Irish republicans opposed to the 1998 peace agreement that ended the Troubles
Dissident republicans (Irish:poblachtach easaontach)[1] areIrish republicans who do not support theNorthern Ireland peace process. The peace agreements followed a 30-year conflict known asthe Troubles, in which over 3,500 people were killed and 47,500 injured,[2] and in which republican paramilitary groups such as theProvisional Irish Republican Army waged a campaign to bring about aunited Ireland. Negotiations in the 1990s led to a Provisional IRA ceasefire in 1994 and to theGood Friday Agreement of 1998.[3][4] Mainstream republicans, represented bySinn Féin, supported the Agreement as a means of achieving Irish unity peacefully.[5] Dissidents saw this as an abandonment of the goal of an independent Irish republic and acceptance ofpartition.[6] They hold that theNorthern Ireland Assembly andPolice Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) are illegitimate and see the PSNI as a British paramilitary police force.[7]
Since the IRA ceasefire, splinter groups havecontinued an armed campaign against the British security forces in Northern Ireland. Like the Provisional IRA, each of these groups sees itself as the only rightful successor of theoriginal IRA and each calls itself simply "the IRA", orÓglaigh na hÉireann in Irish (see alsoIrish republican legitimism).
Groups currently described as dissident republican
^Whitehead, Tom (24 November 2014)."Is Isil the greatest terror threat?".The Daily Telegraph.Archived from the original on 25 November 2014. Retrieved6 April 2024.It is estimated some 3,530 people died during the Troubles on all sides and more than 47,500 were injured.
^Hoey, Paddy (7 January 2019). "Dissident and dissenting republicanism: From the Good Friday/Belfast Agreement to Brexit".Capital & Class.43 (1). Conference of Socialist Economists:73–87.doi:10.1177/030981681881808.This tradition of fractious factionalism became concentrated again in this period because the Good Friday/Belfast Agreement effectively solidified partition and delivered few of the key political aspirations of the Republican movement.
^Goulding, Stephen; McCroy, Amy (2021). "Representing the (un)finished revolution in Belfast's political murals".Critical Discourse Studies.18 (5): 557.doi:10.1080/17405904.2020.1777176.Dissident Republican is an umbrella terms for splinter groups who (1) rejected the constitutional compromise accepted by PIRA in the GFA in 1998; and, (2) view the PSNI as an illegitimate, imperial paramilitary group.
^Ross, F. Stuart (2012). "It Hasn't Gone Away You Know: Irish Republican Violence in the Post-Agreement Era".Nordic Irish Studies.11 (2). Dalarna University Centre for Irish Studies:65–66.eISSN2002-4517.JSTOR41702636.OCLC9980256269.
