WI: Radical communist group splits from the IRA in the 80s

What if in 1981, a rogue communist groups splits from the Provisional IRA and receives funding from the Soviet Union and other communist states through covert means.

This communist group later comes out stating their goal is to spread communism to a sovereign Ireland and starts targeting Parliament, British icons like Big Ben, and US military bases in the UK along with the US embassy.

How would this effect the Thatcher administration and cold war politics, assuming their KGB funding is discovered?
 
Why would the Soviets do something so utterly stupid? Around this time, their primary goal wasn't to spread Communism, but simply maintain the equilibrium in Europe. Funding a violent terrorist group in a foreign nation would be seen as a Declaration of War. If this gets out, WW3 is almost guaranteed, unless whoever was unlucky enough to be in charge when this idea got stamped gets purged.

The IRA itself already had Marxist influence; if the purist Marxists split (and don't get purged before they do so) they would face only about a third of the population to get their recruits from to begin with (the NI Catholic population) a significant proportion want no truck with the IRA, and of the remaining proportion a significant group of them aren't Marxist. They would sure as hell not be getting any Boston funding, their internationalist aspects sure as hell won't be popular with other wings of the IRA (who would worry that their struggle would be associated with the Communists and they have the Americans on them), and would probably have the full weight of the British military slam on top of them.

People fought in the IRA because they either wanted a United Ireland, or thought the British government were irredeemably corrupt and discriminatory. Economic and class grievance was non-existent.
 

Japhy

Banned
The INLA was, in fact, a thing. Besides your list of targets this is basically what happened.
 
Writers on intelligence matters have alleged that some IRA men and women were given training at the Soviets behest. But apparently they were extremely careful not to become directly involved, using East German and Libyan cut-outs to deliver training and arms. Apparently the otherwise ultra collaborationist Husak regime in Czechoslovakia objected to becoming involved because they feared that any IRA success in Ireland might encourage similar notions in Slovakia.
 
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