6.2 TIPOS DE TECNOLOGÍA TIC QUE ACTUALMENTE SE ESTAN
6.2.3 E-Community
My theory of splinter formation posits that groups forming factionally around a single shared disagreement will tend to have higher levels of internal cohesion. Groups forming in this way, recruiting and building their membership base around core pref- erences, are more likely to endure and succeed as an organization. These shared pref- erences minimize internal disputes and allow for decentralizing transformations that bolster survivability. Then, one can understand the new group’s trajectory by examin- ing the nature of their dispute with the parent organization. This provides important information about the goals of the new organization and the type of individuals that will comprise its ranks.
The INLA is an interesting case of splinter formation that began factional, based around Costello and his closest allies who dissented with the OIRA Army Council primarily over the ceasefire, but then soon lost their cohesive advantage by broad- ening their agenda around socialist objectives, worker rights, and political pressure. Their evolution strongly highlights the problems associated with a diffuse organiza- tional identity. However, it is from this identity that one can also understand the
broader trajectory of the organization: since the group was one of the few opposing a ceasefire and advocating a renewed armed campaign it managed to attract some of the most hard-line members from both the OIRA and PIRA, since the PIRA was also on a ceasefire at the time. These anti-cease-fire hardliners sometimes lobbied the leadership for increasingly confrontational policies while at other times they simply launched their own unsanctioned missions, leading to some of the deadliest violence of the Troubles and spurring intra-organizational feuds that would soon tear the or- ganization apart. Also as a result of the internal feuding, the organization was forced to remain hierarchical in an attempt to exert and to maintain control. As one report from the British Independent Monitoring Commission notes, “The INLA is a very volatile mix of people from many and varied terrorist backgrounds. It has a repu- tation for extreme violence and internal feuding centered round leadership disputes which regularly lead to fragmentation of the group.”23
On the socialist-political side of things, the INLA/IRSP attracted a “curious mix- ture of socialists, republicans and trade unionists, most of whom joined the movement as a protest against the positions adopted by the Provisionals and the Officials.24” A wide variety of leftists from across the political spectrum, many of whom were disaffected with their own organizations, joined the IRSP. A consequence of such a wide range of political ambitions was that the IRSP was never able to pin down their precise ideological views. This persisted throughout the duration of the IRSP with the organization fluctuating between various strains of Marxism and socialism over the years. This was noticeable even in the group’s first year when much of the original leadership quickly resigned upon realizing that there was no easy way to resolve the diversity of the group’s political beliefs.25
Things were no better on the military side of the INLA either: Costello’s break
23. Independent Monitoring Commission, Report #1
with the OIRA, which was largely couched in terms of his antipathy towards the ceasefire they enacted in 1972, attracted some of the most hard-line militants with either little or no appetite for politics. Many of these hard-liners were simply criminals who wanted to cause as much pain and destruction as possible while others viewed the violent campaign within a broader Republican strategy. Certainly, the catalyst for these individuals was the violent outlet that the INLA provided. Two major republican organizations, the OIRA and the PIRA, were on ceasefires, and the INLA’s formation was highly celebrated by some of the most militant individuals around.
Divergent preferences among the INLA/IRSP manifested themselves in three ways: first, as tension within the IRSP which could not pin down its ideological stance; second, between the IRSP and INLA on how to achieve their goals and the role of violence in their broader strategic calculus; and third, within the ranks of the INLA between the most hard-line rank-and-file members who wanted an immediate, all-out violent campaign, and the leadership, including Costello, who advocated a level of strategic restraint. These internal disagreements ultimately belied the internal unity of the organization and each once can be traced to the diversity of preferences among individuals who were initially attracted to the INLA/IRSP.
First, the IRSP’s internal divisions were significant. Although a socialist organi- zation that ultimately sought to unite Ireland under a 32 county socialist republic, the exact brand of socialism was never fully realized. Initially, the IRSP sought to cast a broad socialist net and it would often use general leftist-socialist rhetoric in its publications and announcements. For instance, describing the IRSP to an Italian journalist, Seamus Costello said that “We are a revolutionary socialist party and our objective is to create a revolutionary socialist state in Ireland.” No more specifics were provided. The IRSP also had the tendency of foregoing its own identity to focus on the problems with others: “Despite many references to Connolly, and to a lesser extent Marx, Engels and Lenin, the politics of the party became defined in terms of
differences between its ideology and that of the Official and Republican movements. In other words the IRSP was content to define its political outlook in terms of what it disagreed with.26” By taking this approach, the group ended up attracting individuals with a wide range of opinions. Although the IRSP only recruited from the left side of the political spectrum, this was a diverse field in the 1970s including dominant strains of thought by Marx, Stalin, and Trotsky, among others. These divisions are reflected in the different groups that were initially drawn to the IRSP:
The far left were enthused by the emergence of the IRSP seeing it as having the potential to become a mass revolutionary party. . . People’s Democracy also welcomed the formation of the IRSP, and some of its members joined it. Those alienated by the Officials’ increasing embrace of Eastern Europe saw the IRSP as potentially ’anti-Stalinist’. Others hoped it would provide an open forum . . . But few within the IRSP, beyond those with a background in the leftist groups, had any knowledge of Marxist ideology.27
The negative effect of these unaligned preferences can be seen in the events at the groups’ first Ard Fheis in December 1975 where 11 council members resigned in protest over the inability to reach a common, coherent doctrine. Upon her departure, Bernadette McAliskey, a significant figure in the Socialist movement at the time, observed “the IRSP to be objectively indistinguishable from the other strands of republicanism and possibly combining the worst elements of both.” Even more, in an op ed published after the split, the Derry chapter leader of the IRSP noted that he approved of the resignations, saying that the group’s policies were only “a mish-mash
26. Bloomer, The History and Politics of the I.R.S.P & I.N.L.A.: From 1974 to the Present Day, 8.
of nationalism and vaguely radical rhetoric. . . ”28
Second, there was significant preference divergence between members of the INLA and the IRSP and their disagreements generally concerned the utility of violent opera- tions. The hardliners who had defected from the Officials and the Provos swarmed the ranks of the INLA and they were constantly at odds with those who joined primarily for the IRSP. One OIRA member who resisted joining Costello noted that “Many of the people that went with the Erps [IRSP]. . . were just keen to get into the Brits and the Prods. They were at heart sectarian. They couldn’t resist the temptation to hit out at the loyalists. I felt this would be a disaster.29” Another major source of hard-line recruits came from a withering organization known as Fianna ´Eirann, an IRA youth wings with a hard-line streak. According to a former member:
The Fianna was a big problem for the [IRA] leadership. I was in the Fianna at the time. There was a really militant crowd in the Fianna. I remember one meeting the Fianna was called to in Cyprus Street in 1973. The OIRA quartermaster for Belfast was there. He asked members to tell him how many weapons they had. He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Fianna units reported having heavy machine-guns, explosives, rifles, and handguns. He nearly fell off his chair as he took stock of our weapons. Many of those that later went With the Erps [IRSP] came from the ranks of the Fianna. I was like them at the beginning. All we wanted to do was bang away at the Brits.30”
Many of the hardline extremists who initially joined the IRSP/INLA were only interested in violence and retaliating for the perceived injustices against the Catholic
28. “Derry Backing for IRSP Resignations,”Newspaper Clipping (British National Archives), De- cember 1975,
29. Holland and McDonald,INLA, Deadly Divisions, 47. 30.Ibid., 39-40.
community in Northern Ireland. As one founding member put it, “We were a body of individuals prepared to wage war against the British machine in Ireland.31” These hardliners strained relations within the INLA/IRSP as they had little in common with the group’s more politically-minded recruits. “This manifested itself as a series of disagreements between the socialist-republican element and the militant national- ists within the INLA. By the Late 1970’s,” not even five years after their formation, “factions within the INLA openly struggled for supremacy.”32 The different prefer- ences for violence that manifested themselves in intraorganizational feuds constantly bedeviled the organization, exacting a harsh toll on the unity, stability, and survival of the group as a whole.
Third, in addition to the significant differences in opinion and preference between members of the IRSP and the INLA, there were even problemswithin the INLA itself. Most significantly, Costello and other INLA leaders had a difficult if not wholly impos- sible time controlling their rank and file members and exerting negative control—in other words, making them refrain from using violence when ordered to stand down. The leadership’s biggest concern was with the most hardline members of the INLA who were predominantly concentrated in the North and especially in Belfast. On a number of occasions the Belfast contingent conducted operations against Costello’s explicit instructions which, unsurprisingly, created problems: notably, Costello was not planning to announce the INLA until he could fully fund and equip the new orga- nization, but also not until the IRSP could establish itself as a legitimate organization. As he vehemently argued (and lied) in January 1975, just months after the IRSP and the INLA were formed, “We are not involved in any kind of military action but are solely a political group.”33While this plan might have made the most strategic sense,
31. English,Armed struggle, 177.
32. Bloomer, The History and Politics of the I.R.S.P & I.N.L.A.: From 1974 to the Present Day, 5.
it was not realistic in light of the INLA hardliners who were rearing to use violence. Certainly, Costello’s plans now seem naive in light of the type of individuals that the group managed to attract:“Why would gunmen who had grown restless because of the three-year ceasefire join another organization that did not offer them some military role?”34 Resultantly, Costello would soon find himself in a difficult position, negotiating between the IRSP, the INLA hardliners, and his own strategic vision that was situated somewhere in the middle. More problematically, however, he would soon be unable to control his own organization.