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The IRA began its first sustained post-war campaign in Northern Ireland on the night of Dec 11, 1956 with bomb attacks on 13 targets, including a Territorial Army centre. By September 1957, Special Branch warned that the IRA's army council had announced its intention to extend the campaign to mainland Britain.

England was regarded as "a sitting duck" by the council and the IRA launched its first mainland operation in February 1958 when a group made an abortive attempt to break into the armoury at the Army base at Blandford Forum, Dorset. They were helped by a serving Army soldier, a southern Irishman based at the barracks who was supposed to be on leave. 

The involvement of a soldier rang alarm bells in MI11, the military intelligence department dealing with internal security. At the same time, the numbers of southern Irishmen joining the British Army jumped dramatically, which intelligence sources reported was an IRA policy.

Special Branch agreed to vet all new recruits from both parts of Ireland applying to join at mainland recruitment centres. Military intelligence's concern at the attitude of the Irish government grew in early 1959 when the Irish government ordered the release of all interned IRA "political prisoners".  By then, four members of the RUC had been killed and Special Branch intelligence reports spoke of IRA plans to assassinate more members of the security forces.

When, in July, a secret IRA convention agreed to launch a campaign of "total terrorism", to include assassinations of prominent politicians as well as RUC officers, military intelligence called for pressure on Dublin to act. 

"Only the strongest action on the part of the Eire government - and that without delay - can put a stop to the activities of those whose aim would appear to be the creation of a state of anarchy in Northern Ireland."  In the event, the IRA's ability and will to carry out operations began to run down. They lacked the weapons to mount a serious threat to the RUC, having only rifles, grenades and Thompson machineguns. Every attempt to obtain anti-tank weaponry failed. 

By 1960 the campaign had fizzled into insignificance.  It took another nine years for the Provisionals to be created, by British-born Sean MacStiofain and Daithi O'Connaill, a Cork teacher credited with inventing the car bomb.