Pod Insights British Scandal The IRA Heiress | What Rose Dugdale Did Next | 4 About this episode Journalist Sean O'Driscoll met the IRA Heiress herself. He would cycle to her Dublin care home to chat over tea and biscuits. Though he went easier on the digestives after he found out Rose was the architect of the biscuit-launcher: a deadly weapon used in countless attacks during the Troubles. Sean tells Matt and Alice what he learned about the next mind-blowing chapter in Rose Dugdale's story, from prison sentences, to a hidden pregnancy.
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0:00 Alice Levine? Audible subscribers can listen to all episodes of British Scandal ad-free right now. Join Audible today by downloading the Audible app.
0:18 Matt Forde? From Wondery, I'm Matt Ford.
0:20 Alice Levine? And I'm Alice Levine.
0:21 Matt Forde? And this is British Scandal.
0:33 Alice Levine? Right, Matt, Rose Dugdale, what do you think?
0:36 Matt Forde? Well, she's a fascinating character because she could have sat back, like many of her peers, and just revelled in her millions, married well, and lived the life that was mapped out for her. Instead, she chose to dedicate herself to fighting British imperialism, which, on paper, could be seen as an admirable quest. But the way in which she did it obviously wasn't. She gets involved in the IRA, and she's prepared to hurt and kill people and aid and abet people who hurt and kill people. So, overall, not a fan.
1:07 Alice Levine? Okay. Undoubtedly, though, she's fascinating, and she really is one of a kind. It's a stranger-than-fiction ascent to where she ended up. And today, we're going to talk to somebody who is completely captivated by her story.
1:20 Matt Forde? Is it Gerry Adams?
1:21 Alice Levine? Matt, it's not Gerry Adams. Our guest today, Sean O'Driscoll, is an investigative journalist who's spent time with the IRA heiress herself. He first met Rose in her Dublin care home while writing the book "Heres Rebel Vigilante Bomber", all about her extraordinary life, and he joins us next.
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2:44 Alice Levine? Sean, thank you so much for talking to us. So you wrote a book about Rose Dugdale, heiress rebel vigilante bomber. What drew you to her story?
2:52 Speaker 05 I was looking for some way to explain Northern Ireland, the difficulties and the troubles in Northern Ireland. But I wanted some way that would take the reader in. And I kind of thought, well, who is coming from outside this conflict into us that can bring the reader in? And Rose was such an obvious answer because she grew up in Chelsea and Kensington in London and joined the IRA. And I kind of thought you could bring the reader in there with her because I'm assuming most people don't really know about Northern Ireland. And Rose didn't either. So I kind of thought it might be a good way to tell the story, true Rose, in a way. And you met Rose. What was she like? From the very first meeting, she was very polite to me and very polite to those around her.
3:37 Speaker 05 But I would say quite a hardened IRA woman. I mean, the first day that I met her at the nursing home in Dublin, where she was staying, I asked her about, she pulled off the world's largest art theft at Rusper House in Ireland. And the family that she stole the paintings from had made their money from the diamond business in South Africa. So I said to her, you know, how do you feel about the fact that an older man was pistol whipped, crossed the top of the head, and his wife was shoved down into a basement in an operation that you were commanding? And she said, well, they're getting a small taste of what black people were experiencing in apartheid South Africa, where they made their money. So I haven't got the slightest bit of sympathy for them.
4:19 Speaker 05 And I kind of thought, wow, she really is, you know, a tough, a tough IRA woman. You know, this is no longer the Chelsea debutante. And this is somebody who has been through the IRA and has come out the other side. Through prison, through, through bomb making camps and so on, really quite a tough person.
4:40 Matt Forde? Were there lighter elements to her personality at all?
4:42 Speaker 05 Yeah, um, from, from the people I spoke to, she, she was very kind to people, quite kind to, to the poor, to children, to animals. But she had a very kind of thinker view, I felt, of, of the world. You were either the oppressed or the oppressor, and there wasn't much in between for her. So she was extremely kind and generous and quite funny with, with those around her, um, that she felt needed her help. But if she felt you were on the other side of the fence, then God almighty help you.
5:13 Alice Levine? Obviously, by the time that you spoke to her, Sean, a lot of time had passed. I'm wondering if she was open in those conversations or if you sensed that she was guarded.
5:22 Speaker 05 She was open about her childhood very much, open about Oxford very much, quite guarded in some areas of the IRA. She was willing to talk very openly about issues that were already known for which she had been convicted. Um, the Strabane helicopter attack, the Rusper Art Heist and so on. But quite guarded then when it came to things like the IRA's weapon development unit. Uh, I felt a great reluctance there to really get into that. But she kind of directed me then towards other people who would be able to answer those questions.
5:54 Alice Levine? What do you think it was that led Rose down the path that she chose?
5:59 Speaker 05 I think it was mostly her own personality. Her sister Caroline grew up the exact same way as Rose and married a Tory MP. And lived the, very much the Tory wife lifestyle in London. So if you're to take her sister Caroline as, as kind of a test against Rose, I don't think you can blame Rose's background, her parents or any of that. I think it comes down to Rose herself and her personality and. I think incrementally she moved more and more radical during the sixties, you know, beginning in Oxford University. I think her sexuality has something to do with it and her gender issues probably has something to do with it. You know, she discovered that
6:41 Speaker 05 she was as interested in women as she was in men in nineteen fifty's Britain, which probably wasn't easy, but I think that led her on a path to sort of question society in many, many ways. And then her professor in Oxford with whom she had a lesbian relationship. Her passion was the developing world versus the developed world and the disparity between them. And that led Rose then, I think, to really start questioning colonialism. And then when she left college, she really went radical and gave away all her money to the poor of London and really began on this path then towards Irish republicanism.
7:17 Matt Forde? In some ways, her romantic relationships play a big part in her life and in her political development. Peter Aide kind of gets her into politics, Wally Heaton gets her funding the IRA. Obviously with Eddie Gallagher, it really goes up a notch. Is it too simplistic to say that had she met a more boring chap who had more mundane hobbies, that none of this would have happened?
7:38 Speaker 05 Well, that was what her parents had always hoped, you know, they had really tried to put that kind of guy in her path. And she told me her very first crush was for a Tory MP. But I just, I just don't think that she could have settled. When she became international news, there was a man from Malaysia who wrote to the family and saying that I'm willing to have Rose as my wife and, you know, she needs to get away from her radical politics and settle down with me. And there were offers to try and get her on another path, but I just don't think she would have stayed there. I think she was drawn to radical men. I think, you know, being married to a man who liked to watch his football at the weekend and go to the pub would have ended very soon.
8:19 Matt Forde? We finished our story in nineteen seventy four with Rose's arrest for the Strabane bombing and the art heist at Rusper House. But that's not where her story ends, as you discovered. What happened to Rose next?
8:31 Speaker 05 She was jailed for nine years for the Rusper raid. And she went into prison pregnant, but hiding her pregnancy through a big overcoat. Because Eddie Gallagher had sent a message to her that when she went into labour, he would get the IRA and they would break into the maternity hospital and and get her out of there. It was such a crazy plan and it didn't work because the prison felt that if Rose had not declared her pregnancy until she went into labour, then this was obviously got something to do with some sort of elaborate escape plan. So they decided they would send a doctor and two nurses into Limerick Prison where she had her baby. So then she served
9:13 Speaker 05 out her time in Limerick in the women's section. I spoke to other prisoners who knew her. She was quite well known because she would give out cigarettes to other prisoners and give them advice, legal advice and all sorts of advice. And then when she got out, she was only out a very short amount of time when she was involved in the anti-drugs movement in Dublin, which was very much IRA controlled, where they would threaten drug dealers. And Rose had absolutely no fear. I mean, she really went up to some of the most dangerous drug dealers in Ireland and told them she was going to shoot them. And there was a lot of drama about that. And that's how Jim Monahan had got out of prison because he had escaped from the terrorist court by blowing the walls up in the terrorist court and escaping.
9:55 Speaker 05 And he got caught and he did 10 years. So when he got out in 1985, he turned up at Sinn Féin's office in Dublin where Rose was working. And Rose's son Rory told me that it was love at first sight. And then Jim really took her into the heart of IRA bomb-making.
10:14 Alice Levine? You mentioned Jim Monahan and they were together right up until the end of Rose's life. And you said that he was at the heart of the IRA establishment. So if you could sum up the influence of Jim on Rose, what would that be?
10:26 Speaker 05 He led her into the very heart of the IRA's establishment. Eddie Gallagher kind of fell out with favour with the IRA because he kidnapped a businessman, Tila Hara, to get Rose released from prison and to get their their baby out of prison. But that was unsanctioned and got the IRA into a lot of trouble. Whereas I think Jim Monahan was at the very heart of the IRA and had tremendous respect for his ability to develop weapons, to develop missiles, these kind of things. And I think- Rose became part of the IRA establishment. She was no longer a radical when she met Jim Monahan and they were in weapon development together for twenty years.
11:07 Speaker 05 And through which they would liaise with the IRA's most active brigade, which was in South Dermagh, the heart of the IRA really. So through that, she really gained massive respect within the IRA. Because I think in the beginning, she was seen as kind of an eccentric and possibly a spy. But Jim Monahan, she really got a lot of respect within the IRA and its political wing. Sinn Fein, at a time when Sinn Fein were doing fantastically well politically.
11:34 Alice Levine? As you're talking, Sean, I'm just struck by the fact that Rose lived so many lives. The next chapter, if you like, is her as a bomb maker. Did she excel at that?
11:45 Speaker 05 No, she did. And herself and Jim were really at the heart of it. They were given a farm in County Mayo, in the west of Ireland, like right over on the Atlantic coast, where it's very remote and very little police presence. And they really developed a lot of weapons there, particularly missiles. They were very interested in shoulder-held missiles. The IRA had got a lot of weapons from Colonel Gaddafi in Libya. But police on both sides of the border had launched a massive operation to try and get those weapons from bunkers with some success. So the idea was, well, what if the IRA could develop their own missiles? Then they wouldn't have to rely on enemies of Britain and they could just, you know, even if a bunker full of these weapons was found and then they could easily turn it around
12:29 Speaker 05 in a warehouse or farm somewhere and start making more. So that was the idea. And they did have a lot of success and Rose came up with innovations herself that had major impacts on the IRA's bomb-making. For example, they were stuck on developing a new type of fuse for big, big bombs. And it was Rose who came up with the idea that if you take Semtex, plastic explosive, and you deconstruct it into its two parts, RDX and PETN, you can use those as a fuse. So that technique then was used for the Canary Wharf bombing and all the major bombings in the nineties in London. And it just struck me that here is Rose from Chelsea and here she is developing these bombs that were bombing her own city. It just struck me so much how much she was willing
13:13 Speaker 05 to go against her own society. She and Jim together developed what was called the biscuit launcher, which was a shoulder held missile that killed a lot of people in Northern Ireland. It was fired from the shoulder and it had two packets of digestive biscuits at the back, which would absorb the gas that was coming out the back. The problem for the IRA is when they fired a missile, the weapon would fly up in the air because of the gas coming out the back. This was a way to absorb the gas. It was very effective. If anybody in London wants to see an example of one of these, there's one in the British Army Museum in Chelsea, even not far from Rose's home, in their Northern Ireland section. But she developed that with Jim, which led to another thing called the rice launcher, which was packets of rice at the back of the missile launcher.
13:56 Speaker 05 But all of these had a major effect in terms of attacking police and British Army in Northern Ireland.
14:03 Alice Levine? It seems like a strange question in the face of the destruction and the violence, but I'm also fascinated that she had such an aptitude. Where did that skill set come from? Was that just sort of learning on the job per se?
14:15 Speaker 05 Yeah, mostly. She seemed to have an aptitude for chemistry and understanding the different principles of chemistry, but I think most of it came from Gemma and then she was very, very dedicated in terms of trying and trying experiments until they got it right. For example, they were trying different combinations of fertilizer mixed with icing sugar and other components in a place called the Iron Mountain in County Leitrim, right on the border. And once they found the right combination, then they took that down to the farm in Mayo and then refined it and refined it and refined it with experiments until they had found the right mix. That was then used for the really, really big IRA bombs in Northern Ireland and indeed in London.
15:00 Matt Forde? And her and Jim continued to make bombs years after the Good Friday Agreement. So did she not accept the Belfast Agreement at all?
15:08 Speaker 05 She did accept it, but reluctantly, like many people in the IRA, and they kept weapon development up.
15:16 Speaker 05 On the belief that they may have to use it again. And I mean, if you look at the first IRA ceasefire broke down, then they launched a Canary Wharf bombing in London. Then there was a second IRA ceasefire. So it wasn't a surprise to many people in Northern Ireland that the IRA were continuing to train in the background and develop weapons in the background in case that ceasefire would break down. And in the middle of all of that, then Jim was caught in Colombia teaching FARC Marxist rebels the very techniques that he and Rose had developed in County Mayo. So that kind of threw
15:55 Speaker 05 a major crisis into the peace process in Northern Ireland. So even after that, then he returned to Mayo and continued onward weapon development until the IRA Army Council sent a messenger to him to tell him to stop immediately, that all armed actions were to finish by the IRA and they were not to do a single thing more. And you know, thankfully, the ceasefire has held and political development has moved on.
16:17 Matt Forde? She stuck to the cause throughout her life, and that's not always the case of people, you know, some people just don't have the stamina to stick by such radical politics. So what was it about her that gave her effectively that strength to continue to the bitter end?
16:32 Speaker 05 Her son always felt that there was something drawn in Rose, almost a neurological need for rebellion against society. It gave her such a feeling of success to really pick on the establishment. And he gave me many examples where he felt that she could have backed away from this struggle, but she kept going. And so I I think it's just something in her herself that that got such a reward from being part of the struggle. I'll never forget the day when I cycled over to the nursing home and I want to get a conversation going about her son and the birth of her son. So I said, what was the best day of your life, thinking that might have been the birth of her son Rory in prison? So the best day of my life was was the day that I hijacked a helicopter and bombed
17:18 Speaker 05 Strabane Police Station and Army Station from the sky. But for her to say that was the best day of her life, really, to me, was an eye opener into her personality.
17:29 Matt Forde? Do you think she's someone who actually enjoyed being part of a violent group of people? Or was violence sort of grudging acceptance in order to bring about revolution?
17:43 Speaker 05 I think she enjoyed it. I think her son Rory would say that she very much enjoyed it. It was just personal, her personality. And he couldn't have envisioned any other way for her life to have gone because of her personality. I do think she very much enjoyed that life because she could have walked away from it at any time. And there was many, many opportunities where her family would have taken her back. But she never did that. She never kind of said, right, I've done enough here and gone home. She saw it through to the very, very end.
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20:23 Alice Levine? I'm interested to know what your impression of Rose was before you started your work researching her and writing about her, because very little was known about Rose as a bomb designer before your book was published.
20:36 Speaker 05 My impression of Rose before I met her, I think, was I'd always seen her as kind of part of that 60s generation, maybe like the Badger Mine half group in Germany that were radicalized in the 60s and early 70s. When I met her, I think she was maybe more thoughtful about politics than I had assumed and was certainly very interested in Sinn Féin's political development and had spoken very passionately. When Sinn Féin had called a special meeting of its supporters to finally vote in favor of accepting the police in Northern Ireland, Rose spoke very much in favor of accepting the police and that it was time to move on, whereas younger members of the party were very much against supporting the police. There was a political development there.
21:21 Speaker 05 There was an understanding that it was time for peace in Northern Ireland. I suppose that part of her life, I do have respect for because I can see that. She was trying to influence people towards peace and accepting the police and letting peace take root in Northern Ireland.
21:38 Alice Levine? Am I right in thinking as quite a young boy, you had a sense of who she was?
21:43 Speaker 05 Oh, yeah. I mean, if you look at the terrorist court in Dublin, which is the special criminal court, you had so many people going through it in the seventies and eighties, you know, hundreds and hundreds of people. And most of these cases got very little mention in the papers, but if Rose was even in court for five minutes at German, it was on the front page newspapers because she was so different as, you know, Chelsea debutante, who had been in Buckingham Palace. So her name was all around and, uh, yeah, I can remember very distinctly when we were passing Portage Prison, I must have been only five or six and, and my mother saying that, oh, that's where Eddie Gallagher is, who was married to Rose Dugdale. And then I went over and told our English neighbours that we had gone to visit Eddie Gallagher,
22:24 Speaker 05 which absolutely terrified them. And they really thought our family must have been involved for a while. She was a very high profile figure. In fact, I remember her son Rory telling me that she was in a shop once and the Prime Minister, as we would say, the Taoiseach of Ireland, Charlie High, was canvassing in that area and he walked into the shop and he turned around and saw her and he says, oh, I know you. Like she was known even to that level.
22:51 Matt Forde? We know Rose was unusual because of her class background, but how common was it for women to be in leading positions within the IRA?
22:59 Speaker 05 Very unusual. Uh, I think the Sinn Féin had a, their political wing was better at that. They were the first party in Ireland to bring in gender quotas and so on. But when it came to the military campaign, that was not part of, of it at all. It was very few members, very few women who made it on to the army council of the IRA. So it was interesting that, let's say, when she was up in, in Leitrim or when she was in Mayo, she just kind of had a commanding respect within the bomb development unit, you know, because it was herself and Jimon. Well, she told me that the people that she liked most within the Republican movement were the women, the feminist women within the IRA, for example, the Price Sisters,
23:43 Speaker 05 of whom there is now a Netflix series, people like that. And she really didn't like the old male guard that she felt were conservative, Catholic and unwilling to kind of bring feminism into the IRA. That's what she told me, anyway.
23:58 Alice Levine? Some of the women who Rose looked up to in the IRA went on to careers in politics away from the militant wing of the group. Is that a route that Rose could have pursued?
24:08 Speaker 05 Oh, absolutely, absolutely. Because of her work in the Dublin inner city on anti-heroine movement in particular, through a group called Concerned Parents Against Drugs, she did carry tremendous respect within the South inner city in particular. She could, I think, easily have got on to Dublin City Council had she wanted. She never seemed to express an interest in getting into politics. I think she could have even have been a member of the parliament or even an MEP. One of her best friends, who had trained in Mayo with her, was Martina Anderson. She was caught red-handed plotting a major bombing campaign in mainland Britain. She got several life sentences under the think and she got out under the Good Friday Agreement
24:53 Speaker 05 and became an MEP. So people who'd spent a lot longer in prison than Rose had gone on to very, very big political careers, but she always shied away from it.
25:03 Alice Levine? What I was wondering, as you were talking, we started the conversation off with you describing Rose as sort of an interesting viewpoint or lens to look at the troubles as an outsider coming into a movement. Did she remain, to some degree, an outsider despite the force that she became and despite, you know, the influence that she had?
25:24 Speaker 05 No, I think she did as much as she possibly could to be an insider. I mean, when she got out of prison, she moved into, locally it's known as Munchkin Land, these tiny, tiny little cottages in the south inner city of Dublin. I mean, if you extended your arm, it's about as wide as her cottage was. She'd given away all her money by that point. So she really kind of went out of her way to kind of show that she was serious in her intentions, in her revolutionary intentions. So she was very much accepted and valued, I think, within Sinn Fein. And at her funeral, like all the top brass were there.
26:01 Matt Forde? Just thinking of some of the major players in Sinn Fein politics at the time, people like Gerry Adams, Gerry Kelly, Martin McGuinness, would they have been deferential to Rose?
26:09 Speaker 05 Not initially. Eddie Gallagher told me that when he first brought Rose into the IRA, that there was suspicion, particularly in the Belfast IRA, that she was a spy. And Eddie said to them, well, if the British are going to send a spy, they're not going to send an upper class British woman from Chelsea. And they were like, well, that's exactly what they want you to think. That is classic psychology, where the IRA would think there's no way they would do that. And of course, you know, the British could be doing a double bluff. But Eddie said that Rose was just so dedicated that over time, they saw her as very valuable and very committed. And Eddie was quite close to Martin McGuinness. So I think that kind of helped Rose to gain respect within the IRA.
26:55 Speaker 05 And I think her actions and when she came out of prison really proved to the IRA leadership that she was very serious.
27:01 Matt Forde? How should we sum up Rose Dugdale then? She was clearly a force of nature, but did she help or hinder the republican cause overall?
27:09 Speaker 05 Oh, I think she helped enormously. I think propaganda wise, in terms of who she was and where she come from. I think she gave it an intellectual basis for many of the things, their anti-colonialism, their interest in social issues, such as helping Irish traveller or gypsy movement and those kind of things, the anti-drugs movement. And then on a practical level with bomb development. And then being able to articulate why the police should be accepted and so on later on. I think she was of huge benefit to them. And, you know, at her funeral, when you see Gerry Adams, when you see just about anybody who was anybody in the republican movement turning up at her funeral, it showed that she did carry a lot of respect.
27:54 Alice Levine? Thank you so much to Sean O'Driscoll for his excellent insights into Rose Dugdale. Matt, what have you got for me next?
28:01 Matt Forde? Well, we're going from one formidable bloody-minded woman of the 70s and 80s to another. Can you guess who the other woman is?
28:09 Alice Levine? I mean, it's got to be Maggie, hasn't it?
28:11 Matt Forde? Bingo! Which was also big in the 70s and 80s. Let me tell you, Margaret Thatcher had some very dodgy friends, and we're going to meet one of them. We're talking boom and bust, private jets, and a fugitive tycoon.
28:24 Alice Levine? There are so many ways you could have spun a series about her, and this is not the way I thought it was going to be.
28:28 Matt Forde? This is the story of businessman Assal Nadir, who built one of the UK's biggest conglomerates of the 1980s: a jewel in the FTSE 100. And he built it with just his bare hands, a fertile imagination, and a whole heap of lies.
28:43 Alice Levine? Oh, no he didn't!
28:44 Matt Forde? It's one of the maddest corporate scandals in British history. Join us next time for Thatcher's favourite fraudster.
29:03 Alice Levine? From Wondery and Sammestat Audio, this is the fourth and final episode in our series, The IRA heiress. If you'd like to know more about this story, you can read The Woman Who Stole Vermeer by Anthony Amor, heiress rebel vigilante bomber by Sean O'Driscoll. You can listen to the BBC Northern Ireland podcast Assume Nothing, and you can watch the film Baltimore.
29:26 Matt Forde? If you want to get in touch with us with comments or suggestions, email us at [email protected] .
29:33 Alice Levine? British Scandal is hosted by me, Alice Levine.
29:35 Matt Forde? And me, Matt Ford.
29:37 Alice Levine? Our engineer is Jai Williams. For Sammestat, our producers are Chica Ayers and Redsey Bernard. Our assistant producer is Louise Mason. Our senior producer is Joe Sykes.
29:46 Matt Forde? For Wondery, our senior producer is Theodora Leludis, and our senior managing producer is Rachel Sibley. Executive producers for Wondery are Estelle Doyle, Chris Bourne, Morgan Jones, and Marshall Lewy.
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31:34 Speaker 08 The President is joined by guests like Tom Hanks and Ta-Nehisi Coates to reflect on how these timeless stories shaped his thinking on everything from fatherhood to leadership, and discover together what they tell us about the world we live in and the world we want to create. Audible subscribers can listen to all episodes of A Great Book with Barack Obama ad-free right now, plus access each audiobook discussed in the series. Download the Audible app today.
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