socialmedian: Fear of unionist onslaught halted IRA plan to blow up Stormont

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Fear of unionist onslaught halted IRA plan to blow up Stormont

Source: The Guardian

Nov 08, 2009

Summary

1950s Belfast bomb campaign was scrapped to avoid violent backlash against Catholics

The IRA abandoned extensive plans to blow up the BBC, the Stormont parliament and a Royal Navy station in Belfast during the 1950s because they believed that it would provoke a violent unionist backlash.

More than a decade before the Provisional IRA launched its armed campaign that became central to the Troubles, a previous republican leadership was held back from targeting Northern Ireland's capital because of fears for the city's Catholic population.

A new book on the IRA's ill-fated 1956-62 border campaign has revealed that the organisation drew up detailed plans to attack military and commercial targets in Greater Belfast.

The blueprints for the offensive on Belfast were found in the Ardoyne home of 18-year-old IRA member Jim Corbett in February 1957, following a tip-off that he was holding intelligence material for the movement.

Soldiers of Folly: the IRA Border Campaign 1956-1962 has also uncovered new evidence that the IRA's Dublin leadership also believed that a high-ranki

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