This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

Brexit is a “huge help” to Irish republicanism and will fuel violent resistance to British rule in Northern Ireland, a dissident republican leader has claimed.

The UK’s departure from the European Union has refocused attention on the border and the “colonialist” partition of Ireland, boosting efforts to politicise a new generation of Irish nationalists, Brian Kenna, chairman of the political party Saoradh, told the Guardian.

“Brexit has been a small pilot light in reigniting that side of physical force to British occupation,” he said.

Kenna spoke in an interview before three improvised explosive devices were found at separate transport hubs in London on Tuesday. At least two of the packages bore Irish stamps and postmarks.

No one has claimed responsibility but, on Wednesday, Ireland’s deputy prime minister, Simon Coveney, hinted that republican extremists were suspected by expressing “anger and embarrassment” at the “warped thinking” behind the packages.

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Ireland’s justice minister, Charlie Flanagan, called the parcel-bombing attempt “a sinister act”.

An Irish security source said “violent dissident republicans” were the most likely source, pointing to previous letter bomb attacks on targets in Britain and Northern Ireland in 2013 and 2014.

Saoradh, which means Liberation in Irish, is a small revolutionary party which rejects the peace process and the Good Friday agreement – and, by extension, Sinn Féin – as tools of partition. The party is believed to share ideology and overlapping membership with the New IRA, a dissident group which claimed responsibility for a car bomb outside a court in Derry in January.

Ger Devereux, Saoradh’s general secretary, denied any knowledge of the incendiary packages sent to London, saying the party engaged in legitimate political activism. “Anything that happens outside of that, we have no knowledge of or involvement in,” he said.

Speaking on Monday in Dublin, Kenna, 57, the party’s chairman, also distanced Saoradh from the New IRA. But he said a new generation of republicans was committed to using force to achieve a united Ireland.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Brian Kenna, chairman of the Saoradh political party, in Dublin.

“Every generation going back 800 years, Irish republicans have confronted British occupation. I don’t see any reason why that’s going to stop,” he said.

Brexit was giving a boost to resistance, which went through cycles of “highs and lows”, said Kenna.

“Brexit is a huge opportunity. It’s not the reason why people would resist British rule but Brexit just gives it focus, gives it a physical picture. It’s a huge help.”

Security forces had infiltrated and surveilled republican ranks but resistance would continue and grow, said the chairman. “The republican movement is very adaptable. Necessity is the mother of invention.”

The campaign would be smaller than that waged by the Provisional IRA during the Troubles but could still be “impactful” and “very difficult to stop”, he claimed.

In the absence of a militarised border or troops on the streets, republican socialist ideology was incentivising recruits, said Kenna. “Young people are now getting involved in an armed campaign without a personal experience of oppression.”

The return of customs posts or any border infrastructure would underline the reason for resistance, he said. “That border denies our national sovereignty and partitions our island. Brexit has brought that into focus.”

Saoradh, which was formed in 2016, has published a 14-page policy document on Brexit. It considers the UK’s vote to leave the EU a historic opportunity but wants Ireland to also leave, considering the EU a capitalist usurpation of national sovereignty and workers’ rights.

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Saoradh members appointed Kenna, who has served a prison sentence for IRA membership, at a party conference in the border town of Dundalk last November.

Despite the collapse of power-sharing at Stormont in 2017, which has paralysed politics in Northern Ireland, there is little evidence that violent dissidents are filling the vacuum.

The New IRA emerged in 2012 via a merger of several groups opposed to the peace process, including the Real IRA. It has been linked with the murder of two prison officers and multiple other attacks.

Police chiefs say they are taking the threat seriously but play down dissidents’ capacity for sustained or sophisticated attacks.

Marisa McGlinchey, author of the book Unfinished Business, an academic investigation of dissident republicans, said Saoradh reflected the thinking of the New IRA and included prominent former members of the Provisional IRA.

“They share an ideology. It’s suspected that there’s an overlap in membership,” she said.

Saoradh members had joined other groups in civic campaigns against evictions and water charges but, since the party did not participate in elections, it was difficult to gauge support, said McGlinchey. “They don’t seem realistically to be tapping into wider currents.”

Hardline republicans were split between several rival parties, including Republican Sinn Féin, she said. “There seems to be no sign of a cohesive support base. It’s just so divided.”

McGlinchey said the incendiary packages sent to London were not necessarily the work of republicans. “If it is, the message is that they’re still here and that they’re still capable of doing it,” she added.