The war is over

You can all relax. The streets are once more safe. The Official IRA has decommissioned its weapons.

That'll be the OIRA that's been on ceasefire since 1972 then - the one that basically gave up as soon as the Troubles began (hence the graffiti reading 'IRA = I Ran Away'). The IRA everyone's been scared of all this time is the Provisional IRA, which was always more Catholic and conservative than its socialist/Marxist parent group. The OIRA (essentially a load of ageing theorists based in Dublin a long way from the action) declared a ceasefire because they decided that traditional leftwing activism would bring about a united Ireland rather than violence. I can't say that either tactic has worked, though violence followed by dramatic renunciations of violence clearly do qualify you for a British government salary and big car.

I'm largely with the OIRA: a Marxist republican with little taste for violence. That said, nobody defended the nationalist community in the early 70s until PIRA stood up. They became mindless killers pretty quickly, but the immediate cause was just.