Tommy (fiercely): I'm bloody well tired o' waitin' — we're all tired o' waitin'.
Why isn't every man in Ireland out with the I.R.A.?
— The Shadow of a Gunman,
by Sean O'Casey
In 34 years of waiting for a peaceful end to the partition of their country, the Irish from time to time turn to thoughts of violence. When they do, they think of the Irish Republican Army, an outgrowth of the Sinn Fein movement, which has a romantic place in the Irish imagination. Last week, after the I.R.A.'s audacious raid on a British army barracks just 40 miles west of London, the thoughts grew bolder. "This will bring recruits by the dozen," predicted one Irish observer.
They would form a third generation of fighters whose appeal to the romantics has often kept the serious from taking them seriously. During the "Troubles"—the insurrections against British rule in 1918-21—I.R.A. gunmen so skillfully harassed the Royal Irish Constabulary and the British "Black and Tans" that Britain finally settled with the Irish Republican leaders for an independent government of the 26 southern counties (Irish Free State), retaining its hold only on the six counties of the north.* The I.R.A. never accepted this partition. Its continued agitation so embarrassed government leaders that President Cosgrave outlawed it in 1931, and President De Valera (himself a onetime I.R.A. leader) in 1936 declared it an illegal organization. The I.R.A. went underground again.
Thirsting for Guns. In 1939, taking advantage of Britain's preoccupation with the coming World War II, the I.R.A. sought to revive the issue of partition by launching hundreds of terrorist bombings in Manchester and London. Britain protested vigorously to Eire, and a year later, following a pitched battle in the streets of Dublin, the Irish Republican government clamped down on the I.R.A., imprisoned several hundred of its leaders and executed two for murder.
Little was heard of the I.R.A. until last year, when a new generation of young Irishmen joined its secret ranks, thirsting for adventure and impatient of their political leaders' repeated assurances that partition can be abolished "by statesmanship, not force." Their first exploit was to raid the barracks of the Royal Irish Fusiliers in Armagh, Northern Ireland, where they seized 300 guns. Shortly afterwards I.R.A. men broke into the projection rooms of two cinemas in Southern Ireland and forced the operators to flash slides on the screens proclaiming: "Join the I.R.A. We have the guns now." Hundreds joined, but the I.R.A. was still short of arms. Last October the I.R.A. raided a British army depot at Omagh, Northern Ireland, but twelve of their number were captured by the British. The raid on the British army barracks at Aborfield, England (TIME, Aug. 22) was the I.R.A.'s third daring attempt to get guns for its gunmen.
Informer's Tip. All England was alerted in the search for the recovery of the stolen arms. A few hours after the raid, three I.R.A. men were picked up but the truck they were driving contained only a portion of the 80,000 rounds of stolen ammunition. Scotland Yard got its second, break when an informer phoned from a tenement district in north London called the "Irish Channel'' because of the number of Irish immigrants resident there.