Anti-Imperialist Action Ireland or AIA Ireland is an Irish socialist-republican organisation that advocates for the establishment of a socialist state in Ireland through a socialist revolution.[citation needed] The group was founded in 2017. Since then, it has undertaken a number of protest actions across Ireland. The organisation has described itself as "a broad front" opposed to "the UK, the EU, the US and all other forms of Imperialism in Ireland".[citation needed]
AIA has conducted a number of protest actions across Ireland, mainly to bring attention to the struggle for Irish national liberation and Socialism against a perceived threat of British, American and European Union imperialism[9] but also for other issues including Palestinian solidarity.[10]
In 2018, AIA painted over numerous street signs of streets named after Queen Victoria and encouraged others to do the same to other street signs bearing the names of British officials.[11] In the same year Israeli politician Gilad Erdan sent a formal letter of protest to the Irish government demanding they stop Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine member and former airplane hijacker Leila Khaled from appearing over a video call to members of AIA and another Republican group called Lasair Dhearg[lower-alpha 1] during a public talk held at the teacher's club in Dublin. However, the protest was unsuccessful and the call was not cancelled.[12]
Since 2019, the organization has conducted and encouraged "Poppy Watch Patrols" to forcibly prevent the Royal British Legion from collecting donations.[13]
Throughout 2020, AIA ran a political campaign against the extradition of Liam Campbell to Lithuania on charges of weapon trafficking.[14] In June 2009, Campbell was found guilty[15] in a civic court of participating in the 1998 Omagh bombing, the single deadliest attack of the Troubles, in which 29 people were killed and another 220 injured. In October 2022, the Lithuanian court announced that Campbell was returning home after all charges against him were dropped due to a statute of limitations expiry.[16]
In June 2020, following the spray-painting of a statue of Seán Russell in Dublin with rainbow colours and pro-LGBT slogans,[17] AIA released a pamphlet defending Russell, and maintained that Irish republicanism and LGBT liberation were allied, not opposed, causes.[18][19] Seán Russell was a Chief of Staff of the IRA during World War II who organised a bombing campaign in Northern Ireland and England known as the Sabotage Campaign. Russell's time as IRA Chief of Staff was marked by the increasing influence of Irish fascist group Ailtirí na hAiséirghe over the organisation,[20] as well as his direct collaboration with Nazi Germany.[21][22]
In November 2022, AIA claimed responsibility for a paint attack on the headquarters of the Royal British Legion in Dublin, defacing the building's doorway.[13]
In April 2023, after members of the group were targeted with a series of raids and arrests across Ireland by the Gardaí[citation needed], various organisations expressed solidarity with AIA, including the Palestinian organisation Samidoun.[26][27]
In November 2023, supporters of the AIA in Bangor, Maine were accused by the Bangor Daily News of distributing and hanging flyers in support of the Palestinian people, in reaction to the Israel–Hamas war[30]
↑ Douglas, R. M. (2009). Architects of the Resurrection: Ailtirí na hAiséirghe and the Fascist 'New Order' in Ireland. Manchester University Press. ISBN978-0-7190-7998-6.
↑ Hanley, Brian. "Russell, Seán". Dictionary of Irish Biography. 16 March 2022.
The Irish National Liberation Army is an Irish republican socialist paramilitary group formed on 8 December 1974, during the 30-year period of conflict known as "the Troubles". The group seeks to remove Northern Ireland from the United Kingdom and create a socialist republic encompassing all of Ireland. With membership estimated at 80–100 at their peak, it is the paramilitary wing of the Irish Republican Socialist Party (IRSP).
The Omagh bombing was a car bombing on 15 August 1998 in the town of Omagh in County Tyrone, Northern Ireland. It was carried out by the Real Irish Republican Army, a Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) splinter group who opposed the IRA's ceasefire and the Good Friday Agreement, signed earlier in the year. The bombing killed 29 people and injured about 220 others, making it the deadliest incident of the Troubles in Northern Ireland. Telephoned warnings which did not specify the location had been sent almost forty minutes beforehand but police inadvertently moved people toward the bomb.
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Seán Russell was an Irish republican who participated in the Easter Rising of 1916, held senior positions in the Irish Republican Army during the Irish War of Independence and Irish Civil War, and was Chief of Staff of the IRA from c. 1938 to April 1939 upon the onset of World War II. It was under Russell's leadership that the IRA began the Sabotage Campaign, in which the group began bombing civil, economic and military infrastructure in the United Kingdom, primarily England, between 1939 and 1940. In the same period, Russell actively collaborated with Nazi Germany; in early 1940 he travelled to Germany, where he personally met with German foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop and spent three months training in the use of explosives. In August 1940 Russell was to return to Ireland as part of a joint IRA/German plan entitled Operation Dove, however, Russell died aboard a Kriegsmarine U-boat transporting him home following a sudden stomach illness and he was subsequently buried at sea.
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