697. The Troubles: Murder in Belfast (Part 1)

17:55Dominic Sandbrook:So the Unionist leaders, when they basically took six counties, they had guaranteed themselves a two-thirds Protestant majority. They could have asked for more counties, but of course those counties had a lot of Catholics. They didn't want them. So they've got their two-thirds majority. So they're gerrymandering. I mean, you could say effectively, yes. But what that means, of course, is that one third of the people in this new state are not Protestants. They are Catholics. So this is half a million people who are not best pleased at the idea of living in a majority Protestant Unionist state. And partly as a result of this, this whole process was accompanied at the time by considerable violence.

18:33Dominic Sandbrook:Now, the early 20s is a very violent time across Europe. There are all kinds of ethnic conflicts and there are border disputes and all of these kinds of things. and by those standards not a lot of people die but by the standards of the islands of Britain and Ireland a lot of people do die so between the summer of 1920 and the summer of 1922 there's this intense street fighting between the IRA and the security forces especially in Belfast and by the time it's over more than 500 people have been killed most of them Catholic civilians 10 ,000 Catholics driven out of their jobs, 25 ,000 Catholics driven out of their homes by violence and by arson and so on and so forth.

19:14Tom Holland:I mean, one difference between Ireland and other parts of Europe in the wake of the First World War, that the violence in Ireland is a continuity. And Churchill has that kind of famous phrase about the flood, isn't it? And as the waters subside, we see the dreary steeples of Fermanagh and Tyrone. They're still there. And that, I guess, is part of what gives the story around this the sense of ancient hatreds. The idea that there's

19:45Dominic Sandbrook:no solution to the situation. Well, to some extent, people are the prisoners of history and the stories they tell and the lessons they learn when they're children. And you have generations of people who have grown up being told stories of separatism, of separate identity, of antagonism and so on. History is woven into the texture of life in Northern Ireland. It will come to the parades, the marches, the celebrations of battles of the 17th century and things. I mean, it really, really matters and it cannot simply be put aside or wished away. I mean, that's one of the lessons of this story, that continuity kind of gives you a context that people find it very difficult to escape, I suppose.

20:24But also that politicians in London

20:28Tom Holland:view this with a kind of frustrated sense of battlement, which is kind of what Churchill is saying there.

20:33Dominic Sandbrook:You know, nothing has changed. No, exactly. And in fact, the longer time goes on, and the more that the Irish question, as it were, which had been so big in the late 19th century, the more that it recedes, the less that people in London understand it. So by the time you get to the 60s and 70s, you have a generation of politicians in London. Take someone like James Callaghan. We'll talk about him later on. He was the grandson of somebody who had left Ireland in the famine. But his family had ended up converting from Catholicism to baptism. Does James Callaghan understand Ireland? No, not really.

21:03Dominic Sandbrook:He's not really interested in it. It's something that happened a long time ago to him. But to people in Belfast, this is kind of living history. It's real. And the fact that the British don't understand it is enraging to them because it matters so much to them. Anyway, back to the state of Northern Ireland. All this fighting in the early 20s had two obvious consequences. First of all, if you're part of the one-third Catholic minority, you do not regard this state as a safe space by any means. It's actually a very unsafe space for you. Is there emigration? There is some emigration, yes. There are thousands of people who cross the border.

21:37Dominic Sandbrook:To the Republic? Again, by the standards of European population transfers of the 20s, it's not enormous, but it's not nothing. There are people who definitely move south because they think this is going to be a very unwelcoming place for us. And Protestants moving from the south to the north? Not so much. more so that Protestants, I think, would move from the South to Britain. Here are people who lived in the big houses, the Anglo-Irish Protestant ascendancy and so on. So obviously, if you're a Catholic, there are loads of families who bear the scars, sometimes physically of the fighting. There are a lot of people actually later on who were involved in the IRA or whatever in the 60s and 70s who had parents and grandparents who told them stories about what happened in 1920 or 1921.

22:20Dominic Sandbrook:But then for Protestants, for the Protestant majority, they don't regard this as an entirely safe space either. Because although they're a majority in their own state, they are not a majority on the island. They feel we're surrounded by Catholics, we're besieged by Catholics. There is a state to the south that aspires to a united Ireland so that wishes us ill and wants to destroy our state. That's how they see it. and they say we've also got this fifth column inside our own borders we've got you know a third of our population are catholics and we can't trust them and is there anxiety at this stage

22:57Tom Holland:about the demographic potential of catholic families tending to have more children than protestant families which is a kind of people talk about that a lot now yeah was it an issue

23:09Dominic Sandbrook:back then people talked about it a lot they talked about it a lot throughout the 20th century Sir Terence O 'Neill, who was the Northern Ireland prime minister in the 60s, made a very contentious speech at the end of the decade when he said, and this was regarded as him being too soft by a lot of unionists, he said, we should treat the Catholics more nicely because they have loads and loads of children. And if we treat them more nicely, they will behave better and they will have fewer children. They won't overtake us demographically. Basically, nobody likes this speech. There's quite a lot to unpick there.

23:39Dominic Sandbrook:Yeah, there's a lot going on with that. But yeah, absolutely. People often would talk about that. I mean, I don't think it's that they feel demographically we're going to be overwhelmed very quickly. What they feel is the people in Dublin want to undermine us, which a lot of them, frankly, do. They think they look south and they say, well, you know, this newly effectively autonomous and going to be independent Ireland is turning itself into a kind of Catholic run state with the church having overweening power. This is the one thing we dread. We don't want this. and we have all these people within our own borders who we don't think we can trust, who would like to undermine us.

24:18Dominic Sandbrook:So that's why, I mean, there's a defensiveness that gives you the slogan, no surrender, which is, of course, one of Ian Paisley's favorite phrases, isn't it? Yeah. So there's tensions. So they're there in the 20s. And then when most people in Britain tell the story, they sort of stop there and they say, well, let's fast forward to the 1960s because nothing happens in between. But that's actually dead wrong. Lots of stuff happens in between. It's just we don't ever learn about it in Britain. So, for example, in 1935, I mean, this will surprise loads of people. There is massive rioting in Belfast.

24:49Dominic Sandbrook:There are gun battles. There are snipers on the top of buildings. British troops have to be sent to clear the streets with armoured cars. 11 people are killed. 100 people are injured. 2 ,000 people are driven out of their homes. And then actually that inspired reprisals across the Irish border. So there were attacks on Protestant homes and shops in Limerick. There were burnings of Church of Ireland churches and Methodist chapels in rural Ireland and so on and so forth. And in the background the whole time, the Irish Republican Army. So, you know, there's been all this stuff in the 1910s and 1920s with the IRA.

25:25Dominic Sandbrook:The IRA had split in Southern Ireland. It had, in what became the Republic, it had fought a civil war. The IRA never went away. It's still there all this time. So most IRA men, once the British signed the treaty and the Civil War was over, they did go home. They put their guns away. That was an end to it. But not all of them did. So at any given point, there are still a few hundred active IRA men with guns, and that is still enough to kill people. And they do kill people. So in January 1939, again, most people in Britain don't know this happened. in january 1939 the ira launched a new campaign against britain and they called it the s plan the sabotage plan and when you go i mean it's astounding how little known this is when you go through what happened there were bombs in london and birmingham bristol and liverpool and blackpool all over there were bomb attacks on railway stations banks post office there were bombs on the london underground most notoriously there was a bicycle bomb in coventry city center in August 1939 that killed five people, the youngest of whom was 50 and the oldest 82.

26:35Tom Holland:I suppose that further developments in Coventry City Centre the following year have slightly obliterated the memory of that bomb.

26:43Dominic Sandbrook:Yeah, of course. Isn't it funny that Coventry is obviously a bomb by the Germans. Everyone remembers that. So this 1939 bombing, which otherwise would be very well known, is basically being wiped from our national consciousness. But what happened to the IRA? In World War II, both the British and the Irish governments massively cracked down, and they started interning IRA suspects without trial. Ireland actually executed six IRA men during the Second World War, including the chief of staff of the IRA. They executed him for killing a guard, an Irish policeman. So the Irish are just as tough on the IRA as the British are.

27:23Now, against this background, the people who run Northern Ireland,

27:26Dominic Sandbrook:the Unionists have absolutely no intention of loosening their grip. And the first Prime Minister of Northern Ireland was called Sir James Craig. If you Google him, he really does look like a boiled egg and someone has painted a face on him. Does he have a massive moustache? He does have a moustache, yeah. Of course he does. I mean, with a name like Sir James Craig, you couldn't not. He undoubtedly has a moustache, yeah, no question. So he was very explicit about this. He gave a speech in the 1930s. He said, I'm not going to do the accent because my Northern Irish accent is not as good as yours.

27:57Dominic Sandbrook:He said, in the South, they boast of being a Catholic state. All I boast of is that we are a Protestant parliament and a Protestant state. That's good, Dominic. Thank you. It's understated, though, and it's a bit wobbly. He's not wrong. They are a Protestant state. The judges, the magistrates, the civil servants are almost entirely Protestant. The Royal Ulster Constabulary, the RUC, the police, who are going to play a massive part in this story, They're about nine to one Protestant. And the RUC has an armed kind of paramilitary reserve called the B Specials that people sign up for. And these are exclusively Protestant, really.

28:37Dominic Sandbrook:They are the sort of the bulwark, the enforcers of unionist supremacy. When things kick off in the streets, you call for the B Specials and they come out of their orange order lodges with their guns and they are the people who will basically restore order.

28:52Tom Holland:So in the 70s and 80s, the comparison was often made between Northern Ireland and South Africa by nationalists and Republicans. But I mean, there's kind of an element of truth there, isn't there, to a degree? It's a very inflammatory comparison. I mean, if the entire apparatus of the state is controlled by one faction, then it's not, I mean, there's no way you could describe it as a properly functioning democracy.

29:20Dominic Sandbrook:No, no, you absolutely couldn't. We'll come on to this. You absolutely couldn't.

29:23Tom Holland:And it's overtly sectarian. If not, I mean, it's not racist, but it's sectarian.

29:27Dominic Sandbrook:It's not racist. It is a sectarian state. Exactly. And Sir James Craig or somebody like that would say, I mean, he might quibble with the word sectarian, but he would say, you know, we're a Protestant state. End of story. If you don't like it, go somewhere else. This is how we're going to run things. You know, we know what we're doing. Pipe down. He would absolutely say that, and critics would say, well, that's what the Afrikaners or whatever say in South Africa. Some people in Northern Ireland would be offended by that. Some people would lean into that comparison and say, well, we kind of are like the Burrs.

29:58Dominic Sandbrook:We are hardy frontiersmen. We've carved out a state in the face of overwhelming odds. You know, we've built something really precious and special, and we want to defend it. And don't you tell us what to do.

30:11Tom Holland:I don't want to plunge into this because it's murky waters, but on the Shank Hill and Falls Road murals, the Shank Hill is full of the Israeli flag and the Falls Road is full of the Palestinian flag.

30:22Dominic Sandbrook:Absolutely right. Absolutely. Yes, there is a self-image. The unionists, especially some years ago, would have said, we are like the chosen people. We're like the children of God, the children of Zion, all of that kind of thing. Well, I mean, Ian Paisley definitely would have done. Ian Paisley undoubtedly would. And of course, among nationalists, the comparison with the Palestinians, you know, it dates, goes back to the seventies. So absolutely, yes. Two things about the RUC, the police, which is important for people to remember. Number one, they are much, much more powerful than a police force in Britain or elsewhere in Western Europe.

30:55Dominic Sandbrook:There was special legislation in 1922 that gave them special powers. They can search without a warrant. They can arrest you without a warrant. They can intern you as a suspect without trial. They can impose a curfew, a ban on a march or a ban on a newspaper at will. So they have a lot of leeway. And the RUC, like their political masters, are very closely tied to a group called the Orange Order. And the Orange Order is basically a fraternal organization, a fraternity, a brotherhood. It was founded in 1795. It was dedicated to the defense of Protestantism and the union with Britain. It's, of course, named after William of Orange from the Glorious Revolution.

31:37Dominic Sandbrook:And almost every single member of the B Special Reserves and almost every single Unionist MP is an Orangeman, belongs to an Orange Lodge. So where does that leave you if you're a Catholic? In 1967, the Times did a big investigation into the status of Catholics in Northern Ireland. And it described them as Ulster's second-class citizens. and actually you can see why so the ulster unionist leader david trimble who ended up winning the nobel prize didn't he in 1998 in his nobel prize winning speech said that ulster unionists fearful of being isolated on the island built a solid house but it was a cold house for catholics which was a sort of a big concession for an ulster unionist leader to have said and he was right a lot A lot of Protestant firms will not employ Catholics.

32:29Dominic Sandbrook:If you have a Catholic name, if your name was, I don't know, Liam O 'Hara or something, you probably would not get a job. You wouldn't even be interviewed for a job, given a chance of a job in the big Harland and Wolfe shipyards. Roman Catholics are twice as likely to be unemployed as Protestants, and they have no political power really, because Northern Ireland has a first-past-the-post political system in which the boundaries have been ruthlessly gerrymandered to ensure a permanent unionist majority at Stormont, at the Parliament. This is even more glaring at the local level. At the local level, you can only vote if you're a ratepayer, if you pay local government rates.

33:11Dominic Sandbrook:And you pay them if you own your own house, or if you rent a house, or you can vote if you're the spouse of somebody, who, you know, the wife usually of somebody who owns or rents a house. Now, Catholics are poorer. They're more likely to live in extended family groups or with their parents. And as a result, lots of Catholics can't vote in local elections. As a result of that, in the cities or the places where you have, you know, Catholic majority, so the city of Derry or County Tyrone or County for manor. Power is still controlled by the unionists because they have more people who own their own homes.

33:50Dominic Sandbrook:And that means they control public jobs and crucially housing. It may sound very banal, but it's a massive deal in this story. Because the housing stock in Northern Ireland is terrible. It's Victorian, it's crumbling. One in three houses either doesn't have running water or it doesn't have a flushing toilet. So young couples in particular, they want to get out of their parents kind of crumbling Victorian terrace and they want a new home of their own. But because giving people a home means giving them votes, unionist councils don't like giving homes to Catholics because it gives them two more votes, right?

34:28Dominic Sandbrook:Husband and wife, if it's a young couple. So they don't like building homes in Catholic areas, right? Yeah. The chairman of Enniskillen Housing Committee, 1963, we're going to see that the right people are put in these houses. We're not going to apologize for it. Now, it does work the other way around. So in nationalist councils like Newry, they built lots of new houses in the early 60s, and they gave only a tiny handful of them to Protestants. But the big losers from all this are the Catholics. And one place above all becomes emblematic of this. And this is the second city of Northern Ireland, a city in the far west of the country.

35:05Dominic Sandbrook:It was originally a settlement called Derry. then in 1613 a consortium of london guilds basically was set up to colonize the area they built a new walled city and because they were london guilds they called it londonderry and hence you have the name controversy which actually in this period the 60s isn't really is it everyone calls it derry everybody calls it derry yeah it only really became a big controversy once the troubles kicked off. And then it became a kind of a point of pride to call it either Derry, like Paul Rouse, our former guest, or London Derry, as you did in the general post office in Dublin.

35:46Dominic Sandbrook:So we'll just call it Derry for short. Derry in 1965 or so is a two-to-one Catholic city. So 36 ,000 Catholics, 18 ,000 Protestants. But it's always been controlled by Protestants through gerrymandering. So they're always redrawing the boundaries of the wards to give themselves a majority on the council. So when I was thinking about this, I wondered whether you would say, surely the British government wouldn't stand for this. This is outrageous. But the truth is, we shall see, is the British have absolutely no interest in what happens in Northern Ireland at all. I appreciate that.

36:19Tom Holland:I'm just wondering if it is under British law illegal.

36:23Dominic Sandbrook:Good question. I don't think it is. Some Catholic solicitor would have undoubtedly taken it to court. It's not illegal, I think, because the council set the boundaries. The councils decide the ward boundaries. So this is the devolution that Andy Burnham wants back.

36:36Tom Holland:The right of councils to gerrymander.

36:39Dominic Sandbrook:Right. Well, we shall see. Anyway, so to go back to Derry, basically almost every Protestant family who wants a house gets one, but there are 2 ,000 Catholic families on the waiting list for housing. And we will come back to this in the next episode, because it is no accident that this is where the troubles really kick off in earnest against this background. So just to finish by talking about the Catholics before we go to the break. Imagine, Tom, you're a young Catholic in the early 60s in Northern Ireland. What is your name? Seamus O. Murphy. Yeah, Seamus whatever. Exactly. So you're identifiable by your name.

37:15Dominic Sandbrook:You have no flat. You have no vote in local elections. You maybe don't have a job. You feel that the system is stacked against you, and it has been for the last 40 years. where do you look for hope the virgin mary yeah you probably maybe to the virgin mary exactly you you might look to the sort of northern irish nationalist party but they are very small they're very ineffective i mean in 1962 and 1965 in the stormont parliament they won nine out of 52 seats i mean they're they're barely even an opposition really and they are generally seen as a bit old fashioned, very Catholic, very rural, not terribly effective.

37:57Dominic Sandbrook:Kind of De Valera type. A little bit, yeah. But De Valera is a very wily and ruthless politician and they are not. Right. Then you have the IRA. Now, the unionist hardliners talk all the time about the IRA. They're obsessed with the IRA. They say the IRA is always out there, which, I mean, to be fair, it kind of is. The IRA had rebuilt after the Second World War and it had launched a new guerrilla campaign along the border in 1956 called Operation Harvest. And this campaign had been a complete and utter disaster. Both Belfast and Dublin, in fact, Eamon de Valera, reintroduced internment without trial.

38:37Dominic Sandbrook:They interned loads of IRA people and they completely broke the back of the organisation. And so in 1962, the IRA had called off this campaign, they dumped all of their weapons, and madly a few years later they sold a lot of their weapons to the welsh oh to the free wales

38:55Tom Holland:army great so people thinking it's just about ireland it's about wales as well there's actually

39:00Dominic Sandbrook:too much welsh history so much welsh history in the west is history just keeps going i know they're everywhere it's unbelievable right so the ira gets a new chief of staff who's from dublin called catholic goulding and goulding says listen we have been wasting our time here this has been a terrible mistake. He said later, the notion that the IRA was going to rise up someday and free Ireland and get rid of the British was a ridiculous pipe dream. I mean, that's a hell of a thing for the guy running the IRA to say in the early 60s. And this bloke Goulding, he's actually very close to some Marxist academics and to people from the British Communist Party.

39:41Dominic Sandbrook:And they persuade him the IRA's future lies in socialist activism. So he's listening to the British. He's listening to British academics, I know, which is mad. Never listen to a British academic. Instead of blowing up post offices and stuff, why don't we work to build a non-sectarian workers' alliance that will fight both imperialism and capitalism? And the people who are running the IRN in the 60s say, yeah, actually, brilliant, let's do that. Because, of course, that goes with the momentum of the 60s, right?

40:10Tom Holland:It feels right. Yeah, of course. So do they start going to conferences in goldsmiths?

40:15Dominic Sandbrook:They do. There's probably men with polo necks. They have a lot of seminars. There's a lot of talking shops about smashing capitalism. They're massively into this. Now, if you're an older IRA veteran, you are not pleased about this at all. So a lot of older IRA men are culturally conservative Catholics. They are not Marxists. So Joe Cahill, who was an IRA veteran who had been jailed for killing a policeman in 1942, he said, the movement was being led off the true path of republicanism. Ultra-left politics were taking over. sooner or later there would have to be a showdown and he's right and there will be a showdown i mean

40:51Tom Holland:people say that shin fain are doing the same at the moment that they're they're becoming

40:56Dominic Sandbrook:corbynist really exactly that they're sort of caught between you know this catholic nationalism on the one hand and a slightly woolly marxist internationalism yes on the other now we'll come back to this later in the series but the the point really is that they've gone very very quiet so a future member of the provisional ira billy mckee's quote from him i believe that it was dead completely dead and it was except in the minds of myself and other old republicans so to return to the original question if you're a catholic where are you looking for help there is an alternative of course you could look to dublin now in theory the republic of ireland claims the whole island article 2 of the irish constitution the national territory consists of the whole island of ireland and irish politicians would always say if they're asked well our goal of course is unification of the entire island.

41:47Dominic Sandbrook:In reality, since the 1920s, governments in Dublin have shown no interest in advancing this at all and done absolutely nothing about it. And again, this is something that will surprise, I think, a lot of listeners. Twice in the Second World War, the British said to the government in Dublin, we will give you a united Ireland if you abandon your neutrality and join the allies. After Pearl Harbor in 1941, Winston Churchill sent an incredible telegram to Eamon de Valera. Now is your chance, now or never, a nation once again. So the nation once again is a kind of Republican slogan. Churchill was using it.

42:28Dominic Sandbrook:And de Valera just completely ignored him, didn't want to abandon neutrality. And also, of course, if you are a politician in Dublin, you don't really want those one million Protestants who have a tendency to sign covenants and join volunteer groups to fight you. I mean, that's an issue right the way up to the present, really, isn't it? To the present, exactly, of course. So in 1959, De Valera, the great champion of Irish independence and Irish republicanism, retired as Taoiseach and he became president of Ireland, kind of kicked upstairs. And he was succeeded by a man called Sean Lamass. I mean, it's unbelievable he's called Lamass.

43:05Dominic Sandbrook:I know, I know. I mean, anything more calculated to Alarmie and Paisley than Le Mass. We shall come to this. Le Mass had fought in the Easter Rising and he'd also been in the IRA. But in private, Le Mass said to people, come on, that the island's going to be partitioned for a long time yet. There's no point in whinging about this. It's not going to change anytime soon. So Dublin's not really interested in the Catholics in Northern Ireland. And if they're not really interested, people who are even less interested are politicians in London. Now, there are some Labour MPs. There are always Labour MPs who campaign against discrimination against the Catholics.

43:43Dominic Sandbrook:So this goes back to your point, Tom. How could this happen in Britain?

43:47Tom Holland:Well, I kind of think, I mean, it's a massive blot on the British state that it's allowing this to happen, I think.

43:55Dominic Sandbrook:But the British state, first of all, it's running an empire for most of this period. So, I mean, it's not like there aren't other places where there are, you know, interesting local arrangements. But by the mid-60s. Yes, and people in the 60s start to say this. So you have a Labour backbench, what's it called, the Campaign for Democracy in Ulster, that kicks off in the mid-60s. You have newspapers like The Times, The Sunday Times, The Guardian, drawing attention to this and saying it's kind of not right that these people don't get houses and they don't really get to vote in local elections and stuff like this.

44:26Dominic Sandbrook:But here's why people don't get massively excited about it. ever since the 1920s most british politicians have worked on the assumption that the irish question which had dogged britain for so long has been solved it's done it's finished the people in the north we fixed it because they've got their own parliament we'll just let them get on with it it's not perfect but we absolutely don't want to interfere because they have a tendency to start arming themselves and we don't want to stir them up again what has happened in britain is that um Northern Ireland has vanished from the national consciousness.

44:59Dominic Sandbrook:It virtually never appears in the newspapers. It's never mentioned in TV bulletins, news bulletins. Most people never think about it at all. I mentioned Jim Callaghan before. Jim Callaghan, grandson of Irish immigrant. And I quote, most members of parliament knew less about it than we knew about our distant colonies on the far side of the earth. And I think that's true. There's loads in British newspapers about Cyprus in the 1950s. There's loads about Kenya. There's loads about Malaysia. There's virtually nothing about Northern Ireland. And actually, people think, well, what's the point? Nothing's ever going to change.

45:34Dominic Sandbrook:The unionists hold every single Westminster seat. The nationalists are totally irrelevant. The IRA have been beaten. And frankly, most people in Northern Ireland, they might be Protestant, they might be Catholic, but this is the 60s. It's the affluent society. They're more interested in buying a new TV or a new washing machine than they are about refighting the kind of the battles of the past. So this is the Sandbrook perspective. Well, that would be the Sandbrook perspective, and I would be wrong all about washing machines. In this instance, my washing machine eccentric view of history would be absolutely discredited because everybody thinks life is going to go on, everything is going to be the same forever and ever, and they are wrong because things are about to change very dramatically indeed.

46:19Tom Holland:And Dominic, we will find out how and why after a break.

46:28Tom Holland:There have been disappointments and frustrations, but progress has been so marked that there is no excuse for pessimism about the future. The six counties, unlike their neighbours across the border, belong to the British welfare state. They share, too, as they richly deserve, many of the fruits of the affluent society. The processes of modernisation have been carried far, and they are not halted. On the contrary, they are on the march. So welcome back to The Rest is History. And that ringingly optimistic, groovy 60s perspective was in The Times on the 12th of April 1965, looking ahead to a bright new future for Northern Ireland.

47:13Tom Holland:Great to see The Times with its finger on the pulse. The paper for top people. and i suppose that top people sitting in their gentleman's clubs um reading those words it would have seemed beyond the bounds of possibility to them that within a few years there would be bombs going off everywhere in the streets of belfast and derry british soldiers patrolling those streets hundreds of peoples being killed every year and the carnage of it all spreading

47:42Dominic Sandbrook:to the british mainland yeah so what goes wrong i mean what happens what happens but big question That's what the series is all about, Tom. So let's start on the 25th of March, 1963. So this is the day that Captain Terence O 'Neill becomes the fourth Prime Minister of Northern Ireland. So 1963, Harold Macmillan is Prime Minister in Britain. The Beatles are about to launch their greatest salt on the charts.

48:11Tom Holland:This episode is brought to you by Mint Mobile. Right now, all of Mint's plans are$15 per month, even unlimited. Go to mintmobile.com slash history.

48:26Dominic Sandbrook:Upfront payment of$45 for three months,$90 for six months, or$180 for 12 months. Plan required,$15 per month equivalent. Taxes and fees extra. Initial plan term only. Greater than 50 gigabytes may slow when network is busy. includes up to 20 gigabytes of hotspot. Capable device required. Affailability, speed and coverage varies. See mintmobile.com.

48:57Dominic Sandbrook:This episode is brought to you by the Gates Foundation. We have touched on the fall of the Roman Empire a few times on this show, haven't we? But what our listeners may not know is that among the causes that historians talk about, it's not just barbarian invasions, There's also talk of a disease which people call Roman fever, which I believe we know now as malaria.

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49:34Dominic Sandbrook:Yes, so they're creating a new generation of bed nets that kill up to 90 % of mosquitoes. That leads to a 50 % drop in malaria, saving lives and protecting vulnerable communities. The Gates Foundation, partners of human potential. Search gatesfoundation.org slash mosquito to learn more.

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50:53Dominic Sandbrook:And this is Captain O 'Neill. So Captain O 'Neill is almost 50 years old. his father was an ulster unionist his father was the first mp to be killed in the first world war he was born in london brought up in london he went to eton he spent his summers in northern ireland he served in a tank brigade in the second world war two of his brothers were killed in the war but he wasn't and afterwards he became an ulster unionist mp as his father had before him and then he rose to become northern ireland's minister of finance and then in 63 the party grandees they chose him to succeed the elderly Lord Brookborough as Prime Minister.

51:34Dominic Sandbrook:Now O 'Neill knows that when he takes the reins he's facing a big challenge but in his mind that challenge is primarily economic. So in our previous series when we talked about Ireland or indeed when we did the Titanic we talked about how Belfast was different from other cities in Ireland. It's made of brick you not stone. It feels like a northern English city transplanted across the Irish Sea. It's an industrial powerhouse. It makes all its linen in the mills, and it's got its shipyards, and it's got chimneys and smoke and the sound of hammers and all of that kind of thing. And of course, that's brilliant if you're in 1900.

52:10Dominic Sandbrook:But if you're in 1963, this is the kind of place that's going to be left behind by the harsh winds of global competition. Even in the 50s, jobs in textiles and shipbuilding had been shrinking dramatically and unemployment was going up and unemployment was already higher than in the rest of britain and earnings lower than the rest of britain so if you're an ulster unionist this has political consequences because you look at the electoral map and there's a slow steady advance of a northern irish labor party that's appealing to kind of working class people and saying you know times are tough we're going to better represent you than the old stuck-up unionist grandees.

52:50Dominic Sandbrook:And so for Terence O 'Neill, he thinks, well, my priority is to revive the Northern Irish economy by getting new investment. And I'm going to look abroad for that investment. I'm going to get multinational companies, Michelin, Ford, ICI, these big names. They'll come to Northern Ireland because their labor costs are cheaper. But there are two issues with this. Issue number one, most of this happens in Belfast or the east of the country, the places that are more urbanized and have better transport links with the island of Great Britain. But in the west, which is more heavily Catholic, where unemployment is already higher, these companies don't want to invest there.

53:32Dominic Sandbrook:So these places feel like they're being left behind. And people there say, well, Terence O 'Neill talks a good game, but he only cares about the Protestants in the east, doesn't care about us at all. But then the other thing, the sort of more counterintuitive thing about all this new investment it's very disruptive to northern ireland's existing arrangements because if you're you know ford or michelin or something and you arrive you're the sort of you're like people from madmen or something you know you've got a kind of sharp suit you like a graph and a table and all that stuff you've got all these time and motion studies and then people say to you well you know we'll be wearing our bowler hats when we go on a big march and obviously we can't have any catholics You stare at them in stupefaction and disbelief and you say, well, that's not, you know, the Ford Motor Company does not operate that way or whatever.

54:21Dominic Sandbrook:Get with it. Exactly. And so there's a degree of tension between the newcomers, you know, the new investment, the new companies, and then the people who basically are like, come on, we spend our evenings always at the Orange Lodge and we sing our songs about the glorious revolution. Now, this would not have been insuperable for a sort of populist politician, for a more skillful communicator to handle. but terence o 'neill is not that man as we said he's an old etonian he's married to an english woman and he has an english accent because he's been brought up in london and so although he goes down quite well with the kind of country landowners because he's very posh the poorer more conservative working-class protestants they see him as soft and a stuck up and as somebody who's totally oblivious to their concerns so i already mentioned david trimble leader of the ulster unionist in the 1990s he said of terence o 'neill he never spoke or behaved as if he was one of us which is i think true he has a slight look of the former editor of the daily telegraph yeah charles moore and like charles moore charles moore is the head of the rectory society or something he loves an old rectory yes and i believe terence o 'neill lived in a regency rectory and that's a very bad sign in a person is it not never trust a man who owns a regency rectory no they're terrible people so um And Terence O 'Neill also lacks natural political skills.

55:46Dominic Sandbrook:He's very aloof. He's very shy. He's cold. One of his own ministers said he was distant and uninspiring. I would not have felt like dying in a ditch for him. And I don't think that's ideal. You know, it's not an unfamiliar. I mean, we've had prime ministers like that. In fact, quite recently, we've had a couple of prime ministers like that. But it's not the ideal type for this moment. So actually, after a couple of years, more conservative Protestants are beginning to wonder whether O 'Neill is really the man for the job after all. And he keeps doing things that worry them. So for example, in 1965, he became the first prime minister of Northern Ireland to welcome the Taoiseach, the prime minister of the Republic of Ireland.

56:26Dominic Sandbrook:This is Sean Lamass. Now, Terence O 'Neill said, well, it's good to have this boat Lamass here because we want to build bridges with our neighbours. We want to build bridges with the Republic. and one of his critics who was a presbyterian minister said a bridge and a traitor are very much alike for they both go over to the other side and the name of the man who said this was the man we heard in that introduction oh in paisley the reverend ian paisley so he's back in the show great great to have him back so paisley is really an incredible character i did worry that he would slightly take over this episode and maybe that would be no bad thing he is this colossal figure in the life of Northern Ireland he goes from the most sort of strident demagoguery to power sharing in the 1990s and 2000s which just seems absolutely bonkers as a trajectory and like everyone else in this story he is profoundly shaped by history so he's born in Amar in 1926 his father was a Baptist minister his father had served in Edward Carson's volunteers and Ian Paisley himself becomes a Baptist minister and he preached his first sermon when he was 16.

57:42Dominic Sandbrook:Wow he's a massive bloke he's like six foot four or something. Do

57:46Tom Holland:you know what he looks brilliant in a dog collar really it really suits him I think dog collars when they're around a scrawny neck look a bit a bit weedy but with him he looks like um a Celtic

57:59Dominic Sandbrook:warrior with a talk i mean he probably wouldn't like that comparison actually but yeah he could look like a saxon warrior with the talk maybe he might take that i don't know or scottish scottish warrior i suppose so he's this firebrand fundamentalist style in 1951 he set up his own kind of calvinist church the free presbyterian church of ulster uh he believes in the literal truth of the bible he thinks the established churches of ulster which strike most observers It's quite hardline conservative churches. But he thinks they are weak, soft, Romish sellouts. There's an obvious parallel, of course, with Southern evangelical preachers in the United States.

58:40Dominic Sandbrook:And later in his life, he does forge very strong links with Bob Jones University in South Carolina.

58:46Tom Holland:Bob Jones University.

58:48Dominic Sandbrook:Are you aware of Bob Jones University? No. You're not? No. Bob Jones University is a big deal because Bob Jones University was an anti-Catholic, ultra-Protestant university, evangelical. I can't remember when it was set up, but George W. Bush went and gave a speech there in 2000 when he was campaigning for the Republican nomination. Was it set up by a guy called Bob Jones? Or did they just... Let's think of a funny name. Bob Jones, you laugh at Bob Jones University and you're foolish to do so. It has 3 ,000 students. It has an endowment of$20 million. and the current chancellor, Bob Jones III.

59:27Dominic Sandbrook:Well, I take it all back. I apologize to Bob Jones. So anyway, Ian Paisley forged links to Bob Jones University. And so there's a sort of, there are lots of Southern evangelicals who love Ian Paisley. His calling card, rather like that of Bob Jones, actually, is absolutely red hot, evangelical, old fashioned anti-Catholicism. And if people enjoy anti-Catholic rhetoric, this podcast is the place for it.

59:54Tom Holland:Should I do it?

59:54Dominic Sandbrook:You do it. Yeah, I think you should do it because you do the voice. Through potpourri,

59:58Tom Holland:the devil has shut up the way to our inheritance. Priestcraft, superstition, and papalism, with all their attendant voices of murder, theft, immorality, lust, and incest, have blocked the way to the land of gospel liberty.

1:00:22Dominic Sandbrook:that's that's yeah that's good that's his take that is i mean it's a it's a view now people may raise their eyebrows there about the priestcraft and its attendant voices of murder and whatnot but also lust and incest he takes it very literally doesn't he yeah now there's a lot of talk of lust and incest in ian pays his sermons he loves all this so in his first prayer meetings He used to, like sort of jack-in-the-box, a nun would pop up and he would say, this nun has escaped from a Catholic convent. And she was the victim of sexual overtures from monks and other nuns. And I have rescued her and she has seen the light and she's going to tell us all about the evils of Catholicism.

1:01:07Dominic Sandbrook:He had his own newspaper, the Protestant Telegraph, some of its headlines. priestly murders exposed children tortured monks turned out as sadists or one of my probably my favorite thing that he said when the moderator of the church of scotland made a cordial visit to the pope the headline in the protestant telegraph was the church of scotland drunk with the wine of the fornication with the roman or and of course it's easy for us to mock and it's very easy and that's what we have been doing but in northern ireland where religious identity is so important this finds a ready audience he's a brilliant brilliant speaker i mean that is the

1:01:46Tom Holland:thing isn't he yeah there is a power to those tones totally there is he's speaking with the timbre of john fox and there's a kind of magnificent rhetorical yeah role to it but you know who would

1:02:01Dominic Sandbrook:agree with you somebody very unexpected the actor liam neeson i will find you and i will kill you you know that guy that guy yeah he was an early impression very early impression he was born in a catholic family who's from county antrim but he was inspired by ian paisley to become an actor he would go to see ian paisley at his gospel hall and he said afterwards you could see this extraordinary performance the charisma that he had it was electrifying and loads of people talk about this so a man we'll be talking about a little bit later one of paisley's protégés a a guy called Noel Doherty. He was a teenage fundamentalist, he became a printer, and then he became a loyalist paramilitary.

1:02:40Dominic Sandbrook:He said, I was spellbound by his oratory. I felt this is a man that is doing the Lord's work, and I'm going to do it with him. I saw him as a great Ulsterman and a second Carson. Again, harking back to the history of the early 1910s. Now, in 60s Britain, people laughed at Ian Paisley, and they said he's bonkers, he's a clown, he's a freak, he's a relic or whatever. But actually, we have done so many people like this on this show, different time periods, Savonarola, the Ayatollah Khomeini, imposing, charismatic, striking, rhetorically brilliant speakers who have a gift for giving these electrifying addresses that channel the anxieties of their listeners.

1:03:28Tom Holland:Well, I mean, it might sound shocking, but Martin Luther King on the progressive side. Yeah. a brilliant speaker i mean again using using the the yeah the potency of biblical rhetoric

1:03:38Dominic Sandbrook:and like a lot of these people khomeini is a good example you know always dresses the same way ian paisley has a costume he he's a got a flair for publicity so in this period he always wears a black suit he wears his white clerical collar which you liken to a talk and he had something that he doesn't really persist with later life which is he has this trademark raincoat because The 60s is a great age for a coat. This is a Ganex raincoat. I don't think it's Ganex like Harold Wilson's. It's more old-fashioned than that. It's this huge, because he's so massive. It's this massive white belted coat that he always wears.

1:04:13Dominic Sandbrook:He does sometimes wear orangeman sash, doesn't he? Oh, yeah. He'll wear an orange sash when the time calls for it. And he's very good at publicity stunts that are very attractive to the newspapers, and they look good on TV. so to give you some of his stunts he first really came to public attention in 1956 he rescued a 15 year old catholic girl called maura lyons maura lyons had decided she wanted to join ian pay's this church and her parents forbade it so he and his supporters smuggled her to scotland you know this was a massive story i mean they basically kidnapped this teenager and he was absolutely unrepentant he called a big rally whenever he's in trouble he calls a rally in the ulster hall in belfast and he said they're saying i'm going to have to go to prison i would be proud to do time for protestant liberty like he always says this kind of thing that was actually richard nixon's voice two years later uh the queen he condemns i mean he's all he loves putting the boot into the british when they let the side down the queen mother and princess margaret made a courtesy call to pope john the 23rd he said he said of them they've been committing spiritual fornication and adultery with the Antichrist.

1:05:29Dominic Sandbrook:I mean, accusing the Queen Mother of fornication and adultery is strong stuff, I think. Especially with the Antichrist. I mean, it would get you in the papers, wouldn't it? It would. Saying stuff like that. Or, when the Pope died in 1963, Terence O 'Neill, a conciliatory gesture, said we will lower the Union Jack as a mark of respect. Because after all, one in three of our citizens is actually a Catholic. Paisley went absolutely berserk at this. He said, I can't stand the lying eulogies now being paid to the Roman Antichrist by the Iscariots of Ulster. He said, the good news, though, he said, the Romish man of sin is now in hell.

1:06:07Tom Holland:Well, that's something. Do you remember in the 80s, he disrupted the European Parliament? Yeah, he did. There was lots about the Antichrist and the Whore of Babylon and stuff.

1:06:18Dominic Sandbrook:He was an MEP at this point, wasn't he? Yeah. And the Pope, Pope John Paul II, came to address the European Parliament, and Ian Paisley was bundled out of the hall, shouting, I denounce you as Antichrist. He had massive jowls by that point, and they would kind of wobble all over his chest. Yeah. Well, anyway, we come to the Westminster general election of 1964. And this story, this really is the politics of Northern Ireland in microcosm. So we're in West Belfast, which is historically, over the city's four seats, the most competitive, because it contains the heavily Catholic Falls Road, which you mentioned earlier.

1:06:55Dominic Sandbrook:And one of the candidates was a guy called Liam McMillan, who was an IRA man. He'd been active in the border campaign, and he is standing as an independent Republican. And in the window of his election office in the lower falls, he hangs this big Irish tricolour flag. Now, under the Stormont Flags and Emblems Act of 1954, the RUC are empowered to take down any flags that they think are likely to provoke a breach of the peace. And this legislation was aimed specifically at people flying the Irish flag. But the police aren't completely stupid. When people fly it in Catholic areas, they generally leave it alone.

1:07:34Dominic Sandbrook:Just let them get on with it if that's what they want to do. Paisley is horrified by this. he calls a big rally and he says i do not accept that any part of ulster is republican i do not want to see the tricolor flying here and under this pressure the iuc decide fine we'll take it down so on the 28th of september a group of heavily armed police constables smashed down the door of this bloke's office and they carry off the flag through a crowd of 2 000 people who were sort of jeering at them and throwing stones at them and stuff and this kicked off the worst rioting in Ulster since the 1930s. In some ways, you could say this is a possible departure point for the Troubles.

1:08:14Dominic Sandbrook:There are thousands of people throwing stones and petrol bombs. People set a trolley bus on fire. And it ends with hundreds of RUC men armed with batons, supported by armoured cars and water cannons, physically clearing the Falls Road. And 50 people end up in hospital, as well as 18 RUC constables. and there's also copycat rioting or sort of tip-for-tap rioting by the way in Dublin there's a crowd when they hear this they assemble outside the British embassy and they have to be held back by the Irish police and they're kind of throwing stones at them and this is the first point really since the war that the British papers almost noticed Northern Ireland so the times there is a sickening familiarity about all of this it says let's hope we're not returning to the bitterness and savagery of the orange and green vendetta.

1:09:03Dominic Sandbrook:But from Paisley's point of view, this has been very effective. It's got his name in the newspapers once again. He's made a stand. The Irish flag has come down. He is the champion of Protestant liberty, as he would call it. And two weeks later, when the unionist candidate Jim Kilfeder wins West Belfast, he makes a point in his speech of thanking Ian Paisley for his support. So that sets the scene for two years in which Ian Pacey is becoming ever more strident in his attacks on what he sees as the soft, weak, English, untrustworthy Terence O 'Neill. So the visit of Sean Lamass from Dublin. This is when Ian Pacey is going around shouting, no mas, no Lamass.

1:09:48Dominic Sandbrook:And then he gets an even better gift a year later. It's going to be the 50th anniversary of the Easter Rising. And you said yourself. On the Falls Road, there are all the murals to this day of the Easter Rising. They make a big deal of it. Of course, 1916, if you're a Unionist, is the year of the Somme. So it's like a history war, I guess, being played out in the streets of Belfast. O 'Neill says, fine, let the Catholics have a march to celebrate the Easter Rising 50 years on. Of course, we'll let them do it. It would be mad not to. It'll just create great tension if we ban it. Paisley is horrified by this.

1:10:28Dominic Sandbrook:He tells a rally that by allowing this nationalist march, O 'Neill is supporting murder, treason, and sedition. Our forefathers suffered from bullets and bombs and won. We will do the same. Ian Paisley loves very violent rhetoric. Then there's another confrontation, June 1966. This time he's attacking the mainstream churches. So the mainstream Presbyterian church are holding their annual assembly. Paisley decides to lead 1 ,500 supporters to attack them for their Romanizing tendencies as he puts it. Basically you could never be hard enough on Catholicism I think for the Reverend Ian Paisley and he leads his supporters through this very Catholic area deliberately they're attacked by local youths and the melee ends with lots of stone throwing fighting people throwing bricks at the RUC, all of this kind of thing.

1:11:20Dominic Sandbrook:The magistrates then order Paisley to sign a court order to keep the peace, a pledge to keep the peace. And he says, no, I'm not going to do that. And they sentenced him to three months in Crumlin Road prison. And that provoked yet more rioting, thousands of his supporters going on the rampage, chanting his name, people attacking Catholic-owned businesses, Catholic shops, and so on and so forth. And at this point, Terence O 'Neill, the Prime Minister of Northern Ireland, says, OK, enough. I've lost patience. I'm banning all marches, Protestant or Catholic, for the next three months. The RUC have the power to shut down all meetings with more than three people in.

1:12:03Dominic Sandbrook:You know, no more of this. And he gives a very, very outspoken speech at Stormont. And he says Paisley and his supporters call themselves loyalists. But to whom are they loyal? To the Queen, whose personal representatives they revile? To the United Kingdom, in which their fellow citizens view their conduct with a mixture of ridicule and contempt? To Protestantism, many of whose leaders they have personally abused? I mean, it's good stuff. But O 'Neill all the time is losing momentum. And it's Paisley who is attracting momentum. And part of this is the sort of ratchet effect of sectarian rhetoric.

1:12:39Dominic Sandbrook:But it's also the economic context, the fact that people feel anxious about the future, the fact that Northern Ireland feels like it's a changing society and a lot of people don't like that, all of these kinds of things. And all the time, Paisley is attracting more recruits for his church and for its political wing, which was called Ulster Protestant Action. He had set this up, twofold reasons, really. One, he'd said this will deter the IRA, but he also said we want to keep loyal workers in employment in times of deep depression. So there's an economic context to this too. But this is not the only group that he's associated with.

1:13:16Dominic Sandbrook:There's a whole series of sort of a bewildering variety of factions and subgroups and whatnot. So I mentioned that he had a protege called Noel Doherty. in april 1966 with the anniversary of the easter rising coming doherty set up another group a vigilante group called the ulster protestant volunteers the stated aim of this group is we think the ira are going to launch an uprising on the anniversary of the easter rising and we're going to be ready for them we'll have cells all over ulster and they will rise up on command the name the ulster protestant volunteers obviously is to evoke carlson's volunteers from 1912.

1:13:54Dominic Sandbrook:The motto is the same, For God and Ulster. And like Carson's volunteers, they really want to get a hold of guns. So Doherty recruits very heavily among the B-specials, the kind of police reservists, because they have been issued with revolvers and submachine guns, and they're allowed to keep their weapons at home. So this is a very useful thing for a paramilitary group. And Doherty said later, my aim was to have a private army, just like Carson did with the signing of the covenant. So Paisley would have had his own private army and he would have been a second Lord Carson. Can I ask Dominic,

1:14:30Tom Holland:would the Protestants in Ulster at this point be ahead of the Catholics in terms of arming?

1:14:36Dominic Sandbrook:Well, given how many guns the B-specials have, I would say probably yes. And actually when the IRA re-enter the story, let's say 1970, they don't have that many guns. And getting guns, armor lights as they end up getting, becomes a real priority for them. because, of course, they've made the cardinal error, which you should never do, of giving lots of guns to the Welsh. Yes, of course. And the Welsh don't want to give them back. Have you ever tried to reclaim a gun from a Welshman? I can't say I have. It's impossible. It can't be done. Okay. Well, that is a mistake then. Yeah. So anyway, Noel Doherty, this guy, is going round in the spring of 1966 trying to get guns and jet ignites.

1:15:15Dominic Sandbrook:And he comes into contact at this point with another loyalist vigilante group that also looks back to Carson's volunteers. And this is a group called the Ulster Volunteer Force, the UVF. And it's been founded a few months earlier by a group of men who used to meet in the pubs in the working-class Protestant Shankill area. And the chief among them, and a big figure in the story of the Troubles, although he's not so well-known in Britain as some of the other figures, is a man called Gusty Spence, who was in his early 30s. Spence's father had been Carson's volunteers. Spence's father had also served in the First World War.

1:15:52Dominic Sandbrook:Spence himself had been in the British Army. He'd been in Cyprus. He came home to Belfast. He worked as a scaffolder at the Harland and Wolfe shipyards. So he sort of ticks all of these different boxes. Spence is a very hard man. He's no stranger to a brawl in a pub or something. He's a very keen member of the Orange Order. People look up to him because he's been in the army. There's a bit of an element, I think, about him and his friends of the old soldiers who are hanging around in the pub, talking about the old days, trying to find something to do. They want a cause, basically.

1:16:27Tom Holland:So in a way, that's kind of true of Mountbatten. Yeah. You know, all those kind of posh guys in the 70s wanting a military takeover.

1:16:36Dominic Sandbrook:General Sir Walter Walker, David Sterling, all of these people. Yeah. Yeah, they look back to the war or something and they say, God, that was brilliant. I wish we could have that back again. instead of all these grubby political compromises and harold wilson's nasty raincoats all of this so i think with gusty spence and a lot of people like this and this goes by the way for people on the republican side for people in the ira there was a sense of a romantic history of sort of outlaw violence and adventure and whatnot it's all about the songs and the fiddles and the stories and all of that kind of thing and they are almost willing it back into being because at a time when jobs are scarce, life seems shabby and disappointing, this would give you a sense of excitement.

1:17:25Dominic Sandbrook:And of course, if you ally that to the fear of the others, then that becomes a very potent combination.

1:17:31Tom Holland:The sense is that there is nothing inevitable about the troubles. People choose it. People choose it. As you say, they will it into existence.

1:17:41Dominic Sandbrook:Yes, they absolutely do. And I think this search for a cause, and it's a cause that they're very familiar with, is a really important part of the story. Spence said later, there was still a sense, like with the old Ulster volunteers, that you were for the cause. You would fight and die for it. Yes, fight and die for the cause. And that's so widespread among the people who join the different paramilitary groups, whether loyalist or Republican. Fight and die and kill? Well, this is the thing. So do you remember when we did the series about the Irish War of Independence with Paul Rouse? He said all the ballads are about fighting and dying, but people don't write ballads about fighting and killing.

1:18:19Dominic Sandbrook:But someone's got to do the killing. And actually, this brings us very neatly to May 1966 and arguably the first casualties of the Troubles. At this point, Spence and his pals have already started petrol bombing, Catholic schools, Catholic shops, and so on. in their minds they are deterring ira vandalism this is their excuse of course an external observer would say this looks very much like a drunken sectarian vandalism and bullying to me on the 7th of may they decide to target a catholic owned pub just off the shankill road they say loads of republicans hang out in this pub we should blow this pub up and they throw a petrol bomb through what they think is the landlord's window but actually it's the house next door and it belongs to a protestant grandmother called matilda gould who was 77 years old she was bedridden with severe arthritis she can't get out of bed she's horribly burned by this petrol bomb and she dies seven weeks later of her injuries and a lot of accounts point to her as the first victim first modern victim of the troubles and obviously this was a terrible a terrible mistake by the uvf to kill a protestant grandmother but in a sign of what's to come on both sides they don't back down they issue a statement two weeks later from this day we declare war against the ira and its splinter groups known ira men will be executed mercilessly and without hesitation we solemnly warn the authorities to make no more speeches of appeasement So there's two issues there.

1:19:52Dominic Sandbrook:One is the sort of omnipresent, gnawing fear of the IRA that is there in loyalists' minds the whole time. But the IRA are a shadow at this point. They're very quiet at this point. I mean, a loyalist would say, come on, the IRA is still there, aren't they? And yes, they are still there, but even though they're not actively campaigning. But the other thing is the attack on the authorities for appeasement. You know, this rhetoric runs right through the 60s and 70s. and on the 27th of may the uvf meet to discuss their next attack they meet in a pub again they said there's a bloke nearby called leo martin he's a republican activist he's involved with the ira let's go off and shoot him and they go off to the falls road to go and find him and they can't find him and on the way back having not found him they see walking down the street towards them a bloke who's been in the pub all evening who's singing republican songs he's called John Patrick Scullion.

1:20:47Dominic Sandbrook:He's 28 years old. And they say, well, this bloke will do. And they stab him and they shoot him. And two weeks later, he dies in hospital of his wounds. And he's the second victim. And then a month later, a third victim. The evening of Saturday, the 25th of June, there are four young Catholics, four young blokes. They've been working in Belfast City Centre, working late. They decide to go for a last pint at the Malvern Arms just off the Shankill Road because they know it stays open after hours. This pub, the Malvern Arms, is a Protestant pub, but one of these blokes says, it's fine. I know the landlord.

1:21:22Dominic Sandbrook:This guy's called Andrew Kelly. He says, okay, I know the landlord. He'll have no problem with us going there. They get to the pub at about midnight. The pub is very busy. The landlord does know him. It's fine. They have no problem getting served. Great. They sit down with their pints. Unknown to them, but sheer bad luck the drinkers at the next table augusty spence and his gang and one of the gangs said to the police later the conversation came up about the religion of these fellows spence asked the company if they would be catholics spence then went up to the bar beside the four lads to buy a drink when he returned to our table he said i've been listening to their conversation they're four ira men they're ira men they will have to go which they're not they're not ira men they're Absolutely not.

1:22:08Dominic Sandbrook:The four young Catholic guys have their pints. A couple of hours later, they leave the pub. And leading the way is one of them, Peter Ward, who is 18 years old. And as soon as they get outside, the shooting starts. Andrew Kelly again. He was dead, Peter Ward, when he hit the ground. I was shot too, and I dropped down, but they kept on shooting at me. There were four gunmen. They didn't say anything. All I remember is the flashes and the shooting. So one of them, this guy, Peter Ward, is killed. Spence and his gang were arrested and Spence and two others were sent to prison. Now, Paisley always condemns shootings of this kind.

1:22:48Dominic Sandbrook:He's very happy to ratchet up the tension rhetorically, but he almost always distances himself from actual violence. And that, again, is something he's not unusual in that regard. There are loads of people in this story who are very happy to kind of stoke the flames. But when the bullets fly, they always say, oh, no, I don't agree with this, of course.

1:23:09Tom Holland:Do you think that's a cynical take or is he acting on genuine principle when he condemns it?

1:23:14Dominic Sandbrook:That is, I think, something that only he would know. That only he would know. If you're asking me my personal verdict, which not all listeners would agree with, I would say, I think there's an awful amount of cynicism from people in this story. I'm not just talking about Ian Paisley. I'm talking about Jerry Adams or whoever. There are an awful lot of people who say, I don't really support violence. I don't really encourage it. But everything that they do seems designed to encourage it because they believe it's in their political interests, frankly. Okay. Okay. So, yeah, I would take a very caustic view of such people personally.

1:23:50Dominic Sandbrook:And actually, to go back, just to finish on Spence and Co., these killings were just so terrible to us. To some people, they give them a kind of outlaw appeal. They seem exciting. One writer later called Spencer loyalist folk hero. And there are lots of loyalist gunmen who join parametric groups later who say, yes, he was my inspiration. I really looked up to this guy. He was the one person who had the guts to take up the gun and to actually do something positive to defend our people. So I think that that's an important thing to bear in mind. In Britain, what do people think of all this? Do you know what?

1:24:25Dominic Sandbrook:Most people don't even notice. This is the summer of swinging London. It's the summer of England's World Cup win. Most people are completely uninterested in Northern Ireland. It doesn't really fit the mood, these stories. Who cares that some people in a faraway place have been shooting each other if all your thoughts are of Carnaby Street and miniskirts and stuff? But of course, in Belfast, people don't think that way at all. Terence O 'Neill had been on a visit to France for the anniversary of the Somme, and he cuts it short to come back to Stormont and to denounce the Ulster volunteer force.

1:24:57Dominic Sandbrook:He says, it's abominable to compare yourselves to Carson and his volunteers. There's no connection between men who were ready to die for the country and the fields of France and this sordid conspiracy of criminals. And he ends with this really dramatic warning, O 'Neill. He says, Northern Ireland must choose either the road to progress or return to the pointless violence of the past. When he gives the speech, the London press say, oh, this is great. O 'Neill is laying down the gauntlet and people will undoubtedly rally to him because people don't want to go back to the sectarian ages of the past.

1:25:35Dominic Sandbrook:But the biggest newspaper in Belfast, the Belfast Telegraph, which has a much better sense of the local mood, is much less optimistic. It says Ulster is in danger of being thrown back into a dark past thanks to those who have been sowing dragon's teeth and do not care how terrible the harvest may be. but tom that harvest will be much more terrible than anybody realizes so next time um we'll be

1:26:01Tom Holland:looking at the civil rights marches of 1968 the fighting in the streets of dairy your hero jim callahan deciding to send in the troops after a lot of prevarication and um the ira preparing to re-emerge from the shadows. So club members can hear that episode and the entire series. And if you're not a member, you can, of course, get membership at therestishistory.com. And as we may have mentioned before, membership does come with an incredible rate of supplementary benefits, including our fantastic newsletter, which includes guest historian essays, book extracts quizzes prizes just non-stop fun um so all of that and more in your inbox every friday so dominic another excellent reason to become a member so many reasons so many reasons anyway thank you everyone for listening thank you dominic and bye-bye bye-bye

1:27:14Thank you.