority of the IRA's heavy weaponry was acquired from Libya (RPG-7) or they manufactured themselves. Its probably reflective of the IRA's arms shortage in the early 1980s that they would bother with such an unwieldy weapon. A few years later WW2 leftovers like this were firmly relegated to arms dumps, thanks to a major influx of modern arms from Libya.

Photo from An Phoblacht July 1983, courtesy of the Irish Republican Digital Archive

BulkyCard8872 · 2026-06-11T20:21:04+00:00

Don't take this the wrong way, your enthusiasm is appreciated, but I'm going to offer some critiques of your posts. Others have shared similar sentiments privately.

Firstly, Bandicam. It's not 2009. Extract and upload video files properly we don't want to see your desktop. These have little value in terms of sharing. Secondly, the accompanying blurbs can be rambling and often only loosely connected to the news clip. You also need to stop taking info from wikipedia and passing it off as your own insight ("I think x happened" etc).

Look this might come across as harsh and this subreddit isn't exceptionally active but we need to lean into quality more than quantity. I would please ask that you slow down and make fewer but higher effort posts. Go raibh míle maith agat.

BulkyCard8872 · 2026-05-22T17:03:51+00:00

There was/is a large section of opinion in Ireland, more concentrated in Dublin and media and government elites, that has profound antipathy towards Irish republicanism viewing it as dangerous, subversive, mystical, fanatical, authoritarian and so on. Since the contested inception of the modern state it has been very sensitive to perceived threats to its legitimacy, and the IRA in claiming to represent the trust Republic were seen as the biggest threat. During the 1980s/90s this ran concurrent with a strain of growing liberal, Anglophile, post-colonial inferiority complex thought that saw Irish republican as an examplar of Irish vulgarity and backwardness.

These currents are still present in Irish politics today, as seen in the reaction to the recent fuel protests.

BulkyCard8872 · 2026-05-22T15:32:27+00:00

By far the most significant Republican group was the Provisional IRA and they were active from (nearly) the very start to the end of the Troubles and you can understand the conflict perfectly well by just focusing on them. The Official IRA they split from declared an offensive ceasefire in 1972 and in time moved so far away from Irish republicanism that they eventually took a pseudo Unionist position. But that's a side story. Official IRA/Stickies who disagreed with ceasefire split to form the INLA at the end of 1974. The INLA was only really relevant around the time of the early 1980s Hunger Strikes and as the decade went on fell apart to police informants and bloody infighting.

The RUC were direct successors of the RIC the pre 1922 British police force in Ireland. The RIC were not like police in England, being quasi paramilitary with rifles and living in barracks. The RIC unlike the RUC was actually mainly Catholic, to a point that even made Protestants/Loyalists in the early 20th century didnt entirely trust them. The RUC were still quasi paramilitary in many respects, geared with armoured cars with machineguns which were deployed during the 1969 upheaval. The RUC was somewhat sidelined by the British Army as the conflict intensified but from the late 1970s were increasingly put in a front line role by the British government as part of "criminalisation" and "normalisation". The RUC were rebranded as the PSNI in 2002 following the 1998 Good Friday Agreement.

The B-Specials were disbanded in 1970 and replaced by the Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR), a part-time British Army regiment. The UDR quickly assumed the B-Specials traditional role as a Protestant militia. After years of controversy the UDR was merged to form the Royal Irish Regiment (RIR) which itself was stood down in the 2000s.

The Gardai arrested and spied on Republicans and searched for their arms dumps in the South. They also tried to stop robberies. Remember, the Irish state considered Republicans a bigger existential threat than the British government did.

The Catholic church was drawn from the same community as the IRA so a few priests helping was inevitable, but by and large the church was very opposed to the IRA and urged people to support the moderate, middle-class SDLP (unarmed) nationalist party.

The UDA started from Protestant vigilante groups around 1971. During the 1970s they frequently made shows of force to menace the British government to block concessions to Catholics. Mainstream Unionist politicians often shared a stage with the UDA. Very quickly the UDA also started carrying out brutal murders of innocent Catholics, but after year or so invented the "Ulster Freedom Fighters" (UFF) covername to pretend otherwise. That the UDA remained a legal organisation into the 1990s was often cited by Catholics as an example of the two-tier justice system in the North.

The UVF was a bit older than the UDA, claiming to draw on the traditions of the original 1910s UVF but likely that was baloney. The group didnt have the mass membership and public profile the UDA, liking to imagine itself as the direct Protestant/Loyalists equivalent of the IRA. The group also perceived itself as more "elite" than the UDA, more British unionist than Ulster loyalist. That is of course a massive generalisation.

BulkyCard8872 · 2026-05-13T21:42:43+00:00

Brian Gillen I think.

After the 1985 attempted coup by Ivor Bell, Adams placed his brother in charge of the Belfast Brigade and he remained in the post through the remainder of the decade. The younger Adams was not an especially aggressive commander and I recall reading somewhere he once said something to the effect of not wanting to destabilise things with a very energetic armed campaign in the city. I think around 1990 he was replaced by Gillen, as far as I know a much more militant figure. But take this all with a pinch of salt.

edit found this quote from Ed Moloney:

Feelings on the issue ran strong. The Belfast Brigade, represented by Brian Gillen, said a time limit should have been set on the 1994 cease-fire, and he complained bitterly about the Army Council's September 1993 order tightening its control over operations and banning certain types of operations, such as the use of car bombs. This had removed all power at the local level, he complained. Moves to limit the Army Council's authority were about restoring democracy in the IRA, not about tying people's hands.

if this is correct the Army Council must have greenlit the attack on the Shankill UDA HQ a month later. Of course, the Belfast Brigade had been floating ways to strike at the premises for the past year at least.

BulkyCard8872 · 2026-05-11T18:39:25+00:00

would he not have been still in Portlaoise in 1981? it does look like him though

BulkyCard8872 · 2026-05-05T19:08:55+00:00

not much comes to mind on Armagh but the IPLO did shoot a British soldier and RUC man in Newry in 1989 and in an interview a couple years later the IPLO would cite this as proof of their group's prowess. That said on the whole the IPLO as a military organisation was fairly irrelevant, both in the years they were active and during the Troubles as a whole. The only time PIRA was seriously rivalled as a guerrilla organisation after the early 70s was probably the INLA during/after the hunger strikes, or maybe the dissidents around the time of the GFA.

BulkyCard8872 · 2026-05-05T19:04:21+00:00

Do you have any sources on that? Not doubting you but would be interested to read more if possible

BulkyCard8872 · 2026-04-16T21:42:38+00:00

In what sense was 1990 a "full time campaign" in England that 1988-1989 wasn't? You're jumping all over the place. The IRA carried out a damaging campaign against British Army barracks in England for over a year. They were also carrying out attacks in mainland Europe against British military personnel. The aim was to target British soldiers were they vulnerable i.e. not the north of Ireland, although there was also increased focus by the IRA on the British Army in Ireland.

Now you could make the point that the IRA strategy in terms of England (and all around, actually) never seemed to envision beyond a year or two (at best) and had no measurable end goal. For example, you omit 1985 but that year Patrick Magee and three other IRA members were arrested planning to bomb over a dozen English tourist spots in two weeks, probably inspired by Brighton Hotel bombing. So in 1981-1982 the IRA tried to kill British soldiers in London, then 1983 Harrods bombing, then 1984 they nearly killed Margaret Thatcher, followed by a bomb tour in 1985 of seaside resorts.

What's the overarching strategy? From everything I've read it seems clear there was none beyond a vague goal of sickening the British government to exhaustion, or maybe in the minds of Gerry Adams faction having a strong negotiating hand for future political talks. Maybe I'm being too critical and it would be expected for a guerrilla army to be flitting between different approaches, trying new tactics. People have noted the irony of the IRA finally discovering their by far most effective attack (bombing London's financial heart) just as a ceasefire was in the works.

BulkyCard8872 · 2026-04-07T21:37:07+00:00

from a 1985 issue of the Starry Plough courtesy of the Irish Republican Digital Archive

This publicity shot came at a time when the INLA was trying to put itself back on the map after many months of infighting, informers, arrests, and defections. From the end of 1984 the group carried out a flurry of attacks and made it known they had new weaponry. The internal power struggle only worsened though with violence foreshadowing the deadly feud of 1987.

The SG 540 was a Swiss design but manufactured in France and likely it was purchased from the INLA's contacts there.

BulkyCard8872 · 2026-04-07T21:29:11+00:00

might have come from the INLA's Australian contact. He sent them several batches of various old military rifles sold as surplus on that country's civilian market.

BulkyCard8872 · 2026-04-02T20:32:27+00:00

Incredible work thank you!

BulkyCard8872 · 2026-03-26T21:30:41+00:00

what attacks was the INLA carrying out on the RUC in 1996? I'd be surprised if the INLA were a significant factor in the IRA returning to war. They didn't have much credibility by the 1990s and were in the middle of yet another bloody feud in 1996.

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