preview

How The Diaspora Helped Violence Essay

Better Essays

How the Diaspora helped Violence Having established the motives for the Diaspora aiding the nationalist, now it needs to be analyzed what the diaspora actually did to aid the nationalist movement. The aid can be broken down into three categories, financial, political and physical aid. The first and the biggest being financial aid and this type of aid was collected by members of the Irish Diaspora in the US then given to various different nationalist groups. Seldom was the money given to violent groups like the IRA but instead was given to other groups and in turn led to the purchasing of arms or goods and stuff like that which the IRA could use. One of the major organizations that did this was Noraid or Irish Northern Aid. The true purpose of Noraid dealt with arms smuggling and fund raising and thus were closely aligned and allied with the IRA(Brian Hanley 2004:1). The support for Noraid in terms of funding can be tracked in the same exact way that the general diasporatic support can be tracked. The hunger strikes of 1980-81, in which IRA prisoners staged a hunger strike to protest conditions in their prison in which a few of them died, was monumental in the history of Noraid because it led to not only an increase of donation which in turn were given to IRA and groups like it but it also changed the image of Noraid in the US. It led to an increase in membership and made the organization less radical which meant that it year by year would have generally more memberships and

Get Access