In the long context of Irish history, the IRA is on the right and winning side. British policy in Ireland has been one, long, oppressive and rapacious regime. By 1914, the Irish, by legal, democratic, constitutional means, won Home Rule for Ireland. That would result in the re-establishment of the Irish Parliament that had been abolished in a corrupt vote during the Act of Union (Ireland and Britain) in 1801. The British Parliament suspended the Home Rule Act because of the outbreak of World War I. At the same time imperialist and Protestant British officials were stirring up the Protestants of Northern Ireland. The Irish were content to be part of the United Kingdom and hundreds of thousands volunteered to fight in the British Army. The British made a terrible mistake when they executed many of the leaders of the Easter Rebellion. That Rebellion and the repression, created a political sea change in Ireland that never was reversed. The Irish were no longer content with Home Rule but wanted Independence. In the election of 1918, Sinn Fein, wiped out all the opposition in the Nationalist areas and triumphed everywhere except the North of Ireland. Had the British kept the deal that they made when the Home Rule Act was passed in 1914, all might have worked out. But that was not to be. The Northern Ireland interests insisted on partition. The British were sympathetic to that but first the Sein Fein had to be put down. That was the era of Micheal Collins and the first civil war. The British lost, but the peace conference was conducted to settle and adopt the status quo which resulted in partition. I must skip over the Irish Civil War that followed causing the political divisions still extant in Eire. I won't go into the long history and the mutation of the Provos out of the IRA, but it is pursuing the concept of the united Ireland that was accepted by the British in 1914 and then betrayed. British duplicity and betrayal have been the watchword and the rule in Ireland. The rump government in Belfast terrorized and oppressed the Nationalist minority in the Six Counties for fifty years until the Brits could stand the stench no longer and put that government out of existence. The only reason that negotiations have reached the stage that they have is because of the gun. The Irish learned that the British don't honor pacts or laws, and only by force of arms shall gains be made in Ireland. That sums up the sad history of that lovely isle. Ireland was the first English colony and is winding up being the last. The irony is profound.