The Next One is For You

A True Story of Guns, Country and the IRA's Secret American Army

Ali Marie Watkins

• Publisher: Icon Books
• Year: 2025
• Topic: History
• eBook ISBN:
  9781837730407
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

Northern Ireland, 1975. Violence has erupted on the streets of Belfast. After years as a sleepy guerilla army, the IRA is clashing with Loyalist gangs and heavily armed British soldiers. But the Troubles have spilled beyond the small island: An ocean away, in the heart of Philadelphia's Irish enclave, a teenage girl finds a letter in her mailbox. Inside is a bullet, and the message is clear: The next one is for you.

From New York Times reporter and Pulitzer finalist Ali Watkins, this true-crime saga is the long-buried story of how a group of Philadelphia gunrunners armed the IRA at the height of the Troubles. A ragtag band of carpenters, family men and fugitives, the Philadelphia Five, as they came to be known, banded together, bolstering the fight for a united Ireland but fuelling the Troubles at an untold cost.

This small group of Irish nationalists smuggled hundreds of rifles, rocket launchers, explosives and armour-piercing bullets across the Atlantic Ocean and into Northern Ireland. Whether they were skimming money from innocuous-seeming charities, coolly slipping weapons into hidden compartments of vans and houses, or scouring local graveyards for the names of dead Irishmen to use on firearm forms, the gunrunners approached their mission -to unite Ireland under one flag, by any means necessary -with ruthless poise, even as investigators closed in, members of their own movement began to turn on them, and bodies stacked up on all sides.


A gripping tale of crime, rebellion and the hazy line between them, The Next One Is for You is the definitive account of America's hand in the Troubles - a conflict whose resonance is still felt on both sides of the Atlantic today.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Prologue: Andersonstown, Northern Ireland, 1973
• Part I: A New Rising
• Chapter 1: “One with US Address”
• Chapter 2: The Thirty-Third County
• Chapter 3: The Split
• Chapter 4: The Brotherhood
• Chapter 5: “Until Ireland Is Free or Until I Draw My Last Breath”
• Part II: The Inner Circle
• Chapter 6: Jekyll and Hyde
• Chapter 7: “New and Drastic Measures”
• Chapter 8: The Feds
• Chapter 9: “Don’t Make Any Mistakes”
• Chapter 10: “What Other Measures Could Be Taken?”
• Chapter 11: The Massacre
• Chapter 12: Montgomery Loan Company
• Part III: The Boys in Philly
• Chapter 13: Ghosts
• Chapter 14: “Someone Else Is Listening”
• Chapter 15: Mad Dog
• Chapter 16: The Binghamton Fiasco
• Chapter 17: “We’re Working for the IRA”
• Chapter 18: “The Heat Is On”
• Chapter 19: Palace
• Chapter 20: The Sticker
• Chapter 21: “The Irish Problem”
• Chapter 22: “Say Nothin’”
• Chapter 23: “I Respectfully Decline”
• Part IV: Gun Girl
• Chapter 24: Shooter
• Chapter 25: Provo
• Chapter 26: Prisoner
• Chapter 27: Sister
• Part V: The Secret Army
• Chapter 28: “We Are All Loyal Americans”
• Chapter 29: The Tout
• Chapter 30: “The Political Hornet’s Nest”
• Chapter 31: PH T-1
• Chapter 32: “The Bitterness of Centuries”
• Chapter 33: Trophies
• Chapter 34: Beyond a Reasonable Doubt
• Chapter 35: “I Should Be Happy”
• Chapter 36: Last Shot
• Chapter 37: “Dancing a Little Too Much to Our Tune”
• Part VI: A Normal Life
• Chapter 38: The Veteran
• Chapter 39: “Shifting Sand”
• Chapter 40: In Graves
• Epilogue: Andersonstown, Northern Ireland, 2023
• Acknowledgments
• Author’s Note
• Notes
• Illustration Credits