ABSTRACT
Despite the setbacks during the summer of 1972, the Provisional IRA still looked a formidable organisation. The continuing destabilisation generated by PIRA’s violence over the preceding two years still left it in a position to influence the political atmosphere in Northern Ireland. Over the longer term, however, PIRA’s persistence with its campaign was to prove calamitous for the organisation. By 1976, following a prolonged ceasefire, PIRA had exhausted its military options and been brought to the brink of defeat, not just by the improvements in the efficiency of the security forces, but by the faulty assumptions of its own strategy.
