A Portrait Gallery of Provisionals

ABOUT 80% of the members of the Irish Republican Army now belong to its militant, fiercely nationalistic Provisional wing. Three men closely identified with its leadership:

SEAN MACSTIOFAIN, 42, the army's Southern-based chief of staff. He was born near London, and until twelve years ago he answered to both his English name, John Stephenson, and his adopted Gaelic name. Caught up in the republican movement through his Irish heritage, he married an Irish girl from Cork after having served three years in the R.A.F. and joined the I.R.A. He also worked for British Railways as a trainee inspector, a job that gave him free tickets to Ireland for himself and his family. Imprisoned at Wormwood Scrubbs in 1953 for his part in an I.R.A. raid for arms, he learned Gaelic, read revolutionary literature, and picked up a knowledge of modern Greek from the EOKA prisoners from Cyprus who were in jail with him. "The Greek Cypriots," he says, "proved that successful guerrilla warfare is possible in a small country."

After his release from prison, MacStiofain moved to Ireland, where he worked a bit as a traveling salesman and as an employee of the Gaelic Athletic Association but devoted most of his time to the movement. Although I.R.A. units in the North are responsible for tactical decisions, MacStiofain as chief of staff is consulted on overall strategy. He neither drinks nor smokes, and his command presence is unmistakable. A fervent nationalist who would impose Gaelic on Ireland as its sole language if he had his way, MacStiofain is ferociously anti-British. "I have always accepted the inevitability of force," he says in his incongruously flat London accent. "I could never see any way to achieve Ireland's freedom otherwise."

RUARI O BRADAIGH, president of the Provisional wing of the Sinn Fein, the Dublin-based party that is sometimes described as the I.R.A. political arm. Just short of 40, with a high-domed, cherubic face, he looks less like an I.R.A. veteran than a high school teacher, which is what he is--although he has little time for classes these days. He works full time tending the republican movement's aboveground political machinery, leading street demonstrations, making speeches and running its propaganda campaign. He is the Sinn Fein's most visible face.

There was a time, however, when OBradaigh was an I.R.A. gunman. Twice he served as the army's chief of staff. In 1956 he led an armed column of raiders up from the South to attack police barracks in Ulster, which landed him in Dublin's Bridewell Prison on his return. While still in jail, he was elected to the Irish Dail (House of Representatives) on the Sinn Fein ticket, but he did not serve. During the late 1960s, he was one of those who opposed the growing Marxist influence in the movement ("The Communists would have stolen the movement's suit, its clothes, its name") and helped form the breakaway Provisional wing. British policy, he says firmly today, only intensifies Irish resistance. "They're creating junior I.R.A. men every day. They're sowing dragons' teeth."

JOE CAHILL, 51, former commander of the I.R.A.'s Belfast Brigade. In 1942, Cahill and a handful of other young I.R.A. volunteers were assigned to divert police attention so that other army units in Belfast could stage an illegal parade celebrating the 1916 Easter uprising. Almost by accident, a gun battle broke out, killing a policeman; Joe and five other youths were captured and sentenced to be hanged. Three days before the scheduled execution, five of the boys, including Cahill, were reprieved; their leader, Tommy Williams, 19, went alone to the gallows, after telling his comrades that "he would look out for us, look out for Ireland, in the place he was going to."

Cahill served seven years in prison, which he put to good use, learning Gaelic and Irish history. After his release, he reported back to the I.R.A. A construction foreman by trade, hard-fisted Joe Cahill was one of the gunmen who muscled the I.R.A. "Officials" out of control of the Belfast Brigade. Later he became brigade commander himself. After a brazen press conference in Belfast last August --held virtually under the noses of patrolling British soldiers--Cahill went South to plan a speaking tour of the U.S. But U.S. Immigration barred his entry, ostensibly because of his prison record. Staunchly nationalist, vaguely socialist, Cahill says that "the British rule in Ireland is the main cause of our trouble. If a permanent solution is not found this time, the trouble will continue."

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