ABSTRACT
At first glance, the Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA) may appear an odd choice for a book examining why the regenerative capacities of insurgent actors weaken. After all, the PIRA is generally portrayed as having been resistant to any and all security force pressure. As Bell states: ‘A grand sweep of all the active [Volunteers], the introduction of internment, all the panaceas to destroy the Provos would only have opened the way for the generation in waiting to become operational.’1 However, it is important to recognise that the PIRA’s regenerative capacity was not static for the entire 28 years of its campaign. Rather, during the period from roughly mid-1972 to 1977, the PIRA not only experienced a significant deterioration in its ability to replace lost personnel with new recruits, but the organisation also came the ‘closest’ in its history to ‘collapse and defeat’.2
