Irish Republicanism’s Reaganite Wing? NORAID and the Sidelining of Conservative Irish-America

This week’s premier of the RTÉ documentary series, “NORAID: Irish America & the IRA” chronicling the rise and role of diaspora Irish-Americans during the Troubles years offers insight into the ideological machinations of the Provisional movement and more importantly the romantic pull armed struggle still has over the nation’s exiled children.

On paper a funding conduit for republican POWs, NORAID (Irish Northern Aid Committee) was a vital diplomatic hub for republicanism and its outreach to not just diaspora communities but the heart of the American establishment in the lead up to the Belfast Agreement.

Something of an embarrassment for many left-republicans for their non-Marxist leanings under Gerry Adams, Sinn Féin progressively distanced itself from NORAID and its supporters, treating them as politically embarrassing remnants of a “romantic” past.

Regardless, the work of NORAID was a major fly in the ointment at one time for the Cold War era transatlantic relationship due to their alleged covert funding of armaments for the Provisionals. To the ire of many ideological leftists in the Adams orbit NORAID tastefully excluded marxist rhetoric from its media organ The Irish People in contrast to a republican movement moronically beholden to Cuba, Libya and the Palestinian PLO.

As recounted in the recent documentary NORAID represented the authentic voice of Irish-American Catholic working-class communities. What motivated their fundraising efforts was not some vague abstract notion of universal republicanism or international solidarity but Famine-based blood ties connecting Belfast to Boston.

The struggle came at the time when Irish communities in Boston were coming under the jackboot of state-enforced bussing which eventually broke the back of Irish-America’s political power. This is an aspect of the 20th century Irish experience that left republicans carefully navigate away from unless lambasting our co-ethnics for racism. At a time when northern nationalists were keeping the sectarian dog from the door in Ulster, Southie and adjacent Irish communities were being assaulted by America’s multicultural lobby.

The gradually de-legitimisation of NORAID effectively excluded the Irish diaspora from strategic influence over the republican project. A long-standing republican principle that Ireland’s struggle is global was quietly replaced with a parochial, Dáil-centric perspective.

NORAID succeeded in part because it spoke the moral language of Irish Catholicism, values resonant with Reagan-era America even if most of their rank and file were nominal Democrats. Its support base was drawn from Irish-American cops, firefighters, veterans, and churchgoing working-class families—not the radical left or internationalist blocs

NORAID explicitly distanced itself from Marxist and leftist groups. Its publications and events rarely if ever included socialist analysis or class-based rhetoric that excluded the national question first and foremost.

This irked the republican left to no end.

Unlike some factions within Irish republicanism that leaned toward Marxism or Third Worldist rhetoric, NORAID focused on the national question: British withdrawal and Irish reunification. This simplicity made it more digestible and fundable in American political circles.

To their benefit NORAID representatives didn’t speak in Marxist jargon; they spoke the language of self-determination and anti-colonialism without being typecast as reactionary right wingers. This helped garner sympathy in Irish-friendly congressional offices without triggering Cold War alarms.

The same Sinn Féin leadership that benefited from NORAID funds in the 1980s disavowed those supporters in the 2000s for political gain. This opportunism reveals how the peace process often rested on strategic amnesia.

NORAID was born in an era when Irish-Americans were being pushed out of their cities, their schools, and their politics through bussing and an orchestrated war against ethnic Catholics. The same forces that silenced them in Boston eventually silenced them politically in Belfast and now looks to do likewise in Coolock. 

For the Irish-Americans who watched their areas torn apart by anti-white busing and bureaucratic contempt, NORAID wasn’t just about Ireland it was about defending an ethnic way of life already under siege. To erase them from the republican story is to erase the pain that forged their loyalty.