"The leadership of Óglaigh na hÉireann has formally ordered an end to the armed campaign.”
So marked the end of a 36 year long campaign of armed struggle against the British occupation of Ireland, and the effective disbandment of the Irish Republican Army, one of the most effective and sophisticated working-class guerrilla armies the world has ever seen.
Monday 28th July 2025 marks 20 years since the order was given to all IRA units to dump arms. It was the final act in what can only be seen as a long-planned winding down of the revolutionary Republican Movement.
In hindsight, from the moment the ‘Armalite & Ballot Box’ strategy was first formulated in 1981, the IRA’s demise was inevitable, so long as it allowed itself to be controlled and steered by those loyal to the political leadership of Sinn Féin.
The strategy helped Sinn Féin to begin its process of growth that led it to where it is today. However, over time, this dual strategy proved to be irreconcilable, and the political strategy took precedence over the armed struggle. Long before the 2005 surrender, the IRA had already succumbed to political pressure from Sinn Féin and despite what was being said in public, armed struggle was no longer seen as a legitimate means by which to achieve the aim of a Socialist Republic, an aim which itself was in the process of being abandoned.
Military action was by then seen as unacceptably embarrassing to their new political masters in London, who in the best colonial traditions, had agreed to accept them into the establishment, if only they helped to administer their occupation. In doing so the aspirations of future generations of Irish people were instead to be confined to begging their foreign occupiers for the right to determine their own destiny.
Notably absent from the statement was any reference to a Socialist Republic or indeed a reference to the economic liberation of the Irish working class, a reflection of the increasing moderation in the language of those at the forefront of the Republican Movement over many years, a process that has continued in the years since. The total neglect of an adequate analysis of the social question has caused great damage to the Republican Movement in the eyes of many working-class people.
“All Volunteers have been instructed to assist the development of purely political and democratic programmes through exclusively peaceful means."
The terms of surrender had long been a sticking point in negotiations between Sinn Féin and the British government. Ultimately, the army’s capitulation to British and Unionist demands, and the continued British role in controlling Irish affairs, was the price paid to secure political power.
Volunteers were sold a military surrender, on the basis that, with Sinn Féin’s place in the halls of power secure, they could now advance the goal of Irish unity through ‘exclusively peaceful means’.
Two decades on, and 27 years since the signing of the Good Friday Agreement, it is evident that this strategy has failed to advance the struggle for a Socialist Republic any further than it was before the statement of surrender in July of 2005.
More than 330,000 people in the Six County State live in poverty. As we have outlined in previous documents, the most deprived areas in the Six Counties have a suicide rate almost twice that of the least deprived areas, and more people have died from suicide since the signing of the Good Friday Agreement than those who died as a direct result of the conflict in the preceding three decades.
Mental illness is now recognised as one of the biggest causes of individual distress and misery in our societies and cities, comparable to poverty and unemployment, and the Six Counties is, per capita, the most dangerous place in Europe for women.
Our communities are blighted by rampant drug use, criminality is rife, with violent crime on the rise, and despite the eagerness with which certain politicians have been cheerleading for the PSNI, people here now feel less safe than they have in many decades.
This strategy has given us continued poverty, worsening homelessness, drug abuse, mental health crises and increased domestic violence, all inflicted by the violence of the capitalist system. People do not feel safe even in their own communities and despite all this, former Republicans still resolutely stand behind the PSNI. It has been a disaster for the working class, and a windfall for those who walk the halls of power.
The 1998 ‘peace’ agreement, the subsequent surrender of the Republican Movement to an occupying power, and the transfer of the Republican arsenal to British forces did precisely one thing; it ended the violence directed at the British state and its political, economic and security apparatus – it did not end the violence of the economic system imposed by that apparatus, which is still very much with us decades on, and shows no sign of leaving.
British General John de Chastalain oversaw the destruction of the IRA's arsenal which were delivered to him by the then leadership of the Republican Movement.
Above all, the British government still occupy Six Counties in Ireland and show next to no interest in relinquishing control of them anytime soon. More than 20,000 British security personnel continue to enforce this occupation. Despite immense efforts to keep it going, Stormont has been suspended for almost ten years since the Good Friday Agreement was signed.
Nothing we were promised at the time or in the years since has been delivered. Despite Sinn Féin, including many of those in leadership positions at the time, being in government for much of the last twenty years.
The present state of the Republican Movement remains perilous. By no means do all Republicans agree with the decision to lay down arms at the time it was made, in fact many were very vocal in predicting the shape of things to come. The failure to prevent the migration of support from Revolutionary politics to soft nationalism now means that we have an uphill battle to fight. Where previous leaders abandoned their assignment, the task of activists today is to build a new generation of Republicanism, equipped to once again take on the job of removing the British presence in Ireland and the establishment of a new Socialist and Republican economic order across all of Ireland’s Thirty Two Counties. That is – to rebuild republicanism from the rubble that was left for us.
The use of armed struggle in the pursuit of the Irish Socialist Republic is a strategic decision that those in the future must take when the time comes. The right of the Irish people to use force of arms to remove an occupying power is predicated on that power having no right to be here – it is an entirely legitimate means with which to resist occupation, in the past, now and into the future. To condemn any generation for fulfilling that right, is to condemn all generations who walked that path before them. We will never condemn those who choose to utilise it in the pursuit of a Socialist Republic.
Because of the decisions made not just in the act of surrender in 2005, but in the preceding decades, including the decision to accede to the Good Friday Agreement and the further surrender of the Republican arsenal to British forces, the revolutionary potential of the Irish people has been severely hampered. That arsenal was acquired over many years and at great risk to the volunteers and supporters who acquired and transported them for use in the defence of the Irish people.
Some might say that the actions of those in leadership positions in 2005 to end the armed campaign could have been justified on a temporary and strategic basis, but the complete destruction of all arms in their possession, was a reckless, unnecessary and irresponsible act. It has condemned future generations to undergo the long journey of rebuilding the Republican movement from the ash heap that was left. Rather than end the conflict, it has simply prolonged its conclusion, until the impetus and strength of the working class reaches the stage in which it sees fit to finally establish a Thirty Two County Socialist Republic.
The IRA leadership surrendered – not the IRA.
