‘I do solemnly promise … ’ the IRA’s Green Book and its Community of Practice

The Green Book was a training and induction manual for volunteers in the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA), written in the mid-1970s. It provided practical guidance, including on how to resist interrogation, together with an overview of the organization’s history. This paper aims to understand how the Green Book prepared IRA recruits for their lives as paramilitary volunteers. The paper uses the Community of Practice theory and also uses qualitative content analysis, applied to the text of the Green Book. The paper argues the Green Book was effective at the level of practical training for life in the IRA. More broadly, the Green Book also supported and exemplified a strategic process of professionalization in the IRA. The Green Book combined history, a vision and practical guidance on resisting interrogation, thus cementing commitment to the community. The Green Book was a key component part of a wider organizational restructure in the 1970s, enhancing volunteer training within the IRA and enabling it to remain operationally effective despite being heavily outnumbered by technically superior forces.