Irish People's Liberation Organisation

The Irish People's Liberation Organisation was a small Irish republican paramilitary organization which was formed in 1986 by disaffected and expelled members of the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA) whose factions coalesced in the aftermath of the supergrass trials. It developed a reputation for intra-republican violence and criminality, before being forcibly disbanded by the Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA) in 1992.

Foundation: an INLA split

The IPLO emerged from a split within the INLA. After the 1981 Irish hunger strike, in which three of its members died, the INLA began to break apart. The mid-1980s saw the virtual dissolution of the movement as a coherent force. Factions associated with Belfast and Dublin respectively, fell into dispute with each other. When INLA man Harry Kirkpatrick turned supergrass, he implicated many of his former comrades in various activities and many of them were convicted on his testimony. After this, the death knell seemed close to sounding for the movement. It could be argued that by this time the INLA, and the associated political group the Irish Republican Socialist Party (IRSP) no longer existed as coherent national organisations. As a result, members both inside and out of prison broke away from the INLA and set up the IPLO. Some key players at the outset were Tom McAllister, Gerard Steenson, Jimmy Brown and Martin 'Rook' O'Prey. Jimmy Brown formed a minor political group, known as the Republican Socialist Collective, which...
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