Artifact 6: “The IRA Destroys Its Weapons” A Political Cartoon by Patrick Chappatte

This political cartoon from 2005 pokes fun at the IRA being an “army” after completing their disarmament. One IRA soldier crosses out the Army in an IRA banner and asks his despondent comrades if the word “association” is more fitting. On the ground is a newspaper confirming the IRA disarmament, contrasting with the photo of an IRA gunman brandishing a rifle on the wall. The cartoon satirizes the lukewarm or outright hostile attitudes in dissident Republicanism to the Good Friday Agreement, and political solutions to the conflict in Northern Ireland as a whole.

The cartoon also highlights the consistent emphasis and rivaling between violent Republicans on naming. Claiming the history of the original Irish Republican Army, and specifically the anti-Treaty Irregulars, has been paramount for many breakaway extremist Nationalist groups. The Real IRA/New IRA, the Continuity IRA, the Provisional IRA, and the Official IRA have all sought to connect their movements to the existing history of Irish Republicanism through their naming. In seeking to delegitimize all other groups, these variations of the IRA will frequently refer to themselves simply as “the IRA” in communications and public statements. By referring to themselves as the IRA, paramilitary groups seek to claim the mantle of the Irish Republican Army which initially made Ireland independent and the anti-Treaty irregulars who continued to fight to reunify Northern Ireland. Each time dissident Republicans formed another group calling themselves the IRA, they implied the incendiary assertion of allege ownership over the entire history of Republicanism. Therefore, the petty squabbles over the name of the Irish Republican Army function into the broader arguments and divisions in extremist Nationalism.