The Troubles Explained (Part 2)

From the late 1960s to 1998, Northern Ireland was gripped by "The Troubles" - three decades of bloodshed, resulting from competing visions for its future. This week, we're releasing a two-part series that explores why this conflict erupted and how it played out. For this, Dan is joined by Dr Thomas Leahy, Lecturer in British and Irish Politics and Contemporary History at Cardiff University. In this second episode we chart the turbulent 20th century, from the Irish War of Independence to the Good Friday Agreement in 1998. Produced by James Hickmann and edited by Dougal Patmore. Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. We'd love to hear your feedback - you can take part in our podcast survey here: https://insights.historyhit.com/history-hit-podcast-always-on. You can also email the podcast directly at [email protected] mailto:[email protected]. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Dan Snow?

  Hey friends, if you love this podcast and want to decide what history we cover, then you need to become a Dan Snow's History Hit subscriber. Pitch your topic and if I like it, we'll make it into a subscriber exclusive episode. So far, we've covered the English Reformation, the Hudson Bay Company, the Trail of Tears, all of which have been decided by dedicated subscribers. So take the reins of your favourite podcast by heading over to historyhit.com/subscribe or sign up in your podcast player.

• 1:03Speaker 01

  Hi everyone, it's Katie Couric and on my podcast, Next Question, we love stories about how women are taking control of their lives. They are increasingly leading financial decisions in their households, yet many say they don't feel fully prepared for the long-term financial choices ahead. Real confidence comes from knowing your financial future is protected, whatever happens. Pacific Life has helped generations protect what matters today and prepare for tomorrow with life insurance and lifetime income solutions. It's a promise Pacific Life has kept for nearly 160 years, so its customers can keep theirs.

• 1:45Speaker 01

  Ask a financial professional about how Pacific Life can help you create a more confident financial future. Pacific Life Insurance Company, Omaha, Nebraska, and in New York, Pacific Life and Annuity, Phoenix, Arizona.

• 2:00Speaker 02

  This is a paid partnership with Apple Card. The coolest flex at brunch these days is not the Bloody Mary with the bottomless Goldflaite caviar topping. It's not whipping out your wallet to pay. It's not having a wallet at all. Jack's been an Apple Card user since 2019. That's the same year he tossed his wallet in the trash. Because Apple Card holders earn 2% daily cash back on purchases made using Apple Pay. It's the only credit card designed for the iPhone. I tap to pay with Apple Card at the grocery store, at the gas station, at restaurants. And yes, I use it at my second home, the farmer's market. Jack tapping to pay with his Apple Card with Apple Pay is his favorite thing to do. And the pleasant vibration and chime sound? Means I just got 2% daily cash back on my latest purchase. Apply in the Wallet app on your iPhone today. Subject to credit approval.

• 2:43Speaker 02

  Apple Card, issued by Goldman Sachs Bank USA, Salt Lake City branch. Terms and more at applecard.com.

• 3:00Dan Snow?

  Hello, everyone. Welcome to Dan Snow's History Hits. This is part two of our history of the Troubles. The euphemistically named conflict that gripped Northern Ireland, some in Britain in many ways as well, for 30 years. In the first episode, we went all the way back to the beginning. We traced 700 years of British and Irish history. From the reign of Henry II all the way through to the Easter uprising in Dublin and Sinn Féin's landslide electoral victory in the 1918 elections. If you missed it, there's a link in the show notes or just look back on your podcast player. I'd really recommend listening to that one before you launch into this one. Although this one would make sense by itself. We start at that great watershed of European world history. The First World War. We're in 1919.

• 3:44Dan Snow?

  The Irish War of Independence is beginning. The Irish Republican Army, the IRA, begin a guerrilla campaign against British forces. We're going to hear about how that campaign went. We're going to hear about the partition of Ireland into two states. We're going to hear about the civil rights movement and what happened during the Troubles themselves. Our expert guide through this tumultuous history is Thomas Leahy, a senior lecturer in politics at Cardiff University. He teaches British and Irish politics and contemporary history. He's an expert on the Irish Republican Army and Sinn Féin after 1969. This is the second part of our explainer mini-series on the Troubles. Enjoy.

• 4:28Speaker 03

  Black-white unity till there is first and black unity. Never to go to war with one another again. And look off, and the shuttle has cleared the tower.

• 4:41Dan Snow?

  Thomas, thank you very much for coming back on the podcast.

• 4:44Speaker 04

  Thanks, how are you doing?

• 4:46Dan Snow?

  We have left Ireland with the vast majority of people on the island of Ireland making it very clear that they wish to sever either entirely or practically their link with London, their link with British rule. There are six counties in the north of Ireland which have a Protestant majority for staying part of that British project. And the British Crown is not just going to give up without a fight. Tell me about the Irish War of Independence. Comes at right at the end of the First World War. How should we think about this war? Is it a guerrilla campaign? Or are there armies clashing in the field?

• 5:23Speaker 04

  It's the guerrilla campaign. And what happens of it and why it ends up in that direction, what we talked about, you know, finishing off last time, was talking about the Irish Republicans, they reflected on the east horizon and said, there is no point having set peace battles with the British Army. The better trained, the better equipped, we will lose. So the idea of people such as Michael Collins, who becomes a key IRA leader and key in Sinn Féin's political wing as well, he says we'll engage in hit-and-run tactics. And a kind of, you know, what a modern parliament sometimes is called like the war of the flea. If the flea keeps biting the dog or biting the cat time and time again, eventually the largest species in this case, the dog or the cat, or in this parliament, you know, what

• 6:06Speaker 04

  happened with the UK government, is they'll eventually get sick of Ireland, they'll leave because it's too much hassle for them. They have to negotiate for a settlement. And, I mean, at first, their outlook was, we'll try the political route. So they stand in that 1918 election, they get the majority of the seat. They then, if we link it to World War One, go to the Versailles Peace Conference, and via particularly the American government, they try to influence the American government to say to the British government, let Ireland have self-governance in terms of like basically independence. The way they tried to influence that, the head of the Sinn Féin party at this point, the president Sinn Féin, the president of the self-declared All-Island Republic, is a guy called Eamon De Valera, and Eamon De Valera had American

• 6:48Speaker 04

  ancestry, so partly why they felt, okay, we might have some foot in the door, if you like, with the American government. The issue for Sinn Féin was that because of the alliance between American and British forces, et cetera, in World War One, and the government, America wasn't going to do that, it wasn't going to allow itself to be backing an Irish Republican-led government in Dublin and Irish separatism. And then what happens is the British government, what does it do about this independent parliament set up in Ireland, paroques it, or just, that's just one way of saying, spends it, gets rid of it. And it does that because I think from a British government context, you've got to remember this is still an era of empire, and they do not want Ireland setting a precedent, for example, say, India, to decide, right, we'll follow the suit, we'll do exactly what Ireland

• 7:33Speaker 04

  did. So the leaders of Sinn Féin in the IRA, the ones that don't go underground, are arrested, and include some of the Sinn Féin members of the Irish Parliament, self-declared republic, and members of that parliament, were arrested. And then what you get from 1919, then, is an uprising that involves the Irish Republican Army, the IRA, the armed wing of Sinn Féin, and British forces. At this point, when we say British forces, to begin with, it was what was called the Royal Irish Constabulary, the RIC, which is the British Police on the island of Ireland, and the IRA got involved in assassinating them, killing them, to begin with. And that then led to more and more British backup forces coming in, some of these would

• 8:16Speaker 04

  have been British Army, other ones would have been what the Irish population nicknamed the Black and Tans, because of the colour of their uniform, but essentially they were auxiliaries to back up the police, armed auxiliaries to back up the police in Ireland, to try and stem what the IRA was doing. The Black and Tans are mainly recruited from some ex-British Army, but also from what we could call, like, sectarian areas of Scotland, to places like Edinburgh or Glasgow, and in this case, it would have been from Protestant Irish areas of Scotland. But that's essentially what goes on and really the type of conflict you get, you're hit and run. And then you get kind of tit for tat war. And what this involves in particularly the south of Ireland, giving you like standout examples.

• 9:01Speaker 04

  So what was called Bloody Sunday, like one of the original ones in during this conflict. So Michael Collins, who was one of the IRA leaders, has a select band of IRA personnel he works with. They assassinated a number of members of British intelligence in Dublin on one morning. In retaliation, the black and tans go to a place on the same day called Crook Park. So Crook Park's the head of Gaelic athletic games in Ireland, so interested in Gaelic hurling or Gaelic football, that's where it all played. So they go into the stadium and the black and tans shoot up the crowd. There's a number of people die. Another example of this was in Cork City, so a number of IRA volunteers then assassinate black and tans and other members of British forces.

• 9:45Speaker 04

  In retaliation, the black and tans burned Cork City to the ground and declared martial law there. So this is the kind of thing that starts going on and very quickly there's a momentum to one side will do something, the other side will retaliate. And it has a certain momentum to itself. And that's the pattern of the conflict, really. The IRA engage in hit and run attacks. They live in what's called in this period flying columns, so they live on the run, often like in the countryside areas. And they come out to attack and then they just fade back away. They're obviously, it's quite clear that the fact they're able to sustain that campaign, they've clearly got a very minimum sizable minority support. Enough people are willing to aid them in terms of hiding volunteers, hiding weapons, et cetera. And that's basically how the campaign plays out.

• 10:28Dan Snow?

  The Irish War of Independence was a guerrilla war, really. It was fought in ambushes and raids and targeted assassinations. And the British responded as conventional forces do in guerrilla wars. They responded in enormous force. They unleashed the black and tans on Ireland. They were effectively paramilitary soldiers, really. They were hastily recruited into the Royal Irish Constabulary, Ireland's police force. But they were poorly disciplined. They were notorious for their brutality. They often tended to be people that quite enjoyed the opportunities for violence and other things during the First World War. They burned homes, they attacked villages, they killed civilians in reprisals. Thomas mentioned Bloody

• 11:10Dan Snow?

  Sunday in 1920 there. Sadly, that's not the only Bloody Sunday we're going to talk about in this episode. Their presence really antagonised the Irish, it deepened their resentment. Instead of pacifying the population, they drove many towards supporting republicanism, supporting the IRA. This tit-for-tat violence, IRA ambushes, followed by Black in Town reprisals, created a cycle of bloodshed and hatred that really came to find that war. By 1921, both sides were exhausted and came to the negotiating table. The resulting Anglo-Irish Treaty established the Irish Free State, a self-governing dominion similar to Canada or Australia. So for many, this was a triumph to nationalists, leaders like Michael Collins

• 11:53Dan Snow?

  and Arthur Griffith. This was a stepping stone to full independence. But it accepted, well, a few things, really. One is that Ireland would remain in the British Empire, and also that the island of Ireland would be partitioned. The six northern counties would remain part of the United Kingdom. Now, within the rest of Ireland, a division formed between pro-treaty forces who supported the Free State and anti-treaty forces who opposed the treaty and its implications for an Irish republic that incorporated the whole of Ireland. Here's Thomas to explain more. The British government bows to the inevitable, well, I suppose the inevitable, given that

• 12:34Dan Snow?

  they are unprepared to wage the kind of war that they might have been prepared to wage on the imperial frontier outside Europe. They bow to the inevitable, they agree to the Anglo-Irish Treaty in 1921. Although it's a slightly complicated process, that effectively means the Republic of Ireland will be born. Covering most of the island of Ireland, but not the six counties in the north, which remain part of the United Kingdom.

• 13:00Speaker 04

  And when we get to the peace agreement, why does the IRA also opt into this and Sinn Féin? It's because a majority of that organisation believe, as in the two parts, IRN Sinn Féin, we'll call it the republican movement, the majority of the republican movement accepts that this is the best we're going to get at this stage, the Angaros Treaty. And they felt that we're at a point, Michael Collins claimed they might run out of weapons. And so he said, we should throw a lot in with what the British government offer and negotiate hard and see what the most will give us. Lloyd George's British government was willing to give Ireland in 1921 dominion status. It's more than home rule, but it's less than full on republic independence, because if

• 13:40Speaker 04

  you're in a dominion like Canada, Australia, New Zealand, you're still in the, today like the British Commonwealth. A sizable minority, about 45% plus of the IRN Sinn Féin did not accept this. And they said that, you know, this is basically traitorous to what we set up in 1960, a full on republic. And there was a close vote in early 1922 in Ireland, the Doyle, which became the Irish Parliament. It was pretty close in terms of about 51% backed it, 49% were against it. The big thing is the 49% walked out and declared they were going to set up a separate government. They have dual power in Ireland. The government, the British government recognised the kind of Commonwealth government. Then the other one, which declared itself still the existing Irish Republic, set up

• 14:24Speaker 04

  a place called the Forecourt in Dublin. And eventually, partly under British government pressure to Michael Collins, they're told to stop these lot carrying on like this, you need to bomb them out, basically.

• 14:34Dan Snow?

  The resulting Irish civil war was short, but it was devastating. It pitted the Irish Free State and pro treaty forces against the anti treaty forces. So these are nationalist comrades who had been united in the fight against Britain until so recently, they now turned their guns on each other. So fighting began in June 1922. Anti-treaty forces occupied the four courts in Dublin. Pro-treaty troops, now the official National Army of Ireland, they shelled the building with artillery, which was provided by the Brits. The conflict was bitter, it was brutal. The National Army was better armed and better organised and they quickly asserted their control of Dublin and other cities. And the fighting dragged on the countryside. The anti-treaty forces, well, they went back to waging guerrilla campaign that they were familiar with.

• 15:18Dan Snow?

  The same tactics they'd just used against the British in the Irish War of Independence, just a few years previously. The war was again marked by assassinations and reprisals and executions. And for anyone wondering why we're talking about a war that was fought 40 years before the so-called Troubles actually began, it's just important to remember this kind of inter-communal fighting is so vicious and it creates bitter resentment and those fractures can last long after the conflict is done. One of the most shocking moments came in August 1922 when Michael Collins, who was a hero of the independence struggle, he was killed in an ambush by anti-treaty forces. By May 1923, the anti-treaty IRA were exhausted, they were outmatched, they ordered a ceasefire. The war was over, but its consequences were really profound.

• 16:03Dan Snow?

  It shaped Ireland's politics. It cemented partition, so the northern counties of Ireland would remain part of the UK and the Irish government accepted that. And that in turn, that remnant of the UK in Ireland would explode eventually in the Troubles.

• 16:23Speaker 04

  The pro-treaty party won and then eventually the Irish Republic became a republic in 1949, it's unilaterally left the Commonwealth by itself. So then the North East gets left behind. So why the six of the north eastern counties stay within the UK? And really it comes back to all the things we talked about with the like the Irish War of Independence and we just talked about the 1916 Rising. Ulster Protestants after World War One, a large number of them had died. People who see themselves as British were going to the British government saying, look at this rebellious lot in the south. So how on earth can you defer to them and give them self-government whilst basically being traitors to us and forcing us into any kind of Irish Catholic rule, whether that's devolution or independence.

• 17:04Speaker 04

  And you know, this, from the British government's point of view, they found this very difficult to resist as an argument. I think the political makeup of what's going on was important at that point after World War One. You've got Lloyd George as Prime Minister in this period as a Liberal. He has to be in coalition basically with the Conservatives because they've got a number of seats. There wasn't outright majority for either. You've got a Liberal Prime Minister with a Conservative government and the Conservative Cabinet. And the Conservatives had a quite a close relationship with the Unionist Party, believing that, you know, Ireland was better to stay within United Kingdom framework. But then there's a question, well, if we talk about Ireland's provinces, anyone's into rugby will know this, Ulster, Leinster, County Monster.

• 17:44Speaker 04

  Now, Ulster, when we talk about historically in Ireland, was a nine-county province. So it was the six counties in Northern Ireland today, plus Cavan, Monaghan and Donegal. So then there's a question, well, why was Northern Ireland made up of six of them and not nine? And that's because the Ulster British Protestants via the Ulster Unionist Party, the main British Protestant Unionist Party in Northern Ireland said, we don't want the other three because if you give us the other three, the Catholic Protestant makeup of the North East State or State Northern Ireland would have almost been 50/50 Catholic Protestant. Ulster British Protestants wanted a majority and not just a slight majority, they wanted a big majority.

• 18:27Speaker 04

  And the reason then therefore the six counties are chosen is because that would have given them the largest majority feasible for them to hold on land. And the reason they want that because in their belief was we can't come under any all-Ireland form of government, devolution or not, because we'll be discriminated against as part of it.

• 18:46Dan Snow?

  And in Northern Ireland, the lines are being drawn very selectively, as you said, moving around its population to make sure there's the biggest Protestant majority possible. So all sorts of techniques being used to try and maintain British Protestant control over those counties. Does it sort of roughly work from the 1920s into the 1960s? Or what starts to shake it?

• 19:08Speaker 04

  Yes, you're absolutely right. And it's an interesting question there when we then look at the Northern Ireland conflict, you know, kicking off in 1969. Interestingly, right, if we go back to time, 1940s after war, there started to be some problems. And the problems were because when Atlee's Labour Government come in, it passed certain acts like Universal Secondary Education Act, it started to bring in like a national health service. Now, one of the fears there, and interestingly for the austrianist British Protestant government in Belfast, which was always winning elections because it was a majoritarian voting system, not like now, power sharing, similar what we have for Westminster, the first past the post. But if you've got a British Protestant majority in the state, funnily enough, they'll win every single election that you hold.

• 19:51Speaker 04

  But what was interesting is when the Labour Government passed these acts under Atlee, the unionist government in Belfast actually threatened to say, right, we're going to end up like Canada, Australia, we want to become a dominion, we don't want to be part of the UK set. The fear for also British Protestants as well, if Irish Catholics are educated to the same level of us, the discrimination becomes more obvious in 15 to 20 years' time when these people are coming out of school and trying to get jobs and they can't get the jobs. The other worry was if you had any interference in Westminster, like with gerrymandered electoral boundaries, so hang on a minute, there's a Protestant minority in very city, but they're electing more councillors, why were they discriminating in areas where Catholics are the majority?

• 20:32Speaker 04

  But in unionist British Protestant parlance and heads, again, this is an excuse and it's just trying to explain the thinking, they thought if we allow Catholics any influence in this state in positions of power, we'll end up in an all-Ireland republic. The better to hold everything you've got, even if you have to discriminate, to stop that situation happening. So the first, I think, chinks came in 1940s and we can see that by their reactions, saying, well, we might become a dominion instead and threatening Westminster. That doesn't happen because Atlee, as the Prime Minister says, we're not going to interfere in what's going on in Northern Ireland. We passed these acts for the whole of the UK, benefit of all citizens, but we're not going to interfere. You do your thing, we'll do our thing.

• 21:10Dan Snow?

  So that, what, Atlee gives them a sort of de facto opt-out?

• 21:15Speaker 04

  Not of things such as, you know, for example, the NHS and the secondary education, they have to take those things on. But what Atlee promised is, is I'm not going to come and look at your books for what's going on in terms of employment figures, or what's going on related to social housing provision and where you're giving the social housing. The social housing, actually, just reflecting on that, it's a really key area because this is the key dispute by Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association in that sixties. Their argument is, and there's plenty of evidence for this, and scholars generally agree with this, we might disagree a lot on other things, but we generally agree on this, is that classic example, a place called Caledon in County Tyrone in the sixties, where a single Protestant lady, she was about, I think, in her, I think she was either nineteen

• 21:56Speaker 04

  or twenty, was given a house, a social housing, she also worked for a local unionist politician, over a large Catholic family where there was greater need. And this led to some of the sit-in protests that kicked off the civil rights movement. Now, okay, social housing, the unionists didn't like that when Labour brought that in in the late forties either, because they thought this is a threat. But no, Atlee also said, it's fine. Your government and your councils could control the social housing, we won't interfere in that. So that's the potential first chink. You know, like we said, this discrimination has been there from the twenties. So why is there mainly protest in Northern Ireland from the sixties? Two main factors for that. First factor, when you look at the age of people in the civil rights movement, a lot of them might have been quite young, like eighteen, nineteen plus into twenties and thirties, these were the people who were benefiting from

• 22:41Speaker 04

  the Secondary Education Act. So then, these are people twenty years later, after the forties, are saying, oh, hang on, I've gone to a same school, a similar standard of school, just the Catholic area rather than Protestant areas, my Protestant counterparts, I might be better qualified for them, I'm not getting a job. So it becomes more obvious then that, okay, there's discrimination involved. The second big factor here is the global climate. And what we've got in particular is Martin Luther King and the US civil rights movement. That's where they're picking up their tactic, the Irish Catholic generally population about civil rights, that's where they picked it up from, seeing examples from the US. And it was effective. Once, particularly Harald Wilson's government in the mid to late sixties, its eyes are turned on this because of the protests happening.

• 23:24Speaker 04

  You should have said that as well, they're having their sit down protests or their marches. And what was starting to happen was the Unionist state, as in the government in Belfast was trying to ban some of the marches, plus the Royal Ulster Constabulary, the RUC, so Northern Ireland had its own devolved police force, it's predominantly Protestant, was ordered by the Stormont government to join clampdown on some of the marches. And these have been caught on cameras, particularly by Irish Television RTE. It led to more widespread anger in the Irish Catholic community. There is something going on here, and this state is deliberately trying to resist what we want. And Westminster, yeah, in a sense, can't turn a blind eye to this. We've had things like decolonisation at this point across various parts of the empire, is, you know, in line

• 24:07Speaker 04

  with like, human rights, et cetera. But in its backyard, this thing is going on. So it has to take notice of what's happening.

• 24:13Dan Snow?

  So there are marches, there are fights at those marches, the RUC, heavy handed policing, water cannons, batons being wielded. And those are both engaging in provoking Catholic rage in Northern Ireland, but also now meaning the British government cannot look away. These images are being broadcast, well, across Britain and the world.

• 24:34Speaker 04

  Exactly. And I think the other element we have involved here is not all of them, but a majority of the Ulster Unionist party, the British Protestant main party in Northern Ireland, and the British Protestant population are against the civil rights movement. And even to show that how peculiar this is in some respects, when we then talk about Ulster Protestant loyalists, so when we use this word, same belief as Unionists, keep Northern Ireland within the UK. Later on, loyalists are willing to use violence against the Irish Catholic population, the IRA, to achieve that. So that's slightly different than Unionist political parties, because they don't believe in violence, they would argue, to achieve their objectives. But loyalists are from the same, like, Ulster Protestant community, if we call it that, the British Protestant people there. Now, what's interesting with them, some of this discrimination we talked about, you know, you had to own a house, or

• 25:19Speaker 04

  you had to be the rent payer to vote, it affected them, some of the working class Protestants as well. But the Unionist, that mentality, again, we can't give an inch, because if we give an inch, we'll end up in an all-island Catholic republic, and we'll all be discriminated against. So you've you've got the government plus then who are controlling the police force, the Belfast government controlling the police force, the RUC and that behaviour. And then the British government, you know, as the overarching minister of rule in Northern Ireland, because it has similar to devolution today, you know, and I always use the example with students, if the Senedd in Wales said, right, everyone with blue eyes in Wales can't have a job anymore, the Westminster can shut it down tomorrow, it has the power to do that. There's a saying in this period, but what it was trying to walk a tight rope a

• 26:03Speaker 04

  little bit, what was what we don't want, and I think this goes into the part of the British Army's ethos early in the conflict, we do not want an Israel Palestine mark two situation where we're caught in the middle, like they were in the 1940s and killed by both sides. So we have to push Ulster Protestants to reform and give civil rights as much as possible, but not to the point, we therefore push them into rebellion against us as well, alongside potentially Irish Catholic population. So that was the situation as it stood. And I do think, yeah, because this is the year of civil rights, the British government was well aware, we have to remedy the civil rights issues because if we don't, then internationally, we're going to look a little bit, potentially a bit of a prior as well, allowing this to

• 26:48Speaker 04

  go on. And obviously, the American infants would be key here, the Irish Catholics and politicians from that background would be using their contacts in America to draw attention to this, to put pressure on the British government as well.

• 27:01Dan Snow?

  So first chunk of 1969 is vital. Belfast very much have modelled on the Selma Montgomery March in Alabama, just a couple of years before. That was attacked all on the route. It became pretty obvious that the police were sort of favouring those Protestants and occasionally turning a blind eye, that kind of thing. Time about the Battle of the Bogside.

• 27:21Speaker 04

  There's various to these kind of flashpoints. At the Battle of the Bogside at this point, in fairness to the the Prime Minister of Northern Ireland at that point, the Stormont in the Stormont government, the Ulster in this party, is a guy called Captain Terence O'Neill. He'd started, in my view, because the British government put massive pressure on him to do so, to start putting some of these reforms in place, like, you know, one person, one vote, not based on, you know, rent or whether someone's a property owner, etc.

• 27:48Speaker 04

  That march you mentioned is kind of copying Selma to Montgomery March in early 69, which was led by more radical elements within the civil rights movement to try and force the pay. It caused problems for O'Neill because he was trying to pass the reforms, but there were hardline elements within the Ulster Unionist Party. Yeah, we're saying, don't give an inch because this is what's going to happen. And this is not a civil rights movement. It's a United Ireland front. It's just a new front for the IRA. So what then happened by the time you got to the Battle of the Bogside? So this is great where we're discussing the history across the episode because every summer in Derry and across various parts of Northern Ireland, there's various marching season which commemorates for the Orange Order, linked to William of Orange, for the British Protestant

• 28:30Speaker 04

  population, the victories they had over the Irish Catholic population in the past and establishing British Protestantism, the monarchy and rule in on the island of Ireland. So in summer in Derry, there is a march which was to do with the siege of Derry in 1989 and it being relieved by William of Orange. So they have this march because of the background tensions with the civil rights and people that happened. The Protestant population is involved in the Orange Order would march on the city walls, the Irish Catholic Bogside area in particular beneath the city wall. People go there, you can still see this today and the kind of boggy land. And yeah, the tensions because of civil rights and just generally the Irish Catholic population not being that appreciative of the Orange Order for obvious reasons.

• 29:15Speaker 04

  Just got again, little bits of skirmish and some stone throwing, et cetera. What then happened is that the elements of loyalists, Ulster Protestant, more radicals, if you want to call it that, they decided to go into the Bogside area, said, right, we'll have a face off and we'll stop this stone throwing, et cetera. Elements, not all, but elements of the RUC and the security services. There's a couple of backups to the RUC, something called the Ulster Special Confederary, the Irish nationalist Catholics, we call it the B specials, which was almost like 99 to 100% Protestant. And it was kind of to the extent an armed paramilitary, a very old discipline. So they got involved in fighting with the marches. This time, the Irish Catholics living

• 29:57Speaker 04

  The bogside stuck up barricades and they were ready with petrol bombs and yeah, and this went on for days and days. And it spreads because what were the civil rights marches and those involved in the that little bogside, as it was called, that area. Put out a call to brethren in Belfast and other parts of Irish National Northern Ireland. To do the same kind of thing in Belfast, it led to mixed areas, particularly by also products burning out Irish Catholic homes in mixed areas. The British troops had to enter because it was pretty obvious that the that point, the stormant. Also the British Protestant government and the I U C had lost total control of the situation.

• 30:34Dan Snow?

  So the British Army are now on the streets of Northern Ireland and and the sort of really. Nuance bit is that then the British Army are not there. To fight a counter insurgency against Irish Catholic Republicans. And I don't think that the British political and military leadership did not want that to be the case, did they? I mean, they're there. What to sort of try and ensure. The rule of law whilst the British government is pushing the Northern Irish government to offer more concessions to right some of the historical injustice. How do you see? The thinking in in that deployment?

• 31:14Speaker 04

  Yes, exactly. To begin with, it was reluctant and it was reluctant in the sense that, again, it goes back to the history we talked about, the British government. And therefore its own forces did not want direct entanglement with Irish politics again, and it didn't want it for a few reasons. One, because. They tried this when you had front tries and various parts of the Irish population voting. As we talked about in the early nineteen hundreds, you end up with all the home rule thing, almost a civil war. And then obviously the Irish were of independence and they thought we do not want direct involvement in Irish shape as again because of this. The second reason why for Westminster government is just because there's there's no vote. I mean, I know we've had exceptions, say, recent periods where.

• 31:55Speaker 04

  Like trees amazing conservative government was propped up by Unionists in London under the Brexit period from twenty seventeen, was it twenty nineteen? But that's quite rare because we have a first past the post system voting for Westminster election. So very rarely do parties from Northern Ireland, the Northern Ireland today, what, has 18 MPs and there's 600 plus MPs, but very rarely, even if the government fell short, the majority, they're going to rely on parties from Northern Ireland. So it's not somewhere that electorally has any attraction for Westminster governments to get involved with.

• 32:27Dan Snow?

  Even arguably more important than that, there are no votes on the mainland about Northern Ireland, right? So no one's vote is swayed in Reading or Glasgow or Cricath because they wish the British government was firmer in Northern Ireland.

• 32:42Speaker 04

  Definitely, yes. We hold the line here, we push the reforms through and hopefully the civil unrest, rather than like kind of any main kind of internist or paramilitary groups evolving at that point, that this civil unrest between the communities will settle down. And that's how they approached the situation initially to begin with, definitely.

• 33:02Dan Snow?

  This is the Dan Snows History, talking about the troubles in Ireland, all coming up.

• 33:10Dan Snow?

  This episode is brought to you by TikTok. I never thought about the history of coffee. You make it, you drink it, nothing more to it. Then I've had a TikTok video about how people in the 1700s would pour their coffee into saucers to let it cool before drinking it. I love that sort of discovery, a detail, but suddenly you're imagining how people lived and drank and socialized. Now I wonder what all baffled historians about us, mugs. It's a ceramic vessel, but crucially, it has a handle. Well, that's the joy of TikTok, folks. You look for one thing and find yourself somewhere completely different. Your next discovery is waiting on TikTok. Learn more at tiktok.com/discovermore.

• 33:52Dan Snow?

  This episode is brought to you by Decagon. If you've ever been trapped in phone tree hell, pushing zero 50 times while a voice robot pretends not to hear you, you know true psychological warfare. It's brutal, folks. Thankfully, that kind of horror is now confined to the history books. Customer service has evolved. Decagon helps companies create personalized, concierge-style customer experiences with AI agents.

• 34:17Dan Snow?

  Across chat, email, voice and SMS. They're available 24/7, feel natural to talk to, and can resolve customer requests on their own. So businesses can keep up with requests without losing their personal touch. Plus, because workflows can be updated using natural language, teams can make changes themselves. Deckagon gives your team full visibility into why agents make decisions and what's happening across every conversation, helping to power millions of conversations every day. Ready to transform your customer support? Go to deckagon.ai/dansnow to see what Deckagon can do for your team. That's deckagon.ai/dansnow. Check Deckagon out at deckagon.ai/dansnow.

• 35:04Speaker 02

  Outdated technology isn't going to improve a disconnected healthcare system. Next. So what will? At Optum, we wake up every day and work for better. We call it healthy optimism. It's how we use insights and technology to help providers focus less on paperwork and more on patients. Will we fix it all overnight? No, but we'll wake up trying again and again until healthcare works as one for everyone. That's healthy optimism. Learn more at optum.com.

• 35:34Speaker 01

  Hi, everyone. It's Katie Couric. And on my podcast, Next Question, we love stories about how women are taking control of their lives. They are increasingly leading financial decisions in their households. Yet many say they don't feel fully prepared for the long-term financial choices ahead. Real confidence comes from knowing your financial future is protected, whatever happens. Pacific Life has helped generations protect what matters today and prepare for tomorrow with life insurance and lifetime income solutions. It's a promise Pacific Life has kept for nearly 160 years, so its customers can keep theirs.

• 36:16Speaker 01

  Ask a financial professional about how Pacific Life can help you create a more confident financial future. Pacific Life Insurance Company, Omaha, Nebraska. And in New York, Pacific Life and Annuity, Phoenix, Arizona.

• 36:41Dan Snow?

  For the first time in generations, the British Army was formally sent into Northern Ireland to keep the peace. Soldiers patrolled the streets of Derry and Belfast, and that marked the beginning of a military presence that would last nearly 40 years. Why Britain sent the army, sent troops into Northern Ireland, remains one of the most contentious part in this long and very complicated story. The decision wasn't taken lightly for Westminster. It was meant to be a temporary measure. They did not have any interest in British troops slogging around the streets of Northern Ireland when there was a lot else going on in the world. Soldiers were deployed to restore law and order, to protect Catholic neighbourhoods from loyalist mobs, and support the Northern Irish government, which was close to collapse. So they're trying to please all parties here in the conflict. And these core goals are at odds with each other.

• 37:25Dan Snow?

  It wasn't clear whose side these soldiers were on. Catholics hoped the army would protect them from the loyalists and the Royal Ulster Constabulary, the police force of the Ulster government. Unionists thought the army, obviously, would uphold their authority. Trying to satisfy both sides was impossible. So there was rioting in places like Derry and Belfast, and the army struggled to contain the unrest. And it became clear it wouldn't be just there for days and weeks. It was drawn deeper into policing Northern Ireland and actually dealing with that brewing insurgency. As the situation worsened, well, it led to a cycle of violence. And we see at this point the rise of the so-called Provisional IRA. And we see acts by the Provisional IRA, we see loyalist paramilitary retaliation, and on and on and on.

• 38:09Dan Snow?

  Welcome to the decades-long troubles. That sort of doesn't last, and by 1970, there are what looks like kinetic operations against the IRA, right? So more of that counterinsurgency.

• 38:22Speaker 04

  And that comes through, really, because of two things. The Unionist government, it still exists, it's not a parogue, it's not suspended in Belfast, the devolved government they keep in business until March 1972. So you think the conflict starts, what, August 1969? So it's another two, three years on top. And the reason that is, and it gives us an insight into, you know, how's the British Army getting more drawn into a conflict, maybe with the Irish nationalist population to begin, or the Irish Catholic population, if you want to call it that, is essentially just because of the fact that Unionist government is still convinced that the civil rights movement is part of some kind of plot to draw Northern Ireland into an all-Ireland republic. So it's dragging its heels a little bit with some of the reforms.

• 39:04Speaker 04

  The British government's got to be careful in the army at this point. We do not want to get dragged into a conflict between both sides. And that means, for example, if we force through all civil rights and we force all these changes and all the Protestants, will loads of them start going to legal paramilitary organisations? There was also a fear like, what about all these Ulster Protestants we've had in the RUC and the British Security Services in Northern Ireland? Or the B-Specials? If we demobilise them and just back them and bower them from employment again, the ones we felt were involved in some of this trouble, where are they going to go? They'll join probably illegal loyalist paramilitaries and then potentially they'll be attacking the British troops. So what then happens, I think, early on, that kind of unionist paranoia then

• 39:47Speaker 04

  has an influence on British forces. And a classic example of this is something called like the Fallsborough curfew in 1970. The Fallsborough now is a, and it was at this point, is a heavy Irish nationalist area, but particularly an Irish republican area. Difference between those two terms, just to explain to the listeners, Irish nationalist, someone who wants United Ireland, that's happy for it in the long term via political means. An Irish republican in this period, pre 1998, believes in the use of violence, you know, or the armed method to try and get an all-Ireland republic and it needs to happen, the FAP. And so what happened in the Fallsborough curfew is British troops went in, had a curfew and they searched houses. They did find some weapons, but actually, you know, there's been British generals, et cetera, written books after and said, yeah, but actually all we did was make some people probably fences in the community,

• 40:32Speaker 04

  we're not necessarily backing republican, end up backing them. But the reason that search happens, because the unionist Protestant government influenced the British government to allow it, probably more based on paranoia than actual danger from that area at that point. But the second thing that's happening with the British Army, and partly this is because of a change of government in London with the Edward Heath government coming in, there is more of a belief that we've got to be careful here because if Ulster Protestants resisting the changes, we've said, and they then have an uprising, we're stuck in the middle. And a particular moment that's often, I think, overlooked, that was really key in this, we go back just a little bit to the end of 1969, Lord Hunt was asked to do a review about the security services in Northern

• 41:15Speaker 04

  Ireland, the security forces, and what have they been doing and how have they been discriminatory? He released a report called the Hunt Report in the winter months of 1969. He called for the spanding of the B specials, so totally getting rid of that backup for the RUC because he said they were sectarian pro-British Protestant. He also said the disarming of the RUC. Now, this never happened because of the conflict. But from an also British Protestant perspective, this was a nightmare. And for them, said that, look, the British government is teaming up with Irish Republicans is going to force us again like into Northern Ireland Republic. So there's some riots in the heavily British Protestant Shankill Road area at Belfast. And what happened is in RUC offices were shot dead, but there was a lot of skirmishes between the army and loyalists.

• 42:01Speaker 04

  And this sent kind of shockwaves, I think, through the, I think, British Army and government. They thought, hang on here, we've got to be careful because in their heads, they were going to get caught in a two-front war. And in a sense, I think that leads to this ethos that, no, let's focus on essentially troublemaker in the Irish nationalist population, the reemergence of the IRA. And we'll crush that. And that will be the route to solving the tensions. Well, they believed that would balance things out so they wouldn't be faced by two-front war.

• 42:29Dan Snow?

  It doesn't work out quite smoothly as that. You mentioned that the falls rode curfew, there's a full-on firefight, there's people killed, there's people discharging automatic weapons in the streets, it's extraordinary. Does that reach ahead in, in January 1972 with the infamous Bloody Sunday?

• 42:48Speaker 04

  Yes, and the background, the Bloody Sunday as well, a really key thing is internment without trial was brought in in August 1971 by the Unionist government in Belfast. So internment without trial is pretty much what it says on the tin, you can intern someone without putting them to trial, the internment camp set up. Now, in theory, that could have lowered tension if, two things. One, it was introduced with the Irish government at the same time, north and south of the border, because otherwise if people from Irish Republican background ran off to the south, well, they're not going to be interned. And that did happen during a brief, small, little IRA campaign in 1950. But at this point, the Irish government was not willing to introduce internment without trial because it said, well, you've got discrimination in the north and you've been discriminating

• 43:32Speaker 04

  against northern Catholics who live in Northern Ireland. So there's no way we're going to introduce internment without trial until you settle those problems up north. That was one disadvantage for internment. The other problem was that in the first evening of internment in August 1971. About 300 people were interned, over half of the release because most of them weren't even in the IRA or Sinn Féin, but there were some of them are just in the civil rights movement. So it looked anti-Irish Catholic or anti-Irish nationalist. And also no Ulster Protestants were initially interned. And some of these had been involved in the UVF, the Ulster Voluntive, was the legal paramilitary terrorist organisations, whatever people would call them. And the other issue with internment was it wasn't just like the Falls Row curfew, it wasn't just in one place in Belfast, it was across the whole of Northern Ireland.

• 44:16Speaker 04

  And now you'd had a way of antagonising and irritating various Irish nationalist communities. When you then get to Bloody Sunday in Derry in January 1972, so this background's useful because there was a civil rights march, but they were marching against internment that day in Derry City. And what happened, Derry generally up to that point, a lot of the real bouts of the conflict, if you like, between the different sides, with Belfast focused at that point. So Derry obviously had been a site of the civil rights dispute. But at that point, there was no particular faction of like the IRA that had emerged this kind of dominant and really driving a conflict there. And partly some of that was because one of the Irish Catholic local, one of the exceptions

• 45:00Speaker 04

  it was in the RUC, they had driven the kind of security policy where they'd been barricades put up in Derry, don't go in heavy handed to try and remove them, basically have negotiations with the local people of that part of the population, plus the IRA to see if we can get them to agree to remove barricades or agree to some other contributory gesture. What happened by January 1972 is elements of the British Army and certain regiments that had been in Belfast, taken a tough approach, said this approach needs to be taken in Derry. It's ridiculous to allow bits of the state and what the nationalists in the boggs I call free Derry, to basically opt out, live under barricade, they argue it was now the IRA to grow. So this is all culminating when you get to this anti-intermate march by the civil

• 45:44Speaker 04

  rights movement in Derry at the end of January in 1972. And what happened is the army units involved on the day decided we're going to have a snatch and arrest operation of certain people who turn up to civil rights movement may well be in the IRA and they start stone throwing or petrol bomb throwing at the army. But what then happened is when the, as we know from the 2010 Lord Savills inquiry by the British government, 14 unarmed civilians were shot dead to civil rights marches. 13 died on the day and then one died later, 14. And Savills verdict was these people were not posing a threat to British security forces on that day in that area. The problem was then compounded because at the time, just shortly afterward, Edward

• 46:28Speaker 04

  Heath's government did allow Lord Widgery to do a report about what happened. But Lord Widgery's report was quite quick in nature, which I mean essentially wasn't that thorough when we consider Lord Savills' report was well over a decade after the 1998 peace agreement coming to fruitation. And Widgery's blamed the civil rights marcher. So it just led to a mushrooming growth in the IRA in that area in recruitment. And it kind of really was the cornerstone at that point and policy changed slightly to this more overt security operation approach by the British Army. And I say overt, so it wasn't necessarily just targeting known IRA members or suspected. There was an acceptance at least that the rest of the Irish nationalist population

• 47:12Speaker 04

  might get caught up in some of these things, whether they were in the IRA or not. And that was kind of, yeah, led to the dynamics of the conflict increasing really.

• 47:19Dan Snow?

  The British government got rid of the Northern Irish Parliament and assumed direct control a little bit later in 1972. Is that an acceptance that this problem is now just growing and growing and you cannot leave it to this devolved administration? You have to run this from London.

• 47:33Speaker 04

  I think it was a few things, yes, I think that's absolutely right. One thing it was doing was it was an attempt to shift the blame really in somewhat for Bloody Sunday. That it knew there were major ramifications to this. So it had to be seen to do something to it would appease the Irish nationalist population. Plus, we should add in the Irish government at this point, the Irish government was absolutely outraged by things such as Bloody Sunday. As were its population, I mean, the British Embassy in Dublin got burnt down shortly after by protesters because of Bloody Sunday. But the second point is, I think it was an attempt at this point where Edward Heaton had the Northern Ireland Secretary of State position created. William Whitelaw came in and William Whitelaw for Conservatives said, we've got to make an effort to try and appease

• 48:18Speaker 04

  the moderate part of the Irish Catholic community. So that included a party that then existed called the Social Democratic and Labour Party, the S D L P. It was later led by John Hume, who some listeners may know, he was a Nobel Peace Prize winner for the peace process. And their argument, these are largely, the S D L P were the main and throughout most of the conflict, about 60% of the Irish Catholic population backed them. And they did want United Ireland in the longer term, but in the short term, they accepted there'd have to be some agreement where Northern Ireland must stay in the UK. But the civil rights issue needed to be sorted. An Irish Catholic part of the population needed to be given some political autonomy within the Northern Ireland area. There's an attempt to appease them getting rid of Stormont because they didn't like it either.

• 49:01Speaker 04

  It was an attempt to appease the Irish government because the Irish government and the S D L P pretty much were on the same hymn sheet in terms of what they thought of the situation. And it was, yeah, the British government's attempt to try and, yeah, woo or win them over to some kind of more reconciliatory political initiative in Northern Ireland, which is actually the trial with power sharing overall.

• 49:21Dan Snow?

  Did the British government do things on the ground around social housing, employment rights, things like that, that did address some of those civil rights issues?

• 49:34Speaker 04

  Yes, and acts were put through from the late 60s into the 70s and 80s about some of the discrimination that had happened. And largely for the majority, like 50 to 60% of the Irish Catholic community were fairly content with that and the changes that have been made. And then there's a question like, okay, why doesn't this solve the conflict then? Why does the IRA's campaign continue right into the 1990s? Some of that was just essentially the damage that had been done, partly by what had happened with things such as Bloody Sunday or internment we talked about, and the whole civil rights problems in the first place. And it was hard to reconcile some people back to the changes that they then later made.

• 50:14Speaker 04

  But the second point as well is that actually in the 70s and large parts of the 80s, some of the acts that came in, things to do with examples, quotas at work institutions, et cetera, of public or private employment, about how much of the workforce should be Irish Catholic background or Protestant, and how do you monitor this? At first, the British government didn't necessarily in all these areas make it statutory. It made it recommendations by acts of parliament. And actually, later on, the Irish government, STLP, and then later on, Sinn Féin, had put forward the IRA push that, no, this has to be made by legislation. It has to be put in and then monitored by the ombudsman, that there's not discrimination going in.

• 50:55Speaker 04

  So, yes, they did make those changes quite early on in the conflict, but probably too late from the, just, you know, placating the majority of the civil rights movement view. But then there were still disputes going on really into the 90s about things like fair employment and non-sectarian appointment of people into businesses or public institutions, that that should be statutory and it should be actually made illegal by organisations to do that.

• 51:20Dan Snow?

  And I guess the other problem is that it's very easy to start wars, it's very difficult to end them. And they take on a dynamic of their own. And once you get tit-for-tat violence, bombings, assassinations, some of those political disputes can be forgotten and the war just has its own dynamic.

• 51:37Speaker 04

  Definitely, and I think some of the events we talked about on all sides really, some of the, you know, kind of standout largely indiscriminate measures by, say, the British security services at the beginning or the British Army specifically, I bloody Sunday, that has a lasting impact. And then on the, you know, vice versa, some of the things, for example, the IRA do or Protestant paramilitaries do, so UVF or also volunteer force or also defence associations, another big one, UDA. Some of the things these do then can lead to inspirations of violence from the other side. And I think the key thing, when we look at like Irish republicanism, it allowed the IRA to sustain what it did for so long and like the motivation to do so. I mean, there were people in the movement who were long-term Irish Republicans and they had been since, you know, the 1920s

• 52:22Speaker 04

  for their families and they felt their partition was wrong and that go back to 1918, that Sinn Féin, the IRA, they would say legitimately, or Sinn Féin at that point, won the Westminster election and they said they were going to declare independent republic, but the British government got rid of it and then didn't allow for Ireland to be a republic in the treaty negotiations in the 20s, so it was that. But actually, for a lot of people who joined the IRA in Sinn Féin, their view of anti-partitionism comes really from the civil rights dispute. And that, plus the way the civil rights movement was treated largely by the Unionist government, but later on by British forces, they would have seen involved in that. There's a debate now, like in history, where the SDLP, so John Hume's old party, would say Sinn Féin today claims it was part of the civil rights movement, it wasn't

• 53:06Speaker 04

  the United Ireland movement, it's trying to rewrite history. And then Sinn Féin would counter that and say, well, we partly were a civil rights movement. And I think the truth of this is actually just in my view, somewhere in between because of the fact that, in fairness to most people who would be in the IRA in Sinn Féin, the difference between them and the SDLP, the SDLP people believe we can work with the British government, we can work with Unionists, we can work with the Irish government, within the Northern Ireland state in the short term at least, have civil rights and therefore the United Ireland thing could be part of later. But in an IRA and Sinn Féin viewpoint, civil rights in United Ireland were the same thing. They thought you can't have civil rights living in any part of the British state on the island of Ireland, so you have to have United Ireland. And that's essentially just a different type of opinion they had. It

• 53:48Speaker 04

  explains why, you know, with some people willing to, you know, sustain the IRA's campaign as long as they did.

• 54:07Speaker 05

  At Lowe's, this Veterans Day and every day, military members, veterans and their spouses get automatic Milo's Rewards Silver Status benefits. Plus, 10% off eligible purchases with no annual limit. It's one way we honor and give back to those who have served and still do. Learn more and verify now at Lowe's.com/military. 10% discount can't be combined with another offer. Exclusions, terms and conditions apply. Loyalty program subject to terms and conditions. Details at Lowe's.com/TERMS. Subject to change.

• 54:36Speaker 02

  Confidence. It's listening to your gut. It's moving forward even when the path ahead is unclear. For nearly 160 years, Pacific Life has helped people keep their promises, building confidence for generations.

• 54:52Speaker 02

  Whether you're confident in your financial future or just beginning to envision it, we're here to help. Ask a financial professional how. Pacific Life: The Power of a Promise. Pacific Life Insurance Company, Omaha, Nebraska, and in New York. Pacific Life and Annuity, Phoenix, Arizona.

• 55:20Dan Snow?

  The rivalry between these two visions would define nationalist politics throughout the troubles. And in many ways, it was as bitter as the conflict with unionism. The SDLP's condemnation of violence and focus on equality in the here and now clashed with Sinn Fein's defense of the IRA's armed resistance. As Thomas said, throughout the 1970s and 1980s, the SDLP was the dominant nationalist party and it took part in negotiations like the Sunningdale Agreement of 1973, which proposed a power sharing and a Council of Ireland. Sinn Fein and the IRA opposed all that fiercely. The unionist opposition opposed it too. In fact, they killed it. Bizarrely, the irony is, in the long run, the SDLP's vision would prevail and Sinn Fein had been the beneficiaries

• 56:03Dan Snow?

  because Sinn Fein eventually succeeded at the ballot box and have had a stake in ruling Northern Ireland ever since. But that all came from their acceptance of a path that was much closer to the one that John Hume and the SDLP had always advocated for. But in the early 1970s, that was very far from certain. The years that followed saw the violence reach a terrifying crescendo. The British Army ends up fighting a massive campaign of counter insurgency, one of the biggest deployments since the Second World War in its own territory. You're supplying police stations at places like Cross McGlen, which I've been to a couple of times, had to be done by helicopter. I mean, it's just an extraordinary thing. And the IRA

• 56:43Dan Snow?

  detonated on the 21st of July, 1972, 22 bombs in Belfast in one day. What's the dear here? When does this really look like a hot war?

• 56:55Speaker 04

  Yeah, I would definitely say 1972 is definitely the kind of standout moment of this. So there's a couple of reasons for that. First of all, that in the two main cities, and certainly in like counter insurgency doctrine, British Army, the American Army would use places like Vietnam. You know, the belief was, I don't necessarily think this is actually accurate, but the general belief was you start having real problems when in the capital city or the major cities, you've got an armed uprising by insurgents. Because again, if these groups take over cities, certainly in terms of PR on an international level, it looks like you've lost total control. So yeah, there was certainly an ethos very early on, we cannot allow, if possible, the IRA to grow and establish campaigns in the cities. But then some of the things we

• 57:38Speaker 04

  just talked about, like Bloody Sunday, certainly in Derry, it allowed the IRA to mushroom and grow in Derry City. I've read like Peter Taylor's books, when he done some really fascinating work about different aspects of the conflict. But I think he says, I can't remember the exact figure, but there's about 20 out of 150 shops left in Derry City centre by 1975, because the IRA totally blitzed the city centre consistently. So in a sense, it caused more problems. So 1972, we really see that starting to rise in the city.

• 58:06Dan Snow?

  The conflict spread, didn't it? I mean, there was some attempt by loyalists to strike targets in the Republic of Ireland. And then there were IRA attacks in Britain itself. How were they attempting to change things in Northern Ireland by reaching beyond the borders?

• 58:25Speaker 04

  Okay, yeah, so we'll do a loyalist first because you mentioned that. So loyalists, British Protestant paramilitary. Their ethos of attacking places in the Republic of Ireland is simple enough that they felt it would have an effect on the IRA. They felt that anyone who might be backing Sinn Féin, the IRA and the Republic will get a message, don't, because we can come down there and attack you. It was also aimed at the Irish government. So the standout example of loyalist attacks was something called the Dublin Monaghan bombings in May 1974. Thirty plus people die in bombings in Dublin and Monaghan, which Monaghan is a town by the border, on the same day. This is actually the largest number of people killed in single linked incidents on the whole of the conflict on the single day.

• 59:07Speaker 04

  But there were quite a few of these loyalist attacks and they're often not known about around the border areas. And what's sad about it as well is actually the Irish citizens who died, their own government in the seventies and eighties of the Republic of Ireland just kind of forgot about them. And I think from my own work, it's just a sense that if you complain or push back too much, these loyalists might visit, rain down more violence from the north to the south. And I do think those types of attacks did lead to the Irish government, yeah, backing off a little bit in terms of wanting some political influence in Northern Ireland, probably to the mid eighties. That's why loyalists did it, because that was the purpose of it, is to put the Irish government off directly having a say over Northern Irish affairs. And then the second question, right, so the IRA's campaign in England.

• 59:51Speaker 04

  I mean, the IRA's thinking with this is that, we've got to remember this is an era before 24 hour news. Now, a bomb in like County Tyrone or Fomanna today probably would make like BBC News, 24 other news outlets or Sky News, et cetera. Now, back then, when you just had the nine o'clock news, because of the daily kind of grind of the conflict, these attacks just didn't really resonate anymore, certainly on like British media. So their thinking for them was, it used to have a phrase, I think, Republicans use, is like one bomb in England was worth 10 in Ireland. So in other words, particularly if you were attacking places like in London, an economic target, it would grab attention. The IRA's like overall thinking with the conflict key here as well. And you didn't necessarily, particularly from the late seventies, have to escalate what you're doing.

• 1:00:36Speaker 04

  If you just kept killing British soldiers, IUC officers, hitting economic targets, et cetera. Eventually, they believed that, you know, people in England, Scotland, Wales and Britain would press their government to leave, would say, we should leave here because the cost is not worth it. You know, in this thinking, partly where they picked this up from was the Vietnam War and what was happening between like the Vietcong and the American Army. Of course, the situation is a bit different there because of the America's a Conscript Army of Vietnam. Overlooked that a little bit, but that was the genuine belief that it would lead the UK public to wanting to leave, that England, Scotland, Wales public to say, let's just pull out and just leave Northern Ireland to it.

• 1:01:19Dan Snow?

  By the time we get to the mid 90s, galloping ahead here, I'm afraid, folks, obviously, you've got the Birmingham pub bombings, we've got Margaret Thatcher targeted in Brighton, which kills five people. She was incredibly lucky to escape with her life. But by the mid 1990s, you've got these really big bombs, City of London, the Canary Wharf bomb. We now know that they were really very, very close to a genuine ceasefire and peace negotiations while that was going on. So that was the IRA demonstrating strength whilst in those negotiations.

• 1:01:49Speaker 04

  Yes. And what it all goes back to, and we see this like fascinatingly in back-channel talks that were going on in the background between Sinn Féin leaderships, people like Gerry Adams, Martin O'Ginnis, Gerry Kelly, and the British government. And this would be done by intermediaries, my five, somewhere my six, and then Republicans had their own intermediaries as well. But what we see in the back and forth is, in the 90s, fascinatingly, when John Major's government would say, well, if you have a ceasefire, we can talk about these things much more at length and in more detail and really hammer some of the point down, Republicans get very suspicious and they'll say, well, what's on offer here? What is on offer if we call a ceasefire in the 90s? And they keep referring back to 1975 and they said, they'd say to the British government, don't forget, we haven't forgot

• 1:02:34Speaker 04

  that you messed us about in 1975. What they're referring to, there was a couple of IRA ceasefires, there was one in 1972, and William Whitelaw undercover, etc., flew the IRA and Republican leadership over to London, talks in Chelsea, and the talks just broke down quite quickly. In 1975, there was another attempt to solve the conflict involving the Republican movement at that point, Harold Wilson's government. And they had quite lengthy negotiations over most of 1975, the end of 1974, this back-channel talk.

• 1:03:04Speaker 04

  Between Irish Republican representatives and then British government representatives, again largely MI5 or MI6. And what was discussed at those points, there was discussions about, you know, would Northern Ireland potentially become like an independent state? Or would it become part of the Commonwealth, you know, to try and keep Unionists and Republicans happy? Was there a midway measure? But the Republican leadership at that point, who negotiated that ceasefire generally didn't tell very much to the grassroots. They just told the, you know, IRA volunteers or Sinn Féin kind of grassroots members, we're sorting this out and we'll get some form of British withdrawal or disengagement, as they kept calling it.

• 1:03:42Speaker 04

  So when that didn't materialise, the leadership who later took over, so again, people like Martin McGinnis or Gerry Adams for the overall Republican leadership. There was a lesson from them from that and they genuinely believed we'd been led up the garden path by the British government in 1975. And we had pleaded with them that we'd really wanted peace and that that is true. If we look at the documents, the Republican leaders in 1975 were definitely saying to the British government, we want this to stop. You've got to give us more towards, you know, an objective Irish unity. But the Republican leadership who took over later, he said like Gerry Adams, Martin McGinnis, et cetera, generally believed that if you appeared desperate like that. Of course, in their view, the British government sat back and thought, well, we're not going to have all these headaches.

• 1:04:24Speaker 04

  We'll have to have a talking to the IRA, which at that point didn't have a political mandate. So if they're that desperate, they're clearly losing. So we'll just, yeah, continue as we are with the security strategy. And so then when you get into the nineties, that's the thinking that, you know, you have to, when you go to talks, you can make it clear you want peace. You also to an extent talk like war and conflict at the same time. And that's that to make sure the person opposite you doesn't think that, yeah, you're desperate and you'll settle for anything.

• 1:04:52Dan Snow?

  Why do we see peace in the mid to late nineties? What changed, the American attitude changes, do people just war weary? What's the reason?

• 1:05:00Speaker 04

  Yeah, I think in my view, the key factor is an armed and political stalemate between all sides. And in terms of the kind of hot conflict, what's actually happening on like the kind of military front, the IRA continues to persist and it's running a low level intensity campaign, has people in trust at certain times and standout events they seem able to conduct. So that's a problem to like the British government, the Irish government, unionists and other players in the conflict and peace process because you think, well, this isn't going to stop. We can enact some more security measures, but if we enact things that are overt too much again and are non discriminatory, we end up by bloody Sundays or internments again. And then the IRA gets more support.

• 1:05:44Speaker 04

  So they were just kind of stuck and particularly if, you know, the British government decides it doesn't want to go, I don't know, and do something that we've seen in recent years, like, I don't know, Sri Lankan government did to the Tamil Tigers and have an outright conflict where a lot of civilians die, but then you're in big trouble with international organisations because you've probably broken on mass like civil rights rules, et cetera. So that was part of it. The other key part of it is what was happening on the political front. Sinn Féin's winning roughly in Northern Ireland, about thirty five to forty percent of the Irish Catholic vote consecutively from nineteen eighty one. Now, to put that in context, when people voted for Sinn Féin, you know, in the eighties or nineties, they were absolutely categorical. If you vote for Sinn Féin, you vote for the IRA.

• 1:06:27Speaker 04

  It wasn't as if like people didn't know this was happening. When you think about it, that's actually, you know, a sizable minority of that population backing Sinn Féin. So that was a real headache for like the British Irish government unionists because let alone if they got this persistent IRA campaign, you know, they're not going to go away in politics. They're there all the time. And if you wanted a permanent as possible political solution, you probably had to involve Sinn Féin in the IRA because of the percentage of support it had. And I just think that, but if you flip it on the other side for Sinn Féin in the IRA, yes, they've got a sizable minority support. Yes, they consist of the IRA's campaign. But where are these things going to? Otherwise, you're just stuck in perpetual conflict.

• 1:07:10Speaker 04

  So I think for everyone, really, you just reach this stalemate situation where trying to work our political solution seemed the kind of optimum solution to go for. And I think the last point I'd say as well, just with Sinn Féin is, you know, ultimately, one of the things they wanted, and they got out of the political settlement, that the British government accepted that some form of Irish self-determination was allowed in future. And it wasn't exactly in the end what we get in the peace agreement that Sinn Féin, the IRA, wanted, because they wanted the 32-county, the whole of Ireland, the voters one unit, which of course the British government, the unions, won't get accept. But if British government did accept and say, yes, in the future, both parts of Ireland separately but concurrently, same-day referendum, but they have to both say, yes, they could have a unification vote, and it's none of Westminster's business what the decision

• 1:07:55Speaker 04

  of that referendum is, other than to implement whatever the decision was. And that was quite key. So, you know, with loyalism as well and republicanism, they did have, you know, nationalist or separatist objectives, there are things that are tangible that governments can negotiate with.

• 1:08:12Dan Snow?

  We should say the peace process was certainly not smooth. And there was the actual worst single instant of the troubles, the Omar bombing in August 98, that killed 29 people. That was a splinter group, so-called Real IRA. But let's finish if we can. What bits of peacemaking, so what things are in that Good Friday agreement that were innovative or new? And you mentioned the big one there, which is just that essential recognition by Westminster of the sovereignty of the people of the island of Ireland to make that eventual decision. Was there anything else clever? You know, people living in Northern Ireland could be Irish citizens or whatever it might be. What are the bits that stand out to you in that agreement?

• 1:08:52Speaker 04

  I would say, you know, number one, as we said, reiterating that self determination is really key, because if part of the IRA's purpose was about getting Irish self determination, you sold that. It wasn't exactly as they wanted, but they could still sell it to their own movement that we got that. So I think the self determination point was really key, because it means that for the governments involved, the Irish and British governments can argue to group to maybe, you know, still use violence or want to use violence, that and our methods, that well, but there's a democratic path to do this. So I think that's a key point. Second key point, the power sharing setup, two points to this, because it ensured that you tried to get all the parties working together. Now, in fairness, the Northern Ireland government is, we've probably seen it collapse

• 1:09:33Speaker 04

  this quite a lot over, say, the last 25 years, etc. Now, there are backup options that if the government collapsed, it is, it usually goes to direct rule under Westminster and then the Irish government, because the various agreements from the British and Irish government in the 80s, is allowed to have a say on what, you know, consultive role with the British government. You generally keep kind of satisfaction for both in the main communities in Northern Ireland in that period, but there's also an incentive there, because you want to get rid of direct rule, then you have to power share again, that probably means you have to compromise. And so that seems quite a sensible system of government. Definitely the point that you said as well about allowing people dual nationality, and people can in Northern Ireland be British, Irish or other, and they can choose what they want to do. Maybe we see this sometimes in sport, you'll have people who are

• 1:10:14Speaker 04

  born in Northern Ireland, they'll play for like the Republic of Ireland, or people sometimes less so, these sometimes do get it, people in the Republic might play for Northern Ireland. And I think that's important, because people then don't feel like their identity and their culture is being diminished, or, you know, being put second place to a dominant culture. But I think that's really key. I think just the fourth element as well, it's really important about the Good Friday peace agreement in Northern Ireland. It tried to, and the reason I think it succeeded where other attempts failed in Northern Ireland in the 70s in particular, it tried to include as many parties as possible, including those with the paramilitary wing, so like the IRA and the loyalists. You know,

• 1:10:56Speaker 04

  when you try to include as many people at the table as possible and take all views, and then based on mandates, try and work out compromise and solutions, no one's exactly really satisfied with what you get, but no one's mega disappointed either, because they feel their viewpoint's actually been listened to. And I think it just shows that, yeah, trying to have an inclusive process, it can help to try and remedy some of the grievances that are there.

• 1:11:19Dan Snow?

  Thank you so much for coming on.

• 1:11:21Speaker 04

  Thank you very much. Thank you.

• 1:11:26Dan Snow?

  Well, that's all, everyone. Thank you very much. Thank you for listening. That's the long and complicated story of the troubles from the 12th century Anglo Norman invasion to the Good Friday Agreement in 1998. As you've just heard, though, this is an ongoing story. There are future chapters yet to be written, but as they're now written, I hope you'll have a reasonable understanding of the context. These two episodes have given you a strong foundation for what's coming next. Thank you to our amazing guest, Tireless. What a legend, Thomas Leahy. Thanks to all for listening. If you want some more explainers to help you make sense of the history that has shaped our world, make sure you hit follow in our podcast player to get more like this from me on Dan Snow's History. Thank you very much for listening, as always. That's all, folks.

• 1:12:19Speaker 02

  Hi, I'm Laura Adams, host of Money Girl, where I help my listeners make empowered choices. Women are increasingly driving household financial decisions, yet many say they don't feel fully prepared for the choices ahead. When you're making choices for a future decades away, confidence matters, and confidence comes from knowing a promise will be kept. For nearly 160 years, Pacific Life has helped generations protect what matters today and prepare for tomorrow with life insurance and lifetime income solutions. Pacific Life keeps its promises, so you can keep yours. Ask a financial professional about how Pacific

• 1:13:02Speaker 02

  Life can help you create a more confident financial future. Pacific Life Insurance Company, Omaha, Nebraska, and in New York. Pacific Life and Annuity, Phoenix, Arizona.

• 1:13:15Speaker 02

  I'm Jake Stauck, co-founder and CEO of Serval. We built Serval to automate the IT work that slows companies down. Onboarding, password resets, accessed applications, my laptop stopped working. While employees wait for help, their real work is put on hold. IT desperately wants to automate this work, and that's why they need Serval. You just tell Serval what you want to automate in plain English, and it's built. No drag and drop workflows, no expensive consultants. Employees get unblocked and IT teams go from drowning in tickets to building what actually matters. With Serval, IT becomes the AI engine powering the entire company. This is a new way to run IT.

• 1:13:57Speaker 02

  We guarantee you'll automate 50% of all tickets, and we'll prove it to you in a free four-week pilot. Go to serval.com/tickets. That's S-E-R-V-A-L dot com slash tickets.

• 1:14:14Dan Snow?

  Have you been enjoying my podcast and now want even more history? Sign up to History and watch the world's best history documentaries on subjects like how William conquered England, what it was like to live in the Georgian era, and you can even hear the voice of Richard III. We've got hundreds of hours of original documentaries, plus new releases every week, and there's always something more to discover. Sign up to join us in historic locations around the world and explore the past. Just visit historyhit.com/subscribe.