Likewise, in the aftermath of the 1986 split in the Republican Movement, both the Provisional IRA and the Continuity IRA sought Maguire's support. Maguire signed a statement which was issued posthumously in 1996. In it, he conferred legitimacy on the Army Council of the Continuity IRA (who provided a firing party at Maguire's funeral in 1993). In "The Irish Troubles", J. Bowyer Bell describes Maguire's opinion in 1986, "abstentionism was a basic tenet of republicanism, a moral issue of principle. Abstentionism gave the movement legitimacy, the right to wage war, to speak for a Republic all but established in the hearts of the people."