title: Murder of Dee Dee Blanchard

text: Jones also denied a motion by Godejohn's lawyer, Dewayne Perry, for a new trial. Perry argued that the jury should not have been allowed to hear that Godejohn had considered raping Dee Dee on the night of the murder, and he also argued that the state's psychologist should not have been allowed to testify while Godejohn's psychologist should have, to establish that he had diminished capacity. The judge, in denying the motion, conceded that an appeals court could find the latter point significant and consider it a reversible error.


title: Murder of Dee Dee Blanchard

text: The Blanchards' neighbors were shocked to learn that Gypsy's illnesses were fabricated. Aleah Woodmansee, whose information about Gypsy's relationship with Godejohn led police to the couple the day after Dee Dee's body was discovered, said she cried out of disbelief upon hearing that Gypsy had never been sick or disabled. Her mother recalled how everyone had accepted Dee Dee's claims without asking for proof, and wondered if the mother and daughter had been secretly laughing at their neighbors' naïveté. Kim Blanchard (no relation), who had called the deputy sheriffs to the house the night before, said, "What have I been believing? How could I have been so stupid?" Over 60 people attended a candlelight vigil for Dee Dee in downtown Springfield the night after the body was discovered.


title: Murder of Dee Dee Blanchard

text: In a news conference, Sheriff Arnott said of the case "[Springfield is] a giving community, we surround people with love and finances that we believe that needs it. However, a lot of times we are deceived, and I think this is now so true, in this case at hand." Only one of the charities that had helped the Blanchards spoke after the revelations. A spokesman for Habitat for Humanity, whose volunteers had built the Blanchards' house along with others on their street, said, "We are just really, deeply saddened by the whole situation."


title: Murder of Dee Dee Blanchard

text: Dee Dee's family in Louisiana, who had confronted her about her treatment of Gypsy years before, did not regret her death. Her father, stepmother, and the nephew who first shared details of Gypsy's actual health when she first started using a wheelchair all later said that Dee Dee deserved her fate and Gypsy had been punished as much as she needed to be. None of them would pay for her funeral, and her father and stepmother ultimately flushed her ashes down the toilet.


title: Murder of Dee Dee Blanchard

text: Rod Blanchard, Gypsy's father, is more forgiving. "I think Dee Dee's problem was she started a web of lies, and there was no escaping after", he told "BuzzFeed". "[I]t was like a tornado got started." He was happy the first time that he saw a video of Gypsy walking under her own power.


title: Murder of Dee Dee Blanchard

text: Gypsy, now serving her sentence in Missouri's Chillicothe Correctional Center, did not talk to the media until after she had made her plea. When she did, she told "BuzzFeed" reporter Michelle Dean that she had been able to research Munchausen syndrome by proxy on prison computers, and her mother had every symptom. "I think she would have been the perfect mom for someone that actually was sick", she said. She believed Dee Dee's claim that she had cancer, even though she knew she could walk and eat solid food, leading her to assent to the regular head shavings. However, she always hoped that doctors would see through the ruse, and she was frustrated that none besides Flasterstein did.


title: Murder of Dee Dee Blanchard

text: When Dean asked her what made her want to escape her situation, Gypsy recalled the 2011 incident at the science fiction convention, which made her wonder why she was not allowed to have friends like others of her age. While she said that Godejohn took their idle discussions of murder into reality, she accepts that she committed a crime and has to live with the consequences. Nonetheless, she has said that she hopes to help other abused victims.


title: Murder of Dee Dee Blanchard

text: Victims of Munchausen by proxy abuse often avoid doctors and hospitals in their later lives because of lingering trust issues, according to expert Marc Feldman. According to her family, Dean, and Carr, Gypsy also exhibits at times the same sociopathic manipulative behaviors as her mother, who was for much of her life her only role model. "She is already psychologically really compromised, and she's going to need as much family underpinning and support as she can get", Feldman told "Vulture" after viewing Carr's documentary, in which he appears. He also points out that post-traumatic stress disorder is likely to be an issue in her continuing development. "I hope they find someone wherever she chooses to settle who is willing to provide supportive psychotherapy."


title: Murder of Dee Dee Blanchard

text: Flasterstein, the pediatric neurologist who believed Gypsy was fully capable of walking on her own and wrote in his notes that he suspected Munchausen by proxy, says it was only the second such possible case he had ever come across. He learned of Dee Dee's murder at the hands of Gypsy and her boyfriend later in 2015 when a former nurse emailed him the news story. "Poor Gypsy", he said. "She suffered all those years, and for no reason." He told Dean he wished he could have done more.


title: Murder of Dee Dee Blanchard

text: Feldman, in talking about Carr's documentary with "Vulture", faults Carr for making Flasterstein appear to be the hero of the story. "[H]e had a gross misunderstanding of his obligations as a physician, as well as the legal requirements to report suspected abuse or neglect", Feldman said. The film accepts Flasterstein's claim that he was only required to make a report to Child Protective Services in the latter instance, but according to Feldman once he had included Munchausen by proxy in his list of possible diagnoses, he was obligated to make a report. "This conundrum arises in case after case, where innumerable doctors have evaluated the patient, perhaps had questions they kept to themselves, and just proceeded to treat or make referrals and ditch the case that way."


title: Murder of Dee Dee Blanchard

text: While a formal diagnosis of Munchausen by proxy for Dee Dee is technically impossible since she is dead, Feldman told the "Springfield News-Leader" after Gypsy's guilty plea that he could confidently say Dee Dee had it based on what he knew about the case. "Gypsy was infantilized and kept away from her peers", he said. "She was little more than a tool for Dee Dee to navigate through the world the way she wanted to." He said it was "unprecedented" in the 24 years he had been researching the disorder for an abused child to have killed the abusive parent as Gypsy did.


title: Murder of Dee Dee Blanchard

text: HBO produced the documentary film "Mommy Dead and Dearest" directed by Erin Lee Carr about the murder and its relationship to Munchausen syndrome by proxy. The film includes interrogation footage and exclusive interviews with Nick Godejohn and incarcerated Gypsy Rose; it premiered on May 15, 2017.


title: Murder of Dee Dee Blanchard

text: The CBS network talk show "Dr. Phil", episode "Mother Knows Best: A Story of Munchausen by Proxy and Murder" featuring interviews with Gypsy Rose, her father and step-mother, premiered on November 21, 2017.


title: Murder of Dee Dee Blanchard

text: The American Broadcasting Company (ABC) news and information series "Good Morning America", segment "Mother of All Murders" aired an exclusive in-prison interview with Gypsy Rose, aired on January 5, 2018.


title: Murder of Dee Dee Blanchard

text: The ABC network news magazine series "20/20", episode "The Story of Gypsy Blanchard", consisted of Gypsy Rose's first network interview from prison and it also consisted of an interview that was conducted with Nicholas Godejohn.


title: Murder of Dee Dee Blanchard

text: The Sony Entertainment Television channel series "CID" aired an episode titled "Death on Social Media" on 13 August 2017, based on the case but the setting for the episode was changed to India; the characters Aria and Aanchal were based on Gypsy and Dee Dee Blanchard respectively.


title: Murder of Dee Dee Blanchard

text: The Investigation Discovery channel series "James Patterson's Murder is Forever" episode "Mother of All Murders", season 1, episode 2, premiered on January 29, 2018.


title: Murder of Dee Dee Blanchard

text: Investigation Discovery also aired a two-hour special documentary titled "Gypsy's Revenge". Gypsy Rose is interviewed while she is still incarcerated and during the interview, she describes her relationship with her mother. Gypsy's father, relatives, and friends are all interviewed along with public officials and Nicholas Godejohn.


title: Murder of Dee Dee Blanchard

text: "Love You to Death" aired on Lifetime in January 2019, dramatizing the case as "inspired by true events". Marcia Gay Harden starred as the fictionalized version of Dee Dee, Emily Skeggs starred as Gypsy Rose's counterpart, Brennan Keel Cook starred as Nick's counterpart, and Tate Donovan starred as Rod's counterpart. "[W]hen I think about it every teenager wants to murder their parents at some point," Harden told "TV Insider".


title: Murder of Dee Dee Blanchard

text: In 2019 the streaming service Hulu announced the creation of the true crime series "The Act". The 8-episode miniseries is based on Michelle Dean's 2016 "BuzzFeed" article. Dean is an executive producer and writer for the first season of the series. Joey King was cast as Gypsy Rose, and received an Emmy nomination for her performance; she shaved her head for the role. Actress Patricia Arquette was cast as Dee Dee, and won an Emmy for her performance. "The Act" premiered on March 20, 2019.


title: Murder of Dee Dee Blanchard

text: In the 2019 Netflix web television series "The Politician", the characters Infinity Jackson, Ricardo, and Dusty Jackson are respectively based on Gypsy Rose Blanchard, Nicholas Godejohn and Dee Dee Blanchard.


title: Murder of Dee Dee Blanchard

text: The novel "Grace Is Gone" by Emily Elgar, published in January 2020, follows a fictionalized version of the case set in Cornwall.


title: Murder of Dee Dee Blanchard

text: Stephanie Wrobel credited Michelle Dean's 2016 "Buzzfeed" article as one influence on her thriller "Darling Rose Gold" (March 2020).


title: Provisional Irish Republican Army

text: The Irish Republican Army (IRA; ), also known as the Provisional Irish Republican Army, and informally as the Provos, was an Irish republican paramilitary organisation that sought to end British rule in Northern Ireland, facilitate Irish reunification and bring about an independent, socialist republic encompassing all of Ireland. It was the most active republican paramilitary group during the Troubles. It saw itself as the army of the all-island Irish Republic and as the sole legitimate successor to the original IRA from the Irish War of Independence. It was designated a terrorist organisation in the United Kingdom and an unlawful organisation in the Republic of Ireland, both of whose authority it rejected.


title: Provisional Irish Republican Army

text: The Provisional IRA emerged in December 1969, due to a split within the previous incarnation of the IRA and the broader Irish republican movement. It was initially the minority faction in the split compared to the Official IRA, but became the dominant faction by 1972. The Troubles had begun shortly before when a largely Catholic, nonviolent civil rights campaign was met with violence from both Ulster loyalists and the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC), culminating in the August 1969 riots and deployment of British soldiers. The IRA initially focused on defence of Catholic areas, but it began an offensive campaign in 1970 that was aided by weapons supplied by Irish American sympathisers and Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. It used guerrilla tactics against the British Army and RUC in both rural and urban areas, and carried out a bombing campaign in Northern Ireland and England against military, political and economic targets, and British military targets in Europe.


title: Provisional Irish Republican Army

text: The Provisional IRA declared a final ceasefire in July 1997, after which its political wing Sinn Féin was admitted into multi-party peace talks on the future of Northern Ireland. These resulted in the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, and in 2005 the IRA formally ended its armed campaign and decommissioned its weapons under the supervision of the Independent International Commission on Decommissioning. Several splinter groups have been formed as a result of splits within the IRA, including the Continuity IRA and the Real IRA, both of which are still active in the dissident Irish republican campaign. The IRA's armed campaign, primarily in Northern Ireland but also in England and mainland Europe, killed over 1,700 people, including roughly 1,000 members of the British security forces, and 500–644 civilians. In addition 275–300 members of the IRA were killed during the conflict.


title: Provisional Irish Republican Army

text: The original IRA was formed in 1913 as the Irish Volunteers, at a time when all of Ireland was part of the United Kingdom. The Volunteers took part in the Easter Rising against British rule in 1916, and the War of Independence that followed the Declaration of Independence by the revolutionary parliament Dáil Éireann in 1919, during which they came to be known as the IRA. Ireland was partitioned into Southern Ireland and Northern Ireland by the Government of Ireland Act 1920, and following the implementation of the Anglo-Irish Treaty in 1922 Southern Ireland, renamed the Irish Free State, became a self-governing dominion while Northern Ireland chose to remain under home rule as part of the United Kingdom. The Treaty caused a split in the IRA, the pro-Treaty IRA were absorbed into the National Army, which defeated the anti-Treaty IRA in the Civil War. Subsequently, while denying the legitimacy of the Free State, the surviving elements of the anti-Treaty IRA focused on overthrowing the Northern Ireland state and the achievement of a united Ireland, carrying out a bombing campaign in England in 1939 and 1940, a campaign in Northern Ireland in the 1940s, and the Border campaign of 1956–1962. Following the failure of the Border campaign, internal debate took place regarding the future of the IRA. Chief-of-staff Cathal Goulding wanted the IRA to adopt a socialist agenda and become involved in politics, while traditional republicans such as Seán Mac Stíofáin wanted to increase recruitment and rebuild the IRA.


title: Provisional Irish Republican Army

text: Following partition, Northern Ireland became a de facto one-party state governed by the Ulster Unionist Party in the Parliament of Northern Ireland, in which Catholics viewed themselves as second-class citizens. Protestants were given preference in jobs and housing, and local government constituencies were gerrymandered in places such as Derry. Policing was carried out by the armed Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) and the B-Specials, both of which were almost exclusively Protestant. In the mid-1960s tension between the Catholic and Protestant communities was increasing. In 1966 Ireland celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Easter Rising, prompting fears of a renewed IRA campaign. Feeling under threat, Protestants formed the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF), a paramilitary group which killed three people in May 1966, two of them Catholic men. In January 1967 the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association (NICRA) was formed by a diverse group of people, including IRA members and liberal unionists. Civil rights marches by NICRA and a similar organisation, People's Democracy, protesting against discrimination were met by counter-protests and violent clashes with loyalists, including the Ulster Protestant Volunteers, a paramilitary group led by Ian Paisley.


title: Provisional Irish Republican Army

text: Marches marking the Ulster Protestant celebration The Twelfth in July 1969 led to riots and violent clashes in Belfast, Derry and elsewhere. The following month a three-day riot began in the Catholic Bogside area of Derry, following a march by the Protestant Apprentice Boys of Derry. The Battle of the Bogside caused Catholics in Belfast to riot in solidarity with the Bogsiders and to try to prevent RUC reinforcements being sent to Derry, sparking retaliation by Protestant mobs. The subsequent arson attacks, damage to property and intimidation forced 1,505 Catholic families and 315 Protestant families to leave their homes in Belfast in the Northern Ireland riots of August 1969 The riots resulted in 275 buildings being destroyed or requiring major repairs, 83.5% of them occupied by Catholics. A number of people were killed on both sides, some by the police, and the British Army were deployed to Northern Ireland. The IRA had been poorly armed and failed to properly defend Catholic areas from Protestant attacks, which had been considered one of its roles since the 1920s. Veteran republicans were critical of Goulding and the IRA's Dublin leadership which, for political reasons, had refused to prepare for aggressive action in advance of the violence. On 24 August a group including Joe Cahill, Seamus Twomey, Dáithí Ó Conaill, Billy McKee, and Jimmy Steele came together in Belfast and decided to remove the pro-Goulding Belfast leadership of Billy McMillen and Jim Sullivan and return to traditional militant republicanism. On 22 September Twomey, McKee, and Steele were among sixteen armed IRA men who confronted the Belfast leadership over the failure to adequately defend Catholic areas. A compromise was agreed where McMillen stayed in command, but he was not to have any communication with the IRA's Dublin based leadership.


title: Provisional Irish Republican Army

text: The IRA split into "Provisional" and "Official" factions in December 1969, after an IRA convention was held in Boyle, County Roscommon, Republic of Ireland. The two main issues at the convention were a resolution to enter into a "National Liberation Front" with radical left-wing groups, and a resolution to end abstentionism, which would allow participation in the British, Irish, and Northern Ireland parliaments. Traditional republicans refused to vote on the "National Liberation Front" and it was passed by twenty-nine votes to seven. The traditionalists argued strongly against the ending of abstentionism, and the official minutes report the resolution passed by twenty-seven votes to twelve.


title: Provisional Irish Republican Army

text: Following the convention the traditionalists canvassed support throughout Ireland, with IRA director of intelligence Mac Stíofáin meeting the disaffected members of the IRA in Belfast. Shortly after, the traditionalists held a convention which elected a "Provisional" Army Council, composed of Mac Stíofáin, Ruairí Ó Brádaigh, Paddy Mulcahy, Sean Tracey, Leo Martin, Ó Conaill, and Cahill. The term provisional was chosen to mirror the 1916 Provisional Government of the Irish Republic, and also to designate it as temporary pending ratification by a further IRA convention. Nine out of thirteen IRA units in Belfast sided with the "Provisional" Army Council in December 1969, roughly 120 activists and 500 supporters. The Provisional IRA issued their first public statement on 28 December 1969, stating:


title: Provisional Irish Republican Army

text: We declare our allegiance to the 32 county Irish republic, proclaimed at Easter 1916, established by the first Dáil Éireann in 1919, overthrown by force of arms in 1922 and suppressed to this day by the existing British-imposed six-county and twenty-six-county partition states... We call on the Irish people at home and in exile for increased support towards defending our people in the North and the eventual achievement of the full political, social, economic and cultural freedom of Ireland.


title: Provisional Irish Republican Army

text: The Irish republican political party Sinn Féin split along the same lines on 11 January 1970 in Dublin, when a third of the delegates walked out of the party's highest deliberative body, the ard fheis, in protest at the party leadership's attempt to force through the ending of abstentionism, despite its failure to achieve a two-thirds majority vote of delegates required to change the policy. The delegates that walked out reconvened at another venue where Mac Stíofáin, Ó Brádaigh and Mulcahy from the "Provisional" Army Council were elected to the Caretaker Executive of "Provisional" Sinn Féin. Despite the declared support of that faction of Sinn Féin, the early Provisional IRA avoided political activity, instead relying on physical force republicanism. £100,000 was donated by the Fianna Fáil-led Irish government in 1969 to "defence committees" in Catholic areas, some of which ended up in the hands of the IRA. This resulted in the 1970 Arms Crisis where criminal charges were pursued against two former government ministers and others including John Kelly, an IRA volunteer from Belfast. The Provisional IRA maintained the principles of the pre-1969 IRA, considering both British rule in Northern Ireland and the government of the Republic of Ireland to be illegitimate, and the Army Council to be the provisional government of the all-island Irish Republic. This belief was based on a series of perceived political inheritances which constructed a legal continuity from the Second Dáil of 1921–1922. The IRA recruited many young nationalists from Northern Ireland who had not been involved in the IRA before, but had been radicalised by the violence that broke out in 1969. These people became known as "sixty niners", having joined after 1969. The IRA adopted the phoenix as the symbol of the Irish republican rebirth in 1969, one of its slogans was "out of the ashes rose the Provisionals", representing the IRA's resurrection from the ashes of burnt-out Catholic areas of Belfast.


title: Provisional Irish Republican Army

text: In January 1970, the Army Council decided to adopt a three-stage strategy; defence of nationalist areas, followed by a combination of defence and retaliation, and finally launching a guerrilla campaign against the British Army. The Official IRA was opposed to such a campaign because they felt it would lead to sectarian conflict, which would defeat their strategy of uniting the workers from both sides of the sectarian divide. The Provisional IRA's strategy was to use force to cause the collapse of the Northern Ireland government and to inflict such heavy casualties on the British Army that the British government would be forced by public opinion to withdraw from Ireland. Mac Stíofáin decided they would "escalate, escalate and escalate", in what the British Army would later describe as a "classic insurgency". In October 1970 the IRA began a bombing campaign against economic targets; by the end of the year there had been 153 explosions. The following year it was responsible for the vast majority of the 1,000 explosions that occurred in Northern Ireland. The strategic aim behind the bombings was to target businesses and commercial premises to deter investment and force the British government to pay compensation, increasing the financial cost of keeping Northern Ireland within the United Kingdom. The IRA also believed that the bombing campaign would tie down British soldiers in static positions guarding potential targets, preventing their deployment in counter-insurgency operations. Loyalist paramilitaries, including the UVF, carried out campaigns aimed at thwarting the IRA's aspirations and maintaining the political union with Britain. Loyalist paramilitaries tended to target Catholics with no connection to the republican movement, seeking to undermine support for the IRA.


title: Provisional Irish Republican Army

text: As a result of escalating violence, internment without trial was introduced by the Northern Ireland government on 9 August 1971, with 342 suspects arrested in the first twenty-four hours. Despite loyalist violence also increasing, all of those arrested were republicans, including political activists not associated with the IRA and student civil rights leaders. The one-sided nature of internment united all Catholics in opposition to the government, and riots broke out in protest across Northern Ireland. Twenty-two people were killed in the next three days, including six civilians killed by the British Army as part of the Ballymurphy massacre on 9 August, and in Belfast 7,000 Catholics and 2,000 Protestants were forced from their homes by the rioting. The introduction of internment dramatically increased the level of violence, in the seven months prior to internment 34 people had been killed, 140 people were killed between the introduction of internment and the end of the year, including thirty soldiers and eleven RUC officers. Internment boosted IRA recruitment, and in Dublin the Taoiseach, Jack Lynch, abandoned a planned idea to introduce internment in the Republic of Ireland. IRA recruitment further increased after Bloody Sunday in Derry on 30 January 1972, when the British Army killed fourteen unarmed civilians during an anti-internment march. Due to the deteriorating security situation in Northern Ireland the British government suspended the Northern Ireland parliament and imposed direct rule in March 1972. The suspension of the Northern Ireland parliament was a key objective of the IRA, in order to directly involve the British government in Northern Ireland, as the IRA wanted the conflict to be seen as one between Ireland and Britain. In May 1972 the Official IRA called a ceasefire, leaving the Provisional IRA as the sole active republican paramilitary organisation. New recruits saw the Official IRA as existing for the purpose of defence in contrast to the Provisional IRA as existing for the purpose of attack, increased recruitment and defections from the Official IRA to the Provisional IRA led to the latter becoming the dominant organisation.


title: Provisional Irish Republican Army

text: On 22 June the IRA announced that a ceasefire would begin at midnight on 26 June, in anticipation of talks with the British government. Two days later Ó Brádaigh and Ó Conaill held a press conference in Dublin to announce the Éire Nua (New Ireland) policy, which advocated an all-Ireland federal republic, with devolved governments and parliaments for each of the four historic provinces of Ireland. This was designed to deal with the fears of unionists over a united Ireland, an Ulster parliament with a narrow Protestant majority would provide them with protection for their interests. The British government held secret talks with the republican leadership on 7 July, with Mac Stíofáin, Ó Conaill, Ivor Bell, Twomey, Gerry Adams, and Martin McGuinness flying to England to meet a British delegation led by William Whitelaw. Mac Stíofáin made demands including British withdrawal, removal of the British Army from sensitive areas, and a release of republican prisoners and an amnesty for fugitives. The British refused and the talks broke up, and the IRA's ceasefire ended on 9 July. In late 1972 and early 1973 the IRA's leadership was being depleted by arrests on both sides of the Irish border, with Mac Stíofáin, Ó Brádaigh and McGuinness all imprisoned for IRA membership. Due to the crisis the IRA bombed London in March 1973, as the Army Council believed bombs in England would have a greater impact on British public opinion. This was followed by an intense period of IRA activity in England that left forty-five people dead by the end of 1974, including twenty-one civilians killed in the Birmingham pub bombings.


title: Provisional Irish Republican Army

text: Following an IRA ceasefire over the Christmas period in 1974 and a further one in January 1975, on 8 February the IRA issued a statement suspending "offensive military action" from six o'clock the following day. A series of meetings took place between the IRA's leadership and British government representatives throughout the year, with the IRA being led to believe this was the start of a process of British withdrawal. Occasional IRA violence occurred during the ceasefire, with bombs in Belfast, Derry, and South Armagh. The IRA was also involved in tit for tat sectarian killings of Protestant civilians, in retaliation for sectarian killings by loyalist paramilitaries. By July the Army Council was concerned at the progress of the talks, concluding there was no prospect of a lasting peace without a public declaration by the British government of their intent to withdraw from Ireland. In August there was a gradual return to the armed campaign, and the truce effectively ended on 22 September when the IRA set off 22 bombs across Northern Ireland. The old guard leadership of Ó Brádaigh, Ó Conaill, and McKee were criticised by a younger generation of activists following the ceasefire, and their influence in the IRA slowly declined. The younger generation viewed the ceasefire as being disastrous for the IRA, causing the organisation irreparable damage and taking it close to being defeated. The Army Council was accused of falling into a trap that allowed the British breathing space and time to build up intelligence on the IRA, and McKee was criticised for allowing the IRA to become involved in sectarian killings, as well a feud with the Official IRA in October and November 1975 that left eleven people dead.


title: Provisional Irish Republican Army

text: Following the end of the ceasefire, the British government introduced a new three-part strategy to deal with the Troubles; the parts became known as Ulsterisation, normalisation, and criminalisation. Ulsterisation involved increasing the role of the locally recruited RUC and Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR), a part-time element of the British Army, in order to try to contain the conflict inside Northern Ireland and reduce the number of British soldiers recruited from outside of Northern Ireland being killed. Normalisation involved the ending of internment without trial and Special Category Status, the latter had been introduced in 1972 following a hunger strike led by McKee. Criminalisation was designed to alter public perception of the Troubles, from an insurgency requiring a military solution to a criminal problem requiring a law enforcement solution. As result of the withdrawal of Special Category Status, in September 1976 IRA prisoner Kieran Nugent began the blanket protest in the Maze Prison, when hundreds of prisoners refused to wear prison uniforms.


title: Provisional Irish Republican Army

text: In 1977 the IRA evolved a new strategy which they called the "Long War", which would remain their strategy for the rest of the Troubles. This strategy accepted that their campaign would last many years before being successful, and included increased emphasis on political activity through Sinn Féin. A republican document of the early 1980s states "Both Sinn Féin and the IRA play different but converging roles in the war of national liberation. The Irish Republican Army wages an armed campaign... Sinn Féin maintains the propaganda war and is the public and political voice of the movement". The 1977 edition of the "Green Book", an induction and training manual used by the IRA, describes the strategy of the "Long War" in these terms:


title: Provisional Irish Republican Army

text: The "Long War" saw the IRA's tactics move away from the large bombing campaigns of the early 1970s, in favour of more attacks on members of the security forces. The IRA's new multi-faceted strategy saw them begin to use armed propaganda, using the publicity gained from attacks such as the assassination of Lord Mountbatten and the Warrenpoint ambush to focus attention on the nationalist community's rejection of British rule. The IRA aimed to keep Northern Ireland unstable, which would frustrate the British objective of installing a power sharing government as a solution to the Troubles.


title: Provisional Irish Republican Army

text: The prison protest against criminalisation culminated in the 1981 Irish hunger strike, when seven IRA and three Irish National Liberation Army members starved themselves to death in pursuit of political status. The hunger strike leader Bobby Sands and Anti H-Block activist Owen Carron were successively elected to the British House of Commons, and two other protesting prisoners were elected to Dáil Éireann. The electoral successes led to the IRA's armed campaign being pursued in parallel with increased electoral participation by Sinn Féin. This strategy was known as the "Armalite and ballot box strategy", named after Danny Morrison's speech at the 1981 Sinn Féin ard fheis:


title: Provisional Irish Republican Army

text: Who here really believes that we can win the war through the ballot box? But will anyone here object if with a ballot paper in this hand and an Armalite in this hand we take power in Ireland?


title: Provisional Irish Republican Army

text: Attacks on high-profile political and military targets remained a priority for the IRA. The Chelsea Barracks bombing in London in October 1981 killed two civilians and injured twenty-three soldiers; a week later the IRA struck again in London by an assassination attempt on Lieutenant General Steuart Pringle, the Commandant General Royal Marines. Attacks on military targets in England continued with the Hyde Park and Regent's Park bombings in July 1982, which killed eleven soldiers and injured over fifty people including civilians. In October 1984 they carried out the Brighton hotel bombing, an assassination attempt on British prime minister Margaret Thatcher, whom they blamed for the deaths of the ten hunger strikers. The bombing killed five members of the Conservative Party attending a party conference including MP Anthony Berry, with Thatcher narrowly escaping death. A planned escalation of the England bombing campaign in 1985 was prevented when six IRA volunteers, including Martina Anderson and the Brighton bomber Patrick Magee, were arrested in Glasgow. Plans for a major escalation of the campaign in the late 1980s were cancelled after a ship carrying 150 tonnes of weapons donated by Libya was seized off the coast of France. The plans, modelled on the Tet Offensive during the Vietnam War, relied on the element of surprise which was lost when the ship's captain informed French authorities of four earlier shipments of weapons, which allowed the British Army to deploy appropriate countermeasures. In 1987 the IRA began attacking British military targets in mainland Europe, beginning with the Rheindahlen bombing, which was followed by approximately twenty other gun and bomb attacks aimed at British Armed Forces personnel and bases between 1988 and 1990.


title: Provisional Irish Republican Army

text: By the late 1980s the Troubles were at a military and political stalemate, with the IRA able to prevent the British government imposing a settlement but unable to force their objective of Irish reunification. Sinn Féin president Adams was in contact with Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) leader John Hume and a delegation representing the Irish government, in order to find political alternatives to the IRA's campaign. As a result of the republican leadership appearing interested in peace, British policy shifted when Peter Brooke, the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, began to engage with them hoping for a political settlement. Backchannel diplomacy between the IRA and British government began in October 1990, with Sinn Féin being given an advance copy of a planned speech by Brooke. The speech was given in London the following month, with Brooke stating that the British government would not give in to violence but offering significant political change if violence stopped, ending his statement by saying:


title: Provisional Irish Republican Army

text: The British government has no selfish, strategic or economic interest in Northern Ireland: Our role is to help, enable and encourage ... Partition is an acknowledgement of reality, not an assertion of national self-interest.


title: Provisional Irish Republican Army

text: The IRA responded to Brooke's speech by declaring a three-day ceasefire over Christmas, the first in fifteen years. Afterwards the IRA intensified the bombing campaign in England, planting 36 bombs in 1991 and 57 in 1992, up from 15 in 1990. The Baltic Exchange bombing in April 1992 killed three people and caused an estimated £800 million worth of damage, £200 million more than the total damage caused by the Troubles in Northern Ireland up to that point. In December 1992 Patrick Mayhew, who had succeeded Brooke as Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, gave a speech directed at the IRA in Coleraine, stating that while Irish reunification could be achieved by negotiation, the British government would not give in to violence. The secret talks between the British government and the IRA via intermediaries continued, with the British government arguing the IRA would be more likely to achieve its objective through politics than continued violence. The talks progressed slowly due to continued IRA violence, including the Warrington bombing in March 1993 which killed two children and the Bishopsgate bombing a month later which killed one person and caused an estimated £1 billion worth of damage. In December 1993 a press conference was held at London's Downing Street by British prime minister John Major and the Irish Taoiseach Albert Reynolds. They delivered the Downing Street Declaration which conceded the right of Irish people to self-determination, but with separate referendums in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. In January 1994 The Army Council voted to reject the declaration, while Sinn Féin asked the British government to clarify certain aspects of the declaration. The British government replied saying the declaration spoke for itself, and refused to meet with Sinn Féin unless the IRA called a ceasefire.


title: Provisional Irish Republican Army

text: On 31 August 1994 the IRA announced a "complete cessation of military operations" on the understanding that Sinn Féin would be included in political talks for a settlement. A new strategy known as "TUAS" was revealed to the IRA's rank-and-file following the ceasefire, described as either "Tactical Use of Armed Struggle" to the Irish republican movement or "Totally Unarmed Strategy" to the broader Irish nationalist movement. The strategy involved a coalition including Sinn Féin, the SDLP and the Irish government acting in concert to apply leverage to the British government, with the IRA's armed campaign starting and stopping as necessary, and an option to call off the ceasefire if negotiations failed. The British government refused to admit Sinn Féin to multi-party talks before the IRA decommissioned its weapons, and a standoff began as the IRA refused to disarm before a final peace settlement had been agreed. The IRA regarded themselves as being undefeated and decommissioning as an act of surrender, and stated decommissioning had never been mentioned prior to the ceasefire being declared. In March 1995 Mayhew set out three conditions for Sinn Féin being admitted to multi-party talks. Firstly the IRA had to be willing to agree to "disarm progressively", secondly a scheme for decommissioning had to be agreed, and finally some weapons had to be decommissioned prior to the talks beginning as a confidence building measure. The IRA responded with public statements in September calling decommissioning an "unreasonable demand" and a "stalling tactic" by the British government.


title: Provisional Irish Republican Army

text: On 9 February 1996 a statement from the Army Council was delivered to the Irish national broadcaster Raidió Teilifís Éireann announcing the end of the ceasefire, and just over 90 minutes later the Docklands bombing killed two people and caused an estimated £100–150 million damage to some of London's more expensive commercial property. Three weeks later the British and Irish governments issued a joint statement announcing multi-party talks would begin on 10 June, with Sinn Féin excluded unless the IRA called a new ceasefire. The IRA's campaign continued with the Manchester bombing on 15 June, which injured over 200 people and caused an estimated £400 million of damage to the city centre. Attacks were mostly in England apart from the Osnabrück mortar attack on a British Army base in Germany. The IRA's first attack in Northern Ireland since the end of the ceasefire was not until October 1996, when the Thiepval barracks bombing killed a British soldier. In February 1997 an IRA sniper team killed Lance Bombadier Stephen Restorick, the last British soldier to be killed by the IRA.


title: Provisional Irish Republican Army

text: Following the May 1997 UK general election Major was replaced as prime minister by Tony Blair of the Labour Party. The new Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Mo Mowlam, had announced prior to the election she would be willing to include Sinn Féin in multi-party talks without prior decommissioning of weapons within two months of an IRA ceasefire. After the IRA declared a new ceasefire in July 1997, Sinn Féin was admitted into multi-party talks, which produced the Good Friday Agreement in April 1998. One aim of the agreement was that all paramilitary groups in Northern Ireland fully disarm by May 2000. The IRA began decommissioning in a process that was monitored by Canadian General John de Chastelain's Independent International Commission on Decommissioning (IICD), with some weapons being decommissioned on 23 October 2001 and 8 April 2002. The October 2001 decommissioning was the first time an Irish republican paramilitary organisation had voluntarily disposed of its arms. In October 2002 the devolved Northern Ireland Assembly was suspended by the British government and direct rule returned, in order to prevent a unionist walkout. This was partly triggered by Stormontgate—allegations that republican spies were operating within the Parliament Buildings and the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI)—and the IRA temporarily broke off contact with de Chastelain. However, further decommissioning took place on 21 October 2003. In the aftermath of the December 2004 Northern Bank robbery, the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform Michael McDowell stated there could be no place in government in either Northern Ireland or the Republic of Ireland for a party that supported or threatened the use of violence, possessed explosives or firearms, and was involved in criminality. At the beginning of February 2005, the IRA declared that it was withdrawing a decommissioning offer from late 2004. This followed a demand from the Democratic Unionist Party, under Paisley, insisting on photographic evidence of decommissioning.


title: Provisional Irish Republican Army

text: On 28 July 2005, the IRA, with a statement read to the media by Séanna Walsh, declared an end to the armed campaign, affirming that it would work to achieve its aims solely through peaceful political means and ordering volunteers to end all paramilitary activity. The IRA also stated it would complete the process of disarmament as quickly as possible. The IRA invited two independent witnesses to view the secret disarmament work, Catholic priest Father Alec Reid and Protestant minister Reverend Harold Good. On 26 September 2005, the IICD announced that "the totality of the IRA's arsenal" had been decommissioned. Jane's Information Group estimated that the IRA weaponry decommissioned in September 2005 included:


title: Provisional Irish Republican Army

text: Having compared the weapons decommissioned with the British and Irish security forces' estimates of the IRA's arsenal, and because of the IRA's full involvement in the process of decommissioning the weapons, the IICD concluded that all IRA weaponry had been decommissioned. The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Peter Hain, said he accepted the conclusion of the IICD. Since then, there have been occasional claims in the media that the IRA had not decommissioned all of its weaponry. In response to such claims, the Independent Monitoring Commission (IMC) stated in its 10th report that the IRA had decommissioned all weaponry under its control. The report stated that if any weapons had been kept they would have been kept by individuals and against IRA orders.


title: Provisional Irish Republican Army

text: In February 2015, Garda Commissioner Nóirín O'Sullivan stated that the Republic of Ireland's police service, the Gardaí, have no evidence that the IRA's military structure remains operational or that the IRA is engaged in criminal activity. In August 2015, George Hamilton, the PSNI chief constable, stated that the IRA no longer exists as a paramilitary organisation. He added that some of its structure remains, but that the group is committed to following a peaceful political path and is not engaged in criminal activity nor directing violence. He pointed out, however, that some of its members have engaged in criminal activity or violence for their own, individual ends. The statement was made in response to the killings of former Belfast IRA commanders Kevin McGuigan and Gerard Davison. McGuigan was shot dead in what was believed to be a revenge killing by former IRA members over the shooting death three months earlier of Davison. The Chief Constable stated there was no evidence that the killing of McGuigan was sanctioned by the IRA leadership. Also in response, the British government commissioned the Assessment on Paramilitary Groups in Northern Ireland. The assessment, concluded in October 2015, was that "all the main paramilitary groups operating during the Troubles are still in existence, including the Ulster Volunteer Force, the Red Hand Commando, the Ulster Defence Association, the Provisional IRA, and Irish National Liberation Army." But, it added, "the leaderships of the main paramilitary groups [including the IRA's] are committed to peaceful means to achieve their political objectives."


title: Provisional Irish Republican Army

text: In the early days of the Troubles the IRA was poorly armed, in Derry in early 1972 the IRA's weaponry consisted of six M1 carbines, two Thompson submachine guns, one or two M1 Garand rifles, and a variety of handguns. As a result of black market arms deals and donations from sympathisers, the IRA obtained a large array of weapons such as surface-to-air missiles; M60 machine guns; ArmaLite AR-18, FN FAL, AKM and M16 rifles; DShK heavy machine guns; LPO-50 flamethrowers; and Barrett M90 sniper rifles. The IRA also used a variety of bombs during its armed campaign, such as car and truck bombs, time bombs, and booby traps, using explosives including ANFO, gelignite, and the plastic explosive Semtex. The IRA's engineering department also manufactured a series of improvised mortars, which by the 1990s were built to a standard comparable to military models. The IRA's development of mortar tactics was a response to the heavy fortifications on RUC and British Army bases, as IRA mortars generally fired indirectly they were able to bypass some perimeter security measures. The mortars used a variety of different firing mechanisms including delay timers, this combined with the disposable nature of the weapons allowed IRA volunteers to reduce the risk of being arrested at the scene.


title: Provisional Irish Republican Army

text: The IRA was mainly active in Northern Ireland, although it also attacked targets in England and mainland Europe, and limited activity also took place in the Republic of Ireland. The IRA's offensive campaign mainly targeted the British Army (including the UDR) and the RUC, with British soldiers being the IRA's preferred target. Other targets included British government officials, politicians, establishment and judicial figures, and senior British Army and police officers. The bombing campaign principally targeted political, economic and military targets, and was described by counter-terrorism expert Andy Oppenheimer as "the biggest terrorist bombing campaign in history". Economic targets included shops, restaurants, hotels, railway stations and other public buildings. The IRA was blamed for the Abercorn Restaurant bombing in March 1972, when a bomb exploded without warning killing two women and injuring many people. Due to negative publicity after the Abercorn bombing, the IRA introduced a system of telephoned coded warnings to try and avoid civilian casualties while still causing the intended damage to properties and the economy. Civilian deaths were counter-productive to the IRA, as they provided the British with propaganda coups and affected recruitment and funding. Despite this IRA bombs continued to kill civilians, generally due to IRA mistakes and incompetence or errors in communication. These included the Donegall Street bombing which killed seven people including four civilians, and Bloody Friday, when nine people, five of them civilians, were killed when twenty-two bombs were planted in a one-mile radius of Belfast city centre. Premature explosions were another cause of civilian deaths, such as the Remembrance Day bombing which killed eleven people including ten civilians, and the Shankill Road bombing which killed ten people including eight civilians.


title: Provisional Irish Republican Army

text: The IRA was responsible for more deaths than any other organisation during the Troubles. Two detailed studies of deaths in the Troubles, the Conflict Archive on the Internet (CAIN), and the book "Lost Lives", differ slightly on the numbers killed by the IRA and the total number of conflict deaths. According to CAIN, the IRA was responsible for 1,705 deaths, about 48% of the total conflict deaths. Of these, 1,009 (about 59%) were members or former members of the British security forces, while 508 (about 29%) were civilians. According to "Lost Lives", the IRA was responsible for 1,781 deaths, about 47% of the total conflict deaths. Of these, 944 (about 53%) were members of the British security forces, while 644 (about 36%) were civilians (including 61 former members of the security forces). The civilian figure also includes civilians employed by British security forces, politicians, members of the judiciary, and alleged criminals and informers. Most of the remainder were loyalist or republican paramilitary members, including over 100 IRA members accidentally killed by their own bombs or shot for being security force agents or informers. Overall, the IRA was responsible for 87–90% of the total British security force deaths, and 27–30% of the total civilian deaths. During the IRA's campaign in England it was responsible for at least 488 incidents causing 2,134 injuries and 115 deaths, including 56 civilians and 42 British soldiers. Between 275 and 300 IRA members were killed during the Troubles, with the IRA's biggest loss of life in a single incident being the Loughgall ambush in 1987, when eight volunteers attempting to bomb a police station were killed by the British Army's Special Air Service.


title: Provisional Irish Republican Army

text: All levels of the organisation were entitled to send delegates to General Army Conventions. The convention was the IRA's supreme decision-making authority, and was supposed to meet every two years, or every four years following a change to the IRA's constitution in 1986. Before 1969 conventions met regularly, but owing to the difficulty in organising such a large gathering of an illegal organisation in secret, while the IRA's armed campaign was ongoing they were only held in September 1970, October 1986, and October or November 1996. After the 1997 ceasefire they were held more frequently, and are known to have been held in October 1997, May 1998, December 1998 or early 1999, and June 2002. The convention elected a 12-member Executive, which selected seven members, usually from within the Executive, to form the Army Council. Any vacancies on the Executive would then be filled by substitutes previously elected by the convention. For day-to-day purposes, authority was vested in the Army Council which, as well as directing policy and taking major tactical decisions, appointed a chief-of-staff from one of its number or, less often, from outside its ranks.


title: Provisional Irish Republican Army

text: The chief-of-staff would be assisted by an adjutant general as well as a General Headquarters (GHQ) staff, which consisted of a quartermaster general, and directors of finance, engineering, training, intelligence, publicity, operations, and security. GHQ's largest department, the quartermaster general's, accounted for approximately 20% of the IRA's personnel, and was responsible for acquiring weapons and smuggling them to Ireland where they would be hidden in arms dumps, and distributed them to IRA units as needed. The next most important department was engineering, which manufactured improvised explosive devices and improvised mortars. Below GHQ, the IRA was divided into a Northern Command and a Southern Command. Northern Command operated in Northern Ireland as well as the border counties of Donegal, Leitrim, Cavan, Monaghan, and Louth, while Southern Command operated in the remainder of Ireland. In 1977, parallel to the introduction of cell structures at the local level, command of the "war-zone" was given to the Northern Command, which facilitated coordinated attacks across Northern Ireland and rapid alterations in tactics. Southern Command consisted of the Dublin Brigade and a number of smaller units in rural areas. Its main responsibilities were support activities for Northern Command, such as importation and storage of arms, providing safe houses, raising funds through robberies, and organising training camps. Another department attached to GHQ but separate from all other IRA structures was the England department, responsible for the bombing campaign in England.


title: Provisional Irish Republican Army

text: The IRA referred to its ordinary members as volunteers (or "óglaigh" in Irish), to reflect the IRA being an irregular army which people were not forced to join and could leave at any time. Until the late 1970s, IRA volunteers were organised in units based on conventional military structures. Volunteers living in one area formed a company as part of a battalion, which could be part of a brigade, such as the Belfast Brigade, Derry Brigade, South Armagh Brigade, and East Tyrone Brigade. In late 1973 the Belfast Brigade restructured, introducing clandestine cells named active service units, consisting of between four and ten members. Similar changes were made elsewhere in the IRA by 1977, moving away from the larger conventional military organisational principle owing to its security vulnerability. The old structures were used for support activities such as policing nationalist areas, intelligence-gathering, and hiding weapons, while the bulk of attacks were carried out by active service units, using weapons controlled by the brigade's quartermaster. The exception to this reorganisation was the South Armagh Brigade, which retained its traditional hierarchy and battalion structure. Only a handful of volunteers from the South Armagh Brigade were convicted of serious offences, and it had fewer arrests than any other area, meaning that the security forces struggled to recruit informers.


title: Provisional Irish Republican Army

text: The IRA's goal was an all-Ireland democratic socialist republic. Richard English, a professor at Queen's University Belfast, writes that while the IRA's adherence to socialist goals has varied according to time and place, radical ideas, specifically socialist ones, were a key part of IRA thinking. Former IRA volunteer Tommy McKearney states that while the IRA's goal was a socialist republic, there was no coherent analysis or understanding of socialism itself, other than an idea that the details would be worked out following an IRA victory. This was in contrast to the Official IRA and the Irish National Liberation Army, both of which adopted clearly defined Marxist positions. Similarly, the Northern Ireland left-wing politician Eamonn McCann has remarked that the Provisional IRA was considered a non-socialist IRA compared to the Official IRA.


title: Provisional Irish Republican Army

text: During the 1980s, the IRA's commitment to socialism became more solidified as IRA prisoners began to engage with works of political and Marxist theory by authors such as Frantz Fanon, Che Guevara, Antonio Gramsci, Ho-Chi Minh, and General Giap. Members felt that an Irish version of the Tet Offensive could possibly be the key to victory against the British, pending on the arrival of weapons secured from Libya. However, this never came to pass, and the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989 brought a dogmatic commitment to socialism back into question, as possible socialist allies in Eastern Europe wilted away. In the years that followed, IRA prisoners began to look towards South African politics and the example being set by the African National Congress. Many of the imprisoned IRA members saw parallels between their own struggle and that of Nelson Mandela and were encouraged by Mandela's use of compromise following his ascent to power in South Africa to consider compromise themselves.


title: Provisional Irish Republican Army

text: The IRA is a proscribed organisation in the United Kingdom under the Terrorism Act 2000, and an unlawful organisation in the Republic of Ireland under the Offences Against the State Acts, where IRA volunteers are tried in the non-jury Special Criminal Court. A similar system was introduced in Northern Ireland by the Northern Ireland (Emergency Provisions) Act 1973, with a Diplock court consisting of a single judge and no jury. The IRA rejected the authority of the courts in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, and its standing orders did not allow volunteers on trial in a criminal court to enter a plea or recognise the authority of the court, doing so could lead to expulsion from the IRA. These orders were relaxed in 1976 due to sentences in the Republic of Ireland for IRA membership being increased from two years to seven years imprisonment. IRA prisoners in the UK and the Republic of Ireland were granted conditional early release as part of the Good Friday Agreement. IRA members were often refused travel visas to enter the United States, due to previous criminal convictions or because the Immigration and Nationality Act bars the entry of people who are members of an organisation which advocates the overthrow of a government by force.


title: Provisional Irish Republican Army

text: American TV news broadcasts used terms such as "activists" and "guerrillas" to describe IRA members, while British TV news broadcasts commonly used the term "terrorists", particularly the BBC as part of its editorial guidelines published in 1989. Republicans reject the label of terrorism, instead describing the IRA's activity as war, military activity, armed struggle or armed resistance. The IRA prefer the terms freedom fighter, soldier, activist, or volunteer for its members. The IRA has also been described as a "private army". The IRA saw the Irish War of Independence as a guerrilla war which accomplished some of its aims, with some remaining "unfinished business".


title: Provisional Irish Republican Army

text: An internal British Army document written by General Sir Mike Jackson and two other senior officers was released in 2007 under the Freedom of Information Act. It examined the British Army's 37 years of deployment in Northern Ireland, and described the IRA as "a professional, dedicated, highly skilled and resilient force", while loyalist paramilitaries and other republican groups were described as "little more than a collection of gangsters".


title: Provisional Irish Republican Army

text: It is unclear how many people joined the IRA during the Troubles, as it did not keep detailed records of personnel. Journalists Eamonn Mallie and Patrick Bishop state roughly 8,000 people passed through the ranks of the IRA in the first 20 years of its existence, many of them leaving after arrest, retirement or disillusionment. McGuinness, who held a variety of leadership positions, estimated a total membership of 10,000 over the course of the Troubles. The British Army estimates the IRA had 500 volunteers in July 1971, 130 in Derry and 340 in Belfast, journalist Ed Moloney states by the end of the year the IRA in Belfast had over 1,200 volunteers. After the late 1970s restructure, the British Army estimated the IRA had 500 full-time volunteers. A 1978 British Army report by Brigadier James Glover stated that the restructured IRA did not require the same number of volunteers as the early 1970s, and that a small number of volunteers could "maintain a disproportionate level of violence". Journalist Brendan O'Brien states by the late 1980s the IRA had roughly 300 active volunteers and 450 more in support roles, while historian Richard English states in 1988 the IRA was believed to have no more than thirty experienced gunmen and bombers, with a further twenty volunteers with less experience and 500 more in support roles. Moloney estimates in October 1996 the IRA had between 600 and 700 active volunteers.


title: Provisional Irish Republican Army

text: Libyan leader Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, was a supplier of arms to the IRA, donating two shipments of arms in the early 1970s, and another five in the mid-1980s. The final shipment in 1987 was intercepted by French authorities, but the prior four shipments included 1,200 AKM assault rifles, 26 DShK heavy machine guns, 40 general-purpose machine guns, 33 RPG-7 rocket launchers, 10 SAM-7 surface-to-air missiles, 10 LPO-50 flamethrowers, and over two tonnes of plastic explosive Semtex.


title: Provisional Irish Republican Army

text: Another main source of support was from Irish Americans, who donated weapons and money. The backbone of IRA support in the United States was the Irish Northern Aid Committee, better known as NORAID, who in addition to raising money for the families of IRA prisoners also secretly funneled money and weapons to the IRA. In the United States in November 1982, five men, including Michael Flannery of NORAID and George Harrison, were acquitted of smuggling arms to the IRA after they claimed the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had approved the shipment through arms dealer George de Meo, although de Meo denied any connection with the CIA. Harrison's conservative estimate was that he smuggled 2,000–2,500 weapons and approximately 1,000,000 rounds of ammunition to Ireland. American support was weakened by the 11 September 2001 attacks and the subsequent "War on Terror".


title: Provisional Irish Republican Army

text: The IRA had links with the Basque separatist group ETA. Maria McGuire states the IRA received fifty revolvers from ETA in exchange for explosives training. In 1973 the IRA was accused by the Spanish police of providing explosives for the assassination of Spanish prime minister Luis Carrero Blanco in Madrid, and the following year an ETA spokesman told German magazine "Der Spiegel" they had "very good relations" with the IRA. In 1977 a representative of the Basque political party Euskal Iraultzarako Alderdia attended Sinn Féin's 1977 ard fheis, and Ó Brádaigh had a close relationship with Basque separatists, regularly visiting the Basque region between 1977 and 1983. The IRA received support from the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in the 1970s, with volunteers attending training camps in the Middle East. In 1977 a shipment of arms from the PLO was seized in Antwerp, Belgium. The shipment included twenty-nine AK-47 assault rifles, twenty-nine French submachine guns, seven RPG-7 rocket launchers and sixty rocket-propelled grenades, two Bren light machine guns, mortars, grenades and ammunition. PLO leader Yasser Arafat distanced himself from the IRA following the assassination of Lord Mountbatten in 1979.


title: Provisional Irish Republican Army

text: In May 1996, the Federal Security Service, Russia's internal security service, accused Estonia of arms smuggling, and claimed that the IRA had bought weapons from arms dealers linked to Estonia's volunteer defence force, Kaitseliit. In 2001, three Irishmen, known as the Colombia Three, were arrested and accused of training Colombian guerrillas, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). The Irish Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform stated the IRA was to be paid up to $35 million to train FARC in bomb-making techniques, including shaped charges, propane bombs, landmines and the construction of mortars. In 2005 a commander in the National Army of Colombia stated IRA techniques were being used all over Colombia by FARC, and British military experts confirmed bombs used by FARC had previously been used by the IRA. The Colombia Three were acquitted at trial in April 2004, before this was reversed at an appeal court in December 2004 although the men had fled the country and returned to Ireland before the appeal court verdict.


title: Provisional Irish Republican Army

text: Support for the IRA within nationalist communities and within the Republic of Ireland has fluctuated over the course of the conflict. In September 1979 the Economic and Social Research Institute conducted a wide-ranging survey of attitudes to the IRA in the Republic. Its findings showed that 20.7% broadly supported IRA activities, while 60.5% opposed them. Meanwhile, when respondents were asked whether they sympathised or rejected their motives, 44.8% of respondents expressed some level of sympathy with their motives while 33.5% broadly rejected them.


title: Provisional Irish Republican Army

text: A study in 1999 showed amongst Catholics in Northern Ireland, 42% of respondents expressed sympathy with republican violence while 52% said they had no sympathy. The same study found 39.7% of respondents in the Republic of Ireland sympathised with republican violence.


title: Provisional Irish Republican Army

text: The IRA publicly condemned sectarianism and sectarian attacks, however some IRA members did carry out sectarian attacks. Of those killed by the IRA, Malcolm Sutton classifies 130 (about 7%) of them as sectarian killings of Protestants, 88 of them committed between 1974 and 1976. Unlike loyalists, the IRA denied responsibility for sectarian attacks and the members involved used cover names, such as "Republican Action Force", which was used to claim responsibility for the 1976 Kingsmill massacre where ten Protestant civilians were killed in a gun attack. They stated that their attacks on Protestants were retaliation for attacks on Catholics. Many in the IRA opposed these sectarian attacks, but others deemed them effective in preventing similar attacks on Catholics. Robert White, a professor at the Indiana University, states the IRA was generally not a sectarian organisation, and Rachel Kowalski from the Department of War Studies, King's College London states that the IRA acted in a way that was mostly blind to religious diversity.


title: Provisional Irish Republican Army

text: Protestants in the rural border areas of counties Fermanagh and Tyrone, where the number of members of the security forces killed was high, viewed the IRA's campaign as ethnic cleansing. Henry Patterson, a professor at the University of Ulster, concludes that while the IRA's campaign was unavoidably sectarian, it did not amount to ethnic cleansing. Although the IRA did not specifically target these people because of their religious affiliation, more Protestants joined the security forces so many people from that community believed the attacks were sectarian. McKearney argues that due to the British government's Ulsterisation policy increasing the role of the locally recruited RUC and UDR, the IRA had no choice but to target them because of their local knowledge, but acknowledges that Protestants viewed this as a sectarian attack on their community.


title: Provisional Irish Republican Army

text: To fund its campaign, the IRA was allegedly involved in criminal activities such as robberies, counterfeiting, protection rackets, kidnapping for ransom, fuel laundering and cigarette smuggling. The IRA also raised funds by running legitimate businesses such as taxi firms, nightclubs, offices, and nursing homes. British law enforcement estimated that, by the 1990s, the IRA needed £10.5 million a year to operate. IRA supporters argue that as it was a clandestine organisation it was forced to use extralegal methods of fundraising, which were justified in order to achieve a political goal. However, this activity allowed the British government to portray the IRA as no more than a criminal gang. Armed robberies of banks, trains and small businesses across Ireland were a significant source of funding for the IRA, with over 1,000 raids on post offices in Northern Ireland. The PSNI, the IMC, and the British and Irish governments all accused the IRA of involvement in the biggest bank raid in British history—the 2004 Northern Bank robbery—when £26.5 million was stolen, which the IRA denied.


title: Provisional Irish Republican Army

text: Generally, the IRA was against drug dealing and prostitution, because it would be unpopular within Catholic communities and for moral reasons. The chief of the RUC Drugs Squad, Kevin Sheehy, said the IRA tried to prevent volunteers being directly involved with drugs, and noted one occasion when an IRA member caught with a small amount of cannabis was "disowned and humiliated" in his local area. The IRA targeted drug dealers with punishment shootings and ordered them to leave Ireland, and some were killed using the covername Direct Action Against Drugs. However, there are claims the IRA "licensed" certain dealers to operate and forced them to pay protection money. Following the murder of Robert McCartney in 2005, the IRA expelled three IRA volunteers. Adams said at Sinn Féin's 2005 ard fheis "There is no place in republicanism for anyone involved in criminality", while adding "we refuse to criminalise those who break the law in pursuit of legitimate political objectives". This was echoed shortly after by an IRA statement issued at Easter, saying that criminality within the ranks would not be tolerated. In 2008, the IMC stated that the IRA was no longer involved in criminality, but that some members have engaged in criminality for their own ends, without the sanction or support of the IRA.


title: Provisional Irish Republican Army

text: During the Troubles, the IRA took on the role of policing in some nationalist areas of Northern Ireland. Many nationalists did not trust the official police force—the RUC—and saw it as biased against their community. The RUC found it difficult to operate in certain nationalist neighbourhoods and only entered in armoured convoys due to the risk of attack, preventing community policing that could have occurred if officers patrolled on foot. In these neighbourhoods, many residents expected the IRA to act as a policing force, and such policing had propaganda value for the IRA. The IRA also sought to minimise contact between residents and the RUC, because residents might pass on information or be forced to become a police informer. The IRA set up arbitration panels that would adjudicate and investigate complaints from locals about criminal or 'anti-social' activities. First time offenders may have been given a warning, or for more serious offences a curfew may have been imposed. Those responsible for more serious and repeat offences could have been given a punishment beating, or banished from the community. Kneecapping was also used by the IRA as a form of punishment. No punishment attacks have been officially attributed to the IRA since February 2006.


title: Provisional Irish Republican Army

text: The vigilantism of the IRA and other paramilitary organisations has been condemned as "summary justice". In January 1971, the IRA and British Army held secret talks aimed at stopping persistent rioting in Ballymurphy. It was agreed that the IRA would be responsible for policing there, but the agreement was short-lived. During the 1975 ceasefire incident centres were set up across Northern Ireland, staffed by Sinn Féin members who dealt with incidents that might endanger the truce. Residents went there to report crime as well as to make complaints about the security forces. The incident centres were seen by locals as "IRA police stations" and gave some legitimacy to the IRA as a policing force. Following the end of the ceasefire the incident centres remained open as Sinn Féin offices where crime continued to be reported, to be dealt with by the IRA.


title: Provisional Irish Republican Army

text: Throughout the Troubles, some members of the IRA passed information to the security forces. In the 1980s, many IRA members were arrested after being implicated by former IRA members known as "supergrasses" such as Raymond Gilmour. There have been some high-profile allegations of senior IRA figures having been British informers. In May 2003, an American website named Freddie Scappaticci as being a British spy code-named Stakeknife. Scappaticci was said to be a high-level IRA informer working for the British Army's Force Research Unit, while he was head of the IRA's Internal Security Unit, which interrogated and killed suspected informers. Scappaticci denies being Stakeknife, and involvement in IRA activity. In December 2005, Sinn Féin member and former IRA volunteer Denis Donaldson appeared at a press conference in Dublin and confessed to being a British spy since the early 1980s. Donaldson, who ran Sinn Féin's operations in New York during the Northern Ireland peace process, was expelled by the party. On 4 April 2006, Donaldson was shot dead by the Real IRA splinter group at his retreat near Glenties in County Donegal. Other prominent informers include Eamon Collins, Sean O'Callaghan, and Roy McShane, who worked as a driver for the leadership of Sinn Féin including Adams.


title: Provisional Irish Republican Army

text: The IRA regarded informers as traitors, and a threat to the organisation and lives of its members. Suspected informers were dealt with by the IRA's Internal Security Unit, which carried out an investigation and interrogated the suspects. Following this a court martial would take place, consisting of three members of equal or higher rank than the accused, plus a member of GHQ or the Army Council acting as an observer. Any death sentence would be ratified by the Army Council, who would be informed of the verdict by the observer. The original IRA, as well as all the major paramilitary organisations active during the Troubles, also killed alleged informers. The IRA usually killed informers with a single shot to the head, and left many of their bodies in public to deter other informers. There was also a group of sixteen people known as the Disappeared who were secretly buried between 1972 and 1985, which included alleged informers, agents for the security forces, and people that stole IRA weapons and used them in armed robberies. In March 1999 the IRA apologised for the "prolonged anguish" caused to the families of the Disappeared, and stated it had identified the burial places of nine people, including the most high-profile victim, Jean McConville, a Catholic civilian and widowed mother-of-ten. This led to the recovery of three bodies later in 1999, although Jean McConville's body was not recovered until August 2003. As of 2019, the bodies of Columba McVeigh, Joe Lynskey, and undercover British Army intelligence officer Robert Nairac have yet to be recovered.


title: Provisional Irish Republican Army

text: Former IRA volunteers are involved in various dissident republican splinter groups, which are active in the low-level dissident Irish republican campaign. The oldest dissident group is the Continuity IRA, which formed in 1986 following a split in the republican movement, over the decision to allow members, if elected, to take seats in Dáil Éireann. This group was inactive for several years while acquiring weapons and finance, their first attack was in 1994 during the Provisional IRA's first ceasefire. The Real IRA was formed in November 1997 when senior Provisional IRA members, including quartermaster-general Michael McKevitt, resigned over acceptance of the Mitchell Principles. The Real IRA is best known for the 1998 Omagh bombing which killed 29 civilians, and the 2009 Massereene Barracks shooting which killed two British soldiers. In 2005/6 some Provisional IRA members defected and formed Óglaigh na hÉireann, which became active in 2009. This group also included former members of the Irish National Liberation Army and a faction that splintered from the Real IRA. In 2011 a group calling itself "the IRA" claimed responsibility for the murder of Ronan Kerr, a Catholic member of the PSNI. The group was believed to have formed in 2008, and included former senior Provisional IRA members unhappy at Sinn Féin's direction and the peace process. Also in 2008, Republican Action Against Drugs (RAAD) was formed in Derry. This vigilante group's membership included former Provisional IRA members and members of other republican groups. RAAD, "the IRA", and some smaller groups merged with the Real IRA in 2012 to form the New IRA.


title: New England

text: New England is a region comprising six states in the Northeastern United States: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont. It is bordered by the state of New York to the west and by the Canadian provinces of New Brunswick to the northeast and Quebec to the north. The Atlantic Ocean is to the east and southeast, and Long Island Sound is to the southwest. Boston is New England's largest city, as well as the capital of Massachusetts. Greater Boston is the largest metropolitan area, with nearly a third of New England's population; this area includes Worcester, Massachusetts (the second-largest city in New England), Manchester, New Hampshire (the largest city in New Hampshire), and Providence, Rhode Island (the capital of and largest city in Rhode Island).


title: New England

text: In 1620, the Pilgrims, Puritan Separatists from England, established Plymouth Colony, the second successful English settlement in America, following the Jamestown Settlement in Virginia founded in 1607. Ten years later, more Puritans established Massachusetts Bay Colony north of Plymouth Colony. Over the next 126 years, people in the region fought in four French and Indian Wars, until the English colonists and their Iroquois allies defeated the French and their Algonquian allies in America. In 1692, the town of Salem, Massachusetts, and surrounding areas experienced the Salem witch trials, one of the most infamous cases of mass hysteria in American history.


title: New England

text: In the late 18th century, political leaders from the New England colonies initiated resistance to Britain's taxes without the consent of the colonists. Residents of Rhode Island captured and burned a British ship which was enforcing unpopular trade restrictions, and residents of Boston threw British tea into the harbor. Britain responded with a series of punitive laws stripping Massachusetts of self-government which the colonists called the "Intolerable Acts". These confrontations led to the first battles of the American Revolutionary War in 1775 and the expulsion of the British authorities from the region in spring 1776. The region played a prominent role in the movement to abolish slavery in the United States, and it was the first region of the U.S. transformed by the Industrial Revolution, initially centered on the Blackstone and Merrimack river valleys.


title: New England

text: The physical geography of New England is diverse. Southeastern New England is covered by a narrow coastal plain, while the western and northern regions are dominated by the rolling hills and worn-down peaks of the northern end of the Appalachian Mountains. The Atlantic fall line lies close to the coast, which enabled numerous cities to take advantage of water power along the many rivers, such as the Connecticut River, which bisects the region from north to south.


title: New England

text: Each state is generally subdivided into small municipalities known as towns, many of which are governed by town meetings. While unincorporated areas do exist, they are limited to roughly half of Maine, along with some isolated, sparsely populated northern regions of New Hampshire and Vermont. New England is one of the U.S. Census Bureau's nine regional divisions and the only multi-state region with clear, consistent boundaries. It maintains a strong sense of cultural identity, although the terms of this identity are often contrasted, combining Puritanism with liberalism, agrarian life with industry, and isolation with immigration.


title: New England

text: The earliest known inhabitants of New England were Native American who spoke a variety of the Eastern Algonquian languages. Prominent tribes included the Abenakis, Mi'kmaq, Penobscot, Pequots, Mohegans, Narragansetts, Pocumtucks, and Wampanoag. Prior to the arrival of European colonists, the Western Abenakis inhabited what is modern New Hampshire, New York and Vermont, as well as parts of Quebec and western Maine. Their principal town was Norridgewock in present-day Maine.


title: New England

text: The Penobscot lived along the Penobscot River in modern Maine. The Narragansetts and smaller tribes under their sovereignty lived in what is known today as Rhode Island, west of Narragansett Bay, including Block Island. The Wampanoag occupied the regions of modern southeastern Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and the islands of Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket. The Pocumtucks lived in what is now Western Massachusetts, and the Mohegan and Pequot tribes lived in the current Connecticut region. The Connecticut River Valley linked numerous tribes culturally, linguistically, and politically.


title: New England

text: As early as 1600, French, Dutch, and English traders began exploring the New World, trading metal, glass, and cloth for local beaver pelts.


title: New England

text: On April 10, 1606, King James I of England issued a charter for the Virginia Company, which comprised the London Company and the Plymouth Company. These two privately funded ventures were intended to claim land for England, to conduct trade, and to return a profit. In 1620, the Pilgrims arrived on the "Mayflower" and established Plymouth Colony in Massachusetts, beginning the history of permanent European colonization in New England.


title: New England

text: In 1616, English explorer John Smith named the region "New England". The name was officially sanctioned on November 3, 1620, when the charter of the Virginia Company of Plymouth was replaced by a royal charter for the Plymouth Council for New England, a joint-stock company established to colonize and govern the region. The Pilgrims wrote and signed the Mayflower Compact before leaving the ship, and it became their first governing document. The Massachusetts Bay Colony came to dominate the area and was established by royal charter in 1629 with its major town and port of Boston established in 1630.


title: New England

text: Massachusetts Puritans began to establish themselves in Connecticut as early as 1633. Roger Williams was banished from Massachusetts for heresy, led a group south, and founded Providence Plantation in the area that became the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations in 1636. At this time, Vermont was uncolonized, and the territories of New Hampshire and Maine were claimed and governed by Massachusetts. As the region grew, it received many emigrants from Europe due to its religious toleration, economy, and longer life expectancy.


title: New England

text: On October 19, 1652, the Massachusetts General Court decreed that "for the prevention of clipping of all such pieces of money as shall be coined with-in this jurisdiction, it is ordered by this Courte and the authorite thereof, that henceforth all pieces of money coined shall have a double ring on either side, with this inscription, Massachusetts, and a tree in the center on one side, and New England and the yeare of our Lord on the other side. "These coins were the famous "tree" pieces. There were Willow Tree Shillings, Oak Tree Shillings, and Pine Tree Shillings" minted by John Hull and Robert Sanderson in the "Hull Mint" on Summer Street in Boston. "The Pine Tree was the last to be coined, and today there are specimens in existence, which is probably why all of these early coins are referred to as Pine Tree shillings."  The "Hull Mint" was forced to close in 1683. In 1684 the charter of Massachusetts was revoked by the king Charles II.


title: New England

text: Relationships between colonists and local Indian tribes alternated between peace and armed skirmishes, the bloodiest of which was the Pequot War in 1637 which resulted in the Mystic massacre. On May 19, 1643, the colonies of Massachusetts Bay, Plymouth, New Haven, and Connecticut joined in a loose compact called the New England Confederation (officially "The United Colonies of New England"). The confederation was designed largely to coordinate mutual defense, and it gained some importance during King Philip's War which pitted the colonists and their Indian allies against a widespread Indian uprising from June 1675 through April 1678, resulting in killings and massacres on both sides.


title: New England

text: During the next 74 years, there were six colonial wars that took place primarily between New England and New France, during which New England was allied with the Iroquois Confederacy and New France was allied with the Wabanaki Confederacy. Mainland Nova Scotia came under the control of New England after the Siege of Port Royal (1710), but both New Brunswick and most of Maine remained contested territory between New England and New France. The British eventually defeated the French in 1763, opening the Connecticut River Valley for British settlement into western New Hampshire and Vermont.


title: New England

text: The New England Colonies were settled primarily by farmers who became relatively self-sufficient. Later, New England's economy began to focus on crafts and trade, aided by the Puritan work ethic, in contrast to the Southern colonies which focused on agricultural production while importing finished goods from England.


title: New England

text: European colonization in the region also led to the enslavement of Native Americans, particularly in the aftermath of conflicts between Indians and colonists such as the Pequot War and King William's War. Up until 1700, Native Americans comprised a majority of the non-white labor force in colonial New England.


title: New England

text: By 1686, King James II had become concerned about the increasingly independent ways of the colonies, including their self-governing charters, their open flouting of the Navigation Acts, and their growing military power. He therefore established the Dominion of New England, an administrative union comprising all of the New England colonies. In 1688, the former Dutch colonies of New York, East New Jersey and West New Jersey were added to the dominion. The union was imposed from the outside and contrary to the rooted democratic tradition of the region and it was highly unpopular among the colonists.


title: New England

text: The dominion significantly modified the charters of the colonies, including the appointment of royal governors to nearly all of them. There was an uneasy tension between the royal governors, their officers, and the elected governing bodies of the colonies. The governors wanted unlimited authority, and the different layers of locally elected officials would often resist them. In most cases, the local town governments continued operating as self-governing bodies, just as they had before the appointment of the governors.


title: New England

text: After the Glorious Revolution in 1689, Bostonians overthrew royal governor Sir Edmund Andros. They seized dominion officials and adherents to the Church of England during a popular and bloodless uprising. These tensions eventually culminated in the American Revolution, boiling over with the outbreak of the War of American Independence in 1775. The first battles of the war were fought in Lexington and Concord, Massachusetts, later leading to the Siege of Boston by continental troops. In March 1776, British forces were compelled to retreat from Boston.


title: New England

text: After the dissolution of the Dominion of New England, the colonies of New England ceased to function as a unified political unit but remained a defined cultural region. There were often disputes over territorial jurisdiction, leading to land exchanges such as those regarding the Equivalent Lands and New Hampshire Grants.


title: New England

text: By 1784, all of the states in the region had taken steps towards the abolition of slavery, with Vermont and Massachusetts introducing total abolition in 1777 and 1783, respectively. The nickname "Yankeeland" was sometimes used to denote the New England area, especially among Southerners and the British.


title: New England

text: Vermont was admitted to statehood in 1791 after settling a dispute with New York. The territory of Maine had been a part of Massachusetts, but it was granted statehood on March 15, 1820, as part of the Missouri Compromise. Today, New England is defined as the six states of Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut.


title: New England

text: New England's economic growth relied heavily on trade with the British Empire, and the region's merchants and politicians strongly opposed trade restrictions. As the United States and the United Kingdom fought the War of 1812, New England Federalists organized the Hartford Convention in the winter of 1814 to discuss the region's grievances concerning the war, and to propose changes to the U.S. constitution to protect the region's interests and maintain its political power. Radical delegates within the convention proposed the region's secession from the United States, but they were outnumbered by moderates who opposed the idea.


title: New England

text: Politically, the region often disagreed with the rest of the country. Massachusetts and Connecticut were among the last refuges of the Federalist Party, and New England became the strongest bastion of the new Whig Party when the Second Party System began in the 1830s. The Whigs were usually dominant throughout New England, except in the more Democratic Maine and New Hampshire. Leading statesmen hailed from the region, including Daniel Webster.


title: New England

text: Many notable literary and intellectual figures were New Englanders, including Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, John Greenleaf Whittier, George Bancroft, and William H. Prescott.


title: New England

text: New England was key to the industrial revolution in the United States. The Blackstone Valley running through Massachusetts and Rhode Island has been called the birthplace of America's industrial revolution. In 1787, the first cotton mill in America was founded in the North Shore seaport of Beverly, Massachusetts, as the Beverly Cotton Manufactory. The Manufactory was also considered the largest cotton mill of its time. Technological developments and achievements from the Manufactory led to the development of more advanced cotton mills, including Slater Mill in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. Towns such as Lawrence, Massachusetts, Lowell, Massachusetts, Woonsocket, Rhode Island, and Lewiston, Maine, became centers of the textile industry following the innovations at Slater Mill and the Beverly Cotton Manufactory.


title: New England

text: The Connecticut River Valley became a crucible for industrial innovation, particularly the Springfield Armory, pioneering such advances as interchangeable parts and the assembly line which influenced manufacturing processes all around the world. From early in the nineteenth century until the mid-twentieth, the region surrounding Springfield, Massachusetts and Hartford, Connecticut served as the United States' epicenter for advanced manufacturing, drawing skilled workers from all over the world.


title: New England

text: The rapid growth of textile manufacturing in New England between 1815 and 1860 caused a shortage of workers. Recruiters were hired by mill agents to bring young women and children from the countryside to work in the factories. Between 1830 and 1860, thousands of farm girls moved from rural areas where there was no paid employment to work in the nearby mills, such as the famous Lowell Mill Girls. As the textile industry grew, immigration also grew. By the 1850s, immigrants began working in the mills, especially French Canadians and Irish.


title: New England

text: New England as a whole was the most industrialized part of the U.S. By 1850, the region accounted for well over a quarter of all manufacturing value in the country and over a third of its industrial workforce. It was also the most literate and most educated region in the country.


title: New England

text: During the same period, New England and areas settled by New Englanders (upstate New York, Ohio's Western Reserve, and the upper midwestern states of Michigan and Wisconsin) were the center of the strongest abolitionist and anti-slavery movements in the United States, coinciding with the Protestant Great Awakening in the region. Abolitionists who demanded immediate emancipation such as William Lloyd Garrison, John Greenleaf Whittier and Wendell Phillips had their base in the region. So too did anti-slavery politicians who wanted to limit the growth of slavery, such as John Quincy Adams, Charles Sumner, and John P. Hale. When the anti-slavery Republican Party was formed in the 1850s, all of New England, including areas that had previously been strongholds for both the Whig and the Democratic Parties, became strongly Republican. New England remained solidly Republican until Catholics began to mobilize behind the Democrats, especially in 1928, and up until the Republican party realigned its politics in a shift known as the Southern strategy. This led to the end of "Yankee Republicanism" and began New England's relatively swift transition into a consistently Democratic stronghold in national elections.


title: New England

text: The flow of immigrants continued at a steady pace from the 1840s until cut off by World War I. The largest numbers came from Ireland and Britain before 1890, and after that from Quebec, Italy, and Southern Europe. The immigrants filled the ranks of factory workers, craftsmen, and unskilled laborers. The Irish assumed a larger and larger role in the Democratic Party in the cities and statewide, while the rural areas remained Republican. Yankees left the farms, which never were highly productive; many headed west, while others became professionals and businessmen in the New England cities.


title: New England

text: The Great Depression in the United States of the 1930s hit the region hard, with high unemployment in the industrial cities. The Boston Stock Exchange rivaled the New York Stock Exchange in 1930. In the beginning of 1930 John C. Hull, first Securities Director of Massachusetts (1930–1936), helped to mitigate the consequences of the Wall Street Crash of 1929 and the Great Depression. He was helpful in the passing of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 with his war on "unlisted securities".  Hull gave testimony to the US Senate (Sen. Duncan Upshaw Fletcher) for work on the Pecora Commission, which revealed that neither Albert H. Wiggin (born in Medfield, MA) nor J. P. Morgan Jr. had paid any income taxes in 1931 and 1932; a public outcry ensued.


title: New England

text: On the subject of securities laws in the early 1930s in response to the Great Depression, Boston figured prominently. Three Harvard professors, Felix Frankfurter, Benjamin V. Cohen and James M. Landis, drafted both the Securities Act of 1933 and the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. Joseph P. Kennedy Sr., the first chair of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, was from Boston.


title: New England

text: The Democrats appealed to factory workers and especially Catholics, pulling them into the New Deal coalition and making the once-Republican region into one that was closely divided. However, the enormous spending on munitions, ships, electronics, and uniforms during World War II caused a burst of prosperity in every sector.


title: New England

text: The region lost most of its factories starting with the loss of textiles in the 1930s and getting worse after 1960. The New England economy was radically transformed after World War II. The factory economy practically disappeared. Like urban centers in the Rust Belt, once-bustling New England communities fell into economic decay following the flight of the region's industrial base. The textile mills one by one went out of business from the 1920s to the 1970s. For example, the Crompton Company, after 178 years in business, went bankrupt in 1984, costing the jobs of 2,450 workers in five states. The major reasons were cheap imports, the strong dollar, declining exports, and a failure to diversify. The shoe industry subsequently left the region as well.


title: New England

text: What remains is very high technology manufacturing, such as jet engines, nuclear submarines, pharmaceuticals, robotics, scientific instruments, and medical devices. MIT (the Massachusetts Institute of Technology) invented the format for university-industry relations in high tech fields and spawned many software and hardware firms, some of which grew rapidly. By the 21st century, the region had become famous for its leadership roles in the fields of education, medicine, medical research, high-technology, finance, and tourism.


title: New England

text: Some industrial areas were slow in adjusting to the new service economy. In 2000, New England had two of the ten poorest cities in the U.S. (by percentage living below the poverty line): the state capitals of Providence, Rhode Island and Hartford, Connecticut. They were no longer in the bottom ten by 2010; Connecticut, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire remain among the ten wealthiest states in the United States in terms of median household income and per capita income.


title: New England

text: The states of New England have a combined area, including water surfaces, of , making the region slightly larger than the state of Washington and slightly smaller than Great Britain. Maine alone constitutes nearly one-half of the total area of New England, yet is only the 39th-largest state, slightly smaller than Indiana. The remaining states are among the smallest in the U.S., including the smallest state—Rhode Island.