S-Plan

The S-Plan or Sabotage Campaign or England Campaign was a campaign of bombing and sabotage against the civil, economic and military infrastructure of the United Kingdom from 1939 to 1940, conducted by members of the Irish Republican Army (IRA). It was conceived by Seamus O'Donovan in 1938 at the request of then IRA Chief of Staff Seán Russell. Russell and Joseph McGarrity are thought to have formulated the strategy in 1936. During the campaign there were 300 explosions/acts of sabotage, 10 deaths and 96 injuries.

==Immediate context== thumb|IRA Chief of Staff Seán Russell. thumb|180px|right|Seamus O'Donovan prepared the S-Plan at the behest of Russell. Following a power struggle within the IRA during the mid-1930s, Seán Russell was reinstated to the IRA in April 1938 and elected to the IRA Army Council in absentia. At a subsequent IRA General Army Convention, Russell and his supporters secured enough support to get a controlling majority vote within the Army Council and for Russell himself to be named Chief of Staff, the head of the organisation. It was at this time that Russell began the process of preparing for a campaign of attacks on British soil – a strategy he had decided upon from the mid-1930s onwards. The IRA in Northern Ireland supported Russell and his plans for a campaign that would bring an end to partition. However, the Northern Ireland government introduced internment in December 1938 and several hundred IRA activists were held for the duration of World War II.