This is the first comprehensive study of the IRA's attempts to create a 'social republicanism, ' a marriage between militant nationalism and the politics of the left. From agitation amongst the peasantry in the 1920s to the ill-fated attempt in the 1990s to add a political dimension to purist nationalism in the form of Sinn Fein's 'peace process, ' Henry Patterson analyses the various failed efforts to marry two fundamentally incompatible ideologies.