Henry Patterson The Politics of Illusion
A Political History of the IRA

This is the first comprehensive study of the IRA's attempts to create a 'social republicanism', a marriage between militant nationalism and the politics of the left. From agitation amongst peasantry in the 1920s to recent efforts to add a political dimension to purist nationalism, Henry Patterson analyses the various failed attempts to marry two fundamentally incompatible ideologies.

Friend and foe have described the IRA as 'socialists', 'Marxists', 'fascists' or simply as militaristic and murderous thugs. In this highly praised work the author steers us through the complex and inevitably secretive history of both the Provisional and the Official IRA, Sinn Fein and the various organisations with which they have been associated.

This fully revised new edition takes the history of Irish republicanism beyond Sinn Fein's best ever performance in the 1997 Westminster and Dail elections to the IRA's renewed ceasefire. Henry Patterson's conclusion is that 'physical force' or militarist nationalism and the politics of the left make uneasy and, when the rhetoric is cleared away, illusory bed-fellows.

'Of immense value'
The Irish Times

'Subtle and authoritative'
Fintan O'Toole, New York Review of Books