Editing Official Irish Republican Army (section)

===Shift to the left===
The split in the [[Irish Republican Army]], soon followed by a parallel split in [[Sinn Féin]], was the result of the dissatisfaction of more traditional and militant [[Irish republicanism|republicans]] at the political direction taken by the leadership. The particular object of their discontent was Sinn Féin's ending of its policy of [[abstentionism]] in the [[Republic of Ireland]]. This issue is a key one in republican ideology, as traditional republicans regarded the Irish state as illegitimate and maintained that their loyalty was due only to the [[Irish Republic]] declared in 1916 and in their view, represented by the IRA Army Council.<ref>''The Lost Revolution: The Story of the Official IRA and the Workers Party'', Brian Hanley and Scott Millar, {{ISBN|1-84488-120-2}}</ref>

During the 1960s, the republican movement under the leadership of [[Cathal Goulding]] radically re-assessed their ideology and tactics after the dismal failure of the IRA's [[Border Campaign (IRA)|Border Campaign]] in the years 1956–62. They were heavily influenced by [[popular front]] ideology and drew close to [[communist]] thinking. A key intermediary body was the [[Communist Party of Great Britain]]'s organisation for Irish exiles, the [[Connolly Association]]. The [[Marxist analysis]] was that the conflict in Northern Ireland was a "[[Bourgeoisie|bourgeois]] nationalist" one between the [[Ulster Protestant]] and [[Irish Catholic]] [[working class]]es, fomented and continued by the [[ruling class]]. Its effect was to depress wages, since worker could be set against worker. They concluded that the first step on the road to a [[Counties of Ireland|32-county]] [[socialist republic]] in [[Ireland]] was the "democratisation" of [[Northern Ireland]] (i.e., the removal of discrimination against Catholics) and radicalisation of the southern working class. This would allow "class politics" to develop, eventually resulting in a challenge to the hegemony of both what they termed "[[British imperialism]]" and the respective [[Irish unionism|unionist]] and [[Irish nationalism|Irish nationalist]] establishments north and south of the Irish border.<ref>''The Lost Revolution: The Story of the Official IRA and the Workers Party'', Brian Hanley and Scott Millar, pp. 22–70, {{ISBN|1-84488-120-2}}</ref>

Goulding and those close to him argued that, in the context of sectarian division in Northern Ireland, a military campaign against the British presence would be counter-productive, since it would delay the day when the workers would unite to address social and economic issues.

The sense that the IRA seemed to be drifting away from its conventional republican roots into [[Marxism]] angered more traditional republicans. The radicals viewed Ulster Protestants with unionist views as "fellow Irishmen deluded by bourgeois loyalties, who needed to be engaged in dialectical debate".{{Citation needed|date=October 2007}} As a result, they were reluctant to use force to defend Catholic areas of [[Belfast]] when they came under attack from [[Ulster loyalism|Ulster loyalists]]—a role the IRA had performed since the 1920s.<ref>{{cite book|last=Holland|first= Jack |year=1994|title=INLA:Divisions|pages=8–10|location=Dublin|publisher= Torc|isbn= 1-898142-05-X}}</ref> Since the [[Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association]] marches began in 1968, there had been many cases of street violence. The [[Royal Ulster Constabulary]] (RUC) had been shown on television in undisciplined baton charges, and had already killed five non-combatant civilians, three of whom were children. The [[Orange Institution|Orange Order]]'s "marching season" during the summer of 1969 had been characterised by violence on both sides, which culminated in the three-day "[[Battle of the Bogside]]" in [[Derry]].