Historical Dictionary of Terrorism Third Edition

IRISH REPUBLICAN ARMY • 289would have been killed had she not moved into a different room justminutes before the bomb detonated. On 8 November 1987 the IRAbombed a Remembrance Day ceremony in Enniskillen, County Fermanagh,killing 11 people and injuring 63 others.In 1990 the IRA began to carry out more attacks in England,including two shootings and two bombings, one of which killedConservative Member of Parliament Ian Gow on 30 July 1990. On 7February 1991 the IRA carried out a mortar attack against the Britishprime minister’s office-residence at No. 10 Downing Street whilePrime Minister John Major was consulting there with senior membersof his cabinet. During 1991 the IRA also carried out numerousbombings throughout Britain, including a 2,000-pound bomb thatwas exploded outside a police station in Northern Ireland. In addition,the IRA has conducted five major attacks on British army basesin Europe, including a thwarted attack on 6 March 1988 directed atBritish military facilities in Gibraltar.The IRA terror campaign led to unintended results that may havemade its goal of unification of Ireland more remote. First, the bitternessof the terrorist war being waged by the IRA and other nationalist orrepublican groups, by the Ulster Protestant militias, and by the Britishforces exacerbated the communal and sectarian tensions to the extentthat the majority of Ulster Protestants might have preferred to opt fora separate Ulster republic rather than consent to unification with thesouth had Britain decided to withdraw from Northern Ireland. Second,the terror campaign against British targets in England, and particularlythe attacks on the prime minister, members of parliament, andLord Mountbatten hardened both public and official British attitudestoward the Irish nationalists and republicans and strengthened their resolvenot to retreat from Northern Ireland. Third, the terror campaigntransformed the nationalist struggle from being a mass movement forcivil rights into an insidious war of counterintelligence and covertoperations in which ordinary civilians became little more than victimsand pawns and which stifled open political participation.While the original IRA conceived itself to be a true army, and organizeditself accordingly with general orders and a hierarchical commandstructure, the modern IRA was forced to adopt a cellular structure inthe 1970s to prevent the penetration and subversion of the organizationby British agents. Beginning in 1981 the British resorted to the supergrasstactic of turning a captured terrorist, facing substantial charges,