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 among the peasantry in the 1920s to efforts in the 1990s to add a political dimension to purist nationalism in the form of Sinn Fein's "peace process, " Henry Patterson analyzes the various failed attempts to marry two fundamentally incompatible ideologies.