It's gone largely unnoticed in the mainstream media, but the largest republican split since 1997 seems to have taken place over the past couple weeks, with substantial defections from both the Continuity IRA and Republican Sinn Féin. The details of the split are disputed, and I'm not particularly interested in them anyway, but I was amused to read the statement issued by RSF in today's Daily Ireland:

"A few people have resigned from the organisation. Some of these have been ex-Provos who joined recently and who had remained with the Provisionals even after they accepted the Stormont Agreement.

"The remainder are young people without political experience who joined in the recent past and who came under the influence of these ex-Provos.

"The unsettling effect for them of Provo destruction of arms and the declared intention of the Provisional movement to support and join the PSNI/RUC forms the background to all this ..."

God love RSF. If (what they call) "the Provisional movement" didn't exist, they would have to invent it!