TWICE before the IRA has told its members to “dump arms”, writes John Burns. Twice before they picked them up again. The difference now may be that the IRA actually means it, because their leaders in 1923 and 1962 most certainly didn’t.

The first order followed the defeat of the IRA by the Free State forces in the civil war. The Irish government rejected a truce, and Frank Aiken, the IRA chief of staff, issued the order in May 1923. But when Aiken said “dump arms”, he really meant “hide them for a while and we’ll have another crack at this later”.

Eamon de Valera made it clear that dumping arms was a temporary arrangement. “Military victory must be allowed to rest for the moment with those who have destroyed the republic,” he said, in a rousing message to IRA volunteers. “Other means must be sought to safeguard the nation’s rights.”

De Valera did find other means, but a hard core within the IRA refused to follow him into parliamentary politics and the movement drifted back to war in the late 1930s. This culminated in a 1939 bombing campaign in Britain, which was disastrous on every level and left the movement in tatters by the end of the second world war.

After a decade in the doldrums, the IRA regrouped for another military offensive in 1956, the so-called border campaign. This was another debacle, and enjoyed little support in nationalist areas. In February 1962 the army council decided to call it off, and Ruairi O Bradaigh directed all IRA units to dump arms and move back.

Once again, he made it clear that the pike should be put in the thatch, and that volunteers should wait for better circumstances.

O Bradaigh “looked forward with confidence . . . (to) the final and victorious phase of the struggle for the full freedom of Ireland”.

Seven years later, when the Troubles erupted in the north, the IRA once again dusted off its guns.

In May 1972 the Official IRA, from whom the Provisionals had split in December 1969, declared a ceasefire, but it neither disbanded nor decommissioned weapons, and became a covert and criminal fundraising and defensive group.

This time, it may be different. The IRA is not just dumping arms, it is promising to allow its entire arsenal to be destroyed in sight of independent witnesses.

If it ever does return to war, it will not just be a matter of taking the pike from the thatch or the gun from the top shelf.

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