The Irish National Liberation Army (INLA, Irish: Arm Saoirse Náisiúnta na hÉireann) is an Irish republican socialist paramilitary group formed on 8 December 1974, during the 30-year period of conflict known as "the Troubles". The group seeks to remove Northern Ireland from the United Kingdom and create a socialist republic encompassing all of Ireland. With membership estimated at 80–100 at their peak, it is the paramilitary wing of the Irish Republican Socialist Party (IRSP).
The INLA was founded by former members of the Official Irish Republican Army who opposed that group's ceasefire. It was initially known as the People's Liberation Army. The INLA waged a paramilitary campaign against the British Army and Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) in Northern Ireland. It was also active to a lesser extent in the Republic of Ireland, Great Britain and mainland Europe. High-profile attacks carried out by the INLA include the Droppin Well bombing, the 1994 Shankill Road killings and the assassinations of Airey Neave in 1979 and Billy Wright in 1997. However, it was smaller and less active than the main republican paramilitary group, the Provisional IRA. It was also weakened by feuds and internal tensions. Members of the group used the cover names People's Liberation Army, People's Republican Army, and Catholic Reaction Force for attacks its volunteers carried out but the INLA did not want to claim responsibility for. The INLA became a proscribed group in the United Kingdom on 3 July 1979 under the 1974 Prevention of Terrorism Act.
After a 24-year armed campaign, the INLA declared a ceasefire on 22 August 1998. In August 1999, it stated that "There is no political or moral argument to justify a resumption of the campaign". In October 2009, the INLA formally vowed to pursue its aims through peaceful political means and began decommissioning its weapons. The IRSP supports a "No First Strike" policy, that is allowing people to see the perceived failure of the peace process for themselves without military actions. The INLA is a proscribed organisation in the United Kingdom under the Terrorism Act 2000 and an illegal organisation in the Republic of Ireland.
During the 1960s, the Irish Republican Army (led by chief-of-staff Cathal Goulding) and Sinn Féin radically re-assessed their ideology and tactics after the dismal failure of the IRA's Border Campaign in the years 1956–62. They were heavily influenced by popular-front ideology and drew close to communist thinking. A key intermediary body was the Communist Party of Great Britain's organisation for Irish exiles, the Connolly Association. Marxist analysis saw the conflict in Northern Ireland as a "bourgeois nationalist" one between the Ulster Protestant and Irish Catholic working classes, fomented and continued by the ruling class. The effect of this conflict was to depress wages, since worker could be set against worker. They concluded that the first step on the road to a 32-county socialist republic in Ireland was the "democratisation" of Northern Ireland (i.e., the removal of discrimination against Catholics) and radicalisation of the southern working-class. This would allow "class politics" to develop, eventually resulting in a challenge to the hegemony both of what they termed "British imperialism" and of the respective unionist and Irish nationalist establishments north and south of the Irish border.
In August 1969 a major outbreak of intercommunal violence occurred in Northern Ireland, with eight deaths, six of them Catholics. On 14–15 August loyalists burned out several Catholic streets in Belfast in the Northern Ireland riots of August 1969. IRA units offered resistance, however very few weapons were available for the defence of Catholic areas. These events and the dissatisfaction of more traditional and militant republicans with the political direction taken by the IRA leaders, particularly their moves to end Abstentionism, led to a split and the formation of the Provisional IRA.
The "Official" IRA units who remained loyal to Goulding occasionally fought the British Army and the RUC throughout 1970 (as well as the Provisional IRA during a 1970 feud). In August 1971, after the introduction of internment without trial, Official IRA (OIRA) units fought numerous gun-battles with British troops who were deployed to arrest suspected republicans. However, the OIRA declared a ceasefire in 1972. The ceasefire, announced on 30 May, followed a number of armed actions which had been politically damaging. The organisation bombed the headquarters of the Parachute Regiment (the main perpetrators of Bloody Sunday) in Aldershot, but killed only five female cleaners, a gardener and an army chaplain. After the killing of William Best, a Catholic British soldier home on leave in Derry, the OIRA declared a ceasefire. In addition, the death of several militant OIRA figures such as Joe McCann in confrontations with British soldiers, enabled the Goulding faction to call off their armed campaign, which it had never supported wholeheartedly.
As time passed, discontent with the ceasefire in the movement grew. Seamus Costello, IRA veteran, operations officer for "general headquarters staff" (GHQ) and an elected representative on both Bray Urban District Council and Wicklow County Council, became the figurehead of those within the Official movement opposed to it. In 1972 an Official IRA army convention voted to endorse Costello's position of continued support for armed struggle in Northern Ireland. However, supporters of Costello did not have the numbers on the Army Council to enable what was voted for at the convention. At Official Sinn Féin Ardfheis in 1972 and 1973 Costello's policy was accepted by the rank and file but blocked by the party executive. A smear campaign was initiated against Costello and he was marginalised within the movement; some of his prominent associates were expelled. Costello himself was dismissed from Sinn Féin after ignoring an order not to stand in local elections or to attend meetings of the two local authorities of which he was a member. In spring 1974 Costello was also court-martialled by the Official IRA. Meanwhile, Costello's emerging anti-ceasefire faction, amongst them several Belfast men (including Ronnie Bunting, a Protestant nationalist), carried out a series of robberies in the Republic to pay for arms. At the Sinn Féin Ardfheis in Dublin on 1 December 1974, a Costello sympathiser proposed a motion overturning his dismissal. However, many of Costello's supporters had been blocked from entering, including the most articulate who would have been able to sway the members gathered. The motion was defeated by 197 votes to 15 and a split now appeared inevitable. Local branches of Official Sinn Féin throughout the island of Ireland announced they were resigning from the party, and on 8 December the dissidents met in the Spa Hotel in Lucan, Dublin.
The Irish Republican Socialist Party was founded on 8 December 1974 in the Spa Hotel in Lucan, Dublin and the movement's military wing, the Irish National Liberation Army, was founded later the same day. The IRSP's foundation was made public but the INLA's was kept a secret until the group could operate effectively. One delegate suggested the armed wing be named the Irish Citizen Army after the paramilitary group founded by James Connolly that participated in the 1916 Easter Rising but this was rejected by Costello because of sectarian attacks carried out in Northern Ireland by another group using the same name. Costello advocated the name "National Liberation Army" and this appeared in some subsequent claims of responsibility for attacks, although delegates settled on "Irish National Liberation Army". Unlike the Provisional IRA, and the Official IRA who also saw themselves as inheritors of the tradition, by no longer claiming to be the "Irish Republican Army" the INLA abandoned a series of perceived political inheritances which constructed a legal continuity from the Second Dáil.