In 1939, the IRA was involved with the Sabotage Campaign, against the civil and military infrastructure of Britain. The Christmas Raid was a famous raid by the poorly armed organisation against the Magazine Fort in Dublin’s Phoenix Park, Ireland’s largest munitions dump, on December 23rd.

The raid was ordered because although the IRA had many Thompson submachine guns, the ammunition used in these guns was not easily available -- but the Free State Army had large supplies. An extract from Liam Brady’s autobiography, ‘A Libertarian in the Thirties’, in which he describes the operation.