The Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) is an Irish republican paramilitary organisation whose aim was to remove Northern Ireland from the United Kingdom and bring about a socialist republic within a united Ireland by force of arms and political persuasion. It emerged out of the December 1969 split of the Irish Republican Army over differences of ideology and how to respond to violence against the nationalist community. This violence had followed the community's demands for civil rights in 1968 and 1969, which met with resistance from some of the unionist community and from the authorities, and culminated in the 1969 Northern Ireland riots.