Ireland's Long War

In March 1989, the South Armagh Brigade of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) carried out a bold, meticulously planned ambush near the border, killing two senior officers of the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC). The attack became one of the most high-profile blows against British policing in the North during the final phase of the conflict known colloquially as ‘the Troubles’. “In the years that followed, claims emerged of Gardaí in the South tipping off the IRA – allegedly enabling republicans to prepare and execute the ambush.The ambush was the culmination of an extended surveillance campaign lasting most of 1988 and 1989 by the IRA’s elite South Armagh unit, whose operations had long frustrated British forces along the heavily militarised border between North and South.The RUC, whose reputation was shaped by decades of sectarianism and repression in support of the Unionist state, had long been a central target of Republican military operations. But the killing of Chief Superintendent Harry Breen and Superintendent Bob Buchanan marked a significant escalation — and a symbolic coup for the IRA.The ambush came at a time when the British government was stepping up its war against the Republican movement in the North. It exposed even the most senior police figures’ vulnerability, delivering a humiliating blow to the RUC and its political masters.The killings would also prompt the government in the South to establish the Smithwick Tribunal — a multi-million-pound investigation tasked with determining whether Gardaí colluded with the IRA by tipping off the South Armagh Brigade about the RUC officers’ movements.

On a spring evening in 1987, eight members of one of the IRA’s most formidable rural units were cut down in a British Army ambush in Loughgall, County Armagh. It was the single deadliest day for the IRA during the post-partition conflict colloquially known as “the Troubles”—a turning point in what republicans called the long war against British rule in the North.Nearly four decades later, the ambush that wiped out the East Tyrone Brigade’s elite unit remains cloaked in secrecy, with repeated attempts by the British state to block a public inquiry. How British forces acquired such precise operational intelligence is still the subject of unanswered questions—and deep suspicion within Republican circles.The deaths of the eight Volunteers marked more than a tactical defeat. It was the destruction of a unit widely seen as the cutting edge of rural republican militancy. With them died not only lives, but an entire strategic vision—one that had sought to escalate the armed struggle into a full-scale guerrilla campaign across the border counties.Loughgall was a psychological and strategic watershed: a precision killing that sent shockwaves through the IRA, traumatised its support base throughout Ireland and further afield, and—some argue—paved the way for the political project that would eventually supplant the armed campaign.Visit Ireland's Long War on Substack to see this episodes associated images and maps.

Few figures from the conflict known as “the Troubles” evoke more suspicion, myth, and controversy than Captain Robert Nairac. While officially commemorated as a courageous British Army officer who died gathering intelligence behind enemy lines, he is remembered very differently within the Irish republican community—not merely as a soldier, but as a central figure in Britain’s covert war in Ireland. This was a campaign not fought in open battle, but in shadow: a strategy built on collusion with loyalist paramilitaries, the deployment of assassination squads, and the systematic targeting of civilians. Read a detailed article on Ireland's Long War on Substack.

Inside the 1989 commando-style IRA raid that stunned the British military. On Wednesday, 13 December 1989, the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) conducted an unprecedented, highly organised and lethal frontal assault on a British Army vehicle checkpoint at Derryard, near Rosslea, County Fermanagh. The attack, which resulted in the deaths of two British soldiers and injuries to several others, represented one of the most sophisticated guerrilla operations of the conflict in the North of Ireland, commonly referred to as ‘The Troubles’.