Irish Republican Army. This militia was virtually born by the gathering together of various armed movements during the nationalist uprising of Irish republicans in Dublin on 24th April 1916 (an uprising known as Bloody Easter). Their goal was to obtain the independence of Ireland, then a member of the United Kingdom. It nevertheless had to put down its arms on 29th April, 1916. It again took up the offensive against British troops from January 1919 (considered the IRA’s founding moment). Ireland gained independence in 1921, with the exception of the six counties with a Protestant majority which formed Northern Ireland, still a member of the United Kingdom today. This division of the island was ands is unacceptable to the IRA, which entered into a struggle against the new independent state. Beaten, it again laid down its weapons in April 1923.

It gain drew attention in January 1939 when it organised a series of attacks in England, demanding the withdrawal of the British in Northern Ireland. The IRA carried out more operations in the following years but, lacking popular support, it had to once again suspend activities in 1962. At the end of 1969, it broke up into two rival factions: the Official IRA, Marxist, which renounced violence, and the Provisional IRA which began attacks against the British at the beginning of the 1970s. It was the beginning of a long war of which several thousand people were the victims. At the beginning of the 1990s a peace process was little by little put in place and, in 1994, the IRA announced a ceasefire followed by the complete cessation of military operations in 1997. This allowed Sinn Fein (the political wing of the IRA) to sign a peace accord with the Unionists (who were in favour of staying within the United Kingdom) in 1998. A very small minority of the IRA’s members nevertheless refused to accept this treaty and attempted to continue the armed struggle. In July 2005 the IRA ordered its members to put an end to armed struggle and it disarmed in the same year.