Speaker
Description
Between 1969 and 1998, over 3,600 people were killed as a result of ‘The Troubles’ in Northern Ireland. During this period, the Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA), the Official Irish Republican Army (OIRA) and the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA), utilised the border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland to carry out attacks in Northern Ireland before fleeing back to the Republic of Ireland. As a result of this, countering the threat caused by these proscribed organisations, cooperation between the police in Northern Ireland (the Royal Ulster Constabulary) and in the Republic of Ireland, An Garda Síochána, was looked at as essential for ending the conflict and defeating republican paramilitaries. This paper will explore the informal cooperation and personal relationships between the two police services and the impact that it had on the threat caused by the aforementioned paramilitaries. Based on archives and interviews with retired police officers, it will be argued that informal cooperation filled the gap left by a lack of consistent formal cooperation against cross-border paramilitaries.
| Institutional Affiliation | Queen's University Belfast |
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