Provisional Irish Republican Army Campaign 1969-1997 (Paperback)

High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! From 1969 until 1997, the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) conducted an armed paramilitary campaign in Northern Ireland and England, aimed at ending British rule in Northern Ireland in order to create a united Ireland. In the early days of the Troubles (1969-71), the Provisional IRA was poorly armed, with only a handful of old fashioned weapons left over from the IRA's Border campaign of the 1950s. The IRA had split in December 1969 into the Provisional IRA and Official IRA factions. In the first years of the conflict, the Provisionals' main activities were providing firepower to support nationalist rioters and defending nationalist areas from attacks. In contrast to the IRA's relative inaction during the rioting of 1969, in the summer of 1970, the Provisional IRA members mounted determined armed defences of the nationalist areas of Belfast against loyalist attackers, killing a number of loyalists in the process.