ABSTRACT
As we have seen, the republican movement was aware that it did not have sufficient strength to attain its goals through the use of violence per se. Instead, the continuation of terrorism was also justified for propaganda reasons on the grounds that the media coverage obtained made it effective. As various authors have pointed out, ‘in the pursuit of recognition and attention, a major, sometimes only, aim of terrorist action is media coverage’.1 In this way, wide media coverage of attacks reaffirmed the group’s sense of power leading republicans to perceive IRA violence as a simple ‘means of communication’ through which it was possible to send a ‘violent, loud, persistent and adamant message’.2 The IRA campaign became a mere expression of protest consisting of terrorist actions that were defined as effective by those who perpetrated them, although the apparent perception of power that such attacks helped to create masked their real weaknesses. It is rarely the case that as a result of the attention paid to terrorist activities the grievances used by terrorist groups to rationalise their conduct disappear. Republicans themselves have also recognised that while violence may be translated into spectacular images and media attention, normally this did not have anything like the decisive effect needed to bring them close to attaining their stated goals.
