ABSTRACT
Sinn Fein gave all support possible to the Irish Republican Army (IRA), despite the cankering grievances of the Curragh-group, isolated from control and ignored in counsel. After the electoral disaster of October 1961, Patrick McLogan and Tony Magan feared, with some justification, that the IRA would contend that Sinn Fein had let the campaign down and forced the Army Council to give up because popular support had been squandered through the inefficiency of the Ard Comhairle. The leadership of the IRA, forced to forego the gun, began to march to a different drum. The tension that this restraint caused in the local units was revealed following the first IRA action authorized in the Twenty-six Counties since the proclamation of Army Order No. The cynics contended that if the IRA had not existed Special Branch would have had to invent it to explain their salaries.
