Éire Nua
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Éire Nua, or "New Ireland", was a political strategy of the Provisional IRA and its political wing Sinn Féin during the 1970s and early 1980s. It was particularly associated with the Dublin based leadership group centred around Ruairí Ó Brádaigh.
Éire Nua envisaged an all Ireland Republic that would be created when the British withdrew from Northern Ireland. It also involved the dissolution of the existing Republic of Ireland, which republicans of that era considered an illegitimate entity imposed by the British in 1922. Under Éire Nua, Ireland would become a federal state, with parliaments for each of its four provinces as well as a central parliament based in Athlone.
The purpose of the federal structure was twofold. Firstly, it was intended to show unionists in Northern Ireland that they would have some kind of self-government in a united Ireland. This would be achieved by the provision of a parliament, Dáil Uladh, for Ulster. However, by including all of historic Ulster - nine counties instead of the six in Northern Ireland - it was intended that the unionist majority would be slim enough to prevent abuses against the Catholic nationalist population in the province.
Secondly, the federal parliaments were intended to redress the perceived economic imbalance between the eastern and western parts of Ireland and was hoped to increase economic prosperity in the poorer west of the country.
Éire Nua was objected to by northern members of the Republican movement on the grounds that it would perpetuate the dominance of Protestant unionists in the north of the country, even after Irish independence. When northern republicans grouped around Gerry Adams gained control of the IRA and Sinn Féin in the late 1970s, they attacked the policy. In the early 1980s, it was removed as the policy of the Republican movement in favour of the creation of a unitary Irish Republic.
Ó Brádaigh and his supporters walked out of the 1986 Ard Fheis after a motion was passed that ended the Republican policy of Abstentionism to Leinster House and reorganized as Republican Sinn Féin and the Continuity IRA groups. These organisations still advocate the Éire Nua agenda.
