History: In Dublin in the late 1980s I interviewed Sheila Humphreys, an Irish republican veteran who combined zealotry with charm.
Age had not diluted her commitment, and she offered a sincere lament regarding the problem posed by Ulster unionism: "You can't convince the unionists in the north that we wouldn't annihilate them all if they came in with us. Isn't it very, very difficult?"
Difficult indeed. But, as Brian Hanley's fine new book shows, the inter-war years of Humphreys' activist prime were ones during which Irish republicans did not, in fact, focus primarily on partition. They spent much more time pondering social and economic issues, or wondering what to do in relation to Fianna Fáil.
In detailing such debates, The IRA 1926-1936 offers a valuable study of that organisation in the years between the two episodes of Irish troubles which have made it world-famous. The IRA's ideological turmoil during the decade has already been much discussed by scholars. But Hanley's book is a fascinating, original treatment of this alternative army's day-to-day activities and organisation.
These were years when the IRA did not engage in any systematic military campaign. So weekly parades were the lads' central activity. Yet even here it was not always easy to get people to do their duty: the book contains a delightful tale of Dundalk in December 1930, when there was poor attendance at IRA parades "owing to the Christmas rush".
Hanley has done some very thorough research, and has made particularly good use of the papers of Moss Twomey, IRA Chief of Staff during 1926-1936. Twomey's organisation was one which fluctuated greatly in terms of numbers. In mid-1924 there were estimated to be around 14,500 members; by late 1926 this had fallen to approximately 5,000; there were perhaps 10,000 to 12,000 in the IRA by the early 1930s; but by November 1936 there were fewer than 4,000 left.
In practice, these activists never came close to overturning northern or southern governments in this period. For, as Hanley plausibly argues, the IRA's main function in these years was less to overthrow Ireland's two states than to provide opposition to them.
In the south, this increasingly involved a troubled relationship with Fianna Fáil, with whom the IRA edgily cooperated in the early 1930s. Twomey's army thought that de Valera would let down the republican constituency and that the IRA would gain as a result. In fact, most republicans turned out to be happy enough with the more moderate nationalism which Fianna Fáil embodied.
Not only had the IRA failed to recognise the essentially conservative nature of Fianna Fáil; they had also underestimated how satisfied nationalist Ireland would be with such an approach.
So, in the south de Valera established a state whose legitimacy effectively marginalised the IRA (surely the most effective way, even now, of achieving such a goal). In the north, republicans found themselves a minority within the minority, and mistakenly thought that they might be able to win cross-community support. But, despite being rhetorically non-sectarian, the IRA still embodied a politics whose aims and grievances only appealed to a Catholic constituency.
The 1926-1936 IRA possessed some able figures, including Peadar O'Donnell, George Gilmore, Twomey himself and Frank Ryan (the last of these being so eye-catching that he has been written about by both Eric Hobsbawm and Shane MacGowan - a rare distinction). But even their undoubted intelligence could not enable these republicans to transcend Irish sectarian division.
That task remained and remains, as Sheila Humphreys might have said, "very, very difficult".
The IRA 1926-1936. By Brian Hanley. Four Courts Press, 286 pp.
€24.95
Richard English is Professor of Politics at Queen's University, Belfast. His book, Armed Struggle: The History of the IRA, will be published by Macmillan in March