Armalite and ballot box strategy
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The armalite and the ballot box strategy was pursued by the Irish Republican movement in the 1980s and early 1990s, viz. a strategy where elections in Northern Ireland and the Republic were contested by Sinn Féin, while the IRA continued to pursue a paramilitary struggle against the British government and unionist paramilitaries. This was a matter of some controversy within Republicanism, seen as a betrayal of the purity of the armed struggle by some IRA members and supporters, many of whom left to form Republican Sinn Féin in 1984.
It emerged after the Hunger Strikes as a response to the electoral success of Bobby Sands in the by-election of April 1981 and pro-Hunger Strike campaigners in the Northern Ireland local elections and Republic of Ireland Dáil elections of the same year. It was first formulated by Sinn Féin politician Danny Morrison at the party's Ard Fheis (Annual Conference) in 1981, when he said, "Who here really believes we can win the war through the ballot box? But will anyone here object if, with a ballot paper in this hand and an Armalite in the other, we take power in Ireland?"
The strategy was a mixed success. Sinn Féin had a solid core of 9-13% of the vote in Northern Ireland, which gave the party some credibility on the international stage. However at home it highlighted the dominance at the time of the non-violent Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) in Northern Nationalist politics, while Sinn Féin's vote in the Republic remained derisory once the emotion generated by the 1981 hunger strike subsided. In the longer term, it had two important political consequences, each of which fed in to the emergent Northern Ireland peace process. Firstly, the British and Irish governments drafted the Anglo-Irish Agreement as a means of bolstering the SDLP, which in turn led both Sinn Féin and many Unionists to conclude that their ultimate objectives were unattainable. Secondly, it convinced many in Sinn Féin that it was possible to make political gains without violence.
Since the IRA ceasefires of 1994 and 1997, opinion in Northern Ireland remains characteristically divided on whether the armalite and ballot box strategy has been abandoned. Most Nationalists, noting the abandonment of large scale political violence and beginning of decommissioning by the IRA, feel that the republican movement have set aside the gun for good, while many unionists, noting republican involvement in vigilantism and street violence feel merely that the balance of armalite and ballot box has been tilted towards the latter.
Armalite, in this context, is often mistakenly said to refer to the M-16 rifle, but actually refers to the AR-18 rifle.